Chicago Fire season 8, episode 15 takeaways: Off The Grid

What can Chicago Fire fans learn from Off The Grid? Look closer at this week’s episode with our Chicago Fire season 8, episode 15 takeaways.

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

“Off the Grid” featured Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) helping former Chicago PD cop Sean Roman (special guest star Brian Geraghty) investigate a drug dealer whose product was causing multiple overdoses throughout Chicago.

The case was particularly personal for Roman, as one of the potential victims was his younger sister Sarah, and we saw Severide doing everything possible to keep Roman from spinning out of control.

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 Fire recap.

Below are our takeaways from this week’s episode:

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1) Does Severide have good luck? Or not?

Last week we speculated on if Matthew Casey (Jesse Spencer) has terrible luck given the number of times that Chicago Fire has almost killed him. Maybe it’s the opposite for Severide, because every time that the show requires some major detective work, he’s usually the one doing 75 percent of it.

We usually see Severide investigating shenanigans, and on the semi-rare occasion it’s not him, then it’s Casey. You can’t fault the show for this since Casey and Severide are the two most prominent heroes on the show, but it would be kind of cool to see a future crossover episode where Christopher Herrmann (David Eigenberg) uncovers a series of crimes, film noir style.

Or Darren Ritter (recurring guest star Daniel Kyri) and Tuesday go on a search, Turner and Hooch-style. Or what about a crossover where Chief Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker) and his wife Donna (guest star Melissa Ponzio) get to be the leads? There are all kinds of cool ideas, although anyone would be hard-pressed to match Severide’s incredible instinct for sussing out the real story.

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2) Was the Casey and Brett story boom or bust?

“Off the Grid” also demonstrated how difficult it is for Derek Haas and company to write these One Chicago crossovers we love so much. On one hand, there’s this massive crossover storyline. But on the other, Chicago Fire has its own ongoing subplots that it wants to keep moving forward, too.

That’s how we had something slightly awkward on Wednesday. Casey and Sylvie Brett (Kara Killmer) missed a large portion of the crossover, because they were literally out of town during the drug dealer crisis. Brett was on the scene at the beginning of this episode, so it’s not like she totally abandoned her job, but most of her screen time was about finding her birth mother and all that entailed.

It makes sense to a point, because Fire has been building up that storyline and needs to finish what it started. But the timing of it also felt weird, because there was that huge crisis going on that hadn’t been resolved yet. It just goes to show how much stuff our One Chicago writers have to consider when trying to make one of these big episodes.

3) How much fire should be in Chicago Fire?

Here’s a fun fact: there wasn’t a lot of fire in this episode of Chicago Fire. This was an episode where the firefighting was largely secondary; the biggest fire moment came at the end of the episode, where that basement apartment went up in flames.

This is not the first time that we’ve had a fire-light episode over eight seasons and more than 100 episodes, but it’s always kind of amusing when it happens, since “fire” is in the title and in several people’s job description. That ending sequence, though, definitely delivered because we watched that apartment go up like a tinder box—and seeing Roman emerge from the blaze was definitely a jaw-dropping moment!

For the latest Chicago Fire season 8 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago Fire category at One Chicago Center.