NJRadioGuy

Yes, I also find it to be a stretch. Now granted I'm reasonably familiar with U.S. and Canadian law, but this seems like an incredible stretch. Likewise them coming in and seizing property without a warrant (the Doctor's phone comes to mind), and also suspects being interviewed without a barrister present--who would tell them to make no statements under any circumstance. I also find it a stretch to think they'd even be handed a custodial sentence for unlawful burying given their collective actions going forth. Ruined reputation and a very substantial fine, plus community service or probation would be far more likely given their ages at the time, and that there was no foul play involved. And is there such a thing as the statute of limitations in the U.K., and if there is, I wonder what it is for that particular offense. EDIT: So curiosity got the better of me, and interestingly enough Great Britain has no equivalent to the U.S.'s statute of limitations. They can prosecute even relatively minor offenses so long as you're still alive! And if I read a report correctly, there have been two prosecutions for unlawful burying since 2017, but no mention what sentence was handed down.

Yeah, that was a bit messed up, but it didn't really bother me that much. It was indeed a new episode. I don't really have too much disdain for the woman or her late husband. They chose a particularly bad path in life and were skirting the edge of the law, but it's still a terrible thing that happened to him, and indirectly to her. Dope is a cruel mistress. She's a lost cause, I'm afraid, although one can hope that somehow, sometime, she'll break out of the gangster/dope lifestyle. Probably a stint in prison will be the catalyst, since she's likely headed down that road. Forty years, and Life Without were just sentences for the two scumbags.

This was exceptionally bad during the civil unrest last summer. Riot control was using the Citywide 2 band, as well as SOD and you could hear the incessant jamming by miscreants. It takes a little bit of knowledge of land mobile radio operations but nothing a 14 year old couldn't figure out in 15 minutes. Most urban departments have gone to trunked systems that cannot be jammed, and for the vast majority of those, police communications have been encrypted at the same time. I have a massive problem with patrol frequencies being encrypted, but that's a story for another day.

Can't speak for data comms, but most of the real-world NYPD's radio communications, for the moment, are ancient analog-FM repeater technology and immune from computer hacks. Sadly they are extremely vulnerable to over-the-air jamming, which is a somewhat regular occurrence using $30 radios you can get online. In a few years the NYPD radio system will be hardened and unmonitorable (AES-256 encrypted P-25 digital trunking system in the 700 MHz band). The 9-1-1 system is also impervious. But yes, I'm sure data system hacks are a different matter.

Just binged all 20 episodes this week. It got increasingly boring as S2 went on, and I stopped caring about the family. But like the sucker I am, I'll probably keep going until the story ends--which hopefully it will with S3. This just isn't a story that needs to go on for 6 or 7 years. I'll say one thing, it looks really good in 4k and Dolby Vision HDR.

Just as an aside, the third entry on that list, Harbor-UCLA, was the fictional "Rampart General Hospital" on Emergency! in the 1970s! Good to know it's still a public hospital.

From strictly a story-telling perspective the right way to end it is Voight leaving, either vertically in cuffs, or horizontally. And if alive, then no last-minute comeback/acquittal/off-on-a-technicality/etc. Horizontally (perhaps by his own hand) would work also. But from a television perspective, however, I don't know if that would fly. Mind you, we just had one high profile "permanent" departure from Fire and several from Med. But I think the show needs Voight to keep the overall mood as it is. It's already gone too far in the direction of Chicago High School and Police Department in recent years. There are a million normal procedurals, but a dark character like Voight sets an interesting tone. We love to hate on Voight, but that's one of the big draws to me. Unless they plan to completely rework the premise and dump half the cast (NOT a good idea), then keep Voight until a worthy successor comes along.

I disagree. He carries a badge and a service weapon. His character has to be without question. He got soused in public and IIRC destroyed private property (threw a beer bottle at a television if memory serves). While demotion is a bit harsh if he's an otherwise-good detective, you need to send a clear message. I think the guy voluntarily checking himself in to rehab plus loss of the year's vacation days and modified duty for a while would probably have been more just.

I've got a feeling that the murder trial was there to set up Erin's run for D.A. later this season. But yeah, she was out-lawyered in this one. Why wouldn't Erin have gotten a co-counsel from her office to get her on the stand to explain the decision to investigate and charge the mother? If Erin really wanted to bury her boss she should have come out with "you are my superior, and the elected District Attorney for the people of New York County and you're either lying here on the stand or you lied to me in my office. And did you or did you not order me to drop the investigation into a homicide that occurred in your jurisdiction?" The press would have eaten the D.A. alive that night (although it probably would have cost Erin her job as an A.D.A.). Those must have been the twelve dumbest Manhattanites in the jury box, and that judge should probably be looked into for his blatantly biased rulings. I get Eddie being furious with Henry for what he did. She loves him and comes from the position of a present-day patrol officer. It's natural in my book. And Henry telling her to go piss up a rope was absolutely on point too. I really think they got that dynamic right. And to answer a question posted earlier, Henry took an oath those many decades ago to uphold the law. It doesn't stop when you put in your papers. It was every shade of nuts that you could ever imagine, but it's absolutely in his DNA to do what he did.

