Chicago PD season 13, episode 18 puts the spotlight on Kevin Atwater, but it’s nowhere near as strong as previous Atwater-centric episodes of the NBC series.
It’s always appreciated when Chicago PD does a Kevin Atwater episode. But Season 13, Episode 18 doesn’t really feel like an Atwater episode. It is in the sense that his personal life is the subplot, but “The Wicked River” doesn’t showcase Atwater otherwise. He’s had better moments and bigger trials in other episodes.
“The Wicked River” relies on what’s becoming a running bit for the NBC show: Atwater just happens to stumble across a crime in progress. In this instance, he and Tasha Fox (a returning Karen Obilom) run into Ellis Powell, who claims his girlfriend Emily has been attacked at her house party. Emily dies of her injuries, and Intelligence investigates what turns out to be part of a house party theft ring.
The case of the week isn’t driven by Atwater the way that one would expect from Chicago PD‘s usual one-character focused installments; he’s involved, but so is the rest of Intelligence, as well as Tasha. It’s Atwater’s best friend Kim Burgess who gets the biggest interrogation scene, when everyone believes Ellis’ father Alan Powell is the criminal mastermind. (The character of Alan is a severe drag on the episode because he’s nothing more than the smarmy, know-it-all attorney stereotype that crime shows have used so very often. Genre fans could start a drinking game with all the expected lines he throws out.) The one truly major Atwater scene is when he tracks Ellis into a park and the two engage in a fight… but what should’ve been a really exciting brawl is cut short moments later when Tasha arrives to intercede. And then the scene becomes about Atwater worrying about Tasha.
The only significant character development for Atwater is that he convinces Tasha to move back to Chicago—and that, while well-intentioned, is riddled with issues. Firstly, it completely undercuts the point of Tasha’s first episode, Season 13, Episode 5, “Miami.” The message of that episode was that Atwater needed to look outside of his world, like Tasha did. But now here’s Tasha literally saying this great life she found in Miami is actually a life she hates, so what’s Chicago PD‘s message now? That there’s nothing to see beyond Chicago or beyond Intelligence?
Past that problem, Atwater is unintentionally tone-deaf when he first asks Tasha to move back to Chicago. He absolutely means well, wanting her to have a support system, but it comes off like he’s not understanding the life she’s built for herself in Miami. At this point, he doesn’t know she’s unhappy, so it’s trying to get her to give up everything she’s established. And then there’s a third, behind-the-scenes issue—ironically the one that “Miami” had to fix.
Viewers will remember that “Miami” offered a one-line explanation for the end of Atwater’s relationship with Dr. Val Soto. Val’s off-screen exit was likely the result of actor Natalee Linez being cast in Dick Wolf’s FBI spinoff CIA, thus making her relatively unavailable and leading to the introduction of Tasha Fox instead. When Tasha reveals that she’s not happy in Miami, it’s a convenient way to put Atwater and Tasha back together. Except Karen Obilom may or may not be available either; she’s been hired as a series regular in Tyler Perry’s upcoming firefighter drama Where There’s Smoke for Netflix. So Chicago PD is setting up this idea of Tasha and Atwater building a relationship together, when it might have to write Tasha out too. And that becomes a lot harder to swallow when she’s pregnant with Atwater’s baby. In that way, “The Wicked River” highlights how little the pregnancy twist made sense.
Hopefully, Obilom’s schedule will allow her to keep appearing on Chicago PD and viewers won’t be subjected to another time Atwater gets left out in the cold (or worse, another One Chicago miscarriage storyline). Atwater deserves better than how all of his loved ones have faded away over the years; he even makes reference to his dad and his siblings in the final scene here. “The Wicked River,” most of all, is a check-in on the Atwater and Tasha storyline wrapped in a murder investigation. It’s watchable primarily for the same reason all Atwater episodes are: LaRoyce Hawkins is brilliant, and his character is easy to love. But if the show is truly going to move his character forward, this episode is an example of how the writers have to commit to it, and not find another excuse to break Atwater’s heart.
Chicago PD airs Wednesdays at 10:00 p.m. ET/PT on NBC.