Chicago PD Season 10 Episode 14 Review: Trapped
Jasmine Blu
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Marina Squerciati does it again.
As expected, she absolutely delivered a heartwrenching performance on Chicago PD Season 10 Episode 14, which paid a bit of homage to Kim's resilience and was some necessary exploration of PTSD, not just for her character specifically, but cops in general who may endure traumas and triggers on the job.
There was beauty in the breakthrough, and an hour that was dark and somber on many occasions felt hopeful by the end, as if there's light at the end of the tunnel for Kim Burgess.
While Chicago P.D. didn't celebrate its milestone 200th hour, a rare feat and achievement in the fickle world of television, with some elaborate case, cameos, and the entire team front-and-center, there's something gratifying about the subtle things they did here.
For one, the hour featured Trudy, who had some involvement with the case, and it had the current team members who have been there the longest on the case as our darling Torres was off at training.
As much as the singular focus bottle-type episodes have been a matter of taste for many and gotten redundant over time, this particular one for Kim felt long overdue. We can happily accept it as the necessary course correction of the Roy storyline that sidelined her for a puzzling amount of time during Chicago P.D. Season 9.
It's not often the series properly explores the series of traumas that the characters endure and how that builds over time and affects their lives.
Trauma has a way of trapping you without you even you knowing it's sitting there right on top of your body, weighing you down until something makes you notice, until a car backfires and you're shaking on the ground panicking because you feel liek you've just been shot again. Is that what happened?
Therapist
Most of these characters take more than a few hits on the job. Whether it's another continuity oversight or a deliberate choice not to dwell, we don't always see the repercussions of that on the characters long-term.
But you can't have a police series without delving into this aspect of the job where post-traumatic stress is very real and prevalent, and it's essential viewing to see the characters battling it and working through a healthy process for it.
Again, you don't see that often on television which has gotten all too accustomed to glamorizing the "conceal, don't feel" approach to soldiering through atrocities without a second thought.
It's one of the few times where we saw how PTSD could severely hinder a person's performance and approach to life, yes, but they also got pushed to the point of actually taking steps toward handling it.
It was hard not to get emotional when Kim's therapist outlined PTSD and what that actually looked like and chose to elaborate on something beyond the more dramatic depiction of panic attacks but the subtle things as well.
You could see Kim's exposedness and discomfort when her therapist hit the nail on the head by describing precisely what she's been doing for quite some time.
I love that there was a simple explanation of how PTSD isn't always flashy. In this instance, Kim's physical symptoms were the culmination of all the other things she's been experiencing and doing, building up because her PTSD has gone unaddressed.
It manifested in physical, debilitating symptoms that she couldn't ignore anymore. It was her body's way of screaming at her to get the help she's been putting off for far too long.
So often, we have this very narrow idea of what certain things are supposed to look like.
I won't suggest that they've been planning this for a long time, and all the things we've noticed about Kim since the shooting have been building to this -- because I don't necessarily believe it was all intentional, it managed to work nicely enough. It evolved into a compelling, honest arc for the character.
PTSD will literally knock you on your ass, and that's, sadly, what it took for Kim to have her wake-up call. We've seen her dissociating for some time, and the shaky hands from her anxiety rearing up have been a relatively recent development that hasn't gone unnoticed.
But one's heart sank when she heard that car backfire, and it triggered a full-blown panic attack that had her huddled in a corner, unable to process Mac's fear or Adam's soothing words.
If anything would get Kim to seek the help she needs, it's ensuring she no longer scares her daughter with incidents like that. Even Kim's desire to get help wasn't so much about her but maternal instinct, which is true to form for her and speaks volumes about the character.
From then forward, it was as if the panic attacks were happening so frequently that there was no getting ahead.
Her display in the subway car was particularly anxiety-inducing. She had so much happening around her, but she couldn't get a grip.
Squerciati did a fantastic job capturing the claustrophobic feeling of Kim's panic as she relived her shooting. Everything closed in around her, and she was trapped in her own fear and unable to claw herself out of it.
Kim: What's happening?
Adam: Kim, just keep breathing.
It was beyond intense to see her in the middle of an episode, and they did a solid job of putting us right in the moment with her, so we could come as close to feeling what she was as possible.
For most of the hour, aside from a few concerned, knowing glances from other unit members (Voight, Atwater, and Trudy were the most obvious), only Ruzek spoke to her about what she was dealing with and tried to get her to open up.
Ruzek played a supporting character to Kim during this. The hour did take advantage of that easy chemistry that Squerciati and Flueger have that makes their dynamic so endearing even when it's indefinable.
He showed up for her after her first therapy session, a good thing, considering they soon got pulled into that case.
And he urged her to open up and talk to him. He's been in this position so many times, but fortunately, via her sessions, it's finally hitting Kim how active she is in pushing the man she loves away and shutting him out.
With realization comes progress. Even though, on the surface, this hour may not have delivered the type of Burzek content that readily reveals they've made headway in their romance, it feels like an essential turning point simply because Kim is getting the help that she needs.
We've seen how Ruzek has grown as a person throughout the past two seasons, especially how fatherhood has brought out the best in him. We've witnessed that growth that prepares him for a real, adult, healthy romance, presumably with Burgess.
But now, we are seeing the early stages of Kim doing what she needs to better herself as an individual so that she can be the best person, cop, mother, and, presumably, romantic partner for Ruzek, too.
Kim: I can't feel this.
Therapist: Feel what?
Kim: Like I'm getting shot all over again. Like I'm bleeding out every time I hear a gun go off. I almost lost that boy. I can't be who I want to be with this, not for my daughter and not for Adam. And I can't be a cop. They bench cops for this. I can't, I can't not do this job. I don't ever want to not do this job. You said I'm trapped, but I can't be trapped.
Therapist: OK, then we will work on getting you free.
They both needed to go through some growing pains to get to the best possible place where the back and forth could stop, and they can legitimately be a thing, and it feels promising that we're on that path.
But more importantly, Kim's well-being isn't tied to Ruzek or romance, but it's all about her growth, which is genuinely refreshing and makes the arc worthwhile.
We don't get a clear idea of which specific case was the one that Kim found most triggering to result in the sudden umbrage of her physical manifestations of PTSD.
But this case was tough and would've done the trick on its own.
She saw the poor kid bleeding from his chest and entering that train. And she spent so much time trying to save him even as he bled out beyond repair. She battled her own issues the entire time, too.
The subway stuff was exciting and provided that high-octane action that the series does well. It was enough to have you on the edge of your seat a few times, especially when Kim had her panic attack and Ruzek was in the heat of gunfire with the perp.
Visually, those scenes were shot incredibly well, considering the confined space. And the gruesome effects of the scene, from Jamie bleeding out to Kim emerging from the tracks bedraggled and completely soaked in blood, added another layer of intensity to this ordeal.
But the case itself didn't have enough bones. It was one where you couldn't always follow how they got from Point A to Point B other than the plot dictating it.
We didn't have enough background information or motivations behind why Aaron was abusing his son Lucas and his wife was covering it up, what prompted him to pull the kid out of school and keep him hidden in that trap door, or anything else.
Aaron beat and shot his nephew Jamie because he figured out they were abusing Lucas, but that was the extent of the workings of the case.
I don't mind sacrificing some of that for the Kim focus we got, but it needed more development.
And Kim got to heroically push past her panic attack to save Lucas even after they were both stuck in that freezing well and almost died.
But Aaron was taken care of offscreen when he got into a shootout with the cops and got killed. We shifted away from poor Lucas, so we don't know what all transpired with him and where he landed.
There was enough intrigue there, especially with how close to heart Kim took this case, to have more details surrounding it.
It was a solid Kim-centric, which meant it was a bit light with the other team members. But we had a couple of good moments with Kim and Kevin, and Kim, Kevin, and Ruzek; those dynamics are always entertaining.
We also saw Kim working with Voight and taking a bit of the lead at the Bagley home, and it made you think about how little those two tend to work together.
Adam: I think you need to take some time; you wanna sit in the squad, if you want to call the therapist.
Kim: We need to find the man who killed that kid.
It would be nice to see more of Kim and Voight partnering up and exploring that dynamic more, especially with Kim being the seasoned cop she has become over the years.
The hour celebrated their milestone, acknowledging this long-standing character on the series and exploring a topic that needed further exploration, and it worked well enough.
Over to you, CPD Fanatics. What did you think of this milestone hour? Are you happy that Kim has finally gotten help and made a breakthrough? Sound off below.
For the best of the first 200 episodes, you can watch Chicago PD online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is an insomniac who spends late nights and early mornings binge-watching way too many shows and binge-drinking way too much tea. Her eclectic taste makes her an unpredictable viewer with an appreciation for complex characters, diverse representation, dynamic duos, compelling stories, and guilty pleasures. You'll definitely find her obsessively live-tweeting, waxing poetic, and chatting up fellow Fanatics and readers. Follow her on X.
