The firefighting drama notched this dubious honor.
Chicago Fire is always going to be the most iconic One Chicago series. It’s the one that started it all, and it continues to be the anchor piece between Chicago Med and Chicago PD in NBC’s Wednesday night lineup. That doesn’t mean the series is without its low points, though.
Despite boasting some of the most beloved episodes in One Chicago history, Chicago Fire pulled through 2024 with the franchise’s lowest rated episode of the year. While Med and PD regularly got over the 7 hump, and the latter even managed to crack a 9, Fire’s worst rated episode came in at an underwhelming 7.5 on IMDb.
“Birds of Prey” has been the nadir of season 13
The episode in question was “Birds of Prey.” It was the third episode of season 13, and it was came on the heels of the opener, which introduced Dom Pascal (Dermot Mulroney), and the second episode, which saw the shocking exit of Severide’s half brother, Jack Damon (Michael Bradway).
These were pretty significant story beats, and “Birds of Prey” has, well very little by comparison. It’s a standard in between episode, in which the point is less to blow the minds of viewers with lots of story and more to push the character dynamics along. Pascal and Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) have some important interactions, but in truth, the episode feels like 15 minutes of story stretched to 45.
The episode fails to develop any of the characters
We don’t learn more about Pascal here, which is fine if we got more from the rest of the Firehouse 51 ensemble. We don’t, though. The episode falls into the worst tendencies of Chicago Fire, which is the desire to incorporate everybody into an episode and wind up with an episode in which nobody is able to stand out.
You could argue that Pascal and Lyla Novak (Jocelyn Hudon) are the standouts, but whatever appeal they bring to the table here is based on the charisma of the actors more than the writing. It has since improved, thankfully, for both of them.
“Birds of Prey” is fine, but placed in the context of the rest of the season, it feels uniquely aimless. Nothing major is gained or learned, and one could effectively skip to episode 4 without missing any real story beats. That’s a problem. It’s still worth watching for One Chicago fans, but we are not very surprised to learn that it is the lowest-rated episode of the season thus far. Hopefully it’ll stay that way.
