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After a week break, it's Gabby Dawson to the front and center again. I hope that at least they take this opportunity to bring Jon Seda as Antonio over for a crossover to share this latest mess with her and dilute her screen time. Logically it shouldn't just be Gabby's problem. Seemed like Mouch thought it could be handled in a "good old boys" fashion and he found out the reality had changed. So will Otis and Brett have to help Cruz with his share of the rent? That roommate story still seems so dumb.

I've also wondered about the organization of the Intelligence Unit. For most of the show's run there were two uniformed cops apparently associated with the unit, one of them being Burgess, who answered to Platt. Her original partner was Atwater who moved to the Intelligence Unit itself. Thereafter Burgess had a couple of partners, notably Roman until she finally got put into the Intelligence squad room herself. Since then, we don't seem to have any uniforms specifically associated with Voight's unit. Are we supposed to assume they are still there in the background?

The partner who made the plea deal to testify against his partner and got the life sentence sure must have felt stupid. Wouldn't the police department of a major city have an internal affairs investigation department or some such to look into these cases?

I don't know why Chicago P.D. did what they did to Jon Seda's character. He was a good fit on that show in Season 1. Thereafter they pushed him more and more to the side as they emphasized the other Intelligence Unit's characters more. It didn't have to be that way - Sophia Bush has stayed front and center from the beginning. Anyway I'm glad he has a better role on this show although it still seems funny when the S.A.'s office investigators do police detectives' work.

Not a huge fan of Dr. Beautiful - I mean Natalie Manning - but I agree with this. I didn't see anything that wasn't compatible with her having to make a detour to Molly's to keep a stylist appointment she'd made in advance.

Tracy Spiridakos was supposed to be playing a teenager on Revolution but she was really past that even four or five years ago and wasn’t convincing. I’ll give her a chance and won’t prejudge her on Chicago P.D. but I have to say her acting on that earlier NBC show did not impress me and I didn’t watch it for long. And yes, less makeup please. Amy Morton a.k.a. Trudy Platt remains my favorite female character on this show.

I agree, calling in another psychiatrist would have been a viable alternative. There is always a subjective aspect to the profession of psychiatry/psychology, as evidenced by the range of opinions that the lawyers in criminal trials can present in court when the mental state/health of the defendant is in question. Another thing - given the unknowns about Robyn's case and the cause of her problems, why release her to surroundings (Connor's apartment) where she had a well documented psychiatric episode previously? I never bought Sara Reese being assigned to evaluate Robyn. Given that her attending is Robyn's father, I can't believe that the assignment would be made given the possible conflicts of interest. About the story of the patient with the subdural hematoma and ALS who refused surgery and insisted on Heparin - would someone afflicted with ALS really be a candidate for organ donation? Given the unknowns about the causes of the disease, I would think that there would be hesitation accepting the patients tissue for transplantation.

A couple of things but first of all, did they really say that Robbery-Homicide has a clearance rate of just 20%? Can a division really have such a low rate and still justify their existence as a a separate division?

Seems to me this fight between Pride's NCIS and Hamilton's office has expanded outside the jurisdiction of NCIS. There are U.S. government agencies that handle corrupt local and state governments - the FBI, the Dept. of Justice, whatever. I agree that the NCIS brass would be wondering what Pride is doing at this point. The clergyman's murder did not involve Navy personnel.

Kelly and the Dad... well I appreciated the time they had together on screen. Was anything ever said about Anna's mom? Anna could have been fleshed out a bit more as a person. What of her girlfriends with whom she used to go out with after work? Wouldn't they come by to see a friend who might be leaving them soon? Kelly could have met them too. It didn't have to just be Kelly and Dad, although I suppose there's only so much screen time to be shared between all the actors and just so much budget for guest actors.

At least this one wasn't a Gabby Dawson centered episode. I like Monica Raymund but the show has been putting her character out front too much at the expense of the rest of the ensemble. For once the F.D. powers that be were willing to help out Casey and Boden and go along with a solution that preserved honor for all. It seemed believable that Kannell simply didn't want to come back. The Otis-Cruz-Brett roommate thing felt silly. Does she really want to live with these two jokers-I mean fellow first responders-whom she has to see on shift all the time? Good luck with that. Finally Anna. Sad to see her go, but cancer is a hydra which often enough finds a way around the most aggressive treatments. After she got the bone marrow transplant I started worrying that they might be putting the cancer story behind them too easily. One can always have a positive outlook but it is difficult to be entirely free of cancer's shadow, and it can take a while. That it would recur and take her so quickly is sadly something that happens often enough.

