‘Chicago PD’ season 4, episode 10 review: Ruzek’s undercover exit; Rixton’s debut
It’s interesting sometimes how a show like “Chicago PD” works. Even though much of Wednesday night’s new episode “Don’t Read the News” was focused mostly on a powerful case of a serial killer never properly investigated or stopped, we know that the majority of the questions out there since it aired revolve around the character of Ruzek.
With that in mind, what we have to tell you is this: Don’t worry too much about him departing for an undercover mission. We haven’t heard anything suggesting that the character is leaving the show; instead, we actually think that his exit is for now smart writing. Think of this in terms of the characters. Adam was struggling with the idea that he’d have to work around Kim Burgess daily. He still loves her, and seeing that they’re no longer together smashes him emotionally. To him, he’s not necessarily thinking of this in terms of anything other than his current emotional state, but at the same time, we’re also not sure that doing this is going to be a way to make himself feel any better in the end — after all, he does have to find his way back to her eventually and cannot steer clear of the problem forever.
The case – Or, we really should say, cases. After a young black woman is found dead, more and more information comes to light that several other young women of a similar ethnicity and background were found dead, and in many cases raped postmortem, over the course of the past several years — in the process of that, the police were negligent in giving these crimes the proper attention or care. Intelligence got a hold of this, and we do have to credit Burgess dramatically for really putting in the time to understand the plight of the families. This produced some results that made it possible for the unit to find the real person responsible — though it still wasn’t easy and took many interrogations to get there.
Along the way to help this time was Kenny Rixton (the great Nick Wechsler), an old colleague of Voight’s who is very familiar with him thanks to the time that they’ve spent together on the gang unit. He’s no doubt accomplished at his job, but in the early going Olinsky got annoyed with him for not recognizing the “team effort” associated with doing every part of the job.
Meet Lindsay’s father – Once this case was resolved, we had a chance to dive a little deeper into one of the episode’s big personal stories: This man finally arriving in her life. He was the “secret admirer,” and he claimed that he wanted to be in her life in a way that he wasn’t previously. At first, she was understandably skeptical, and understandably so given that some parts of his story were different than what she was told beforehand. Yet, Halstead checked him out and he wasn’t in need of money. Does that mean that she can trust him? Maybe on the surface, but he did raise another interesting possibility at the end of the episode: Maybe this man is not really her father, and that is something that Lindsay may need to know. We’re not sure she really wants to, but we’ll see where the story goes.
Overall – We did miss Ruzek, but Rixton was entertaining in his debut, and we did find ourselves moved by the case. Our biggest concern moving forward is the involvement of Platt. With Burgess up in Intelligence, how much more are we really going to see from her? Grade: B+.