Chicago PD will return this fall for its fourteenth season, though our excitement about the new season is dwindling already due to recent comments from the series’ showrunner.
Following the Chicago PD season 13 finale, showrunner Gwen Sigan spoke with Parade about the events of the finale. While reflecting on how the season ended, she offered a small kernel of information about season 14 when revealing plans to continue a storytelling trend that has divided fans.
“I think we will continue to make it as character-focused as we can, which does lend itself to focusing on a character each week. So that probably will stick around next year,” Sigan teased.
Sigan’s comments all but confirm that the show is going to continue a storytelling trend that is quickly dividing the fans and is causing many to lose interest in the series.
Unlike its sister series Chicago Fire and Chicago Med, which do a brilliant job of giving each member of their larger ensemble equal time in the spotlight and organically further key storylines in every episode, Chicago PD has taken a more unique approach. The show has gotten into a pattern of rotating through its main characters with a character-of-the-week type of approach.
While this allows for character-focused episodes, which are great hours of television and an amazing showcase of the ensemble, the problem is that this approach kills the momentum of bigger storylines and fails to use the show’s ensemble to the best of its abilities.
Take, for example, season 13’s storyline in which Atwater found out he was going to be a father. The entire storyline essentially played out over the course of just three episodes with little to no updates on the storyline outside of the Atwater-focused episodes. We met Tasha in episode 5, found out she was pregnant after her night with Atwater in episode 11, and then had to wait until episode 18 before the storyline was picked back up as the pair discussed their plans for raising the baby. In fact, it wasn’t until episode 18 that Atwater’s friends even found out about the baby, and it wasn’t mentioned again after the episode in any of the final episodes of the season.
This storytelling approach might give characters the chance to shine in that moment, but then the spotlight shifts to another character, and it’s like the events of the previous episode never happened as we just move right along to a new case and a new storyline.
It’s an approach that makes it hard to invest in the show and its ongoing storylines, as there is not a natural progression to the storylines introduced. This can be quite jarring, especially when dealing with such major life moments such as the death of a loved one.
Season 13, episode 19 brought about the death of Ruzek’s father, Bob, in a heartbreaking episode that put Ruzek center stage. Rather than seeing Ruzek deal with the fallout of his father’s death in the final episodes of the season, the show moved on without batting an eye, and no one even referenced Ruzek’s loss. It was literally as though Bob’s death didn’t even happen as Ruzek was immediately back on the job by the following episode, and there was not a single line of dialogue used to address his mental well-being after his father’s death or even a mention of a funeral.
This cycle of character-of-the-week storytelling is harming the show, and it’s concerning that the creative team is going to continue to embrace it heading into yet another season. We wish Chicago PD would take a page from Chicago Fire and Chicago Med’s playbook and switch to a storytelling style that actually celebrates more than a single character per episode and advances storylines episode to episode.
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