TV Review: Chicago PD Season 1 Episode 14 "The Docks"

We pick up where we left off - Antonio is shot, and Pulpo and his wife and kid have escaped.

As we see Antonio under supervision still recovering, Jin is being a dirty rat copying files from Voight's computer. He sweats some bullets and gives Platt an excuse when she sees him.

Why do TV shows never show real computer graphics? I don't get it. They don't even make it seem real either.

(Before I continue - where was Dawson visiting her brother? Scheduling probably prevented it and it wasn't vital to the story. It still would be cool to see her in the finale though).

Voight is the king of good speeches. This was a special episode. Even in a show where many of the cops are borderline corrupt, they never go fully to the other side.

This episode was the exception. It was exhilarating to see the good guys declare that there were no more rules anymore. The chase was on. Voight tells Jay that Pulpo wasn't coming back to jail.

The clue trail started and the team called in a death threat to Pulpo's shady lawyer to give them an excuse to visit him without a warrant.

Through the lawyer, they track down an old client who makes fake credit cards and ID's.

After Olinsky breaks into the back and threatens to plant a gun on the guy, he admits to making credit cards and ID's for Pulpo and his family.

This would get Pulpo's wife flagged buying a rental car which had GPS. After the team takes the wife and kid in, she says she was supposed to pick Pulpo up at a location.

Voight realizes that it's all just a big diversion, and tells the team to call social services on the kid.

The team finds a new angle with someone who tried to post bail for Pulpo - some Russian club owner. Apparently Russians hate Colombians so this was initially puzzling for them.

After a shootout at the club, Otis stops by to translate some emails.

Through the emails and helping in the interrogation, Otis learns Pulpo was escaping in SUV's that were being shipped to Moscow on shipping containers. The Russian was helping because Pulpo had fronted him a million dollars in cocaine.

They track down the container and isolate it in an undisclosed location. They remove the driver, and later Pulpo who is driven away in the trunk of Olinsky and Voight's car.

The connecting of the dots here all made sense. Chicago PD does a good job of staying away from typical SVU silliness.

No bartender remembering the tiny detail about the blonde girl at 3:45 a.m. two weeks ago in this episode.

This whole time the tension is just building and building. Jay, who had spoken to Antonio, interrupts Olinsky and Voight just before they drop Pulpo in the water with chains and cement blocks around his neck.

Jay had been against killing him this whole time, and Olinsky backs out as well - citing the fact that the last time they did this to the person who killed his partner, he wasn't the same.

Voight is diplomatic and leaves when he knows he's been outvoted.

This was a difficult part for me to get. I would argue the tension deflated when they (or at least Voight) didn't kill the guy. The way the whole episode was set up was geared towards seeing that. It feels weird to type that, but it's true. I would argue it wasn't as satisfying.

However, they clearly didn't want to kill the guy in this episode, and that is fine. The way they grounded it - Voight acknowledging that his way is different from Jay's, Olinsky haunted by the previous killing - they all worked. Even the hinting that Voight's father was killed on the job as a reasoning for Voight's seemingly sleep like a baby attitude.

I just wished we had seen the kill on screen.

Jay and Olinsky backing out would have been a perfect opportunity for Voight to kick Pulpo into the water himself.

We saw the aftermath of Voight killing off someone who harmed a family member, this would have upped the tension even higher.

However, they didn't go that route.

Like I said it worked - because they showed how while they are a team, they have different philosophies.

I'm just saying that next time, they need to show Voight killing off someone if they are going to do this kind of story again.

The never subtle camera movements had a slow zoom in on the coffee cups Olinsky and Voight left at the docks. The only way to make it more obvious would have been to do a Hitchcock Zoom.

That could be an interesting angle though - perhaps Jin has to deliver this to the IA guy who is demanding more? I'm curious how the cups will be connected back to them.

Jin, in his attempt to cover his ass, gets Sumner transferred out of the unit after he gives Voight her telephone calls which showed her calling the IA guy a few times.

This causes Voight to promote Atwater, and tell Burgess she didn't get it because of office romance.

It was a cool moment where we had no inclination that Voight knew about Ruzek and Burgess hooking up, just that he has eyes in the back of his head.

Charlie and Annie make an appearance again in Lindsay's life. Annie's kid is apparently Charlie's son, which only complicates things. Charlie calls in a favor, which we will see play out in the finale.

For the first time, I would say Chicago PD really eclipsed Chicago Fire this week. Given that Chicago Fire was the finale, that's saying a lot.

Fire's episode was good, but this was high octane on another level. They had so many spinning plates this episode and they managed to not shortchange the viewer on any story.

There is a lot going into the finale - Burgess kissing Ruzek costing her a promotion, Lindsay's deal with Charlie, the coffee cups, Antonio recovering, IA, Jin - the list goes on.

This finale has quite a few promises they need to deliver on (hello IA angle). We will see if those happen, and what sort of surprises they might have as well.

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