Critic’s Rating: 3 / 5.0
3
Um, so that was quite the installment of Chicago PD.
We’ve waited most of the season for the series to return to Atwater in the rotation, and Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 13 delivered on the centric portion, but it wasn’t the strongest.
An hour titled “Street Jesus” sets up a familiar conflict for Atwater, where he struggles with his community devotion clashing with his work as a police officer.
Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 13 Retreads Water with Kevin
We’ve been down this road before with Kevin, and while they didn’t play the same notes of Black versus Blue, the results often feel the same for him.
Most of Chicago Season 12 has done a fantastic job utilizing the cast shifts and rotations to produce character-centric installments that further develop and serve the characters well.
It’s been Chicago PD’s strongest season to date, exploring new sides of characters we know and love with installments that focus on them while still taking advantage of the rest of the team in supportive roles.
We’ve had some powerful arcs derived from this practice. Torres floundered at times, but he’s still had a gratifying arc. Burgess’s evolution as she’s climbed the ranks professionally has served her growth well.
Ruzek’s evolution is also notable, and the series has made us fall in love with newcomer Kiana.
If anyone has struggled the most this season, mainly because the series benched him, it’s Atwater. As a result, there was genuine excitement over another hour that properly explored him since we haven’t done so since Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 3.
However, “Street Jesus” was a rough installment that felt disconnected in many ways.
Revisiting Val Falls Short
For starters, after Val’s introduction earlier this season and all of these promises and teases about the nature of Atwater having a genuine, real romance serving him well, it’s disappointing that it’s all happening offscreen.
The hour treated us to a couple of minutes of these two as a couple, giving us the briefest peek into their lives together, enough to know that Val uplifts and supports Atwater in a way that he needs.
However, they easily could’ve ended the hour with him returning home to her, getting the comfort he deserves in the aftermath of a difficult case. Yet, the hour doesn’t produce it.
Val’s words to Kevin were essential. He needs to hear them regularly, as he has a long history of trying to be everything to too many people.
However, he went into the day and the case again falling victim to that, which resulted in this messy, frustrating case that casts Kevin’s best traits in a negative light.
Chicago PD Season 12 Excels at Keeping the Whole Team Interconnected
It made me smile that he was opening up a community center. He’s the type of person who has poured everything into helping those around him and genuinely wants to make a difference.
It’s always been at the core of who he is as a man and police officer.
Of course, my smile grew wider at the sight of his best friends — his brothers, Ruzek and Torres right there in a sea of community members cheering and supporting him.
These are some of the best moments of this series; frankly, these little bits have been missing from the show for many seasons.
The interconnectedness elevates the unit now that we see genuine friendships and partnerships on display instead of segmenting and fracturing the team.
Kevin Finds the Case Triggering As it Hits Close to Home
But we can never have positive things for too long on Chicago PD, so it was no surprise that Kevin could barely walk away from his ceremony before someone fired shots and a young man died in front of him.
Seeing so many people claim not to have seen or heard anything was chilling. We expect the community to fear retribution if they speak to the cops or point any fingers, so that wasn’t a surprise.
What was most jarring this time was the lack of reaction to Alonzo’s dead body on the ground. People walked past his body without a second look, as if stepping over litter in the street.
The apparent apathy to a dead young man — the desensitization was unsettling to witness, as it was as if this man’s body and life didn’t matter.
Perhaps that’s what made Kevin so prickly about it, coupled with the fact that this took place shortly after an event celebrating the neighborhood and having this safe space for the community.
Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 13 Delivers Ruzwater Content (and Some Old Issues)
We then shifted to some of the messiness between Ruzek and Atwater during some cases. Kevin bristled at Ruzek’s assumption that Alonzo had gang ties despite his grieving mother’s contrary statements.
It felt like the hour briefly revisited some of the clumsiness of some time around Chicago PD Season 8 when Ruzek was frustratingly tone-deaf and culturally insensitive, and Atwater was on edge constantly dealing with racial overtones in everything.
At one point, these two best friends came to blows.
Ruzek’s push for the gang affiliation narrative was frustrating this time around. However, he initially presented it as a possible theory based on some of the evidence as it trickled in.
It didn’t feel like a case of him being microaggressive this time (and it’s not to say he hasn’t had his moments in the past), but it was an unbiased theory to work as they tried to solve the case.
