It can’t have been easy to turn a subject this hot into a show that struggles to reach lukewarm.
Still, NBC managed. The first step was to let Law & Order’s Dick Wolf solder Chicago Fire (** out of four, NBC, tonight, 10 ET/PT) together out of the scraps of a hundred squad house, multiple-crises dramas, with bits from every medical series thrown in for good measure. The second was to treat the two male stars like eye candy, to the extent you’re left wondering whether the show is about firefighters or firefighter calendars.
‘Chicago Fire,’ which treats stars Taylor Kinney, left, and Jesse Spencer like eye candy, is to ‘Rescue Me’ what the The Osmonds were to The Jackson Five.
And the third is to hope viewers have forgotten that a show as dangerously, darkly funny and searingly insightful as Rescue Me ever existed. Because Chicago Fire is to Rescue Me what the The Osmonds were to The Jackson Five.
Carefully remove every shred of originality or excitement, and you’re left with that kind of well-funded mediocrity that marks so many broadcast series. Everything looks shiny and new; everything moves along with a sort of chilly efficiency. People die, buildings burn, hearts are touched and the hour hums along. It’s TV made for people who hate to be surprised.
Set in a firehouse populated by firefighters, paramedics and the members of an elite “rescue squad,” Fire stars Jesse Spencer and Taylor Kinney as Casey and Severide, former best friends temporarily split by the hour’s opening tragedy — though even the use of the word “tragedy” gives the show and the stars’ male-model performances more weight than they deserve. For equal opportunity sex appeal, the show also stars Lauren German as Leslie, a lesbian paramedic who shares Severide’s apartment — where the lease, apparently, forbids her from being fully clothed.
The squadmates bond and bicker while going out on emergency calls designed to put people at risk in strange ways: a father and son trapped in a car teetering on a precipice, a guy impaled on a fence, a man who may need an on-site amputation to escape a construction accident. It’s the kind of thing Grey’s Anatomy has been doing for years, and with far better balance of drama and humor.
You can’t put people in those kinds of life-and-death situations and not generate some emotional connection, and there are times when the show’s blatant manipulation works. But even when it does, the moments seem to vanish as you watch — like smoke passing by your eyes.
And just about as enticing.