It's been mentioned several times that the Law & Order format doesn't work well in Dick Wolf's universe of Chicago shows. Nagel and Dawson doing Chicago P.D.'s job? Well maybe if one imagines that the State's Attorney's office fears it won't be able to successfully prosecute a case given to it by Chicago P.D. because of "irregularities" then perhaps they would have their own investigators doing the job of police detectives. But that seems absurd.

It seemed improbable to me too. And I didn't quite get it - was the deal to get just probation contingent on getting a conviction in the "virtual kidnapping" case? It seemed that way but I can't imagine a deal being made that way. This was really a case that should have gone to the P.D. and not the S.A. investigators from the get-go, with the hit-and-run vehicular homicide of the council member.

I suppose that a left ventricular device would be a stopgap measure to buy time. The mother will probably have to get a heart transplant at some point. The mother’s decisions became ever more wild as things went downhill. She was willing to die, or collapse into a vegetative state in order to continue her pregnancy, but without any guarantee that further complications wouldn’t develop that would end the pregnancy anyway. And if she did deliver the baby, there is no assurance that the bone marrow transplant would completely cure her daughter’s condition and for all the days the daughter lived she would have to carry the burden of her mother giving up her life to try and cure her. I wasn’t actually bothered by Robyn’s psychiatric problem seemingly appearing out of the blue. I’ve heard more than one story about extended family members and former schoolmates who were seemingly fine when I knew them developing psychiatric conditions in adulthood. There could have been signs, perhaps years in advance, but since we don’t see every detail of the character’s lives we wouldn’t necessarily know about them. It was mentioned that there is a family history. It could be an external happenstance that brought it on. It could have been a triggering event or a series of them.

Regarding the story of the pregnant mother with the weak heart and the cancer-stricken daughter, I think the outcome was the one most likely to happen. The mother could be saved, the fetus not, although Dr. Rhodes did all he could. While it was sad I think there was a realism to it as opposed to him being some kind of super-surgeon pulling off the impossible. I don't think Will Halstead had to apologize to Natalie about what Nina did express delivering the autopsy report. The doctor was going to see it soon enough. She was certainly upset about seeing the results but seemed to shrug off the way she received them. Sure, Will could confront Nina and ask "What's up?" but it was unnecessary and awkward for him to bring it up with Natalie. Unless of course he WANTED a pretext to talk to her about their relationship or lack thereof. I for one don't care to see a romance develop between them. And then there was another moment shown between Natalie and Jay right afterwards. The writers can't seriously be thinking about a cross-series romance between the two, can they? It's still Jay and Erin over on Chicago P.D. - or is it not?

I enjoyed this episode from start to finish, but I had problems with the ending. Lindsay walks into the review board meeting with the case file implicating Woods in the false investigation and saves her boss Voight. But would that really have let Voight off the hook? The wrong man arrested, the widow of the victim illegally directed to point him out in a lineup, gun evidence planted. If Voight was the partner of the detective who committed those actions, then I would think the review board would be even more interested in the “Voight dossier” that Woods was presenting to them. A man wrongly incarcerated for 17 years was bad enough, but the murder case originally had the slant of a black on white crime, and the real killer turned out to be white. There could be further criminal investigations including a possible Federal one for violations of Valentine’s civil rights. Not to mention civil actions. To convict the wrong man in this situation required a real feat of railroading the defendant, the witness, the whole system. Was one detective really responsible for it all and was his hide going to be enough to handle the public uproar? I think the Chicago P.D. would want to have all its i’s dotted and t’s crossed, and that would have included scrutiny of Voight’s actions. I liked Hank Voight trying to speak to Valentine and his daughter Therese at the end of the episode, going to their home. The daughter was willing to forgive, was probably even grateful that Voight looked at the case again. The father - not.