Kevin was Too Close to the Case, and His Greatest Strength Became a Flaw
However, Kevin was more sensitive this time, so his hackles rose.
But then the hour sort of dissipated whatever cropped up there as we had to shift to what became the more pronounced issue of Kevin’s personal involvement with this case.
Kevin recognizing Hype (played by In the Dark‘s Keston John) and not wanting to reveal anything wasn’t the most brilliant move on his part. However, it wasn’t anything we hadn’t seen before on this unit either.
That could be part of the issue with this storyline. After all this time, Kevin deserved a storyline that didn’t simultaneously retread some of his usual arcs and the same conflict other characters have had.
Even within the hour, Ruzek points out that Kim and Dante JUST dealt with this whole thing by not telling Voight and the rest of the team pertinent information.
Replaying the Secrets Approach So Soon is Redundant
We’ve done these storylines before, to death. It’s disappointing to see this happen again.
It’s tough when we have to watch the most morally grounded character of the series come across as dumb and then get chewed out as if this is par for the course for him when it isn’t.
Unlike Ruzek’s reaction to Torres (which I know you guys flamed me over), his having a heart-to-heart with Kevin and encouraging him, to be honest, felt more organic because we’re just coming off this mess with Kim and Dante.
It’s best not to rock the boat so soon after a similar incident; it doesn’t serve anyone well. Hell, it was also amusing and highlighted how well they know each other. Ruzek instantly realized Kevin was lying through his teeth and wanted to pull him aside and call him on it.
Kevin’s Navigation of the Case was Messy
Nevertheless, it was still hard to take some of this seriously when Kevin didn’t do anything we haven’t seen other characters, including Voight, do themselves.
In some ways, the hour proves Kevin’s decision to keep Hype out of it right based on Hype’s fate in the end.
Kevin still followed the case around Hype and shared important information about Luther. They were able to get through most of the cases well enough.
But it also doesn’t change the fact that Kevin was ridiculously off his game for the entire hour, and it was painful to watch.
It was also hard to wrap one’s head around the fact that he was in front of a huge crowd in that same neighborhood, admitting that he was an officer and then going undercover shortly after, proclaiming to be everything else.
These are all the messy little things about this hour that didn’t click well and made it difficult to enjoy.
Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 13 Executes Some of the Arc Poorly
Kevin comes across as incompetent throughout much of the case, or his sympathy outweighed his judgment so much that it clouded his judgment and rendered him incapable of investigating this properly.
But the rest of the team had those moments, too. It didn’t get more predictable than Luther killing Hype right in front of the team before they could stop it—even though they had ample time to prevent it.
I don’t understand why he didn’t have a vest on or why the team moved so slowly when Luther had killed about six people since they picked up this case.
Hype’s death was tragic and frustrating. The loss to the community is major, and it impacts Kevin more than he should bear.
Worse yet, we likely won’t see the aftermath of it, so it feels like additional trauma tacked on for the sake of it. I won’t even unpack the hour’s approach to Black death.
Voight’s Moral Highground Against the Most Moral Character Is Equal Parts Amusing and Annoying
The callous response to Alonzo’s death was hard enough to swallow, and Hype’s senseless death caps it off, leaving things in an unsettling place.
By the end of the hour, we had Voight reciting his signature slogan: Tell me the truth so that I can lie for you.
Voight chewed Kevin out like a disappointed father exasperated that he had to give this lecture to the one kid he never usually has to worry about — but at some point, it was comical to have Voight, of all people, lecturing anyone on something he’d done dozens of times.
And it’s hard to take him seriously giving this lecture to Kevin when we’ve watched every character short of Kiana (because she’s new) do the same thing once, if not a handful of times before.
Additional Notes:
- I will never tire of how well the season mixes and matches the team. It’s my favorite thing of the season.
- Kiana has chemistry with every single character on this show. I will sing from the rooftops that she’s an excellent addition to this series, and they haven’t missed with a single one of her interactions.
- I missed Ruzwater scenes, and I’m so glad we got that brotherhood onscreen again. It’s been too long.
- I loved Voight in his skull cap. I also loved him in his glasses.
- The Torres tackle was epic.
Over to you, Chicago PD Fanatics.
Was the Kevin-centric everything you wanted?
Did you miss Val?
Will we revisit Kevin’s grief over Hype? Sound off below.
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