Chicago PD was one of those shows that kind of snuck up on me.
One of my friends recommended the One Chicago franchise to me late last year and it took me a while to really get into it; but when I did, boy, I binge watched all shows in record time and Chicago PD turned out to be my favorite out of the three shows at the time.
That was mostly due to two fantastic characters: Detective Erin Lindsay and Sargeant Hank Voight.
These two are brought to life by the incredible performances of Sophia Bush and Jason Beghe and this week’s episode only highlighted how awesome they are.
Season 4 Episode 20, Grasping for Salvation, investigated a case that had a murder weapon that was a match to another murder that Voight had worked on 17 years ago.
The catch? They caught the murderer from that 17-year-old case and the guy was already serving a life sentence in prison, because they had supposedly found the murder weapon in his house back then.
So when the ballistics guy calls Hank and asks to talk to him in person, we all knew something bad was about to happen.
Worst case scenario, they had convicted the wrong person, who had been sitting in jail for nearly twenty years. Whatever the case, it would not be good.
So he leaves Erin running point on the present case and goes down to ballistics to see what’s up. Now, Erin Lindsay should be in charge more often. It felt like she had always been the boss and she took to her new role in Intelligence like she had been doing it for years.
Maybe it’s just how amazing she is at her job or maybe it’s just how Sophia Bush exudes confidence when she’s playing Lindsay, but whatever it was, it definitely worked.
We need to see her in charge more and it was a joy to see that he left the only woman in the team in charge of all the guys.
Not because she is like a daughter to him and not because of her gender, but simply because he trusts her judgement implicitly and knows she is going to kick some serious ass at whatever he throws at her.
So Voight meets with the ballistics guy, who tells him he is absolutely sure that they had the wrong murder weapon seventeen years ago, which means they have definitely convicted the wrong guy.
Hank reaches out to Danny Woods, the detective in charge of the case back then, and tells him about his concerns, asking if they could trust the CI that had identified Valentine as the murderer seventeen years ago.
Woods freaks out and tells Hank he should drop it and stop digging into this. But now that he knows something is not right, he obviously won’t stop until he finds the truth.
Woods starts cutting him off at every turn, but with the team investigating the murder that happened now, they soon find a connection.
The victim this time was a 17-year-old boy, who, on paper, looked like the perfect child.
His father is also a hot shot DA, who does not want the Intelligence team on his son’s case, because he wants to do justice with his own hands.
Even though they keep getting stonewalled, the team persists and Erin tells them to keep digging. They soon find that the boy had leaked his ex-girlfriend’s naked photos online, which seemed to be the perfect motive for murder.
Except the girl didn’t do it and all evidence points to her father. But her father couldn’t have done it either because he can’t even squeeze a toothpaste tube, let alone the trigger on a gun.
It turns out, though, that Jojo – the ex-girlfriend – knows who might have done it and it’s one of her best friends. This kid named Eric, who just wanted to defend her honor and took the gun only to intimidate the victim.
He never meant to kill him. And guess who Eric’s dad is – Woods’ CI, who had incriminated Valentine 17 years ago on the detective’s orders.
The problem is, when they get to this point in the investigation, Woods is determined to have Voight’s badge and calls for a review board on him, just because he kept digging on the Ruffalo/Valentine case.
By the time they finally get the confession out of both the father and the son, Voight is already standing before the board and Woods is essentially destroying his career, just to save his own ass.
But our girl Erin gets there just in time with the confession and the tables are turned.
Woods is stripped of his police powers effective immediately and will remain without pay until an investigation of all the cases he has ever worked on is concluded.
God, I love this show. The character development here is nothing short of amazing and Hank Voight has come a long way from the guy we first met all the way back in the first season of Chicago Fire.
He plays by his own rules, that’s very true, but now we know he is such a good guy with the kindest heart, who just wants to help people get justice for their loved ones.
Chicago PD airs every Wednesday at 10/9C on NBC.