Before you hunker in, this is not a review. This is a recap of Chicago Fire Season 14 Episode 2.
If you’re looking for all the grunts and giggles and our usual commentary, you are looking for our Chicago Fire Season 14 Episode 2 review.
Now that that’s out of the way, let’s get into the details.
“Primary Search” opens with Sal at the shooting range. He’s an excellent marksman. A young cop named Girardi walks through and razzes him, and when he asks Sal how the family is, Sal gets into his face. Clearly a touch subject.
Kelly and Stella are meeting the kid who needs a temporary foster family. His name is Isaiah, and I know from what little we know of his story that he needs more than fly-by-night people in his life. His mom is ill and will eventually reclaim him.
They mention mom, and he’s not interested in talking about it. Stella tries to connect about algebra.
Stella thinks they might not be enough for the kid, but Kelly disagrees. He thinks maybe the kid just needs a place to crash and for them to do the best they can. He says they’re all Isaiah’s got. They’re going to bring him home.
Sal gets a collect call from the Metropolitan Correctional Center. But he’s in the locker room, and when Novak enters, he hangs up. Novak has news about Ritter. Dwayne is out of the ICU. He’ll be off the job for a while, and Ritter will be hanging around for at least another surgery.
Mouch asks Herrmann about a lever on the rig. It’s sticking. Herrmann says it wasn’t sticking on his watch, and it’s Mouch’s rig now. They have bigger issues. Molly’s is struggling. They gotta come up with a way to boost profits. Mouch is shocked. They had a good write-up and a pub crawl.
Rising prices are killing their bottom line. Good God. Is this creeping into every storyline??
The crews get a call. Looks like it’s a fire at the local dump. When the call is over, Cruz credits Sal for jumping on a grenade. Offsides, Mouch and Stella discuss his “grit,” with Mouch wondering if she’s considering trading Sal in already. She says Pascal wants her to make him stick.
A delivery guy arrives, and Mouch wanders off with excitement about his new nozzle. But it’s not his package. It’s for Herrmann. It’s the new pint glasses for the bar. Why would he have them delivered to the firehouse and not Molly’s?
His new business direction is to use not-pint glasses. Shrinkflation.
Isaiah is packing up his stuff right now. It’s real.
Stella wants Sal to write a detailed report about the last call, explaining his actions. No more than two pages. He questions her. She explains, and he says he’s ever written an incident report before. She says to have it in an hour. He wonders if he’s being punished.
When he leaves, Stella asks Kelly, “Do you see what I’m dealing with here?” He responds by asking her if it IS punishment. It’s more of a teaching moment, she says.
Ritter texts Novak. Dwayne doesn’t need another surgery. He’s coming home. Violet is relieved. Too many people have left the firehouse lately.
They get a call for a person down. When they arrive at the house, nobody answers and they can’t see any movement. The door is open, so they enter. Inside, a girl is bleeding on the kitchen floor, a knife beside her. She has a gaping wound in her abdomen. Her name is Laura, and she did it to herself.
She was breaking up frozen chicken when the knife slipped, and she must have fainted. She’s doing alright except for the burning sensation from the peppers. Capsaicin is used in muscle cream, so you know it’s potent stuff.
Back at the firehouse, Cruz talks with Kelly. He can’t believe Firehouse 85 is shutting down. Kelly looks confused. Cruz wonders if they should be worried. Kelly isn’t. He reminds him Pascal said people on the rig might be limited, but they are staying open, at least for now.
Kelly takes the moment to ask Cruz’s advice about Isaiah. Cruz thinks it’s great news and offers to help in any way he can. Cruz says all they need is a couch and a gaming console.
Kelly notices that Sal is fixing a rig using an office chair. Did he take that from the squad table? He’s going to need that back, he tells Sal. Kelly means now, and tells him to get up.
Violet thinks their call with the chicken knifing was odd. Novak agrees. Before they can decide what tom do, they get another call. It’s a guy with a wound on his arm. He got cut, he says. He says he broke a bottle, and the glass cut him.
Amazingly, his arm is burning like crazy. It’s got to be tied to Laura’s knifing. They take him to the hospital.
Stella has called Sal to the conference room. She’s drawn up some scenarios based on his report along with some alternative actions. He thought they weren’t supposed to live in the what-ifs (thank goodness for closed captioning). She says we don’t dwell on them, but we can always learn from them.
There are a lot of what-ifs and knowns they can use together to come to different conclusions. He stops her. He was aware of the risks and knew about them before grabbing that tank. If it had gone of, it would have been like ten sticks of dynamite exploding. She was on the victim, so he made the call.
This time, she interrupts. “You made the call,” she says, which is where she’s sticking. He’s going rogue, but it doesn’t even occur to him. Yes ma’m. He says risk management is risking a lot to save a lot. The risk of him dying was worth saving everyone there. She just raises her eyebrows and glares at him.
Later, Stella gives Kelly some more marching orders for him. He should ask Cruz about the console, babysitters, and the after-school program.
That night over dinner and wine, Violet and Novak try to suss out what is going on between Laura and Karl with the burning knife wounds. Ritter is already home, which is surprising since he was in New York. New York and Chicago aren’t neighbors.
He seems somewhat down. He tells Violet that this week was a lot. When he heard Dwayne was shot, he was on the first flight. But when he got there, another guy showed up. It was his brother, followed by even more family members.
Ritter was embarrassed since he blames himself for Dwayne’s shooting. If they had moved in together, Dwayne wouldn’t have gone to New York. Violet tries to tell him that’s bullshit. Don’t use it as an excuse to walk away like she did with Sam.
