One Chicago: Biggest takeaways from March 17’s Fire, PD and Med episodes

Chicago Fire: Was Boden right to bend the rules for Mouch?

In “Double Red” One Chicago fans saw Mouch (Christian Stolte) get a lucky break courtesy of his battalion chief. Mouch failed a training course because he did his own thing instead of the actual exercises he was supposed to be doing, but after he delivered an emotional monologue to Chief Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker) about wanting to be a hero and how much it meant to have the younger firefighters looking up to him, Boden called in a favor with the instructor to pass Mouch anyway.

Now, the sentiment behind this is understandable and very sweet—Mouch wants to be admired and feel relevant in a firefighting world that he thinks is passing him by. Boden reassures him that he’s a hero just for showing up to work, where he’s become a mentor to Darren Ritter (Daniel Kyri), and getting him the certificate is a way of saying that Mouch is more than good enough.

But in a practical sense, was it the right thing to pass someone through a training course when they didn’t complete the training?

It kind of sets the precedent that it doesn’t matter if our characters follow the rules because they’ll just get a pass anyway. That’s not a direction to go down—just look at Chicago Med for how that pans out. One Chicago’s medical drama has characters pretty much doing whatever they want and the audience doesn’t always believe them.

The real heart of that scene, the exchange between Mouch and Boden where Boden points out Mouch’s value around Firehouse 51, would still have been impactful without the chief bending the rules for Mouch. Doing that was a convenient way to wrap up the training storyline, but it might not have been the best way to go from a character development standpoint.