Chicago Fire season 8, episode 13 takeaways: A Chicago Welcome

3. Those awkward cameos

The scene: The gang is getting drinks at Molly’s Bar, making small talk about football. But look closely at who they’re talking to—that’s former Chicago Bears football player Matt Forte and the Bears’ one-time head coach Dave Wannstedt. These are the latest Chicago Fire celebrity cameos, as Wannstedt tells the Firehouse 51 crew if he thinks the Bears will be any good in 2020. It’s not quite as cool as when the Cubs were on the show a few seasons ago, but it might have been a fun Easter egg for any NFL fans.

The takeaway: Mostly confusion. What was the point of having Forte and Wannstedt in this episode? Unless you’re a die-hard Bears fan, you might not have recognized them; Wannstedt hasn’t coached the Chicago Bears since 1998, and Forte hasn’t played for them since 2015. Both of them have since started working for FOX; Forte is an analyst for FOX Sports Chicago while Wannstedt recently appeared in the broadcast booth during the Bears’ preseason in August, which explains how they were around to appear on Chicago Fire.

At least when Cubs players appeared during “My Miracle” it’s because there was a subplot involving a child losing his baseball card collection. Their guest spots were relevant to the story being told. What we saw on Wednesday feels more like a random in-joke, like that time NASCAR driver Carl Edwards popped up as a pizza delivery driver. So is Chicago Fire going to do more of these admittedly fun but also gimmicky random cameos? Are we just going to see celebrities at the bar now and then, the way The Simpsons is constantly having big-name guest voices?

If there are going to be celebrity guest appearances, they’re better when they actually serve the plot being told. Otherwise, it’s probably best just to focus on our regular cast members.

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