‘Chicago Fire’ season 5, episode 11 review: Severide’s surprise with Anna; Dawson, Casey heal
Given everything that has transpired as of late when it comes to “Chicago Fire,” it feels somewhat understandable to say that the majority of the characters tonight were feeling a little stressed out.
For one prime example, you did not have to look any further than Casey. He was clearly still reeling from losing Louie, and almost everyone was caught in the crossfire. We saw it with Dawson, we saw it with Severide, and we even saw it with Herrmann. He was struggling on the job and at home, while Dawson was taking a slightly different approach: She was distant. She was quiet at dinner, and she became preoccupied with work and a young woman that she did her best to help — even if there was tension between her and the child’s father.
The good news for Dawson is that she may have been able to use losing Louie as a way to connect with the father and try to help the two of them heal. She was able to find some sort of light within darkness. Yet, was she still pushing too hard? At the end of the episode, Herrmann finally got through with the two of them, making it clear that what the two of them were doing was not exactly handing the situation in the right way. Instead, what they were doing was distracting themselves from their pain.
In the end, Dawson and Casey were able to pass some belongings along to the young woman she was looking after — consider this closure?
Matters of the heart – We don’t want to frame this storyline as a “love triangle,” mostly because it is a little bit more complicated than that. Both Stella and Anna have to want to be with him just as much as he wants to be with either one of them, and they both had things to think about there — namely Anna. After all, she didn’t live in Chicago, and while she obviously felt something for him, the reality still was that the version of her that he had feelings for was not the same person that she is in the outside world.
When Kelly arrived to see her get discharged, what he learned was that she’d already been let go. She left him one of her pictures with “someday” written across it, a sign that they could still have a future — but that future couldn’t be right now.
As for the state of Severide and Stella, we don’t think that the two of them are done by any means. With Anna gone, he may need to reassess some of his feelings, but we don’t expect it to happen overnight. Of course, we also don’t want Stella to wait around for him in the event she finds someone new. There was talk about timing in this episode, and for now, that timing seems to be off.
Our final take – It was hard to follow the gut-wrenching episode that we saw last time. Still, what we enjoyed about this episode was that there was an essence of hope, which is something that we do need on the show and in the world these days. Grade: B.
Next time – Want to see when “Chicago Fire” is going to be returning with new episodes? All you have to do is head over to the link here right now. (Photo: NBC.)