With the One Chicago franchise, it happens so often that it just makes sense to go with the flow and see the character as just another copper or firefighter. Before Station 19 become a steaming unwatchable mess, that's how I had to approach characters that were obviously crossovers from Gray's Anatomy or whatever that show's called.

This is difficult on a show like CF. You have to have a respected/loved (or at least feared) authority figure, and you just can't do it in a FD-themed show. Most houses don't have a Battalion or Division chief stationed in them and they run just fine, with each shift having an officer on each piece of apparatus. But how does that fit into a narrative of a prime-time show? You have the LTs, but for the sake of storytelling there needs to be a Boden-esque character In Charge Of Everything. One thing with Fire, for the most part it's generally a light drama, being in the 9pm timeslot. It's not the kind of show that constantly beats up on its characters like PD does, so it's a Feed Good Story when Boden gets promoted DDC. We did see him in a few other houses as well before he was relocated to E51's quarters. But the big question is where does the 25 Battalion relocate to? They should have explained that. I guess burn stages cost a shit-ton of money, and when you still have a bunch of 10-year actors under contract and lower ad revenue coming in you can't do the big sets more than once or twice a year. I'm actually fine with shorter time in fire buildings because my B.P. goes up 10 points when I see the T81 guys in there without water. Face it, any TV-show fire could be put out in seconds with a small hand line, so credibility is indeed a problem. I have similar but opposite issues in police procedurals. They spend so much time on getting the correct weaponry and firearm tactics, but the all fail Detective-101.

Deadline is reporting that S33 will premiere on January 5th 2022, and that it's currently in post-production with all travel complete.

I'd be fine with this whole thing if it actually resulted in one or more of the major players actually going down. I love Voight despite (even because of?) his flaws, but he's well beyond his sell-by date. How many times can you rehash the same plot before the audience checks out? Now should be the time to him pay the piper for real, and either he goes out in cuffs or eats his gun as the feds bust down the door. Dramatically it would work, but...then what? Nobody currently on the show, except possibly LaRoyce Hawkins, has the talent and gravitas to pull off being chief of Intelligence, but you just know they'd go with Jay or She Who Must Not Be Named.

Gallo should have been suspended the instant they got back to quarters. Full stop. Pelham wouldn't have needed to go to Boden since he's his immediate superior. Take the rig out of service, call the crew dispatcher and get a replacement truckee in ASAP, but Gallo goes home immediately. But that said, Pelham failed officer-101 on the alarm call by not doing a 360° sizeup himself. That's his job when he's the officer. Investigate the building and check for signs of fire externally, and if nothing's showing then authorize a cautious entry. What if there'd been the faintest whiff of smoke on the Charlie side? Forcing the door (or Gallo opening up a window) gives it that gulp of oxygen it needs, and everybody suddenly has a Very Very Bad Day. Oh, and a bad battery operated household smoke detector is not an automatic alarm, which they were toned out for. An automatic is exactly what its name implies--something trips it, and it notifies the alarm office automatically. Maybe if they took a charged fekkin' hose line into the house they have more time to do the primary search? Just spitballin' here. Loved the expectant mother story, what the Squad guys did for her (hell yes that happens in real life), and the knitted S3 cap was just perfect. Loved Violet in the back of the ambo. She sold that scene nicely.

This show hasn't had so much as a casual one-night-stand with real police work for years. Find out everything to know about the person you're looking for. Dump her phone, check for known aliases, trace financials. If you don't get any hits on anything after a specific date that's a clue that either she's met with foul play or has otherwise changed her identity. When was the last time her phone pinged off a tower, and where was that tower located (cell records are good within a few feet in many places now)? Who was she calling, or better still, texting? Pull a phone and you get *all* text messages since word go. Trace her movements that way, talk to the people she talked to or texted with. Someone will know the story and spill.

When it comes to screen time I'll take Anna 10 times out of 10 over Felony Barbie. I really like the character, but there's just not much they can do with her on the show beyond as a C.I. She's got a record and has done time so no way she ever gets into any type of law enforcement; as a C.I. she's only useful until she isn't, so my guess is she either ends up dead next week, or at best, into some kind of witness protection arrangement or she goes back to being a DEA asset and is never heard from again. Which is too bad, because she brings a bit gravitas that I found refreshing. I've said here in previous threads that for a unit working the worst crime areas of Chicago that this almost-all-white team would stick out like a sore thumb, and having deep UCs with Anna's smarts, connections, and yes, good looks, would have really helped the show. At first I thought she was going to be undercover from maybe ISP or some other agency, who'd transfer into CPD after an existing cast member leaves.

