Chicago P.D. Season 14, Episode 4 ‘My Eye, My Call‘ attempts to do something the show has done a few times before, with mixed results: introduce us to a new character that might end up joining Intelligence. The last time the show did it worked really, really well, but there have been misses too. Characters the show hasn’t known how to write for, or make work with the rest of the unit.
But in a long-running procedural, you need an effective changing of the guard, and Chicago P.D. has been more or less successful in this. We still have Adam (Patrick Flueger) and Kim (Marina Squerciati) alongside Voight (James Beghe), but we’ve also got Dante (Benjamin Levy Aguilar) and Imani (Arienne Mandi), who are relatively new faces in comparison. I’m not even counting my FBI friend Charlie (Kyle Selig) because I don’t believe we should get attached to him yet. And now there’s Officer Watts (Naiqui Macabroad).
The thing is that you can never replace a character with someone too similar, because then it starts to feel like you’re just getting a copycat. We don’t need another Kevin Atwater (Laroyce Hawkins), just like we didn’t need another Jay Halstead (Jesse Lee Soffer) or Hailey Upton (Tracy Spiridakos) before. But we also don’t need just an interesting archetype; we need a character that actually works with the people we’ve got in Intelligence right now.
A “you still haven’t noticed you’re not the only police on the streets” kinda cop might just work, because that’s both very much the vibe of Intelligence sometimes and also not truly the vibe of Intelligence at other times. Everyone in the unit, even Imani, has sort of learned that you cannot be “go, go, go” all the time. But boy, do they forget every once in a while. Donovan still hasn’t come close to learning the lesson.
Is he what Chicago P.D. needs? And can he work for more than one episode? It’s way too early to tell yet. We need to see a lot more before we commit, and we especially need to know if there are some interesting dynamics the show can play with that involve him. How does his personality mesh with Adam? With Kim? With Dante (who is once again MIA and needs to return soon or we’re gonna put a BOLO out on him)? That’s for this season to tell us.
Perhaps the thing that seems more intriguing to me is how a character like Donovan might help us discover new sides of the characters we already know very well. Can he really work for Voight? Can Kim be a mentor for someone who acts first, thinks later? Can his impulsiveness temper someone like Dante, who has always been very quick to jump into things as well? Can Chicago P.D. manage to build lasting friendships between these characters when they’ve basically replaced half the team?
Again, we’ll see. For now, I’m willing to go along for the ride.
MORE: Chicago P.D. Showrunner Gwen Sigan On Imani’s Future And Atwater’s ‘Great Sendoff’
Agree? Disagree? What did you think of Chicago P.D. Season 14, Episode 4 ‘My Eye, My Call’? Share with us in the comments below!
Chicago P.D. airs Wednesdays at 10/9c on NBC.
