Chicago Fire season 8, episode 5 recap: Buckle Up

Happy endings?

At Molly’s, Emily Foster (Annie Ilonzeh) is still trying to sell her colleagues on putting office gossip in the newsletter. But then Christopher Herrmann (David Eigenberg) gets an emergency phone call from his son Luke, and she goes with him to help. One of Luke’s friends decided to jump off the house’s roof into the pool and missed, just like every other episode of Ridiculousness.

Now the kid isn’t breathing, but they’re able to get him going again before an ambulance arrives. Foster compliments Luke’s attempt at CPR, but Herrmann chews him out for not stopping his friend from potentially killing himself.

Brett disseminates the second issue of the newsletter, which she has vastly improved…in her opinion. She’s kind of gone crazy with editorial power. But the joke’s on her, thanks to a “connect the dots” puzzle that Capp (Randy Flagler) put in.

Speaking of puzzles, Severide takes his suspicions and his photos to Boden. Casey then arrives with information of his own: the lead car in both accidents was the same. This is an obvious scam. Severide goes to the hospital to tell the scammer that they know what he’s doing. He explains the whole scam to the guy, and thus Chicago Fire fans. “How much is that towing company paying you to cause these accidents?” he asks.

As if on cue, here’s the truck driver and his buddy. Unmoved, Severide keeps talking, showing the guy photos of the victims from the two accidents to lay on the guilt. And he tells them all that he’s on to them, which would seem to be a dangerous thing to do. But Chicago Fire wraps the storyline up in the very next scene, by saying Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) from Chicago PD was already on it and the scammer is already cooperating. Severide watches as the truck driver and his buddy are arrested, and their lot will be shut down.

Stella is surprised when the rest of the firefighters decide to name her incident leader for their final simulation, and Boden gets the good word from the conference leader about Stella’s performance. He also finally catches on about the newsletter, which has turned into a dumpster fire. He shuts it down then and there.

Severide meets Stella upon her return, and they both have long stories to share. But it’s not such a happy return for Herrmann, who finds Luke waiting to apologize to his dad. Herrmann takes Luke to visit his injured buddy in the hospital, while Mouch gets home to Trudy Platt (Amy Morton) and they head out for dinner.

But that’s not all: Chloe (Kristen Gutoskie) meets Cruz outside his apartment building. She’s changed her mind, and she’s holding a very large arrangement of baked goods as an apology. Some of them spell out “Ask me,” so she clearly figured out he was going to propose. Cruz doesn’t need to be told twice, and the two are officially engaged!

Well, that escalated quickly, and for the good. Except for the poor desserts, which are now on the sidewalk and can’t be eaten anymore.

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