‘Chicago Fire’ Boss on Boden’s Responsibilities in His New Position and 51

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Chicago Fire Season 10 has had some big moments, from Jesse Spencer’s exit after 200 episodes as Matt Casey to the question marks around Stella Kidd’s (Miranda Rae Mayo) future at 51 — and with her fiancé Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) — following her radio silence while she was away doing work for her Girls on Fire program. But it’s also had some quieter storylines, exploring other aspects of the job.

For example, at the beginning of the season, then-Battalion Chief Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker) had to decide if he was going to take a promotion to Deputy District Chief. He did, and it briefly took him away from his family of Firehouse 51, due to the necessity to be in a centrally-located office. But thanks to some digging by assistant Kylie (Katelynn Shennett), he soon returned to the office where he belonged. Despite now having other firehouses under his command, we’ve only really seen him involved in 51’s business (which is understandable, given where his office is and that they’re his family).

But will that change or be addressed? “It’s a hard one because once you start spreading your stories too thin, then I think it’s harder to maintain a good episode structure and the show has always been about Firehouse 51, even more than it’s been about any individual character,” co-showrunner Derek Haas explains to TV Insider. “It’s about the events of that firehouse. So we’ll occasionally see Boden stepping out to mind his other houses that he’s now responsible for in his district. But the fact that he’s headquartered at 51, he’s just still tight with those guys. And if you had to ask him, he would say, this is his favorite shift.”

Before the NBC drama went on break for the holidays, the winter finale saw firefighter Randy “Mouch” McHolland (Christian Stolte) bring up the fact that after they save victims on calls, they don’t know what happens to them. In that episode, he did find out, after visiting a victim in the hospital and then the wife stopping by the firehouse later. Don’t expect to see that become a major storyline for Mouch, however.

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“That was just really in relation to what was happening in that storyline, but it is something that older firefighters feel more as they get longer on the job,” Haas says. “It used to be that you could just compartmentalize and take these things out of your mind, but then, cumulatively, it starts to build and affects them. So we don’t have a storyline planned out to show more of that, but we did want to show that since I’ve heard that from firefighters who had 20 years on the job.” And it also ties into how big of a supporter Mouch has been of Sylvie Brett’s (Kara Killmer) paramedicine program.

Chicago Fire, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC