It’s just plain difficult not to give credit to The Chicago Code for trying so damn hard. The problem is that you end up looking at how hard the show desperately wants to be authentic to Chicago.
The opening scene of “Gillis, Chase, & Baby Face” displays in one wonderfully photographed chase across the city, the best and worst of what the show has to offer. On one hand, it can be extremely exciting, with Jarek and Evers the first to a call of a bank robbery, then racing off after the escaped assailants. Then, in a bit of the show’s worst, the two officers start talking about “the El train” on the brown line going to “the Quincy stop.”
It’s a moment where the show forcibly tries to place itself squarely in the geography of Chicago, a slipup that effectively comes off as unnatural and disingenuous.
The Chicago Code is developing nicely into a police procedural with a lot of different angles, albeit one that almost nobody is watching, but it makes a great case for anyone in the area to start watching. This episode features enough broad, hackneyed plot devices to draw in some more viewers, and hopefully Shawn Ryan won’t have another one season wonder on his hands.
After that furious opening chase that leaves a security guard injured and a robber dead, Jarek and Evers (which is just a better name for the duo than Wysocki and Evers or Jarek and Caleb) track down the remaining suspect. This happens only after Jarek gets grief from the Organized Crime Unit guys we’ve been introduced to about Superintendent Colvin forcing cops to retire. As Jarek takes flak for potentially being a snitch for the superintendent, this leads to a nice little bit for Matt Lauria to play as Evers, who wants to prove himself enough to be a permanent partner for Jarek, but not get frozen out from the rest of the force.
Elsewhere, we finally get to see Delroy Lindo stretch his muscles a little bit more as Alderman Gibbons. He’s in league with the Irish mob on a crooked construction site that’s leeching government money. Colvin and Jarek decide to push some buttons on the site, which is out of Gibbons’ ward, to see if he makes any political moves in order to help out one of the mob bosses. When he does, Colvin shuts the site down, only for Gibbons to strike back when he sees that Colvin hasn’t been keeping her chief-of-staff privy to her plans.
The scene where Gibbons gets at Colvin’s chief-of-staff is about as clichéd as possible, and is one of a few wrong steps the episode takes. The guy literally sips on private stock, grabs a Cuban cigar, and openly asks for a bribe and Colvin’s job, but Delroy Lindo plays Gibbons as the kind of snake oil salesman this kind of show thrives on. He exposes a recording of his conversation with the chief-of-staff to Colvin and the media as punishment for the superintendent messing in his affairs. It’s a very publicly calculated move to make himself look better to the people of Chicago and complicate any efforts made by the police department to clean things up around town.
On the illegal side of things, Gibbons and an Irish mob boss trade scenes where they try to grab the upper hand in their business dealings. First, Gibbons can’t deliver on his promises to control Colvin, but then has child pornography planted in the swanky home of the mob boss. The way in which he teases out making the man ask for his help is a high watermark for the series so far.
The back half of the episode features a bit too much double dealing, backstabbing, and underhanded power-grabbing. But, this is the point Ryan seems to be making about political corruption at large, not just about this particular city. There are a lot of ways in which business gets done; there are a lot of deals to broker, and a lot of wheels to grease, but Colvin and Jarek are inching their way closer to Gibbons, and they know how he makes his moves. Whereas last week had a lot going for it during the case, this time around it’s the overarching plot of the season that takes the limelight, and provides a wide array of interesting questions for the show to tackle going forward.
Final Grade: B+
Other Notes:
Chicago sighting: Clearly the opening chase scene was the most thrilling, but we do get another glimpse at Alderman Gibbons’ office, filmed at Northwestern’s School of Law.
We get precious little bits of Jarek’s niece and her partner in this episode. They’re sidelined to writing parking tickets for mob-hired construction workers.
Liam takes way too many chances at providing inside information to Jarek. Any respectable mob group would’ve sniffed him out by now.
I’m still waiting on a better backstory for Caleb. There has to be something that digs deeper than his use of technology. This week he snaps a cell phone picture of a deceased suspect’s shoes to use when questioning witnesses.
Thank God there were no Cubs/Sox references this time around.
Still no reference to who the mayor actually is during this season of television, I guess we’ll have to be satisfied with hearing “the mayor” this and “the mayor” that all over the place.