“Today is a great day. Today is the first day of a better Chicago.” -Gibbons
It’s episodes like “Cabrini-Green” that lead me to believe The Chicago Code will be successful. The center piece of this episode was an episodic story line about bombings going on in Chicago. This allowed for the episode to stand alone to a viewer who might have just tuned in to watch the show for the first time. It had suspense and drama. In particular the scene where the bomber talked to his mom on the phone. Watching Caleb Evers sneak up on the bomber with everyone’s life at risk had my heart racing a bit. I know they wouldn’t kill off our main two characters, but I have to suspend that feeling and just let the show work on me. While the episode was largely episodic, we did learn more about Alderman Gibbons.
What makes for the best villains is not just continuous acts of crime, violence and other despicable things, but rather humanity. We need to be able to commiserate with the villains from time to time in order for the highest levels of drama to be reached. It makes for a better viewing if you watch Gibbons and think, “I hate him, but I’m on his side here.” It makes the audience constantly evaluate each episode and situation. It also makes our heroes work that much harder for our appreciation. In this particular episode, we saw Gibbons take in a young boy about to be initiated into a gang and turn his life around despite the kid attempting to assassinate him. Now, we can all agree that helping out the less fortunate is agreeable. But to what end? He used the kid to figure out what gang had put out the hit. With that information Gibbons was able to track down the leader and murder him. I think we’re also on the same side that murder is bad. It’s the way the audience’s morals are always in question that lead me to love the writing of Gibbons.
Aside from learning about Gibbons, we got some more insight on Caleb Ever’s detective skills. We still don’t know a lot about him personally except that he’s from the north side of Chicago and wants to do well at his job and is anxious to please Detective Jarek Wysocki. Caleb proved in this episode he could keep up with Wysocki both mentally and physically. However, I’m going to grow wary if their relationship is just one where it’s Evers constantly searching for the approval of Wysocki. He’s going to need to earn his stripes sometime soon or the relationship will get stale. I almost hope it comes at the expense of Wysocki. Up to this point, he’s been a bit of a “super cop.” Saving lives and solving crimes. That’s all Wysocki does. I think back to the conversation he had with the nun. He’s still not over his brother’s death and often finds relief in the bottom of a bottle. We haven’t seen this dark side yet. We know he’s fooling around with his ex wife behind his 27 year old fiancé's back, but again, we haven’t seen it. As much as I need my villains to have a touch of humanity, I need my heroes to have some blemishes as well.
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