I didn't dislike this episode. It was OK for the most part, but the church bomber looked like he put on 100 pounds and 15 years since last week's fleeting glimpse of him fleeing the crime scene. I'm guessing this story will be continued. And yes, a pallet-load of ammonium nitrate would have done more than gut a car. Being a lawn care nut, though, I would imagine that most of the fertilizer he'd have been able to get would have been less-volatile ammonium sulfate, but I get the plot point. And the crispy-critter behind the wheel was grossly undersized for the actor (IRL the remains would have been gruesome beyond what could ever be shown on TV--no, it would not have been a fully-charred body after that brief a fire). Hand cans are all that would have probably been enough to put out what was left of the car, but an inch-and-three-quarters would have been better. I agree, the wig doesn't do her any favours, but I've seen more than a few people with....odd fashion and personal grooming choices so, meh. Whatever. It makes her distinctive looking if nothing else. I don't hate it. LT Pelham. Definitely something dark under the surface (Hail Hydra?) and I doubt he'll stick around. My guess (and it's only a guess) is Kidd gets truck as LT. Did I read that Miranda Rae Mayo was ill or otherwise unavailable for filming earlier this season? If so, maybe they had to rejigger the plot to put a temp in as LT? Just guessing here. Unless Spencer's "departure" is a fakeout, I'm still not seeing what they're going to do with Brett in the long term. If she's staying on indefinitely and JS is really gone permanently then she's going to be a devastated wreck moving forward. Meanwhile, there's definitely a spark between The Wig and Severide, but I doubt they'll go there, which is too bad in a way. I like the two actors' on-screen chemistry together. But as the token You'veGotThisStellaKidd Fan here, I hope this doesn't happen. Gallo overstepped. Agent Ward--er--Lt. Pelham was absolutely correct at the rescue scene. He's a boss, and unless he's giving an order that will compromise his team's or the victim's safety, he's 100% within his rights here and Gallo shouldn't have mouthed off to him. Casey knew him, trusted him, and gave him more leeway. Pelham doesn't know him and has no reason to trust his judgement as anything other than Just Another Firefighter under his command. But I get what they were getting at (resentful young guy missing his friend and mentor, new boss will never fill the same void, etc). Call me sappy, but I actually like Violet's "It's Not a Crush" reaction to Gallo and the BreweryBabe™. There's some chemistry there too that if they pursue wouldn't be horrible to watch.

Bet they won't do that again, wherever they work next, that is. Tech mumbo-jumbo to follow--skip if you don't care: 9-1-1 incoming lines and switches are hardened by the telco. They can't be affected by malware, although a strategically-placed backhoe can cause utter mayhem until it's repaired. Dispatchers are trained up the wazoo on what happens if (when!) CAD goes down, and in many older parts of the country that happens more often than you'd think. But again, it's a great big nothingburger since everybody qualified on the floor knows what to do when it happens. Likewise, radio systems are hardened against pretty much anything, including mains power failures (generators with backup fuel supplies), multiple sites in case a tower fails, etc. The only weak link is old analog radio systems that can be maliciously interfered with by idiots with $25 walkie-talkies that they bought off Amazon. NYPD, CPD, and LAFD learned that lesson. Trunked encrypted radio systems will be in place in NY within a few years so that never happens again. I still love the way the old telegraph machines worked. Pull the little lever and a clock-like spring mechanism turns a signal on-and-off in the pattern of the box's number. So if you pull box 425 the alarm office (or the local firehouse) would hear four bells, two bells, and five bells, sent twice. They'd look up their cards and see that box 425 was at Main and Elm, and send a first alarm response to the box, where they'd expect to meet the person or see the fire. This is 100+ years ago, and there are still working boxes in many places! To me, the best form of fire dispatching was when FD had sworn (often restricted-duty) firefighters, and had only fire calls sent to them by 9-1-1 intake. Many of those veterans knew every street, alleyway, hydrant, and other bits of infrastructure in the city. Like Mouch did when he heard the bad address they'd just know listening to an address if it was right, where to send first due, second due, third due, etc for optimal positioning. I'm betting in most places that's all gone now. You have one or two dispatch centers for a city or even a county in many places with intake callers making near-minimum wage. They talk to the public and read scripts for every conceivable emergency, and from their keyboards they forward calls to the air dispatcher who handles the radio traffic. Some call centers have utterly useless intake call takers (see that bit about near-minimum wage). Give them a bad address and they'll argue with the caller about where they are. I've had to report things like MVAs on a few occasions in NYC and one time I just gave up they were so bad. Others, especially state PD call-takers are top notch. But in an urban FD setting, you really want the guys behind phones and at the radio consoles to be firefighters who have The Knowledge.