Seems to me that this is the basic problem with the show to date. It is set up like the original Law & Order with the investigators playing the role of the police officers. When the police get involved it is in marginal roles, like Atwater dropping in. How realistically does this show share a universe with Chicago PD? With that show's "old school" methods, off the books gimmicks, intimidation, under the table, outright vigilantism, the kind of stuff that was always tripping up the prosecution with the judges on Law & Order during the second half of the episode. I would think that when Jeffries and Stone get a case handed to them by the Chicago PD Intelligence Unit they'd react with "Hell, not another one from Voight!" This felt like the weakest plot point of the episode. I would guess they'd find a way to connect with each other if their accounts were canceled.

I felt a little dubious about Pride’s decision to throw away the clandestine wiretap of Hamilton’s office in order to confront Nadine’s father with the recording. Yes, NCIS had to bring down the killers, but it was a costly decision for Pride to make. That Department of Justice person or whoever it was who got the authorization for the wiretap must have gone out on quite a limb and spent her political capital in order to get it for Pride. I agreed with her when she told him that he should have at least talked to her first, such bridges are difficult to rebuild once they’ve been burned. I agree that it does seem like they may be phasing out Shalita Grant in her role as Percy. If it’s not her choice then I don’t understand the thinking of the people who are making these decisions. It’s not been one year since they phased out Zoe McClellan, apparently against her will and to the puzzlement of this show’s fan base.

I agree that this episode didn't gel very well with all its different ideas. In the end the Amanda Knox with a psychotic twist character felt like a misdirect, even though she did testify at the trial. I also felt somewhat dubious about the verdict, thought that reasonable doubt on the self-defense argument could have still existed in the jury room. I think the actor's name is Richard Masur and he has appeared before in Dick Wolf's Law and Order universe, although not as the same character. He played a judge on the original show who locked horns with Jack McCoy, I think he also appeared on SVU, although I don't remember him there.

These Chicago shows constantly cross over into one another with mixed success. Imo Jesse Lee Soffer's appearance on this episode wasn't one of the better examples. If you're going to have Will and Jay together and dealing with the possibly mortal illness of their father, why can't there be some scenes/dialogue that convinces the viewer that they are indeed brothers? I found Dr. Charles' behavior in this one annoying, was he shutting out Dr. Rhodes because he doesn't like him being in a relationship with his daughter? But then I didn't make much sense of his earlier behavior toward Dr. Reese, shutting her out too and making her feel she was being pushed out. I like watching the evolution of the relationship between Will Halstead and Connor Rhodes. Not drinking buddies, for sure, separated by barriers of upbringing and socio-economic class. Not a lot of warmth between them but there is respect.

I too miss Sonja Percy, wonder what is up with Shalita Grant. And I also like seeing CCH Pounder on the screen, not much of her in this one. It seems they are setting up for a big takedown of Mayor Hamilton, perhaps that's the season closing arc? When Pride keeps expressing doubts that Marino was their guy even after his former protege turned on him once could guess that he wasn't their guy.

Well one can add to that that Voight her boss ended up praising Burgess for what she did, telling her that her thinking was right for the job. What's up with his reversals? First he tells her she's too close to the crime to do the undercover assignment with Lindsay, then he yields to her and has her do it. He calls her into his office to yell at her for her conduct then tells her she did the right thing. Is he so easily persuaded by his newest subordinate?

She was identified as "Judge Melnick" by the nameplate on the bench, I think it's safe to assume she's meant to be the same character as the defense attorney on the original "Law and Order". Dick Wolf's shows have done this before. Carey Lowell as Jamie Ross made guest appearances as a defense attorney on "Law and Order" after stepping away from her regular role as ADA. And she appeared as a judge, I think it was on "Trial by Jury". I do wonder a bit how Tovah Feldshuh came to Chicago to play the role. I've always understood her to be a New Yorker to the bone, and that her first passion is the live stage rather than TV. I suppose actors like everyone else can travel anywhere to do their job, but I wonder if she will be a recurring character on this Chicago show.

The original "Law and Order" had some interesting defense attorneys, some of whom were recurring characters. The one that most comes to mind is Danielle Melnick, played by Tovah Feldshuh, who was a friend of ADA Jack McCoy and the viewers could look forward to seeing them oppose each other in the courtroom. I noticed that this actress and her character has appeared on this show, now as a judge.

I agree that it's doubtful the case would have gone forward. When Stone went for 1st Degree Murder my reaction was "what are you thinking?" It seems impossible to establish a direct causal connection between his harassing machinations and her suicide. I have no sympathy for the father (Clark was his name?) and he should have been convicted of something, but murder was way too much of a reach.