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“Chicago Fire ” recap (1.24): “It didn’t take.”

Previously on Chicago Fire, the writers reached into the depths of Hermione Granger’s magically extended bag of tricks and pulled out everything. Andy Darden got himself blown up and Matthew Casey and Kelly Severide blamed each other for it. Severide had a busted shoulder which led to a drug addiction which led to a fight with his lesbian roommate who had been feeding his painkiller problem but then threatened to move out because, dude, you need help. Before she could take her flawless lady-loving self to the home of one exquisite Gabriela Dawson she got hit by an actual truck. But since she’s a unicorn or something she heals really fast and so does Severide because he decided to get help for the shoulder and for the drugs because Shay almost died and because a hot girl who looks a bit like Carmen told him that he could pop on down to St. Mungo’s and they could fix him up in a jiffy.

Meanwhile Casey and Hallie (the doctor who never doctored) were engaged and then broke up and he thought about dating Dawson for a hot second, well more like lukewarm because the dude can’t close. He zigged, she zagged right into the pants of one wee lad named Peter Mills. Mills has some daddy issues so the team let him get a puppy. Aww. Then Dawson found out about the daddy issues but kept them to herself until she couldn’t anymore and then Mills broke up with her. Buddy, you work on commission, right? Big mistake. Big. Huge.

Shay played house with her crazy ex (hands up all you lesbians who have a crazy ex, yep that’s everyone) until McCrazy took her McBaby to New York. No worries, Shay is a woman with a plan and a can-do attitude so she decided to get pregnant. For reasons no one understands, she didn’t ask Christopher “the re-populator” Herrmann for his sperm that swim like freaking Michael Phelps. Instead she asked the former drug addict, who wears skinny jeans, and bangs her ex-flames. Not your smartest day, Shay.

But Severide got caught up in a fake sexual assault (bitches, man!), Mouch got some man panties from Japan, Herrmann, Otis, and Dawson opened a bar, and what else. Oh yeah there was a dirty cop who due to circumstances outside our control (spinoff!) might not be so dirty after all. What was that last thing – oh right, Hallie got burned to a crisp. So that’s about half of what you missed this season.

Herrmann and Otis are hanging a banner outside of Molly’s offering ladies night specials every night of the week. Herrmann asks Otis if he can borrow a video camera to make a video for the impending Herrmann baby and Otis, speaking for every teenager in America, says “dude you have a phone with a camera, it actually doesn’t get any easier than that.” Dawson walks up in a leather jacket she borrowed from Katniss after the Hunger Games and berates the guys for offering the special. She’s feeling a little sensitive about the fact that her mere presence does not seem to be bringing all the ladies (or gents) to the yard. Construction workers roll by and Dawson laments the fact that the bar will suffer further if there’s construction but Herrmann, ever the optimist, thinks it will bring in good business. Up and coming neighborhood, right?

At the firehouse, Shay and Cruz are walking into the locker room having a very important conversation. Guys, take note. Do not hit on the lesbians. We are an underutilized resource. We can help you, but you have to stop drooling and asking if you can watch.

Cruz: Are you messing with me?

Shay: No, women love it. You will not believe how many nerve endings are –

She stops because she sees Casey whose mere presence kills the mood. He tells them not to stop with the sex advice just because the last lady he did it with is dead. Shay and Cruz shuffle around and pat Casey awkwardly.

Shay walks out to the ambulance and apologizes to Dawson for being late. Then she explains in graphic detail the precise move she was teaching Cruz and then she and Dawson hop in the back of the rig to practice. Fine. Dawson asks “Leslie Shay, did you get your blood drawn this morning.” It’s nice but Dawson’s face looks just like it used to when she’d ask Shay if she got laid the night before. Sigh, I miss the good old days. Shay is a day late and got a blood test to see if her eggo is preggo with the spawn of Severide. I’ll just be over here doing my best Juno MacGuff impression “please be negative, please be negative.”

While they are having this chat, Mills lurks in the background. Dawson says they aren’t talking and Shay says Mills is a tool for breaking up with Dawson. Dawson wants to agree but knows that things never work if you can’t trust the person you are with. It also never works when you are dating a guy who is a big baby.

Severide runs up to Mills and tells him that the results of Quidditch try-outs will be posted later that day and, if they’re lucky, Mills will be the new beater and can stop having to clean everyone’s broomsticks for them. Oh stop talking in code you two and just make out.

Herrmann runs up to Severide with a thing around his neck that makes him look like Britney Spears/Brittany S. Pierce. Thankfully it’s not a snake but a pregnancy pillow. Herrmann tells Severide if he gives it the Shay he’ll be her hero. It’s a pillow guys, not a superpower. As he walks away Herrmann says “having a kid, it’s the best thing you’ll ever do.” Which is nice since usually it’s women saying that shit because it makes us feel better about stopping our lives to have them.

