Will Chicago PD finally change in light of current events?

Will Chicago PD season 8 evolve to reflect current events?

Chicago PD once promoted itself with the tagline “Break the rules, not the law.” But that attitude isn’t likely to fly anymore in the wake of nationwide protests regarding police brutality and racial injustice.

The public perception of police has changed drastically since PD went off the air in April, and that includes how cops are shown on TV. Docuseries Cops and Live PD have been canceled and their reruns pulled, while there’s been growing criticism of how police are depicted on scripted shows, too.

Chicago PD is rife for that kind of criticism. The entire premise of the show, as evidenced by the aforementioned promo, is that the Intelligence Unit uses whatever means necessary to defeat the bad guys. Every character has done something that’s morally questionable, if not outright illegal.

Then there’s Hank Voight (Jason Beghe). He’s made a career out of doing the wrong thing, from murder to repeated assaults to planting evidence. Voight would seem to be the example of what these current protests are about. So will Chicago PD have to change its stripes in order to move forward in season 8?

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Chicago PD’s concerns already existed

One thing should be established first: Chicago PD has had issues well before current events. Viewers have already been voicing criticism, particularly about Voight, for a few seasons now. There were plenty of reasons why he should have been arrested back in season 5—three years ago.

The show is fantastic in many ways, but it does have certain flaws. Intelligence gets away with a lot of things, often in ways that don’t make sense, like saying Voight needed to face consequences for his behavior but killing off Alvin Olinsky. Or having Voight or Trudy Platt (Amy Morton) pull strings or lean on someone to make something go away.

And the series has become increasingly one-dimensional in its point of view over the last two seasons in particular. Conflicts between team members fizzle out pretty quickly, often within the same episode, and characters who provided different points of view like Olinsky and Antonio Dawson (Jon Seda) have been taken out of the show entirely.

So criticism about Chicago PD isn’t just about what’s happening in the world right now—but what’s happening does add to the reasons why the show would benefit from some changes ahead of the next season.

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Current events should prompt new storytelling for Chicago PD

It’s time for Chicago PD to change, both for creative reasons and to be mindful of what is going on in the country. Even conceding a certain amount of dramatic license, it’s not a good idea to proceed with a show where the cops regularly flout procedure and commit acts of violence at a time when people are discussing police conduct.

As of season 4, Voight had 56 complaints of excessive force against him, and that number has to have gone up since then.

We have yet to see serious reprisals for Intelligence when they do something clearly illegal. The police reform storyline in season 5 turned into just one person’s vendetta against Voight. The sixth season started with Voight being investigated for shooting the man responsible for Olinsky’s death, but he quickly got off the hook when Deputy Superintendent Katherine Brennan (Anne Heche) wanted his team’s help.

This season, no one knows that Voight and Superintendent Jason Crawford (Paul Adelstein) framed an innocent man for murder in “False Positive” thanks to Voight threatening the man’s widow in “Mercy.” Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) planted drugs later in the season and she got sent to New York, but that was between her and Voight, and hasn’t seemed to have any negative effect on Upton.

And as much as the show talks about racism, it also has room for improvement there. The main cast includes one African-American character (Kevin Atwater played by LaRoyce Hawkins), who’s not used enough and when he is used, it’s usually in a racism-themed storyline. The show just added a biracial character, Vanessa Rojas (Lisseth Chavez), this past season.

But a large portion of the African-American characters on Chicago PD are suspects, many of them being drug dealers, gang members, or both. The show did introduce some prominent people who weren’t—Denny Woods (Mykelti Williamson), Blair Williams (Charles Michael Davis) and Ray Price (Wendell Pierce)—but Woods and Price went to jail anyway while Blair was murdered.

There was Commander Emma Crowley, who used to be Voight’s boss, but Barbara Eve Harris’s character hasn’t been seen on the show since 2017.

The writers have tried to address racial issues and talked about addressing police reform as early as season 5, but they haven’t completely gotten there. If they still want the show to “feel like it’s really part of Chicago” then they need to take current events into account and make the changes that would happen as a result. Not only would it be realistic, but it’d be a better show, too.

Will Chicago PD fans keep watching?

The obvious question when making major changes to any TV show is what reaction the fans will have. And while many Chicago PD fans have critiqued the series, others believe that it’s just meant to be entertainment, or say that Voight is their favorite character specifically because of his take-no-prisoners approach. People can have different opinions, and making the show too realistic risks turning some viewers off.

But let’s go back to the beginning of our discussion: this series is ripe for a creative shake-up even if you take everything current out of the equation. Chicago PD isn’t the same show it used to be a season or two ago, after losing fan favorite characters and because of the aforementioned places where the writing could be better. Any kind of change, as long as it’s done well, could be amazing for the show.

And Rick Eid and company have put themselves on the absolute perfect track for this. Chicago PD season 8 will open with Atwater having spoken out publicly about racism and having to face what appears to be major backlash from other officers within the department. There is an incredible story waiting to be told here and Atwater’s at the heart of it. The writers can be timely while still doing the story they’ve already planned to do.

Even after that, there are all kinds of plotlines that could be pursued. Let’s say that the writers decide that Voight has to be reined in a bit; they could approach that from his point of view. How will Voight adjust to policing that’s now way different from how he operates? We’ve already seen a little bit of that when he sent Upton to work with the FBI. Voight seemed to be getting more self-awareness anyway; why not chase that and see where it goes?

He can still be a favorite character; he’s still intense and intimidating when he’s not putting hands on people, and Jason Beghe could do great things with Voight as he tries to change and maybe he isn’t quite so sure of himself. What Chicago PD has needed for awhile now is someone to balance Voight out again—maybe that someone ends up being him.

Or maybe Intelligence does participate in some reforms. If the show wants to tell a powerful story, it wouldn’t be easy for this unit to decide to change their ways, but it would be something different to see on TV. And even that wouldn’t take that much away from the episodes; it wouldn’t be taking away the action, just cutting back on the scenes that are clearly out of bounds.

There are ways that Chicago PD can respond to current events without destroying the show; it’s going to be up to the writers to find that balance. But it’s absolutely possible, and the challenges that it would present line up perfectly with what the show needs to get even better. There’s no reason not to try something new in Chicago PD season 8.

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