And the weakest member of the unit right now is Jay Halstead.
If given the option between Hailey going down for the Roy death or Voight, Jay will choose to save Hailey, and that’s the offer an eager Special Agent North presented Jay by the end of Chicago PD Season 9 Episode 8.
The fissure lines tearing through the unit are unlike anything we’ve seen. It hasn’t even reached its peak yet.
The hour severely lacked usage of most of its characters as we were right back to an excessive amount of time spent with Jay, Hailey, and Voight as they juggled a mostly lackluster case with an overeager FBI agent investigating Roy’s disappearance.
The case fell on the predictable side, right down to the “shocking” switcheroo with which of the sisters was a glorified psychopath.
They looked into the victim to determine if he was into some shady dealings that may have led to his brutal stabbing. Most of what they had to work with was a descriptor by Candace, who Upstead found in a closet hiding as if she witnessed the most traumatic thing in her life.
For most people, seeing your parent killed in front of you would be traumatic. But as we came to learn, Candace didn’t care since she was the one who killed him in the first place.
Shockingly, the girls blamed their father’s murder on a mysterious Latino man instead of the status quo of a scary Black guy, which tends to be customary.
This dude might as well be crashing on your couch.
Trudy
But for the most part, aside from Rodrigo going from a suspect to a person who tipped them off that something else was going on with the girls, the case didn’t branch out very far.
The teens played up the notion that their father was abusive. Darlene attempted to throw the unit off with the cuts on her arms. Hailey’s background as a trauma survivor, knowledge of cutters, and extraordinary hunches had them doubling back on the case when things didn’t add up.
And we learned that Darlene wasn’t the manipulative monstrous sister but rather Candace’s victim.
The case fell to the background and only served as filler, and the rest of the unit’s involvement with it was much the same.
The one person who deservedly got some gosh damn screentime for a change outside of the Drama Trio was Trudy, and we’re all the better for it. Why is Amy Morton so underused? Perhaps it’s at the actress’ request, but it was so good to get Trudy away from that desk and in the field with Voight.
Can we please get more of that? It would be marvelous.
Trudy always knows that things are happening, and she’s the queen of trusting her gut. She’s been calling Voight out on the tension in the unit for a bit now, and while he still didn’t tell her everything that went on, she knows enough to sense that a storm is coming.
And that leads us to North. He’s good, isn’t he?
He seemed perfectly cordial when he met Voight to ask him a few questions and tell him about his intentions with the investigation. You would’ve never guessed during that moment that he had already done his diligence digging into every facet of the unit’s lives, personal and professional.
If not for us knowing they wouldn’t bypass drama, he was convincing as a person crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s without much commotion.
Voight kept it calm, but Halstead was pissed when he found out about North. Why, though? He knew it was coming!
Halstead walking away when Voight informed them about North and insisted they kept their stories straight was so unbelievably juvenile, and his teenage temper tantrums have long since gotten old.
North’s questioning of the unit felt like a nice nod to the other time they did the group questioning with the slick camera work, and it was a brief highlight of the hour. It’s too bad they didn’t spend more time on that.
Overall, it was weird that so much of this shifted away from the rest of the unit.
North had a single moment when he thanked Burgess for her sacrifice because of what happened to her, but all the attention right back to Hailey, which remains one of the most frustrating aspects of this storyline.
They had ample room to approach this from two angles: one of those is how all of this affects Burgess after what she endured, including her PTSD from that night, and even explored Burgess and Hailey’s friendship with Hailey keeping this secret from her.
Hailey: Do you think I should turn myself in?
Halstead: No. I want to start my marriage with the woman I love without a prison.
Hailey: We’re supposed to be together forever, but if you feel what I’ve done is so terrible, there’s no turning back. Forever feels like a long time.
And yes, the other side could’ve continued to focus on Hailey in the aftermath of the shooting and everything they’ve done thus far. By exclusively exploring every angle from Hailey, Voight, and Jay’s end without balancing that out with Kim’s, it feels like an incomplete storyline fixated on the wrong things.
They’ve beaten the Upstead and Voight portion of it to death, pardon the pun, and selling us on the friction in the unit would work much better if the others found out what happened sooner and we got to see where everyone fell during the fallout from it.
It feels like they’ve mostly benched half the unit for this storyline, one of whom should be the most pivotal to it.
North was on Hailey early, and it was easy to figure out why once we learned how thoroughly he investigated matters before speaking to anyone on the unit. Voight interrupting her time with North did look suspicious.
And Trudy gained intel that North had spoken with the hostage Mark took, who overheard Hailey agreeing to tell the world the truth about Roy before they killed him was one of the first signs that this could go to the left.
But Voight was right about North not having nearly enough to go on at that moment. And to Hailey’s credit, she kept well under pressure when North thought he was presenting his case to her and would succeed in rattling her.
I know we’re all supposed to get hype about how badass Hailey was during that interrogation after North brought up her father, past trauma, and all of that, and she shut him down. And don’t get me wrong, her snapback was lethal, badass as hell, and catnip for the diehard Hailey fans.
