Ride the Blade’ was a flop because it tilted Chicago Fire’s balance too far toward personal drama, and the personal stories felt like they were just too much. Though Damon is gone, the show still has Pascal and Carver’s messy personal lives to deal with. Pascal’s relationship with his wife Monica continues to be just plain bizarre; her response to finding out he assaulted his old friend out of jealousy is to make out with him. It’s still not clear exactly what their deal is… but at this point it almost seems better not to know. Despite the efforts of Dermot Mulroney and KaDee Strickland, this pairing isn’t at all entertaining to watch.
The apparent love triangle between Carver, Violet Mikami and Carver’s new girlfriend Tori isn’t disturbing, but it’s also not interesting. It seemed like the series might resolve things by having Violet text Carver… and then this episode reveals that Tori deleted the text when she gives Violet a smarmy speech about how she’s not going to lose Carver again. There have been romantic rivals for the main characters before, yet Tori is about as charismatic as Hope Jacquinot and with less dimension. At least Hope had her backstory with Kara Killmer’s character Sylvie Brett and eventually got a character arc. Tori is basically just a human road block between Violet and Carver. If the creative team really wants to keep Carver and Violet apart, it was more meaningful when the problem came out of their own inability to see eye to eye.
There’s always going to be some form of romantic drama on Chicago Fire. Part of the popularity of the entire One Chicago franchise is that every show has multiple “ships” to keep fans coming back. With Severide and Stella Kidd now happily married, somebody else has to be that “will they, won’t they” couple. But this show has done that better before. At least one pairing gets some good news — Christopher Herrmann takes a moment to point out how great Darren Ritter and his boyfriend Dwayne are together. That’s a duo that’s worth rooting for, especially since Ritter had already gone through his fair share of tough times before he got blown out of a second-story window.
