NJ RadioGuy

Call me a sentimental sap but I liked this one. It hit the right notes, mostly and showed a side of Severide I really like. As for Detective Hottie McHotterson, a.k.a. Severide's next belt-notch, I don't like her character and attitude. I know real-life murder police and she ain't it. There was no need for chain of custody for the hairbrush. That was just to check and see if there was a familial match to confirm ID. After 9/11, victims' families were asked to bring in hair brushes, toothbrushes and so on for the same thing. Chain of custody would only become relevant if they were going after a suspect's DNA to tie him to the murder. Courtney's DNA from the brush could not matter in the slightest to proving the uncle did it. And with a body that charred, down to skeletal remains only, what kind of DNA would they hope to find anyways? That point was rather silly. Nope, don't care about New Girl or her rocker-ex. Get me invested in her character as a functioning paramedic first then throw me back story. Maybe. Liked Casey's election wrapped up in one episode and not dragged out. I agree, the gang storyline is going to come back as will his Casey's run-in with the CFD, because his Aldermanic duties will absolutely clash with his CFD shifts eventually. I don't know CFD policies, but shift switching in most departments often isn't a big deal; everybody in the House knows everybody anyways, regardless of which shift you're working. We only see the day watch here but the other shifts in the house are equally family.

I think in the real world, any cop who tried to pull that kind of a stunt would be very clearly reminded that shot cops are treated by these same ER folks and they're not a group of people you want to piss off over what would be a relatively minor DUI case. Nobody died, the DoucheBro is probably in his late teens so likely isn't a repeat offender. Maybe I'm wrong, and I certainly don't know Illinois laws at all, but the patient/suspect refused to give a blood sample in front of witnesses. In many places that in itself carries the same penalties as DUI, so the end result would be a conviction and loss of DoucheBro's license for a year or 6 months or whatever the actual penalty is. No way that case would end up with jail time, I'm sorry to say. Especially if RichDaddy hires a good attorney and pleads it out to something that keeps the DA happy. As to the other story lines, good ghods, stop it with the anvils already. I don't give a shit about most of the main characters and I haven't gotten to know enough of the supporting characters yet for them to make a difference. I only like Reese, Charles and Rhodes in the entire place. Halstead is just awful and Saint Manning makes me wretch more often than not. Choi is so bad I fast forward through his scenes mostly. Here's an idea. Have those three out at Molly's or maybe doing something at the 21st District station house and then drop a fleet of helicopters on Med and have done with it.

So life imitates art: "A woman used forged documents to pretend to be a lawyer for a decade and was in line to be named partner of a firm when her fraud was discovered late last year, according to charges filed by the state attorney general's office. "Kimberly Kitchen, 45, of James Creek, Pennsylvania, was charged on Thursday with forgery and unauthorized practice of law. "The forgery charge is a first-degree misdemeanor punishable by up to five years in prison; the unauthorized practice charge is a third-degree misdemeanor, carrying up to a year in jail." Both charges were state misdemeanors; not federal felonies. Maybe when she gets outta the Big House she can do a cameo on the show? She'd probably have better chemistry with Mike Ross than Rachel. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3015122/Authorities-Woman-posed-lawyer-partner.html

Nice shoutout to LMS on the "DC Legends of Tomorrow" episode "Marooned." The captain of the Acheron, the flagship of the time fleet, was named...Eve Baxter! (Or maybe LMS' Eve was a shoutout to a comic book character? Dunno; not a comic fan).

One nice throwaway that I didn't see anybody bring up in the earlier:The odds of Ray Palmer surviving the cardiac arrest were 3720:1. About the same as surviving a trip through an asteroid field. Also a nice shoutout to Last Man Standing. Captain Eve Baxter. Maybe her not getting in to West Point was a Good Thing for the timeline?