But on the other hand, it had one wondering where the hell this Hailey was the entire time and why her personality oscillates based on what suits the plot during the moment?
How was the woman who was having panic attacks weeks ago BACK to the smirking, smug, cocky woman who was on her mini-Voight sh*t?
The continuity issues on this series will be someone’s villain origin story one of these days.
The hour kept volleying back in forth in this frustratingly disjointed manner, bouncing from one scene to another without connecting between, and we never got an understanding as to what was going on with Halstead and Hailey.
After learning that their cars were bugged and had trackers on them, Halstead told Hailey, and they discussed their nuptials and how he didn’t want her to turn herself in.
Shocking no one, Halstead’s strong sense of morality is conditional. He hates what Hailey did, but he didn’t want her to turn herself in over it.
But then we jumped to the next day before we got a sense of what that conversation was like for them. It seems Halstead has made peace with what Hailey did and is moving forward.
Their conversations about their relationship and how everything affects it keep starting and stopping with no clarity. Still, we’re to assume that this situation hasn’t broken them in any capacity despite Halstead’s hissy fits.
So, of course, after everything, we find out that Halstead’s inability to mind his business, stay in his lane, and let Voight handle things as he has always done caught up to him.
North: You fight for people who can’t fight for themselves, and that’s what you did here. Roy Walton is dead, and you covered it up. In some ways I get it, I admire it, but it’s still a crime. You talk now, I will protect you the best way I can, you keep stonewalling me…
Hailey: There’s a lot of truth in there North, but you don’t have a case. I bought new BDUs because real cops get dirty. I made that promise to Mark Irwin because he had a gun pointed to a civilian’s head and that’s what he wanted to hear in that moment. That’s textbook police work. I hope Roy Walton is dead. If you’re right about that, Walton’s turning into dirt somewhere, and everyone is where they’re supposed to be, so since I’m very obviously not under arrest, I’m going back to work now. I’m a great cop. I’m in the middle of working a murder, and you’re wasting my goddamn time.
It’s hilarious that Jay is the weak link, and he is who took North’s flimsy case with circumstantial evidence to something legit by leading North to Roy’s body.
It’s downright laughable that he is now the reason that he has to choose between his fiancee and his boss. Let’s give him a round of applause!
Regardless of where you stand with the Roy murder coverup, all of this could’ve gotten avoided if Hailey didn’t insert herself into Voight’s business and Halstead didn’t do the same later.
The Hailey situation is a rehash of Erin, which does nothing to quell the comparisons right down to sleeping with Jay.
Voight: It can’t look bad if you’re keeping steady in there. Are you?
Hailey: Yeah, I am.
Jay attempting to serve as Voight’s moral foil, like Antonio, feels redundant right down to another authoritative figure demanding he turn on Voight.
North did wonders hyping Jay up about how great a person he is and all of that, and the ridiculousness of Halstead being the reason North was onto them made it impossible to hear all of that without laughing bitterly.
And now, we have to wonder if Halstead will opt to be a snitch, taking down Voight to save Hailey. It’s something he’s wanted to do, so you can’t put it past him to agree to it. And we all know he’s whipped when it comes to Hailey.
It’s a heck of an ending. But at some point, the series needs to dig into how all of this affects the other characters. It’s gone on too long without implementing them, too. We can speculate all we want about how this will tear the unit apart, but we’re long overdue to see it.
North: You know who that is? Course you do. You’re the one who led me here. You’re the one who ran Voight’s GPS the night Roy Walton disappeared. Damn good police work which is either tragic or ironic, I’m not sure which. I’ve been searching for the fault lines and this and it’s you. It’s always been you.
Jay: Is that right? I’m your weakest link?
North: No, it’s not weakness, it’s decency. It’s possible, Jay, that you’re too good for this world we operate in. You truly love Hailey Upton, do you? You had to protect her. You had to fall in line, and in the process, you became a full partner in the coverup of a crime. So here’s what’s going to happen, I’m going to give you a choice. I arrest you and Hailey and you, and I promise you, I’ll make the case, or option two, you help me take down the person I really want, Hank Voight.
Other Tidbits:
- Have you ever seen a doctor show such little compassion when telling two teenage girls that their father was dead? Goodness, woman! Do YOU need a heart transplant?
- Hailey looked good in this episode. That leather jacket was everything!
- When will we get the Trudy-centric installment that we deserve? Can we at least have an entire episode of Trudy and Voight working on a case together?
- What was with the editing of this installment? It was so rough, bounced all over the place with the scenes., and was unpleasant.
- They’ve gone shootout crazy during this season. It’s the millionth time Jay narrowly escaped some bullets. And Adam also caught a couple, too.
- When will Kim’s PTSD arc, Kevin’s relationship arc, and so forth come back from war?
- Where the hell is Miller?
Over to you, Chicago PD Fanatics. Will Jay turn on Voight to save Hailey? Hit the comments below!
Chicago PD returns for its Fall finale on December.8.
Until then, you can watch Chicago PD online here via TV Fanatic to catch up or relive the season thus far.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.