‘Chicago P.D.’ Forces Burgess to Face Her Trauma in Episode 200 (RECAP)
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Chicago P.D. Episode 200 “Trapped.”]
Chicago P.D. celebrates a milestone with a 200th episode that leaves Officer Kim Burgess (Marina Squerciati) no choice but to face her PTS from when she was shot — first when a car backfires, then when she’s on a subway train in a tunnel with a man bleeding out, and finally at the bottom of a well, trying to rescue a kid.
It begins when Burgess is at home, with Officer Adam Ruzek (Patrick John Flueger) and her daughter Makayla. The car backfiring makes her flash back to when she was shot and saved herself, and Makayla finds her on the floor, shaking. Ruzek sends the young girl to bed and tries to talk Burgess through breathing. After that, Burgess tells her therapist she’s been fine, and so she wants to deal with what’s happening now and go back to being “fine.” Her therapist then tells her about PTS, describing it as leading to decisions made out of fear and pushing away the people you love, as well as trapping you without you know it’s there until something changes that.
It’s immediately after that session that Burgess and Ruzek, who’d been waiting outside and urges her not to push him away, hear a gunshot and chase the shooter and victim onto a subway train. What follows is Ruzek chasing after the shooter and ultimately losing him in the tunnel, while Burgess stays with the victim as he bleeds out — and trying to save his life while everything around her (including his blood staining her shirt and hands and the shots exchanged between her partner and the offender) reminds her of her own trauma. When Ruzek finds her, the victim (later identified as Jamie) is dead and she turns her focus to finding the shooter. When she waits in the morgue to talk to the ME, her hands are shaking.
Intelligence’s investigation leads them to Jamie’s uncle, Aaron. But why would he shoot his own nephew? As they discover, Aaron and his wife were keeping their son, Lucas, in a wall in the shed; there’s a pillow and blanket — and some blood. Jamie must have found out. But where’s Lucas now? Aaron is MIA and his wife won’t talk.
Traffic cameras pick him up, and Burgess and Ruzek split up to search the area. It’s Burgess who finds Aaron’s truck and Lucas in a well. When she goes down to help him, Aaron shoots down at them, then closes them in. And so even while triggered and talking herself through breathing, Burgess has to help Lucas. When he can’t make it up the ladder, she must climb, and by the time she pushes the rocks holding the cover down on the well off and gets out, Ruzek finds her — Aaron’s dead — and climbs down to Lucas.
After those events, Burgess returns to therapy. She can’t feel like this, like she’s getting shot all over again and bleeding out every time she hears a gun goes off, she admits. “I can’t be who I want to be with this, not for my daughter, not for Adam, and I can’t be a cop,” she says. “They bench cops for this. 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.” And so she and her therapist are going to “work on getting [her] free.”
What will that work look like? We’ve seen that Burgess still did her job, even while being reminded of what happened to her, but will anyone else from the unit know she’s working with a therapist? If the wrong person in the CPD finds out, she could be benched. And might this “work” lead to a big step for Burgess and Ruzek, given the therapist’s mention of PTS leading to pushing people you love away?
Chicago P.D., Wednesdays, 10/9c, NBC
