Chicago PD season 7 midseason report: Kevin Atwater

What it means

At the risk of sounding like a broken record, we’re going to argue again that Chicago PD needs to make more and better use of Kevin Atwater. This is a topic that we, and the fans, have been going on about since at least season 5, but it continues to be an issue.

The biggest development for Atwater in the first nine episodes is that he might, or might not, get a new girlfriend in Rojas. Setting aside the general argument about how One Chicago doesn’t need to ship every one of its main characters, this isn’t much of a plot development. Atwater and Rojas haven’t shared any personal scenes together since “Assets.” We haven’t seen any chemistry with them. And even if we did, there are more important things that could be done with Kevin.

The show did mention his family this season—are we ever going to check back in with them? We still haven’t seen them since early in season 5 either. Given how important family is to Atwater, it would be more important to rectify that issue in his personal life than to worry about who he may be dating.

And what about using him on different cases? He always gets pigeonholed into either the racial-episode guy or the undercover guy. He can do other things. It’d be great to see him working more in the community, even if it’s just a scene of him off the clock to open an episode; Atwater has a way of connecting with people that the other characters don’t. He could do some community polciing and show that Intelligence is about more than just strong-arming the bad guys.