The Chicago PD season 13 fall finale comes back around to the Raymond Bell story, but the NBC show doesn’t offer any actual conclusion.
The Chicago PD Season 13 fall finale also happens to be the NBC show’s 250th episode. That makes it doubly frustrating that it isn’t bigger. The series circles back around to a story everyone’s been waiting to finish, and then actually doesn’t finish it.
“Impulse Control” is the sequel to Season 13, Episode 4, “Root Cause.” Hank Voight sees his opportunity to take down Raymond Bell, the bad guy who escaped justice at the end of that episode. That open ending was clearly going to be revisited at some point, and this episode does reveal the full extent of Raymond’s crimes. He has many more victims than first suspected, and he is another one of those truly bad villains that Chicago PD has from time to time.
What follows is a pretty standard back and forth between Intelligence and Bell, with the team struggling to find enough evidence to get the State’s Attorney to charge him. (A Nina Chapman reference will make viewers miss actor Sara Bues all over again.) Along the way, Eva Imani connects with Bell’s granddaughter Julie, who reaches out to Eva for help.
That plot point is both a blessing and a curse. On the good side, it’s something else for actor Arienne Mandi to play with. Chicago PD is giving her material worthy of her talent, and having Eva be Voight’s right-hand woman in this episode further establishes who Eva is and her value to the team. On the other hand, that creates a certain amount of false jeopardy when it comes to the final scenes of Eva breaking into Raymond Bell’s home. Chicago PD has gotten rid of a few characters in quick fashion (remember the Season 12 premiere where there was a new detective who got killed in that same episode?) but the show clearly wants to use Eva as a foil to Voight. And beyond that, it would be incredibly short-sighted for the series to jettison Mandi this quickly.
The rest of the Intelligence team are here in mostly support roles. The only piece of major character development isn’t even actually talked about at all: Dante Torres appears to be doing much better since the previous episode. He’s shaved and seems like he’s actually slept well. This is a great sign, because Torres deserves to get better. But given that he’s not far removed from a harrowing hostage experience, it’s also a little odd—both that he seems good and that there isn’t at least a line of dialogue acknowledging it.
What’s also interesting is how much this episode has in common with the Chicago Med fall finale. Chicago Med also built its finale around plot from its fourth episode. And it also ended with a cliffhanger of one of its main characters alone in the house of a suspect. Who knows if the One Chicago writers’ rooms compare notes, but those coincidences don’t help this episode either.
There is one big piece of information that happens in a “blink and you miss it” fashion: Voight learns that the person sending him photos of his past is Commander Devlin, the latest Chicago Police boss to make life difficult for the Intelligence Unit. Joel Murray gets credited for one scene of Devlin looking at his phone. That’s a significant reveal to just speed through. Obviously, that’s going to be the next confrontation on Voight’s dance card.
“Impulse Control” does provide a lot more answers about Raymond Bell, his crimes and why Voight is even more determined than usual to take him down. It also provides more screen time for Eva. What it doesn’t do is actually finish the storyline in any satisfying way. There’s some lost potential in the final ten minutes, when the whole team takes turns in the interview room trying to get Bell to crack. Voight doesn’t even sit down with him until there are just a few minutes left.
This episode may have been truly thrilling if viewers saw far more of that—Bell trying to play the group, every character having a different approach with him, and alternating those talking scenes with other characters being out in the field gathering evidence. Lean into the cat-and-mouse effect, while also highlighting the strengths of each person in Intelligence. Instead, all that gets smushed together right at the end. This is a middle chapter instead of a finale, and that’s why it winds up as a perfectly average experience.
Chicago PD airs Wednesdays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.
