Chicago PD season 7, episode 14 takeaways: Center Mass

What can Chicago PD fans learn from Center Mass? Look closer at this week’s episode with our Chicago PD season 7, episode 14 takeaways.

What did One Chicago fans learn from the latest Chicago PD episode? Here’s what we took away from this week’s installment, “Center Mass.”

“Center Mass” featured newcomer Vanessa Rojas (Lisseth Chavez) as doing a favor for a friend led her to pursuing a killer, and attempting to bond with the victim’s mentally ill friend.

If you missed any of this week’s episode or just want a refresher on the events that we’re about to discuss, you can catch up with our Chicago PD recap.

Below are our takeaways from this week’s episode:

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1) What’s the deal with Rojas?

“Center Mass” is another Rojas-centric episode, and even though she’s been with Intelligence for a little while now, we’re having a hard time figuring out who Chicago PD wants her to be.

She has this tough persona sometimes, and then there are episodes like this where we’re supposed to hear about her difficult past and see a softer side. Is she another one of the many TV characters who are tough on the outside, but not so much on the inside? Or what about her is going to make her stand out?

Lisseth Chavez is doing a good job with what she’s been given, but so far we haven’t seen that one thing in the Vanessa Rojas character that makes us want to watch her every week—or that shows us why she’s supposed to be part of the elite Intelligence Unit. She’s a good cop, and a good character, but she’s not great. And we want her to be great.

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2) Is Chicago PD still shipping Atwater and Rojas?

Remember the talk earlier this season that Chicago PD was writing toward a romantic pairing of Rojas and her partner Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins)? Producers did say it may or may not be happening, and based on this episode, we’re not sure where they are.

“Center Mass” had Rojas opening up to Atwater more with a few details of her past, so they got a lot of one-on-one screen time together. But he is also her partner, so that’s not that different. And none of the scenes they had were particularly memorable or revealed anything massive. It’s not like, say, season 5’s “Ghosts” where we learned a ton of stuff about Upton we didn’t know and we saw how Halstead was there for her.

For the record, it’s totally okay if Chicago PD doesn’t ship Atwater and Rojas. There’s not really a lot of chemistry there yet, and it is permissible for people to be partners without dating in this unit. We think.

3) Could there have been another ending?

This is something we’ve discussed before, but “Center Mass” highlighted one of the tropes of this show, which is that there’s usually a fair amount of action and/or violence in every episode. That’s how this unit primarily solves cases. They don’t do as much investigating as they do shooting, or kicking in doors, or threatening people in the interview room.

Look at the ending of this episode. Rojas tries to talk down Sammy, but when she thinks he may shoot two innocent bystanders, she’s forced to shoot him instead. We’re told that he survives, but could the scene have ended differently? We’ve already seen that Rojas has a knack for talking to the guy, and it would have been compelling enough to watch that—to see the negotiation and to see him perhaps making that genuine human connection with Vanessa.

Instead, we get someone else being shot and the obligatory angsty moment of Rojas sitting by Sammy’s bedside in the hospital. It’s not necessarily wrong, but it shows that Chicago PD can be predictable sometimes. Like Voight, the show is set in its ways. That works, but sometimes it also leaves you wanting more.

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