TV Review: Chicago PD Season 1 Episode 15 "A Beautiful Friendship" Season Finale

The Chicago P.D. Finale is here.

We start off with Lindsay getting into the middle of Charlie roughing up Annie, Lindsay's old friend and mother of Charlie's baby. He gives the ultimatum:

either Lindsay helps him pull off a job, or he will start talking about something he has over her and Annie. Lindsay reluctantly agrees to help.

Antonio is back and apparently almost back to normal. Voight forces him to do desk duty. Throughout the episode, it's hinted that Antonio's wife is upset that he came back so soon and that she wants to move out of the city.

Throughout the show Antonio has been shot (not including when he got shot in Chicago Fire) and her kid has been kidnapped so this is understandable.

Antonio ends the episode finding a note presumably left by his wife insinuating that they've moved without him.

To me this felt fast and almost forced. I say almost forced because we never saw his wife on screen. There was a similar story with Ruzek and his fiancee leaving him that also was a self-contained story that lasted one episode. The difference there was we actually saw her appear and be upset.

That helped it seem not so fast. Nothing fancy, just put a face to the argument and make it hit harder.

Episodes get squeezed for time so I get not having the wife, but I would argue even her driving by and leaving at the end would have hit harder than him going home and finding the note. But that's nitpicking.

The crew is called to a robbery at a construction yard where explosives were stolen, and a security guard was killed. After they get back, Lindsay goes to Jin to cash in on the favor she owned Charlie which turns out to be blueprints.

It was only a matter of time until Charlie intersected with the case of the week, and it happened after Jay and Ruzek get a meeting with a mysterious man who turns out to be Charlie looking for blasting caps and detonation cords.

Ruzek and Jay cover for Lindsay temporarily and tell the crew the CI meeting didn't pan out.

Jin meets the IA guy and fills us in on another clue: the blueprints Lindsay got for Charlie were for a Jewelry Store. Coming back from the meeting, Voight catches him. They drive and he slaps Jin around.

Feeling the walls close in, Lindsay goes to Voight and fills him (and us) in on some details. When Lindsay was 16 her parents were out of the picture and Charlie kept the heat on and food on the table. Naturally, she was in (or thought she was in) love with him when she was 16 and he was 25.

Obviously Voight reminds her that she was 16 and on drugs. This was a nice scene with some fine acting. These two should have more scenes together.

Jay, Ruzek, Olinsky and Atwater get one of Atwater's contacts to give up the name of the guy who hired his crew to watch the construction place while they robbed it.

The unit now knows that a guy named Red was the leader, and that Charlie is part of the crew.

They arrest Charlie at the Jewelry Store, and he starts to shout about a murder in 2002. It turns out Annie killed a guy who was after her and Lindsay helped her cover it up.

In the interrogation, Lindsay laid down an ultimatum herself: she'd confess to the murder and bring Charlie down as well, or Charlie can give up info on Red, go to jail with a reduced sentence, and eventually be a father to his kid.

Charlie is smart and takes Lindsay's deal.

With help from Nadia fresh out of rehab, they identify the area that Red is in and get into a shootout with a guy who apparently never needs to reload.

There's a van chase and Lindsay shoots out Red's tires before it flips. Case closed.

Voight finally pays the IA guy, and Jin copies something to a flash drive before calling his dad and telling him to leave Chicago.

Ruzek and Burgess hook up, and Voight is called to a crime scene where the IA guy shows him Jin's dead body where it appears his throat had been cut.

So that concludes Chicago P.D. season 1. A strong season overall. I'm not crazy about the "oh look he's dead, did Voight do it?!" cliffhanger again. The saving grace is whatever Jin was copying on the flash drive and whoever he gave it to.

That will ultimately determine the success of this cliffhanger, much like the finale of Chicago Fire. Personally (again, this is personally), I would have liked to see the Voight/Lindsay angle played up a bit more. Since she was bailed out by him so much in the past, I think that relationship is important to see more often.

Not only did he do a lot for her, but he STILL will go above and beyond.

Perhaps that's more of a future story for season 2 - but I'd like to see how far Voight would go to save her from the law again.

It was a strong season. It only had 15 episodes, so I'm excited for Chicago Fire and Chicago P.D. where they both premiere around the same time and have more episodes to coincide with each other. That means more crossovers and more cameos on each show. Judging by the fine work they did here, it should be an even stronger season 2( and 3) with both shows at full strength.

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