Except that there are a million stories on TV of little guys getting screwed and the Lawyer With A Heart stepping up to save the family farm. I like those, but they're too common and frankly boring. I loved the glamour of Suits. Very high-priced lawyers playing for millions and even billions, living a lifestyle I could only dream about. If PSL is relegated to bond court or chasing ambulances it won't be the Suits I loved from day 1. Sure I like Mike "the Conscience" Ross as a foil to Harvey "The Closer" Specter but what fun will it be to see Harvey representing DWIs and landlord-tennant cases? And without Mike as a bona fide attorney, the dynamic duo is dead anyways. Good luck to him getting bonded or even a PI's license. And in the aftermath of that, why on earth would anybody at PSL (other than Harvey) want anything to do with the guy who cost them everything in the end by his own stupidity. Like I said earlier, they've painted themselves into a huge corner. Since my earlier post, I read that I'm now far more interested in the firm's rebuild than in Mike's troubles-of-his-own-making.

There is no parole in federal prison so if he pleads to two years he does two years, but there is a provision for up to 54 days per year for good behaviour. So he'd still have to serve 622 days out of 730. I'm torn between how I want this to play out. I was hoping they'd find some last-minute tactic that would have invalidated the whole mess Mike got himself into, but that would have been lazy (but satisfying) writing. On the other hand, they now have to either go with "Two years later" to open next season or pull some insane rabbit out of their--er--hats. Neither works for me. If they go with two years later, then the audience will be subject to far too many flashbacks (a pox on that storytelling device, I say) and we'll be cheated out of some potentially great storylines. If they go with a hail mary that springs Mike and makes everything bad go away it'll be a cop out of biblical proportions. Plus, you know, the NY Bar would never ever allow Mike to practice law again afterwards--unless Harvey, Louis and Jessica can get pictures of certain members of the bar in compromising positions. Involving poultry. They wrote themselves into a corner by not going to verdict, quite frankly. A not guilty verdict would still have screwed over PSL; civil litigation alone would have sunk the firm. Regardless of how they proceed, I think the show has jumped the shark now. I miss the case of the week format they had in the first two seasons, with Mike and Harvey kicking ass and taking names in high style. That was fun. This is a chore. This ending should have been a series finale with a 5 minute epilogue showing what happened 5 or 10 years down the line.

Absolutely correct. In the real world, you'd have a dozen squad cars on hand to secure the scene before EMS and FD would even be allowed down the block. And besides, PD are often dispatched to unknown type rescue jobs, and *because* it's an unknown type rescue, FD would be toned out as a matter of course for possible forced entry. Which also brings me to the house fire. "51 get some water on that fire." Right-o chief. Except I didn't even see the engine company in the establishing shot. And even if it was there, it would take a four man crew about two minutes to take a hydrant, hook up a supply line grab an inch-and-three-quarters (or two) and at least start a basic attack. A job roiling like that would have gotten an immediate 2nd Alarm to boot - and their first alarm would be a minimum of 3 or 4 engines, 2 or 3 trucks, a squad and at least a couple of senior officers. Now roughly double that for a Deuce :). But at the very least, could they not even afford to show one single engine company from their own house puttin' the wet stuff on the red stuff? And for that matter, with a fire that bad, and only a single truck company they're setting up something Really Effin' Bad by not venting the roof. Which is why there are multiple truck companies dispatched to a working fire :) For the sake of TV production I get it, of course, but they *could* try just a *wee* bit harder?? Maybe?? And that brings me back to Emergency! from back in the day, when it was the other way around. Their house had the starring Paramedic/squad and an engine company. So many of the calls they ran could have ended very simply, in a fraction of the time, with one or two truck companies--especially the resident Tower Ladder <grin>. The unjust dismissal lawsuits that could emanate from such a case would reverberate through the department--and the local media--for years. Not just that, but in what universe does a Battalion Chief make hiring/firing decisions in the first place? Ain't no way our Problem Child--er-Chile gets summarily canned just like that. I could see Boden giving her three written warnings then calling in higher-ups to intervene, but, like the OP stated, EAPs and the like exist for a very good reason. She sure as shit wouldn't be the first and won't be the last member of the service to drown her sorrows on company time. So that now brings up the rest of the season. Obviously she's coming back at some point--it's network TV ferheavensakes--but what hot guy or gal will fill in for her until that happens? I haven't seen the previews, but since we're in sweeps, you can bet it won't be Joe or Jane Shlubotnik in the ambo.

