Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0
4
The Intelligence Unit is in trouble!
Seriously, with the closing moments of Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 8, I genuinely need to know what Chief Reid’s deal is and what his newfound “friendship” with Voight is!
But first, we need to pour one out for Gloria Perez. What’s Chicago PD’s cardinal rule? Oh, right—CIs always die!
Something tells me the hour wasn’t intended to be as funny as it was, but there were so many moments that elicited a chuckle that it somehow managed to be a humorous hour despite the high drama and action.
When you have situations like Torres sitting in Voight’s office, like he was reporting to the Principal, or hearing an aggravated Voight tell poor Dante that he wasn’t his father right before giving a tongue lashing like he was, it’s hard not to chuckle.
Or part of the amusement is related to live-tweeting with the lot of you Chicago PD Fanatics as we powered through this adrenaline-pumping hour together.
Nevertheless, it was a challenging hour for Torres, who felt immense guilt for so many things that he could barely function and focus on the case at times.
Humor and snarks aside, I sympathized with him, particularly because he frequently turned to God, praying his way through some of the most trying moments while routinely beating himself up over everything that happened.
Torres carried so much guilt.
The tense moments during the opener where he and Burgess frantically searched for Kiana were the starting point for Torres’ descension into guilt and anxiety-ridden, layered emotions.
It was tearing him up inside that harm could’ve possibly come to Kiana because of him. Pinging for her phone resulted in it being stationary, and the duo feared the worst.
But Kiana was fine, thankfully, pissed as hell, but okay.
Kiana is such a mood, and she truly is endearing and a great addition to the series. She didn’t hold back when it came to letting Torres know how she felt about him, keeping some vital information from him.
In the end, you could tell that it wasn’t so much that he slept with Gloria, but that he didn’t forewarn her about it when he put her in the deep end, and as a result, her life was on the line in a situation she couldn’t figure out.
It was refreshing to see her angry and unwilling to brush it off because there had been a breach of trust, and she had reason to be upset. The ripple effects of that spread throughout the entire team.
It was easy to understand Kiana’s position as someone directly impacted, especially given the special bond she and Torres formed during Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 5.
However, some of the other unit members’ reactions were more amusing simply because we were rehashing a storyline involving a unit member sleeping with a CI for the third or fourth time by now.
Hell, it’s practically a Rites of Passage at this point.
Ruzek, in particular, was letting that protective streak of his come out full force, as he was pissed off that Burgess was involved in a situation that could cost her her job. She just made detective, after all.
I love Ruzek to pieces, but it’s freaking Ruzek. For one, Burgess makes her own decisions, and you can never make her do otherwise, so it wasn’t even fair to blame Torres for Kim covering for him.
Kim would and has covered for all of them, and Ruzek, bless his heart, has had more than a few dicey moments and flubs over the past decade. Protecive spouse thing aside, my guy Ruzek trying to hold any semblance of moral superiority in a situation like this is rich.
Sleeping with a confidential informant is the one thing he hasn’t done.
Atwater’s anger felt more muted, and we missed him expressing some disappointment, especially since he’s been Torres’ primary mentor since Halstead left, but we got the Fabulous Foursome of Ruzwater and KiKi working together, so I’ll allow it.
And Voight talking about how much Torres had screwed them and jeopardized all of their jobs was knee-slap, deep-belly laugh types of funny because it’s freaking Hank Voight. This is child’s play in the long list of things he’s had to cover up for his unit.
Browbeating an already guilt-ridden Torres when we’ve grown desensitized to how much each unit member has done and can get away with was a choice.
The tensions were high, giving off the vibe that the puppy had peed on the carpet. However, Voight is always more focused on making things right and ultimately nail their case.
He kept emphasizing that he didn’t have time or any need for Torres’ guilt over this situation; he needed him to get to work so they could find a way to take down this entire drug operation.
It was a great hour for showcasing how important Torres’ faith is to him and that it’s something that he lives and acts out, not just this ritual that he occasionally partakes in on and offscreen.
All of those little moments of Torres praying, whether in the field when things got dicey or in the locker room when he was trying to ground himself, Torres’ faith is so instrumental to who he is.
