Chicago, where the men strut and the women watch?
That would appear to be the motto of NBC's Chicago Fire where the actors pose instead of brood because brooding might cause premature wrinkles around the lips and eyebrows.
Episode 12 of NBC's Wednesday night show remains the one impossible to get over. Not since Will went home with Grace on college Christmas break has there been such an awkward sex scene. But this is trumped, at the start of episode 12, with what's supposed to be post-coital, as Dawson (Monica Raymund) wakes up alone in bed. Wandering through her place, she finally finds Mills (Charlie Barnett) in the kitchen nervously darting about having just finished a veggie and egg scramble for her and pouring her a cup of coffee as he explains that no one needs to know what just happened.
Yeah, can't have the boys in the firehouse locker room talking -- you know how catty and vicious those bitches can be.
Every episode seems unbelievable. Just when you think you're getting a handle on the show, for example, three of the main characters decide they want to own a bar -- and do! Or maybe it's the firefighter tracking down his ex and finding out she's a stripper and feeling like the firefighter wants to . . . be a stripper himself. Or maybe it's the grown man who gets (and wanted) his mother released on parole to his custody. Not a lot of grown men want to live with Mommy. Especially when Mommy killed Daddy and she'll only hint at why. Along the way, there's drunk driving, a three- month coma, and a dog in need of rescue.
The latest TV production from the Dick Wolf is all about muscular firefighters who fondle themselves a lot while speaking and at least pretend they'd like to touch women -- including the paramedics that they work with -- when they're not splitting their time between putting out fires and what appears to be practicing for the next calendar shoot.
The male pin ups -- Jesse Spencer (Matthew), Taylor Kinney (Kelly), Barnett and Eamonn Walker (Chief Boden) -- attempt to saunter but it all comes off like a shimmy -- especially when you're working with all that Taylor Kinney's parents gave him -- and you're left wondering exactly what the Dick Wolf thought he was making a show about this time?
Judy Garland used to sing:
I got the surprise, the surprise of my life
I had to stop and stare
I saw a man dancing with his own wife
And you will never guess where
Chicago
Yes, that was and is surprising. Chicago is, after all, the Birth of the Down Low.
And, if nothing else, the series gets that across.
The ladies? They're window dressing left to repeatedly play confused, never quite sure why such hunky men haven't settled down. At this late date, when The New Normal can just put it out there, there's something terribly retro about a soap whose men tend to prefer the company of men but can't seem to vocalize that need.
There's also something sad about it and about the fact that, on this show, women can't be firefighters. Apparently, Dick Wolf doesn't think they're able to wrap their hands around a big hose, not the way he pictures the men doing at any rate.