Sorry, but every time I hear them talk about OPA, all I can think of is "Olivia Pope & Associates" More wine? (sorry, couldn't resist). I've really fallen hard for this show and now can't wait to read the books--much the same as I felt for Game of Thrones and the ASOIAF novels as well as Outlander. So far it's hitting all the right notes for me, especially their world building. For a SyFy-based show I can't believe how good they've made it all feel and fit together. Like others here, I find Closed Captioning the only way to understand what's being said. Too many shows these days have a bad dialogue mix--what sounds good in a perfectly-calibrated mixing studio will sound much different in people's living rooms with lousy speakers and terrible accoustics.

I watch both this hot mess and Code Black and I guess I must be in the minority (judging by both shows' ratings), but I prefer CB over this any day. Like PD and Fire, I like the procedural aspect more than who's boinking whom and which character they're going to put through the wringer this week. So with that in mind comes my biggest complaint about this show. It's set in an undetermined part of Chicago, but obviously within the operating area for the companies of House 51 and the 21st (?) district of PD, so likely within a couple of miles. It's a pretty gritty urban neighbourhood with plenty of abandoned industrial areas, gangs and so on. In "Fire" they show long shots with the Hancock Tower/etc from a certain angle that clearly places the area southwest of the Loop (it's real-world Engine 18's quarters, http://engine18chicagofire.com/).The demographic of that real-world area is predominantly Hispanic (3:1 over african American and caucasian) and not particularly middle class either. Yet seemingly every patient in Med thus far is either lilly-white or upscale. Residents of the area as depicted on PD and Fire are a mix of everything but because Med's ER clientele is middle-class or above, it just takes me out of the story. Given the area, I'd expect Med's ER to more closely resemble Angels' ER on Code Black, to be honest. So far, Charles is the only likeable character in the whole series to me, and the only one with a shred of common sense. As for this episode in particular, if I wanted to be preached to I'd go to church. (If I went to church, which I don't). There were so many damned anvils falling I felt like this guy for half the episode.

I think those shifts are also populated by the other 3 or 4 engine companies, 2 or 3 truck companies, haz-mat and other assorted appartus that would roll on every single working fire. And as for that roof rescue, anything involving the words "on the roof" would mandate something that could throw up at least one ladder (if not the stick itself). Even engine companies carry at least a couple of ground ladders, and honestly the closest engine to the address would have been sent with the Squad and ambo.

Yea. I'm actually enjoying this trainwreck of a show. I was ready to jump off a few weeks ago but I'm actually glad I hung in.

Mellie is overdue for a serious case of the get-evens and at this point I think she's just making her @#$% list and will be ladling it out before the mid-season break. I for one am looking forward to the inevitable FLOTUStorm to come. I think she'll give Cersei Lannister a run for her money by the time this story is over.

Just finished the show tonight. Loved it and I hope they do a second season--hopefully with more shoutouts to TAR and TAR-C (since it's a Canadian production). I'd love to see Phil do a cameo just for fun. I didn't like the fact that there were so many NELs but with 18 teams and 26 episodes I guess you kinda gotta do it. I'm now officially referring to the Amazing Bathmat as the Carpet of Completion and the clue boxes as Don boxes when I watch the mothership show from now on. And there is no subway at 81st and 3rd, nor is there a station at the ESB :). And why they'd be that far uptown coming in from JFK is silly...Midtown tunnel or the Battery Tunnel (or the 59th St. Bridge if the LIE is totally borked). They got the boathouse and Bethesda Fountains absolutely perfect (even the flags at the fountains are as pictured). OK, I'll shut up now :) I think the thing that bugged me the most was that some of the tasks were so far over the top as to break the illusion. Yes, it's a cartoon, yes its intended audience is pre-teen, but mortal danger that would really kill an actual person several times over (Bahamian diving challenge, I'm looking at you) just took me right out of the episode...but I did love the speedboat from France to Iceland :). What I especially enjoyed was how they got the geography pretty well right on, or good enough for a kids show. I think the best animated aspect of the show was the animals and their expressions. Especially the rabbits. Loki for the million bucks next time! Kudos to all involved and I hope they can do it again.

