Chicago Fire season 8, episode 8 recap: Seeing is Believing

Uncovering big secrets

Boden pops into the officers’ quarters looking for Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer), wanting to have a chat. Boden is now thinking about what happens to Firehouse 51 in the future and how he doesn’t want to see their shift break up. “Every now and then, I take a look at Severide and I catch a glimpse of Benny,” he tells Casey. “He didn’t think he was going to move to OFI either, and then he did.”

Cut back to Severide, who’s doing anything but rubber-stamping those old files, much to the annoyance of his new co-workers. But he’s convinced a grocery store fire in Roseland is not as simple as it looks, and Van Meter tells him to take Seager with him if he has to look into it.

Speaking of looking into it, Herrmann returns and brings his suspicions to Casey and Boden. The house’s couch, and other pieces of furniture, were made out of polyurethane which is a huge red flag for fires. When he points out they came from the same place that led to Otis’s death, that gets everyone’s attention. Literally everyone.

So what is Firehouse 51 going to do about this? Herrmann decides on “an old-school approach,” which means that he and Casey visit the company’s corporate office for a meeting with the CEO. Unfortunately, since they don’t introduce themselves well, they get re-routed to the vice president of Public Relations, who’s the usual one-dimensional talking head type character. Herrmann’s fuse continues to get shorter.

Meanwhile, Severide and Seager visit the Roseland market, which is still a burned-out husk of its former self. Severide takes in the door and they search around, finding the real origin point of the fire and some out of code electrical wiring. The report was wrong; it wasn’t arson, but a common electrical fire. Score one for Severide.

And Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) goes off to teach her new class, which turns out to actually be two classes. And she has to walk directly into teaching, while her boss watches on with a nonplussed face. Also nonplussed? Herrmann, who has decided to stage a sit-in outside the furniture company’s building with the rest of Firehouse 51. Severide even brings Seager along! But it turns out the CEO isn’t even in the state. At least they find out when he’s coming back.