‘Chicago Fire’ Heats Up With a Proposal and Declaration of Love (RECAP)
Spoiler Alert
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Chicago Fire Season 9 Episode 15 “A White Knuckle Panic.”]
The penultimate episode of Chicago Fire Season 9 features major developments for both one of its most stable couples and possibly one of TV’s most frustrating slow-burns.
Lieutenant Stella Kidd’s (Miranda Rae Mayo) professional future remains in flux — there are no open spots at 51, even on another shift, so Battalion Chief Wallace Boden (Eamonn Walker), her boyfriend Lieutenant Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney), and her captain Matt Casey (Jesse Spencer) are trying to find her the best firehouse possible for a transfer. But her personal life is another story … though she doesn’t know it (quite yet).
Meanwhile, the Gabby Dawson-sized obstacle in Casey and paramedic Sylvie Brett’s (Kara Killmer) way comes calling … the firehouse. (No, Monica Raymund doesn’t appear.) But will this set the stage for a possible “Dawsey” reunion or is Fire finally about to do something about “Brettsey”?
Read on to find out.
Burning Love
While Severide, just last episode, told Casey he was going to bring up the idea of marriage to Kidd, he admits he’s now “rethinking” it. When they first got together, she said she’d never get married again “because I don’t ever want to be in a situation where I can’t just leave.” As Casey points out, that was a long time ago.
Adrian S. Burrows Sr./NBC
However, that all changes in the middle of a fire, as Severide and Kidd are trying to find their own way out. “I am never going to leave you,” she tells him. “Don’t you get that by now?” We can see the light bulb going off above Severide’s head. And then in the middle of a fire, Severide takes off his mask and says, “I don’t ever want you to leave me,” before getting down on one knee. Again, in the middle of a fire. Kidd also then takes off her mask as the fire rages politely in the background and doesn’t touch them.
“Stella Kidd, will you marry me?” Severide asks. Of course she says yes, and they kiss as… you get the point. They eventually just waltz out of the building, having found their own escape, while the rest of the house is hard at work trying to free them. But they’re engaged, which is really what matters.
And yes, she will be getting a ring, he assures her later in bed. “You know I don’t get caught up in that stuff,” she says. “All I need is you” … but she’ll take the ring.
We’ll Give This Declaration of Love a “B”
Understandably, things get awkward (again) between Casey and Brett when she hears that Dawson called the house and wants to talk to her ex-husband. She was just calling to congratulate Randall “Mouch” McHolland (Christian Stolte) for a medal he’s getting and to ask Casey to record the ceremony for her, he later explains. But is the damage done?
Lori Allen/NBC
When paramedic Violet (Hanako Greensmith) asks Brett about Greg Grainger (Jon-Michael Ecker), she finds out about the breakup. “It had nothing to do with him. I’m the problem,” Brett says. “Looking for something I can never have.”
But Violet doesn’t think that’s true. “What makes you so sure you can’t? From what I’ve seen, you already do,” she points out. “I picked up on it the day I got to 51. You, Casey, the way you are with each other, it’s kind of undeniable.”
Is it? Well, for one of them it certainly is. It turns out that Casey’s right when he tells Severide that his second conversation with Dawson “will tell me a lot.” And what it tells him, he reveals to Brett, is … “what I already knew. Gabby and I will always care about each other. There’s too much history not to, but I’m not in love with her. I haven’t been in a long time. Gabby is my past, and you’re my now. I can’t tell you how to feel, but I think there’s a reason that no matter how hard you and I have tried to make it work with other people, we can’t. I’m in love with you, Sylvie, nobody else, and even if that doesn’t change anything for you, I needed you to know it.”
Adrian S. Burrows Sr./NBC
He then leaves her to think about that, and as far as declarations of love go, it’s not bad. But that “you’re my now” isn’t the best. (Come on, why not say “present and future”?) Still, we have a feeling it worked and there just might be a little bit of reciprocation as part of a major Brett/Casey moment in the May 26 finale.
Chicago Fire, Wednesdays, 9/8c, NBC
