It seems we have a new season Big Bad who we’ll have to keep an eye out for.
There’s no way that Raymond Bell won’t be popping up again sometime in the season, especially with the conclusion of Chicago PD Season 13 Episode 4.
But the bigger mystery is figuring out who left that old photo of a young Voight in his car and what they hope to gain from it.
Imani Feels Short-Term (and They Keep Reinforcing That)
There’s a possibility that Imani will feel so comfortable in Intelligence that she’ll opt to stick around longer (and Mandi may last for more than a season, a rarity at this point). However, every time they mention something about her, it’s a reference to how she can’t stay in one place for too long.
The opener had its amusing moments, particularly when she argued with her landlord (and showed off her multilingual skills) over issues with her apartment.
Trudy, bless her, is always a real one, so it was such an endearing moment when she pledged to bring the full force of herself and even weaponize her husband, Mouch, for Imani if necessary. You gotta love Trudy!
But the takeaway from it is that Imani will always find something wrong with wherever she is, and she feels compelled to be on the move. She gets antsy.
When they keep hitting this point home, it feels like they’re warning us that she won’t be with us for very long, and it feels like an attempt to prepare us for that. I’m unsure how to react to those attempts.
Is it better knowing ahead of time that someone won’t have any lasting power? Or is it something that might deter some viewers from forming a connection?
Imani’s Background May Come Back Up Down the Road
Imani has been interesting so far, as viewers seem to have a positive response to her. I may be in the minority, though, and I’m still wary of investing, as I don’t have strong feelings yet.
What was fascinating was hearing about Imani’s tragic background. It seems every cop on this series has to have one, right?
Her undercover performance, which had her masquerading as a one-shoed addict, was certainly a highlight of the hour; I’ll give her that. She transformed with ease, and I always love the undercover aspects of Intelligence.
The characters with a chameleon-like quality always make those moments worthwhile, and most of the unit has excelled in this regard. So Imani was in her element.
But the bits of Imani we got were regarding her childhood, which, for the most part, worked given the whole Voight situation. Imani and her sister became separated, and she hasn’t seen her since she was 8 years old.
It makes me wonder if it was a foster care type of situation, if one of them went on the run and disappeared at some point. And if that’s the case, why does she believe her sister would be at AA meetings?
No doubt we’ll get an Imani-centric this season that may dig into this more, if we’re lucky.
Voight and Imani’s Partnership? I’m Still Undecided on It
But that makes Voight and Imani working this specific case a way of not only tying them to this but to one another.
Am I the only one who still doesn’t know what to make of the Imani/Voight partnership? Their dynamic is slightly different from what we’ve seen before. They work well together, but then we have little moments like her pestering him about the envelope situation and inquiring about it that stand out.
It’s probably a “me” problem because I get easily annoyed when people who don’t really know me well start pushing boundaries, and it felt like Imani was doing that, especially by the end when she opened the envelope — one he didn’t even show Trudy.
But, presumably, this is what the series is going for to dig into Voight more and give him some other character who doesn’t subscribe to his tacit behavior.
Imani respects, but she doesn’t comply.
Root Cause Opens the Door for a Season-Long Plot
The case was pretty out there, and there seems to be a pattern of Voight getting some of the gnarliest of them. I’m still not over the whole cut eyelids thing from a couple of seasons ago, and this time we had Gary out here mutilating people’s hands and then self-lobotomizing.
Initially, I thought that the suspect was maybe committing all of these violent robberies under duress or something. I envisoned someone in the guy’s ear telling him what to do, and him doing it out of some ransom situation that had to do with his daughter.
Instead, Gary was having some psychological break, and he was a deeply disturbed individual who neither got over losing his wealthy lifestyle nor got the help he needed to deal with some dark, intrusive thoughts.
It was so disturbing how he’d beat people (some to death) and then feel remorse afterward to the point of getting help for some of them or apologizing.
Seeing him in action made his dynamic with Sage make a bit more sense, even though he treated her horrifically, and she needed to get far away from him.
Imani handled that interview with Sage well. She exuded a softness we hadn’t seen from her before, and genuine compassion that reinforced the idea that, beneath her tough-as-nails exterior, she’s genuinely in this for all the right reasons
I can respect that.
This Recurringn Case Feels Redundant
Sadly, they couldn’t talk things through with Gary enough to get him help and maybe even get to the bottom of how his father ruined him. Clearly, this man experienced abuse and ended up inflicting it on others.
Now that Gary’s gone, we’re left to wonder what’s happening in that house of horrors with Raymond and the granddaughter.
In some ways, this reminds me of both of Ruzek’s cases — the one with Zoe and the one with Samantha and her son under the thumb of her white supremacist father, Richard.
Given that, there’s a bit of a redundancy with this scenario that leaves me feeling a bit underwhelmed, but it could certainly evolve into a bigger and more interesting story, especially with Voight at the helm.
But the hour had more invested in the envelope.
I’m Here for the Voight Lore
Voight seemed rattled about it when he found it on his car, but no one expected him to tell Imani or anyone about it.
But someone is digging into his past, and they’ve unearthed something that Voight likely would have ensured was buried. It’s a shocking development to emerge 13 years into a series.
In all this time, there’s still so much we don’t know about our main character, so the prospect of finally getting to dive into his background is remarkable.
It seems a young Voight was a survivor of abuse, which, in hindsight, isn’t that surprising and aligns with who he is as a person, as a survivor, and as an avenging angel on the streets of Chicago.
Now, it makes me think about how Chicago PD Season 13 Episode 1 had Voight acknowledging his father on the memorial wall, and I have more questions than I do answers about this development.
The most frustrating part is knowing that, given Chicago PD‘s tendency to focus on character development through rotating storylines, we likely won’t have any follow-up on this until the next time Voight is in the spotlight.
And something tells me this is something they’d use to deliver a cliffhanger for the midseason finale before the holidays.
Other Notes:
- Are we supposed to read something into Torres rocking a gray shirt now instead of his signature white? He does have his foot and whatever other appendages into the dark side these days.
- Gosh dammit, I really missed Atwater. He’s already been criminally underused this season. Let’s hope his incoming centric makes up for it.
- Trudy and Voight being Ride-or-Die for each other never stops putting me in my feels. He can always count on her.
- I don’t mind the Voight/Imani thing, but am I the only one who wants to see her interact more with other characters?
- Just how much into Voight’s past do you think Chicago PD will be willing to go? And should Voight clue the others in on this if it persists? I cannot deal with that frustrating secrecy stuff he and Hailey used to have, and since Imani is basically Hailey 2.0….
