Thursday, September 18, 2014

Chicago PD: Season 1 - Episode Four - "Now Is Always Temporary"



"Now Is Always Temporary"
Written By: Denitria Harris-Lawrence
Directed By: Mark Tinker


Voight’s unit attends a hostage situation where an apparently-crazy and paranoid artist takes a call girl hostage and ends up blowing his own brains out. The hostage leads Lindsay to another call-girl named Nadia, who will only give up the location of another dead body if Lindsay organises her a hit of cocaine. Unbelievably, Lindsay agrees.

The reason for the bodies piling up turns out to be a pretty sophisticated money laundering ring, which Voight’s squad investigate with the assistance of a Secret Service agent. The squad track down the counterfeiters who are apparently tying up loose ends, hence all the bodies piling up around the place.

When Nadia is sober, Lindsay drives her to a street. On one side, there’s a drug dealer and on the other is a rehab clinic, and Lindsay tells Nadia that she has a choice: continue down her old path by scoring another hit of drugs, or start afresh by going into rehab. Lindsay hands over a business card. As she drives away, Lindsay breaks down in tears.

Atwater and Burgess are asked to arrest a woman who’s been hoarding unimaginable amounts of rubbish in her house, and on their second return – after sustained brow-beating from Sergeant Platt – they discover a secret doorway that leads to a cramped basement, and a kid stuck down there, who, it later emerges, has been missing for some time. Atwater and Burgess are hailed as heroes. Even Platt seems to congratulate them.

Olinsky’s daughter, Lexi, is found in possession of some marijuana and correctly assumes that the boy she’s dating asked her to hold onto them. He has a squad car pick the kid up and, deliberately in front of Nadia, who is sobering up cold, does his best impersonation of Voight, though without physical contact, and tells the kid that he should never contact Lexi again. Understandably, Lexi is a little upset, threatening their father/daughter dance, and it’s revealed that Olinsky lives in a garage out the back of his home. Apparently, he’s separated from his wife.

Halstead’s reasons for accosting the father and son last episode become a little clearer this episode: t
he son, Lonnie Rodiger, molested and killed a child who was the brother of Halstead's high school girlfriend. Lonnie escaped conviction when his father, Phil, lied – at least, Halstead thinks he did – and all the signs apparently point to Lonnie being some sort of sexual offender. But there’s nothing Halstead can do, other than hold a grudge.

Nor is there anything Voight can do about his wayward son, who’s picked up by the police after getting involved in a bar fight. And Kelly Severide makes an appearance at Lindsay’s apartment, where she consoles him over the kidnapping of his sister.


My thoughts: Another good episode, with the oft-forgotten uniformed Atwater and Burgess as the real heroes. That dungeon setup in the hoarders’ house was really creepy. So was the tense hostage situation at the start of the show. Never cool seeing someone’s brains splatter across the walls.

Lindsay going out on a limb to help Nadia is interesting. Maybe she faced a similar choice, or sees something of her former self in the drug-addicted call girl. Or maybe some of Voight’s better qualities have rubbed off on her. Lindsay and Severide: give it ten episodes or less and they’ll be a couple.

Elias Koteas is a great actor, and his obvious love for his daughter, which manifests with him living in a garage to be close to her, and the fact that he gave The Word to her pot-loving boyfriend, really shines through. Maybe he’s the show’s third tortured soul, along with Halstead and Voight. Oh, maybe add Lindsay to that?

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