She says things could have worked, but she pushed Sam away. If he does it with Dwayne, she assures him he will regret it.
At Molly’s, Cruz notices that the glasses are smaller, but the prices are the same. All over the bar, everyone is grabbing their glasses at the exact same time that the glasses are too small. Herrmann tells the crowd the next round is on the house. So much for cost-saving measures.
Kelly is trying to make the house more welcoming. Then Isaiah arrives. I thought this was the same day. Time is nothing on this show.
They show him his room, mention pizza and the X-box, but Isaiah isn’t hungry and has lots of homework. Maybe he just needs time, Stella says. All that’s left to do is wait and see.
Sal gets a call in the middle of the night. We are already seeing where he lives and who he sleeps with, and it’s just his second episode. It’s the Metropolitan Correctional Center again. “Hey, Dad,” he says.
The next morning, Violet apologizes to Ritter for inserting herself into his relationship, but he’s pleased. He called Dwayne and they talked for about two hours. Dwayne feels bad for walking away, and he went to New York for a promotion, not to run.
After shift, Ritter is flying back to New York. Violet didn’t mean for him to quit. He says he’s not quitting. It’s an extended furlough.
A cop visits the station to ask Violet and Novak about the capsaicin wounds. They can’t prove anything, and the cop can’t do anything without more.
When the cop leaves, Violet thinks it might be interesting to tell Laura they treated Karl as well. And they do have to go on a supply run…
Mouch is trying to read the monthly financial reports from Molly’s and doesn’t see an issue. Why is he still getting monthly checks if Molly’s is struggling? Cruz says it depends on his agreement. Is it monthly distribution or does it allow for reinvestment of profits?
Mouch is like, uh… Cruz wonders if maybe Herrmann is overstating the issue. Mouch wonders why Herrmann would be in such a panic about boosting profits. Then he considers it’s not Molly’s who is having the financial problems but Herrmann himself.
Cruz says that either way, it’s uncool for Herrmann to tank the business for his personal gain as he was trying to do with the smaller glasses.
Kelly is running training. Sal doesn’t use a strap like she told him. He learned something from a guy in Squad 6, and it’s faster. She’s pleased. He just broke her house record.
Novak and Violet visit Laura and discuss the other victim. She doesn’t want to discuss it. She faints at the thought of blood. She won’t talk to them, but she hardly seems OK. Violet wonders what they are missing. Then she realizes that if Laura faints at the sight of blood, who called 9-1-1?
Violet and Novak head to 9-1-1 to talk with Violet’s friend Abby.
Mouch confronts Herrmann. Herrmann says it’s a first that Mouch looked at the books, but Mouch isn’t to be deterred. He’s impressed that Herrmann is in the black without Mark Cuban’s help.
Mouch wants out. All he ever wanted was a free place to drink, so for a lifetime of free small drinks at Molly’s, he’s giving Herrmann his half. Herrmann drives a hard bargain. No guests, no substitutions.
Violet and Novak go back to Laura’s. They pound on the door. They know Karl was there and called 9-1-1, but came here first before the police.
Apparently, Karl is her little brother. He’s bipolar and has borderline personality disorder, which has only gotten worse after their parents’ death. He’s never hurt her before on purpose. She says she grabbed the knife to ward him off, and she got stabbed.
She knew with his medical history, he’d get blamed. She says he saved her life. “After almost killing you,” Novak points out. Novak understands but says it’s too much for one person to try to save him on her own.
They’ll put her in touch with the chief of psychiatry at Med who can offer some suggestions.
Back in the locker room, Violet commends Novak on how she connects with people. Novak says sometimes getting into someone else’s head is the best way to help them. Violet realizes it’s the opposite of what she’s been doing with Ritter.
Stella and Mouch chat about Sal after the shift. She says her style is more about keeping a tight rein, and Mouch says he learned a lot when he took Ritter under his wing. Probably more than Ritter learned from him.
Mouch and Ritter have a moment talking about Ritter’s upcoming NY visit, where he might visit a relative’s firehouse.
Stella passes Sal and asks him to show her that hitch next shift. Kelly says that’s different, and she says, we’ll see.
Ritter is leaving the apartment when his phone pings. Violet and Novak burst through the door. They want him to cancel his uber so they can drive him to the airport.
Kelly knocks on Isaiah’s door to ask about a video game. He can’t get past the second level and hopes Isaiah will show him how to do it. They are playing together on the couch.
There are no signs so far of overtime. So maybe this will work out.
Back at the firehouse, Sal is under a rig when Girardi, the cop from the range visits. He says he comes in peace. He says someone pointed out to him that he might have been out of line yesterday. What his dad did is on him, not Sal. He gets that as a person who has been there.
Sal says he doesn’t know a goddamned thing about his dad. Girardi says he’s just trying to apologize. Sal tells him to get the hell out.
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Chicago Fire Season 14 Episode 2 Recap: Primary Search
If you’re looking for a no-nonsense Chicago Fire Season 14 Episode 2 recap, here’s what went down on “Primary Search.”
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I’m Sorry, but It’s Time for Chicago Fire’s Herrmann to Retire
The Chicago Fire Season 14 premiere makes it clear that Herrmann is never going to see growth, and it’s time to write him out.
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Chicago Fire Is Setting Up Ritter’s Exit Storyline (and I Like It)
Darren Ritter isn’t just disappearing with a one-line explanation in Chicago Fire Season 14. Instead, he’s getting an arc that shows growth.
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