Just saw a promo during this afternoon's reruns: Thursday, November 5th; same day as season 2 of Nightwatch begins. My Thursday nights are about to become interesting once more. I couldn't determine what cities were being featured this year, however.

I'm still in for Lady Love and Isabel's scenes together and my desire to see the chamberlain meet a grisly end. Why is it that chamberlains in fiction are always the bad guys? What I'm most afraid of, now, is what Gaveston said would happen to Love if she was discovered in her deception, and that Wilken would be ordered to do the deed. Is it wrong that I don't hate Witch Bundy? I'm actually growing to like She Of The Hideous Accent. Of course this show is still an utter trainwreck overall but it still manages to hold my attention long enough for me to come back next week.

That's correct. "Rampart" exteriors were shot at what was then called Harbor General (the original building you see in Emergency! is still standing), now Harbor UCLA. Roy and Johnny were based out of that hospital but there were two others mentioned in an early season 3 episode; I forget their names. The fire station that stood in as Station 51 in Emergency! is actually real-life station 127 in Carson, only a few miles east of Harbor. They don't have a squad--just an engine and a truck. I'm currently finishing a binge-watch of all 7 seasons of that show and have been a fan since the 70s. So this was a natural fit for the kind of television I enjoy. As another posted mentioned upthread it's not a documentary and, since it's a scripted CBS show, it's naturally going to skew older audience-wise, so the pearl-clutching set will need their tropes and Good Outcomes or they won't tune in next week. And you know what? For this 50-something I'm OK with that. Real life offers so few miracles and happy endings that it's nice when the good guys win more than they lose. Would you really want to watch a weekly hourlong drama of routine ER care, broken arms, cuts and bruises, confused seniors who land in the ED because they refuse to take their meds, morbidly obese 60YOs stroking out from heart disease, the retinue in 26-part harmony of extended urban families when their (24 YO) "baby" comes in with a non-life-threatening GSW, walking zombies who need a padded room more than "curtain 1" and junkies/drunks horking their guts up on gurneys? Having just accompanied my wife to the ER after she suffered cooking burns, we'd both have run screaming in terror if that's what our ER looked, sounded (and probably smelled) like. No, I like this show, from the point of view of a viewer - but I'd rather eat my own spleen than be transported there for treatment in real life. I'm interested in the back stories and character interactions as well as the practice of extreme medicine. I'm not in the field of medicine so I don't know how medically accurate or probable the cases are but I don't care. That can be fixed. I'd much prefer this formula to 20-somethings banging each other in supply closets or another damned Dr. coming-of-age story. Emergency!, ER and St. Elsewhere, in their primes, were appointment television for me. I suspect this will fall into that same category here, unless it gets cancelled.

Looks like a new season starts November 5th per their Twitter feeds. So looking forward to more episodes.

Also found this show courtesy of the main TAR thread, and man did they do a good job. Still just on episode 2 so it'll be a while before I catch up and I'm trying to avoid spoilers. A little too over-the-top in spots but they got the flavour of TAR just right and the teams really do mimic a few real-life contestants, or at least they get the stereotypes mostly right. Without spoilers, are there any direct or obvious shout-outs to famous tasks from the main show, and do they hew closely to the other TAR staples, like U-turns, NELs, etc? p.s. I dare anybody to catch a flight to Morocco from Toronto Island airport :)

Any word on when actual new episodes start running or if any new cities are coming up? I was a big Nate Sowa fan since I'm a fellow cigar smoker. I've known murder police to smoke cigars at the scene when a body is ripe, to help kill the smell a bit, but he just liked his stogies :). I think my absolute favourite is Tom Armelli. If I ever go 10-7 under mysterious circumstances I'd like him to take the lead. Also love the Dallas guys, and Minneapolis' Rick Zimmerman.