I think this episode wins the weekly Samuel F.B. Morse award for telegraphing a plot so perfectly. Let's see, we've got a beloved veteran cop on the verge of retirement who we've never ever heard of before (and never will again)...how else could this story go. Invariably either the way Ortiz wanted it to end, the way it did end. Or door number three, he turns out to be clean in the end and ends up getting shot and killed by a Bad Guy (who in turn is put down by Our Heroes).

I'm dyin' (of laughter) here with that call center plot. OMFG. I get the drama they were trying to portray, but sweet baby Jeebus they couldn't have screwed this up more if they tried. As DJ said, they'd need 40 or 50 call takers and a phone switching network as big as the firehouse in the basement at the very least, reference for every intersection in the city on file, remote lines to the towers and a lot of other shit besides. Phone banks at the FAO (fire alarm office) would still work, since they're all hardwired. CAD goes down regularly in a lot of places and it's no big deal since it's all part of training. Intake might need runners to move paper tickets to over-the-air dispatchers rather than via keyboards. There will be a location cross-reference of some kind (FDNY uses box numbers that refer to old "pull in case of fire" telegraph boxes that used to exist everywhere, and still do in some places--and every city will have some kind of similar reference). There will be a printed reference of who will be the first due companies, first alarm response, second, third, fourth, fifth, etc. Radios will still work (Chicago is on an digital P-25 UHF repeater system, but it's not trunked. Main is on 477.7875 MHz for any other radio geeks out there). So a call comes in, an intake caller will use written procedures (that they will have to know in order to be on the floor), prepare a ticket with location, someone will look up the location and hand the ticket off, the voice alarm dispatcher will have the box ticket and tone out the firehouses (yes, with a human voice instead of the BionicB*tch™ as "she" was known), and then the air dispatchers will take it from there as they always do. FDNY and Toronto Fire Department used to use conveyor belts for punch-card size tickets, between the phone banks and the OTA dispatchers as an example. There's more than Engines, Ladders, Squads, and Ambulances, so coins are ridiculous. What about Battallion Chiefs, district chiefs and other brass, hose tenders, air supply units, lighting rigs, airport crash tenders, etc? Chopped Liver? I remember boards with companies in lights. Red is on scene or OOS, white is enroute, Green is in quarters. the OTA dispatcher knows where his or her companies are because they're not morons. I grew up with this stuff. But yes, I get why they did this, and it was a nice little story, just so beyond the realm of possible as to be laughable.

Depends on the fire, depends on the cat(s). Nothing will survive a flashover, and with modern construction and building materials, going from ignition to flashover can be 2 minutes or less if you're unlucky or someone gives it some oxygen. Our house is sealed up pretty tight so there's nowhere for them to go if things go bad fast. But we thankfully have working smoke and CO detectors all over, and plenty of extinguishers, so there's that.

If a couple of guys want to get into it and settle their differences with their fists, out of sight and out of mind--and it's fully consensual--I really don't have an issue with it. Although it's best if someone is there to stop things if the aggressor goes apeshit and tries to kill the other guy.

Yeah, I'd bet his lawyer is going to play the mental defect card at trial. Something wasn't right between that boy's ears. But with that said, if I were in the State's Attorney's office I'd be seeking the death penalty for this guy, to be honest. If he actually did what's he's accused of doing he's a textbook case for the bonus round. Or at the very least, agree to take the needle off the table if he spares the families the anguish of a trial and pleads out to a LWOP sentence.

Yeah, Halstead can just go away, and preferably take Choi with him. As for the Vas-Com, maybe I'm just an idiot but what's the big deal here? In the context of the show the thing appears to be a piece of medical hardware with high-tech features that wouldn't be out of place in a modern hospital. If it had a known flaw that was being covered up then it would be a good plot point, but by all accounts it's just something that's supposedly being pushed heavily by the company behind it. And what health care company in the US of A doesn't go out of their way to promote their whiz-bang machine or medicine with high-value incentives ? We can argue the ethics of that all day long, but if something is approved by the FDA for actual use on actual patients (and here one would assume that the fictional Vas-Com would have that approval) then I'm just not seeing the Great Big Scandal here.

It's ironic that these pretend firefighters suffer greater rates of injuries than their real-life counterparts who have proper training, muscle memory, they drill constantly, and they don't repeat the same physically-risky stunts for 10 hours a day straight until it looks perfect on a director's screen.