Chicago PD season 7, episode 16 takeaways: Intimate Violence

What can Chicago PD fans learn from Intimate Violence? Look closer at this week’s episode with our Chicago PD season 7, episode 16 takeaways.

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

“Intimate Violence” featured Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) trying to get through to a suspect’s wife who was also a victim of domestic violence, and her partner Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) going a bit too far because of it.

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:

More from One Chicago Center

• Chicago Med star on 2024 cast changes: ‘Nice to have new faces’
• Here’s the perfect Chicago Fire episode to watch on Thanksgiving
• Ranking the 8 NCIS Thanksgiving episodes from worst to best
• Mark Harmon does NOT have plans to reprise Gibbs on NCIS
• One Chicago stars tease new seasons on IG: ‘Here we come’

1) Was that ending no surprise?

We spoke about this with “Burden of Truth” but the ending of “Intimate Violence” was another typical Chicago PD ending—going for some sort of dark or grim thing to conclude an episode on.

When Upton revealed that her mother was still living with her abusive father, it felt like more of a shoulder-shrug moment than a shocking or even sad one, because we’ve come to expect that there’s some kind of a catch somewhere. And it’s not great in some ways, not only because it can be depressing but because since we expect it, it lessens the impact of reveals like that one.

To be fair, though, this is not strictly a Chicago PD issue. Dick Wolf‘s original hit Law & Order also went through several years where it ended episodes on some sad asides, and Law & Order: Special Victims Unit also does that sometimes (although that’s more in tune with the tone of that show as well).

Watch One Chicago on fuboTV: Watch over 67 live sports and entertainment channels with a 7-day FREE trial!

2) Was Voight giving Halstead a backhanded compliment?

It turns out the dust-up between Halstead and Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) was more of Voight giving Halstead a lecture. In Voight’s monologue, he says that Halstead leading with his heart is part of who he is—but then Voight also says that he “made peace with it.”

But why would Halstead having a heart be something Voight needs to make peace with? That implies that such a quality isn’t normally welcome in Intelligence, or Voight wouldn’t need to make himself accept it in Jay.

Which, in turn, might not be a great look for this team. It either means that Voight is implying he expects his officers to be more objective (which is normal) or Voight expects that they’re not going to have compassion (which is weird and also not necessarily out of line with the vague morality of this unit). We’ll let you decide how you want to interpret it, but that comment was just a bit off.

3) How big was that Upstead hint?

No doubt Upstead fans swooned when Halstead handed Upton the roses he bought as a way of not revealing to Shane Sullivan that he was a police officer. But was that Chicago PD continuing to fan the flames of Upstead or just good police work, or both?

It’s clear that the writers are aware there’s interest in that ship or we wouldn’t have had scenes like the one we had in “Mercy.” But the writers also have to either commit to this or not, and not leave it vague forever (like Brett and Casey over on Chicago Fire). It’s fine to be cute like that, if they’re going to follow through, and if they do they’d also better address how Halstead also dated his last partner and that didn’t work out for him at all.

For the latest Chicago PD season 7 spoilers and news, plus more on the entire series, follow the Chicago PD category at One Chicago Center.