Chicago Fire (NBC) - Series Premiere: Synopsis and Review

‘Chicago Fire’ follows a team of firefighters and a team of paramedics as they respond to emergencies. It stars Jesse Spencer (‘House’) as Matthew Casey, Taylor Kinney (‘Trauma’) as Kelly Severide, Charlie Barnett (‘Men in Black 3’) as Peter Mills, Monica Raymund (‘Lie to Me’) as Gabriela Dawson and many others. It premieres October 10th at 10/9c on NBC.

The firefighters of Chicago Firehouse 51 are joined by a new recruit, Mills. They are still mourning the loss of one of their men a few months ago though. To make things worse, the firefighters all have their own problems. Christopher Herrmann (Eigenberg) lost his house, Casey has relationship troubles with his fiancée and Severide gives himself mysterious shots. A personal conflict between two of the firefighters, Casey, who is in charge of ‘the Truck’, and Severide, from the ‘Rescue Squad’, over the death of their team member is making it impossible for the two of them to work together.

As they go out to watch a boxing match, the men get called to a fire. The men go up and work their way down the building, looking for survivors. They find and rescue two children hiding under a bed and a woman unconscious and trapped between elevator doors. Just as they’re about to leave the building, a beam falls down and Casey and Herrmann fall through the floor. But, with help from their colleagues who came down into the basement to help them, they get rescued. That is, they rescue Herrmann, who was badly injured and having trouble breathing, but they leave Casey and Severide on their own in the burning basement. They do their best to climb out, but it’s only at the last second that their colleagues come back and help them.

Meanwhile, the paramedics Gabriela Dawson and Leslie Shay (German) respond to a crash and take a little girl to the hospital. On the way, her heart starts to leak and Dawnson has to empty the pericardium; the sac surrounding the heart. She hits the little girl’s heart in the process, and when they arrive at the hospital she gets scolded by the doctors for it. She faces huge repercussions if the girl were to die.

When the paramedics get the call, they join the firefighters at the burning building, and they have to fix up Herrmann. The episode ends with the firefighters and paramedics all in the hospital, waiting for news about their injured colleague.

This premiere was OK. To be honest, I wasn’t very interested at first. I only became interested when a few men fell through the floor, and moreover; for a large part of the episode I had no idea what everyones’ names were. Nor did I find it very relevant at the moment, because there was almost no character development. There are a lot of characters and it’s not very apparent who is going to be important. With all of them wearing the same clothes and helmets, the introduction of this many characters is very confusing, even more so because their names aren’t clearly mentioned. However, this is something you learn while watching multiple episodes, so even though it confused me right now, I have no doubt it will be resolved.

The premise of the show is actually quite good. Of all possible professions, firefighters and paramedics definitely have a few of the most interesting day to day troubles. However, this first episode did not live up to my expectations, I think the execution of the premise could be a lot better. It could be just because it’s the first episode but I expected a little more breathtaking moments.

'Chicago Fire' airs on Wednesdays at 10/9c on NBC.