We’ve got both good news and potentially bad news for Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD fans.
Let’s start with the good news! The good news is that it is looking likely that all three One Chicago shows will be renewed in the coming weeks. While the futures of the shows were technically never in question as Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD remain top performers for NBC, you truly never know which shows are safe in today’s day and age.
Just because a show is a strong performer in the ratings, does not always mean it will be coming back for another season. CBS’s decisions in recent years are a perfect example of this, with the network canceling many hit series including NCIS: Hawai’i, SWAT, and Blue Bloods, despite their strong ratings. At the end of the day, it wasn’t about the shows’ popularity or performance, but about the money and the shows came to an end to really no fault of their own.
Those cancellations really reminded fans how nothing is guaranteed in television, which is why One Chicago fans always have a slight fear lurking in the back of their minds. Thankfully, it seems that there is nothing to worry about as it’s expected that Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD will be renewed for respective fifteenth, twelfth, and fourteenth seasons.
That’s the good news; the bad news is that the One Chicago renewals are expected to come with yet another wave of budget trims.
According to Deadline, the renewals of Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD are expected to come with budget cuts which could impact a number of things. This includes the number of episodes series regulars appear in, the number of episodes ordered by NBC for the new seasons, and potential cast exits.
One Chicago fans are no strangers to the ramifications of budget cuts, so the news that the renewals of Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD will bring more cuts to the shows’ budgets is concerning. We’re already at a point where series regulars are missing several episodes each season, and it’ll be really interesting to see if the number of episodes they miss grows any further. If series regulars do miss additional episodes, it’s going to be interesting to see if the shows will continue working these absences in randomly through the season, or if perhaps we might see characters miss multiple episodes in a row through more carefully crafted storylines.
This is something we saw Grey’s Anatomy do in its current season with Caterina Scorsone missing an extended stretch of episodes at once, rather than coming and going. In the show, they wrote this into the storyline with Scorsone’s character Amelia taking a leave of absence. It’s a move that could easily be adapted by the One Chicago shows via a number of storylines such as characters being injured on the job, leaving town for various reasons, serving suspensions, going undercover, etc. What is more concerning is the possibility of more cast shakeups.
The current seasons of Chicago Fire, Chicago Med, and Chicago PD each underwent cast departures this season with Chicago Fire being the most heavily impacted. In total, five key actors exited the shows this season with Jake Lockett, Daniel Kyri, and Michael Bradway all leaving Chicago Fire; Marlyne Barrett taking a step back from Chicago Med; and Toya Turner exiting Chicago PD. If additional budget cuts are implemented, it stands to reason we’ll see more cast departures in the months ahead.
As for the episode count? Well, we thought that could come into play last season with expectations being we might only get 20-episode seasons but we ended up getting 21-episode orders for Chicago Fire season 14, Chicago Med season 11, and Chicago PD season 13. Should there be a reduction in the episode numbers, it seems likely it’d be minimal and a 20-episode season would still be longer than most broadcast shows are producing these days!
We'll certain to learn more about how these budget cuts will impact the shows once the renewals come through.