Critic’s Rating: 3.6 / 5.0
3.6
What’s the quintessential Chicago PD motto?
Tell Voight the truth so he can lie for you.
It’s as simple as that, yet here we are 12 years later, and we see during Chicago PD Season 12 Episode 7 that it still isn’t clicking for the characters.
In Dante’s defense, he’s relatively new to the equation, and while he adjusts remarkably well, he still keeps things close to the vest.
It’s too bad he didn’t keep things in his pants, or we wouldn’t be in this situation where we’re wondering about Kiana’s fate, now would we?
“Contrition” was an aptly titled hour as Torres spent the entirety deeply remorseful about something or another.
We started with his guilt over sleeping with Gloria, which jeopardized not just his job but Kim’s in the process.
And now we’ve ended it with him deeply fearful and remorseful about how his actions may have jeopardized newly minted Intelligence member Kiana.
It’s not looking good for our boy!
After starting strong this season, this installment doesn’t keep up the quality of previous episodes in Chicago PD Season 12.
But it will set us up for a Fall Finale that will likely have us on our edge.
The problem is that I was never a fan of the Gloria storyline in the first place.
Torres isn’t without his flaws, like every character in this series, but it was irksome that he engaged in a sexual relationship with a confidential informant.
Worse yet, even as a trauma survivor, it was always abundantly clear that Gloria was a force to be reckoned with and someone too endeared to the lifestyle that drug dealing could provide to give up on it altogether.
Gloria always wanted to become a queen pin, and her husband’s death was fortuitous, allowing her to do so.
And that’s why it never rang true that Torres would discard all reason and his gut instincts to buy whatever narrative he told himself about Gloria leaving town and starting over as a normal person.
If I’m not mistaken, didn’t she even say during Chicago PD Season 11 Episode 9 that she wasn’t capable of such a thing?
She never hid that the allure of that lifestyle still called to her even as she bid Dante farewell.
The second Zibata’s name came into the picture, and there was that Gloria connection; it was apparent that she was likely the person running things.
It didn’t matter how much denial Dante was in.
We should’ve known that the series would attempt to revisit this storyline based on how they left things, but frankly, I’d rather they didn’t.
It wasn’t the most interesting arc in the first place, and now it’s a colossal mess that requires too many things to even work as a feasible storyline in the first place.
For one, it hinges on Dante and Kim keeping this secret from everyone when we know nothing good comes from the unit keeping things like this under wraps.
We’ve seen how the unit can erode because of secrecy.
We also know that Voight’s biggest issue isn’t that his team makes stupid mistakes or even breaks the law; they don’t tell him about it so that he can work his magic or properly prepare for how to handle it.
Kim kept things under wraps when she first found out, and Gloria disappeared, which was fair enough.
But it makes zero sense that Kim would double down on keeping things a secret once it emerged in the case, and the whole unit is now devoted to taking Gloria down.
It’s not even a matter of selling Dante out here, but simply presenting the rest of the team with the full story so that everyone could figure out how best to approach this case.
The case could fall apart because the team is in the dark.
It was great to see Kim in detective mode again.
She’s really great at handling certain things and people, and the particular fondness and care she extends to Dante and Kiana is where she’s at her strongest as a leader.
She’s emerging as a mentor to them both, protective of her charges, if you will, and almost this maternal energy emanates from her regarding both.
The moment she literally gave Dante an expression she probably reserved for Mack was hilarious and endearing.
But it sucks that the hour saddles Kim with this situation because in order even to make it work, it forces the viewer to call into question the obvious: why withhold this information from Voight?
And that’s where this arc relies too heavily on contrivances.
The same goes for Dante, who is so naive about Gloria and thinks there’s a way through this where she doesn’t expose him.
It was also incredibly dicey that he popped up at Gloria’s place out of the blue, “randomly” tracking her down for old-time’s sake, and she bought into that for a while.
She’s a criminal who has been in the game for far too long not to think something was up.
Dante’s visit while they were investigating the case felt like it would’ve tipped her off immediately, and thus, Kiana’s sudden appearance at the restaurant would automatically read as suspicious.
It’s like Torres endangered Kiana with that move alone, long before that cliffhanger ending.
Kiana going undercover was great because we got to see her doing something new.
And she was mostly great at it, and seeing her in this element was good.
The hour spent a shocking amount of time simply building up her cover and fixating on how she built trust with Gloria.
It mirrored how Dante did the same when he worked at the garage and poured himself into the operation, with the montage expressing the timely process.
So many of Kiana’s moments mirror or connect to Dante, which is interesting.
But if it wasn’t already suspicious that Dante popped up out of the blue, Kiana’s appearance and the badass way she disarmed that gunman should’ve raised red flags.
Instead, they allowed an illogical slip-up on Kiana’s part—despite how careful and intuitive she’s been thus far—to be the tipping point in Gloria’s realization.
Kiana reciting Gloria’s pattern verbatim as Dante told her was one of the dumbest moments we’ve seen in a while because it was so forced.
Even though Kiana never went undercover, there’s no reason to treat her as if she’s completely green, either.
Despite the tense moments during that and how they led to Gloria’s distrust, Dante and Kim were more concerned about cutting off the feed before Gloria could reveal it was Dante she slept with rather than how dicey the situation may have been in the car.
Sure, Dante jumped out and ran to the location, wracked with guilt and hoping to get to Kiana in time, but losing ears caused more damage.
They couldn’t hear what else Gloria was saying, whether she bought what Kiana was saying or where she could’ve been taking them.
Knowing how cautious the unit has been over the season after Martel’s death, this situation is their worst fear for many reasons.
Kiana is off with Gloria; they have no idea where, and it’s still uncertain if she blew her cover.
Fortunately, despite that stupid mishap, Kiana Cook is resourceful and quick on her feet; she’ll likely be all right and pull this off.
But in the meantime, the unit will deal with this fallout and how it jeopardizes the case and one of its own.
Dante’s despair was palpable, and I appreciated the touch of him praying while running to the spot.
I also appreciated some of the lighter fare of this installment.
Red is Kim’s color, and she should wear it more. I loved that jacket.
I also loved how she and Ruzek seized the opportunity to have an impromptu date night in the middle of the stakeout by going inside to have tacos while scoping things out.
Those tacos must have been legendary, given Ruzek’s reaction and the fact that he probably hated having to leave them there while ducking out before Gloria saw them.
Burzek likely earned overtime while turning their stakeout into a date? Goals.
It was also great to have Ruzwater back in action and working together.
They’re OG’s as a partnership and a personal favorite, and we haven’t had them together in a minute.
Of course, Atwater was still criminally underused again, which is starting to become an alarming pattern.
At this point, it’s clear we won’t be getting another Atwater-centric for a while, and he’s been disappearing into the background and playing a supportive role in the interim.
Nevertheless, having the whole team in the episode was still good.
Over to you, Chicago PD Fanatics.
How did you feel about that cliffhanger?
Are you a fan of the Gloria arc?
This this episode miss the mark? Let’s hear it below.
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