It’s refreshing to see because there is very little consistent depiction of religious characters on television, whether it’s Christianity or anything else.
But Torres’ relationship with Gloria was just toxic and not always fun to watch, and this time around, it was enough to have you pulling your hair out.
After everything blew up like that, it was irritating that Torres still rushed over to her house to confront her. It was the going off-the-books type of stuff that got him in trouble in the first place.
Torres also spent a significant amount of time trying to save Gloria’s life as her adversary was coming after her while simultaneously convincing her that she should work with the police so she could get the best deal.
It’s absurd that Torres had to beg and plead for the chance to save her and give her some type of lifeline. And it was challenging to understand where Gloria was coming from here because even if she couldn’t trust Torres with her heart or whatever else, it beat the alternative of dying at the hands of an enemy.
The two of them having full-on lover’s quarrels while bullets were flying around was a special kind of absurd, but some of you may be delighted to know that the action, full team presence, performances, and so forth were far more entertaining than Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 7, at least.
Plus, we have official confirmation that Gloria won’t be returning or a nuisance anymore, given that she died protecting Torres. After all of the bickering, back and forth, trust games, and so forth, at the end of the day, Gloria genuinely loved Torres and sacrificed herself for him.
Her dying words were to remind him that they were in fact the same, a stark contrast from what she was saying earlier in her attempts to push him away.
The thing is, Gloria was right in that she repeatedly told Torres who she was and what she would be doing, but he was so enamored with the “broken” parts of her that he felt needed saving that he ignored everything else.
He was the only one delusional when it came to Gloria, which was probably why it was so frustrating to see him get so involved and jeopardize everything for her as he did.
Gloria’s death wasn’t as devastating as losing Anna because, unfortunately, she became such an annoying character that death seemed to be the only way to tie things up with her.
But it was still devastating to see Torres’ reaction to it, his crying as he clung to her and begged her to stay alive, even when it was evident that a GSW with no exit wound (and a bullet likely ricocheting through her) would prove fatal.
Torres begging God and apologizing as if, in doing so, God would change his mind and bring her back was a tough scene, and it was one of many that Benjamin Levy Aquilar absolutely slayed.
It was an extensive hour for him, probably his heaviest episode to date, and he had the chops to really carry this hour. But those final moments with Gloria were particularly hard to watch because of how badly you felt for Torres.
Even Ruzek couldn’t help but offer a hand to the shoulder in solidarity, which was a nice gesture given how pissed he was earlier and also his own experience of recently losing someone.
Gloria didn’t have many options. She clearly saw that the deal was a setup, and chances are, she’d end up in prison or dead anyway.
Hector had already thrown her under the bus, and Campos was ready to take her out. Dying for Torres felt like a last stand for a complicated character.
The team had to race to pull this entire case off well after the mishap with Torres. It seemed like they were getting away with covering things up, but somehow, Reid kept popping up and around them at the most inopportune times, setting us up for those final moments.
Somehow, Reid knows about everything that happened—Torres’ relationship with a CI, Burgess covering for him, all of it. But inquiring minds want to know how he came across this information.
It’s one thing for him to learn that Torres slept with his CI, but how did he know that Burgess covered for him or that the entire unit knew and was actively covering it up?
We’ve been trying to figure out Reid’s deal, why he’s been hanging around, and what purpose he’s serving. Chicago PD has never had an authoritarian character come in who hasn’t had an agenda or caused trouble.
Turning them in is of no interest to Reid. He wanted to leverage this information just to become Voight’s “friend.” But why? What does that mean, and what does he think he’ll gain?
Is this one of those things where Voight’s reputation precedes him, and Reid wants Voight on standby for dirty work? Does he want Voight to be some kind of snitch?
What does Reid hope to gain by having Voight under his thumb? It’s more nerve-wracking when you can’t determine what someone wants from you.
We’re no closer to understanding what makes this man tick and what he wants, and that certainly serves as a solid cliffhanger.
Over to you, Chicago PD Fanatics.
What do you think Reid has in store for Voight?
Do you think the team was too hard on Torres?
Did Gloria’s death upset you? Sound off below!
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