Not feelin' it this season. I wish they'd just go back to status quo, stop the relationship melodramas for a while and focus on some interesting cases. Preferably stories that only take 2 or 3 weeks to tell. I don't like the dysfuctional firm that's misfiring because this one or that one or those two are damaged. It's fun to see the whole Scooby Team kick ass and take names.

So may different kinds of wires are available in real-life that could easily go undetected. And if the mic is inside a cellphone, under the battery it wouldn't receive anything. The mic has to be able to, you know, pick up voices without obstructions. An RF jammer would be the only way. Cellphone frequencies have been unmonitorable since the dawn of 3G, if not before. They are digitally encrypted and cannot be monitored on a commercial scanner. Yes, I agree. That was pretty well how I'd imagine every firefighter would react in a similar circumstance. I like the way he's been written this past season or so, but I will never be able to root for his character. A few seasons ago (toward the end of S1, IIRC), he let a gang leader burn up in a fire. Yes, I understand why he did it (to save his son), but that should have ended differently. He literally got away with murder, and for a firefighter to allow someone to burn up in a fire is something I refuse to believe he would allow, even given the extenuating circumstances.

Oh, don't get me going on this. A fully-involved warehouse of that size would be easily a 5th alarm if not higher, which in most departments would be roughly 20 engines companies, 6 to 8 trucks, plus special-call units like heavy rescues, multiple chiefs and every single television camera in Chicago. A mayday call and they stand back? Not effin' likely. Here's a hint: if you ever want to hear unimaginable real-world heartbreak, listen to the 9th Alarm from Boston from last year, where a man from E33 and another from Ladder 15 were lost. It's on Youtube. I listened live as it happened and it still haunts me. You don't leave a brother (or a probie) in that without a hell of a fight. And who the actual f--k enters a conflagration like that without at least an inch-and-three-quarter or better still a 2-1/2. Before they went to an exterior attack (yay fireboat and tower ladder cameos) why weren't there at least a dozen hand lines in operation, and multiple ladders thrown or sticks up? And there didn't appear to be anybody venting, either. Oh, and yeah, look where the tower ladders (snorkels) were aiming their streams -- at the damned side of the building. What, keeping the bricks cool or something? I guess they couldn't just put out the gas nozzles that were fueling the TV-fire. And I'd love to hear from a professional firefighter about the gas leak call at the start. I was shaking my head. My understanding (thank you Mythbusters) is that a stochiometric ratio of about 9:1 to 20:1 is combustible. If it was "close to 100%" when they rolled up, in 3 minutes, without venting, and the door kept shut, I can't see an 80% loss happening that quickly. But by the same token, if it was that concentrated for that long, shouldn't the victim have been dead (or at least critical)? And no gas shutoff on the street? What would the gas company do if they didn't pay their bill?

Between the bleeping of bad words, mumbling and poor audio pickups I was having a hard time figuring out the storyline of Jake Anderson going onto the Saga. Was it to checkup on the crewman in galley or on Elliott? Looked like Nick and Jake were trying to discuss the crewman's sobriety, but we kept flashing back to the empty chair in the wheelhouse and then Jake's comment about Elliott throwing it all away. The editors didn't do a particularly good job of conveying the storyline here. And what of that crewman who went into the wheelhouse to use the phone, telling the person on the other end of the line that he was wired for sound, so don't say anything embarassing....what was that all about? Like I said, I'm missing a few pieces of that segment.

The creepiest, most disturbing three hours of television I've sat through in a long time. Nadia could have been a great character, and frankly I found her far more interesting than St. Lindsay. I'm honestly sick of the psychopathic-killer-who-makes-no-mistakes-ever trope in television. CSI lost me years ago for that reason. There's too much horror in our real world. I like my TV fake cops to save the day and the scumbags to get their comeuppance. I like that in my real cops, too. Leave the "edgy" to HBO. Now, like with Shay on Chicago Fire, we'll go through a half-season of LindsayAngst™ and brooding, blah blah blah.