Chicago PD season 8, episode 10 recap: The Radical Truth

This week’s Chicago PD was a family affair, but not necessarily in a good way.

Wednesday’s episode “The Radical Truth” saw Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) on a mission to rescue his father Bob (recurring guest star Jack Coleman) after Bob’s bad habits once again got him in trouble. Would Intelligence find him alive and if so, would they cover for him one more time?

Meanwhile, the situation strained Ruzek’s relationship with Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati).

Here’s what happened in the latest Chicago PD episode for each of your favorite characters.

Chicago PD season 8, episode 10 recap

Chicago PD wants you to think Ruzek is going to have a nice time with his dad, meeting Bob at a local bar. The two are planning a retirement party for Bob, which Adam puts down the deposit for. Trudy Platt (Amy Morton) asks about it afterward, saying she doesn’t go to retirement parties, while Hank Voight (Jason Beghe) gives Adam a farewell gift for Bob. But when Ruzek and Burgess swing by Bob’s house to drop off said gift, Bob isn’t there.

Bob has very clearly been forcibly removed from there: there’s blood all over the kitchen floor, and his cell phone has been thrown away by the back door. Ruzek speaks to a neighbor who saw two men arrive at the house and leave less than a half-hour earlier. “There’s a decent chance it was self-inflicted,” he admits to Burgess, before calling in his dad’s abduction.

Everyone else arrives some time later (because now it’s dark outside) with Voight telling them to keep the case on the down low. While looking at Bob’s phone, Adam sees a cryptic message that reads in part “You don’t deliver, it’s over.” Voight wants Burgess to look into Bob’s cases but Adam isn’t convinced this is a professional grudge. He goes straight to find Benny and he brings his gun with him.

Adam believes Benny is the man behind the text message, and Benny admits that Bob has massive gambling debts totaling $80,000. However, he swears he didn’t retaliate because Bob showed up with the full balance in cash about a month earlier. Adam apologizes and walks out only to realize that Burgess has followed him. He wonders where the money came from, since just hours earlier his father couldn’t put down the party deposit.

But ominously Chicago PD has Adam get a video from the same mystery number. It’s a very roughed-up Bob claiming that he’s being held by a group named Los Tiranos as leverage. They want Adam to find out who’s feeding the cops their information or they’ll kill his father. Who wants to bet the two are connected?

The next day Intelligence regroups with Kevin Atwater (LaRoyce Hawkins) confirming that the group holding Bob is a Hispanic gang. Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) says some of the crime scene blood belongs to a member of Los Tiranos and the team goes to find Hector. Unfortunately for them, he’s nearly dead when they arrive at his girlfriend’s house and expires within moments. Ruzek is left to question his girlfriend Elena, who didn’t even know Hector was in a gang.

Burgess interrupts this not-really-interview to reveal to Adam that three days ago Bob had been poking around in the police gang database trying to identify the aforementioned snitch known only as Merlin. While he’s still attempting to process that information, Adam gets another video from his dad. He tells Voight what Burgess has uncovered, and that he has until noon the next day to give up the CI or his father will be executed.

Adam wants to make the trade; Voight reminds him that will get the CI killed. Adam argues that the informant is less valuable because he’s a gang member, but Voight points out Bob isn’t a saint either. “I would make the same trade for you every time,” Ruzek says before Voight declares he’s going to get the name himself and they’ll find Bob on their own.

Voight and Upton meet with the task force that’s running the CI and they suggest the task force give them another name. The person who wants the CI dead is a gang member named Lucas Barela. He’s Hector’s cousin and he has been looking very bad because of the informant’s work. New arrival Andre Cooper (Cleveland Berto) is able to help find a possible location; Intelligence storms it and Ruzek finds his father barely alive.

However, this is Chicago PD so it’s no shocker that Lucas takes off running. He carjacks a passerby and escapes.

At least we learn that Bob will be fine. Adam visits his father in the hospital to confront him: Lucas Barela is one of Bob’s former CIs after an arrest 25 years earlier. Adam has connected the dots: Lucas loaned Bob the money to pay off his gambling debt and used that against him. Bob tells Adam to let Lucas get away so that Bob’s own misdeeds don’t come out; Adam storms off as he darn well should.

However, he presents Bob’s exact argument to Voight anyway, and Hank tells him to stop covering for his father. “All the people that matter, they know who you are,” Voight says before refusing to cover for Bob yet again. When Ruzek invokes Alvin Olinsky’s name, that makes Voight snap; he says this isn’t about his own issues with Bob, but not letting a crime against the Chicago PD stand. Ruzek can be in or out.

The rest of the team discusses an address that came up multiple times in Bob’s work history that Lucas was just spotted near. Ruzek’s still fuming as he and Burgess drive to that location, and of course they’re the first on the scene. Adam goes off on his own to the back door, and shots ring out. When Kim catches up she finds Ruzek standing over Lucas’s dead body. However, the corpse is face down; Adam shot him twice in the back.

Chicago PD‘s final few minutes involve the rest of Intelligence arriving on the scene. Voight tells Ruzek people are on the way to start their investigation; Ruzek insists he had a good shoot. When they get back to the district, he’s unbothered by Burgess telling him that she’s being asked for testimony in said investigation. He dares her to say what she’s really thinking; Kim stays silent.

Adam reveals that the security camera next door caught the shooting on tape; all of Intelligence gathers to watch it. The tape shows that Lucas pulled a gun on Ruzek, who shot him once in the front and twice in the back. It is, as he said, a justified shooting. That night he stops to talk to Trudy, admitting to her that Bob wasn’t really a family man; he was using that to cover up his gambling. Voight is also there with a file he’s about to deliver to Deputy Superintendent Miller, but of course that file has been sanitized to protect Bob Ruzek.

At his father’s retirement party, the bartender tells Adam he must be proud and that there’s a “hell of a legacy” to carry on. Adam finishes his drink and then ends up getting even more drunk alone. Kim is not happy when she sees him wasted. “We need to clear the air,” she tells him. But it doesn’t go the way she wanted. He’s offended that she didn’t ask if he was okay; instead she asked what he did.

Adam isn’t sure Kim believes in him anymore. She points out that her skepticism made sense based on what was in front of her face. He tells her that he’d have given her the benefit of the doubt “because I know your heart.” He expected the same thing from her. Kim apologizes but he closes the door in her face, so Burzek fans can worry about their ship all over again.

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