Heading into Chicago Fire season 14, episode 16, we knew the arrival of Chief Hopkins would shake things up and ruffle some feathers. However, nothing could have prepared us for the personal vendetta that Hopkins would have for Firehouse 51’s longtime lieutenant, Kelly Severide.
From the moment he arrived at 51, Hopkins made it clear that he was not a fan of Severide. After doing some digging, Severide would come to discover that Hopkins had worked with his father Benny back in the day, and Hopkins has been holding a long-time grudge after Benny wrote him up on call. As Hopkins made clear, now that he has power in the CFD, he plans on using it to weed out nepobaby firefighters who only made it where they are through their connections. This meant putting permanent roots down at 51 to directly oversee the day-to-day operations out of the firehouse.
Interestingly, Chicago Fire season 14, episode 17, “Sway,” does not pick up with the Severide and Hopkins drama. Instead, we open with Violet at a bar as Novak joins her. Not wanting to keep secrets any longer, Violet finally comes clean about hooking up with Vasquez a few months ago after Carver came to town. Violet assures Novak nothing is going on between them and stresses that she thought Novak was over Vasquez as she was dating Frost at the time. Novak is understanding of the situation—or at least she tells Violet this as her face tells a different story.
The action then moves to the following day as Herrmann and Kidd head into 51 for their shift. As the pair walk along, Kidd brings Herrmann up to speed on everything that went down between Hopkins and Severide as she reveals Severide is out for captain’s training. Before leaving for training, Severide gave Kidd strict orders not to tangle with Hopkins while he’s away.
After dropping her things off in her locker, Kidd goes to see Hopkins and introduce herself. To her surprise, he seems to be a fan of her calling her a rising star in the department. He begins to tell her that Capp and Tony will be working with her on Truck during the shift, but their conversation is cut short as they head out to a fire at a surgery center.
During the call, Hopkins watches the team as Stella leads the call. They’re able to get everyone out safely, with Kidd helping to evacuate a patient who was undergoing surgery at the time of the fire and the nurse who stayed behind to monitor the patient.
When they get back to 51, Herrmann reveals a bar down the street is starting a half-priced drinks promotion on Friday nights, and Herrmann is not about to back down without a fight. To compete, he’s launching Friday night trivia, and he enlists the 51 team to rally for what will be Molly’s first trivia night. Hopkins enters, and the team prepares for criticism, but to their surprise, Hopkins praises them all for a job well done as he comments about understanding why 51 has a reputation for being the best in the city.
In her office, Kidd is preparing her incident report as a call comes through for her. On the phone is a woman who informs Kidd the fire was not an accident and was set on purpose. She asks Kidd to look into the fire before more people are harmed but hangs up before Kidd can gather any additional information.
Kidd brings this to Hopkins and notes no signs of arson. He’s impressed with her arson investigation skills, and she mentions that Severide is great at arson investigating and she must have picked up on some things from him over the years. Hopkins asked why the anonymous whistleblower called Kidd instead of the police, and Kidd suggested it could be someone from the scene. She suggests it could have been the OR nurse, as she was the only one she interacted with on the scene. Hopkins agrees the nurse is a good place to start and has her loop in OFI and speak with the nurse at Med.
In the common room, Violet and Herrmann do rock, paper, scissors for first pick for their trivia teams. Violet wins and drafts Capp first, Herrmann takes Novak, Violet then takes Ballard, and Herrmann gets Vasquez by default. She seems to pass over Vasquez on purpose, and Novak tells her she didn’t need to do that with Vasquez, as she again assures Violet that she doesn’t need to be awkward about this. Directly after, Violet reveals she picked Capp to try to get him to convince Tony to join their team as his knowledge could help make or break their odds of winning. The only problem is that Capp and Tony are in a fight at the moment.