The crew is called out to a fire at the prison. Mills is freaking out and Casey tries to calm him down a he did on Mills’ first day. The prison guy in charge has turned off the sprinklers because the inmates were using them to cause trouble. The Chief is having none of the bullshit and asks to have them turned on before he send Casey, Herrmann, Mills, Cruz in to check it out. Mills looks like he might vomit.

Otis is giving Mouch shit about his internet girlfriend from Japan. Mouch is hurt because Mari is coming to visit and he’s a bit nervous to meet her. The Chief gets a call that Herrmann’s wife is in labor and headed to the hospital. Herrmann declines the opportunity to leave the fire because “this will only take a minute.” Famous last words Herrmann.

They go in and there’s thick smoke in a small room filled with inmates. Crus quickly finds a guy who has been stabbed in the chest and is bleeding a lot. The room is chaotic with the fire and smoke and inmates yelling. They pull the guy into the hallway but Mills says the victim is too hurt to move so Boden sends in Dawson and Shay. They take over for Mills but once it’s obvious that they need a backboard for Mr. Shanked-but-not-too-hurt-to-flirt-with-Dawson, Mills gets pulled out to help Dawson while Shay runs for the backboard. It’s a little awkward but they’re pros, right? Then Casey finds the cause of the fire, a jammed electrical socket, and then the power goes out. Whoopsie. Now we can’t open the doors and everybody is stuck in place. Mills and Dawson trapped together and Casey, Herrmann, and Cruz stuck with one of the prison guards and a whole lot of inmates who look like a gang of Inferi.

While the braintrust is trying to figure out a way to get in with every door locked and unable to be opened until the power is back on, Shay gets a call and takes it because you know, this is the perfect time for personal calls. Casey’s team leave the Inferi and hide under a staircase. Mills wants to know how long he’s going to be stuck with Dawson because the victim is bleeding out and it’s just torture looking at her perfect face.

Boden sends Severide in to knock heads and cut through doors. Before Severide goes into the prison he runs into Shay who tells him that the pregnancy didn’t take. That is a crushing, hopeless feeling. When you are trying to get pregnant it all starts out fun and light and full of all the hope you can squeeze into a perfect person. A person so perfect you haven’t even made her yet. There’s a place in your mind that tells you not to get your hopes up because it knows that getting pregnant can be hard and it can take a long time. But the rest of your brain is set on the idea that you are the exception, you’re the one who gets pregnant on the first try. Then while you wait those agonizing weeks before you can even find out if you are pregnant every second, every feeling you have is either a symptom that you are or aren’t pregnant. You read every book, you scour the internet in hopes that that dizzy spell you had or the weird feeling in your stomach is the start of a person.

It’s like that girl you like and you want her to like you so much. One day you think she smiled at you but maybe she was smiling at the person behind you. Then she does it again, or she says “hi” to you and god, was that a smile that wasn’t just friendly? Could that smile mean something more? That’s constant battle between hope and logic, of wanting to believe, and wanting to protect yourself from disappointment is what rages until you know. When you find out like Shay that that little voice was right and that your hope, those smiles, those symptoms you checked and rechecked because maybe they were a sign that you were creating something brand new inside yourself they were all wrong. Like that smile from that girl and the three words you exchanged were creating something new, something perfect between the two of you. But then you find out that she’s just nice, or you’re not really pregnant, and the hope you balanced so precariously, that you propped up as long as you could comes crashing down. It’s a horrible, hopeless feeling of loss and it makes you feel sad because you aren’t pregnant and stupid for being hopeful in the first place.

Mr. Shivved but looking to mingle reaches out for Dawson and Mills threatens the guy. The guy loses consciousness and Dawson springs into action. She can’t intubate the guy so she improvises in true Dawson fashion. Just to be sure that she’s voted most badass of all, she MacGuyver’s together a light to determine whether her maneuver was successful and Mills, like any good lesbian, is turned on by Dawson’s manual dexterity and ingenuity.

Meanwhile Severide’s cutting through doors and Herrmann wants an update on his wife. To add insult to injury, Boden asks Shay to call the hospital. Shay finds out that Cindy needs an emergency c-section but Boden decides not to tell Herrmann the news.

The firefighters follow Officer “Don’t Call Me Susan” Lucci to a cell block where the prisoners are not in their cells. They discover a dead officer and more hell breaks out when Lucci starts bashing inmates and one of them grabs Herrmann as a hostage.

The crack team of Otis and Mouch has been sent to fix the electricity in the joint. Severide gets through one door only to find another. Meanwhile, Dawson and Mills are talking about how Dawson messed up. She asks if they can start over, hoping that they are just bent but not broken and that they can learn to love again. He’s like, “sure thing lady just tell me I’m the Lavender Brown of this story and you aren’t in love with Casey.” Guys, Monica Raymund in addition to being extensively easy on the eyes, can act. Her face shows us everything Dawson is feeling when Mills tells her the price of a clean slate is her ability to tell him that she doesn’t feel anything for Casey. I make a lot of cracks about the stories on this show but some of the acting is so good, it’s the picture of subtlety when there is much too much big loud emotion, the actors on this show regularly deliver small, quiet, powerful moments. Anyway this moment is interrupted by Severide is his giant flaming rod (seriously). Mills just has that effect on him.

Casey talks the deranged inmate into moving to a less smoky room and offers himself in exchange for Herrmann. No dice. Mr. Shiv wants Lucci and only Lucci and offers to kill Herrmann if he doesn’t get to kill Lucci.

While they are loading the flirty McShiv into the ambulance Dawson tells Mills that she can’t lie and tell him she doesn’t have feelings for Casey. Mills looks sad and so does Dawson and then off they go to the hospital. It’s impossible to process feelings like this. Thank goodness there is room in their turnout gear for a journal. When they reach the hospital, Shay asks about Cindy Herrmann.

Severide reaches the electrician who is locked in the basement but his rod is burnt out (seriously) so they have the guy talk Otis and Mouch through how to turn the power back on. Watching Otis and Mouch run around trying to fix it, complete with writing the instructions on their hand, is a little reminiscent of the guy from Ocean’s Eleven who hacks the security camera and then gets so sweaty he can’t follow the directions to get out.

The Chief holds the phone up to the radio to allow Shay to tell Herrmann that Cindy had a c-section and they had a boy. While the bad guys are distracted and waving a knife around Herrmann bashes the guy in the face and is able to escape. The firefighters retreat with Lucci to a side office and try to hold the door closed. Severide finds the ducts and is able to open the damper just as Otis and Mouch get the power back up so the fans can blow the smoke out, which disables the inmates. In the midst of the smoke, Casey convinces the inmates to let the firefighters out if they leave Lucci behind. They all walk out with Lucci disguised as a firefighter.

They pop Herrmann in a Sheriff’s car and send him to the hospital. The baby isn’t getting enough oxygen and Herrmann struggles to keep composed in the car. He bombs into Cindy’s room but doesn’t see the baby. He starts to break down with his back to his wife. When she calls his name he sucks the tears back in and gives her a hug (a little rough for a lady who just got sliced and diced). While they hug the baby cries and Herrmann dissolves again at the sight of his son. He swaggers out into the waiting room with the baby and everyone admires the little guy. Shay pulls a tight smile but announces that the kid is the cutest she’s ever seen.

The Chief steps aside to field a phone call and then pulls Mills over to tell him that he hasn’t been chosen for Squad this time around but that he should keep taking classes and keep trying and not to brood or lose focus based on this setback. Mills ask if that’s all the Chief has to say. They stare each other down before the Chief asks Mills if he has anything he wants to say. Mills says no and storms off down the hallway.

Herrmann heads back to his room and asks Shay and Severide to come with him. They walk into the shit show of four kids running around and beating each other up. He and Cindy ask the knuckleheads to be the baby’s godparents. Shay and Severide are both honored and they exchange sappy looks over the top of the baby as they surely imagine their own spawn.

The rest of the episode is a montage interspersed with Herrmann making a video with the new baby. First we get a glimpse of what all that construction was near Molly’s. It’s a giant sports bar. Molly’s will be toast in no time. Mills walks into the police academy and asks for an application. God, he’s a big baby. If Emily Fields moved every time a girlfriend got killed – no wait. That’s actually a good idea. And take Paige with you. Mouch is waiting with a bouquet of roses for Mari to show up. It’s kind of adorable. Dawson shows up at Casey’s door where there are newspapers piled up and the door is unlocked. She finds him inside his messy apartment sitting at his table. He’s lost, trying to hold it together for work but he’s a mess. She hugs him and they cling together, both crying.

Finally, Shay and Severide are walking down the sidewalk. It’s nearly identical to the time they walked together when Severide asked “bar or strip club.” It must be their thing, when something is broken to throw their arms around each other, hold themselves up, and put a smile over the mess.

But this time, when they get close to the door, there’s someone waiting. It’s Renee, and as much as I wish I could say she’s there to get a personal lesson in nerve endings from Shay, she’s there for Severide. She’s there and she’s brought company. She reveals her pregnant belly and Shay just breaks off behind Severide, like seeing Renee pregnant with Severide’s kid just cut her loose from her mooring and she’s drifting. Severide is bewildered as he puts his arms around Renee and Shay tries her best to smile.

I forgot how Sad Shay feels like a kick in the teeth. What more could we ask for, Shay’s not pregnant and Carmen is back, baby!

So, what did you think of the finale?

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