How Chicago Fire Season 14’s Premiere Deals With The Show’s Cast Exodus
Contains spoilers for “Chicago Fire” Season 14, Episode 1 — “Kicking Down Doors.”
As it enters its 14th season, “Chicago Fire” is once again in the position of having to replace several important actors who are in the midst of departing the show. As it stands, Daniel Kyri’s Darren Ritter, Jake Lockett’s Sam Carver, and Michael Bradway’s Jack Damon are all slated to leave the series this season. But it looks like only Ritter’s exit is going to be pulling much narrative attention, at least for the first few episodes.
During “Kicking Down Doors,” Darren Ritter’s boyfriend, Dwayne (Samuel B. Jackson) — who moved to New York City during Season 13 — fails to meet him for a prearranged Skype meeting. He asks Mouch (Christian Stolte) to call his wife Trudy (Amy Morton) and pull files to find out what’s up. It turns out that Dwayne was shot on duty and is now in the hospital. Darren flies out to be with him at his hospital bedside, and Dwayne is clearly moved that he made the effort. This gives the show narrative space to have Darren move to New York to be with Dwayne, a story which will apparently stretch out over Season 14’s first few episodes. But as for our missing firefighters, little is mentioned of them.
As Vasquez enters the scene, we have some idea of where Damon and Carver are
Our other two missing firefighters don’t get much shine. “Kicking Down Doors” does hint that Sam Carver’s storyline is basically over. The episode opens with a flashback to the Season 13 finale, where Carver told Violet (Hanako Greensmith) that he’s putting an application in with the Denver firefighting department. But he also returned to kiss her, leaving the door to their relationship wide open. The Season 14 premiere indicates he is completely gone, though his name isn’t mentioned aloud — when Stella Kidd (Miranda Rae Mayo) meets Sal Vasquez (Brandon Larracuente) for the first time, she tells him he’s “replacing a hell of a good driver.” Vasquez shrugs at the comment, saying that Carver isn’t as good as him. Kidd and Vasquez immediately enter into conflict. The metatextual issues are addressed by Dom Pascal (Dermot Mulroney). “We’ve lost a lot of good firefighters lately. I suggest you take a beat before we lose another,” he tells Stella.
Jack Damon isn’t mentioned at all, either, though his name is still on his locker when Vasquez puts his own name on Carver’s own now-empty equipment holder. Since Vasquez seems to be taking over the role of team hothead from Damon, that’s fitting. Whether he’ll actually last remains an open question as of this writing. But hopefully, if fans bond with the character, they’ll be rewarded with a long stay from him.
The Untold Truth Of Bones
Of all the many forensic-based procedural crime dramas that debuted in the early 2000s, few were as beloved as Fox’s Bones. The series about the team of forensic anthropologists at Washington, D.C.’s Jeffersonian Institute led by the brilliant Temperance “Bones” Brennan (Emily Deschanel) enlisted to help FBI agent Seeley Booth (David Boreanaz) debuted in 2005, and eventually became the longest-running drama in the network’s history. But as with any series that’s on the air for so long, there’s bound to be controversy, scandals, and disagreements. Here’s a look right into the marrow of Bones.
Sweets takes a permanent Vacation
When he isn’t acting, longtime cast member John Francis Daley (FBI psychologist Lance Sweets) enjoys a parallel career as a screenwriter. With his writing partner Jonathan Goldstein, Daley wrote Horrible Bosses, Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs 2, The Incredible Burt Wonderstone, and Spider-Man: Homecoming. In 2014, he signed on to write and direct the remake of National Lampoon’s Vacation. He needed four months off for the project, but Bones writers couldn’t come up with a viable way to explain Dr. Sweets’ absence for half a season, so in the last few minutes of the season 10 premiere, they killed him off—shot in a parking garage by a Navy SEAL caught up in the conspiracy ensnaring Booth at the time.
Zack Attack!
An earlier fan favorite’s abrupt departure came even further out of nowhere. Before the show settled on a format of revolving interns at the Jeffersonian, the position was filled by the super-intelligent, socially awkward Zack Addy (portrayed by Eric Millegan), who received his doctorate in the show’s second season. It came as a shock to fans when it was revealed in the third season that the apprentice to Gormogon, the terrifying cannibalistic serial killer that Bones and Booth just couldn’t catch…was Zack. Locked up forever in a psychiatric hospital, the character has made occasional appearances. But why was he written off the show? At the time, cast and crew said it was a creative decision to mix things up.
The nasty lawsuit
In 2015, Bones executive producer Barry Josephson sued Fox and production company Twentieth Century Fox Television for withholding profits from a number of people—including himself, Kathy Reichs (on whose novels the show is based), and stars Emily Deschanel and David Boreanaz, who joined in the suit. How much underreporting? As much as $24 million, accrued from airing the show in Europe, online streaming, and in product placement deals. Fox filed a motion to immediately move the case into arbitration, avoiding a lengthy and costly court battle—a move allowed because Deschanel and Boreanaz had contract clauses agreeing to arbitration over a trial. The case did make it to arbitration, and the show was renewed for its 12th and ultimately final season in spite of the legal troubles.
An even nastier lawsuit
Josephson’s lawsuit was not the first time Bones faced legal difficulties. In 2009, actress Kristina Hagan appeared on the show as an extra, after which she alleged that David Boreanaz took an inappropriate interest in her. According to Hagan, Boreanaz offered career guidance and a bigger role on the show because he was “the boss.” Instead of delivering on those promises, he allegedly drove her to a park and sexually assaulted her. Later that month, Hagan alleged that a similar event happened on the Bones set, in Boreanaz’s trailer. The suit was settled out of court, around the same time that Boreanaz admitted that he cheated on his wife, Playboy Playmate Jaime Bergman, with Rachel Uchitel, best known for being one of Tiger Woods’s many mistresses.
It’s based on a book series…and Fox’s desire to have its own CSI
In the early 2000s, writer/producer Hart Hanson had another show in the works, but it fell apart during the 2005 TV pilot season. Because he had a development deal with Fox, the network asked him to create a forensics-based crime show not unlike CBS’s extremely popular CSI franchise. At first, Hanson wasn’t the least bit interested in making a procedural, but Fox asked him to meet with producer Barry Josephson, who held the rights to develop a series about forensic anthropologist and crime novelist Kathy Reichs. Hanson then watched a documentary about Reichs, which he found “fascinating, because what she could do with a pile of bones was amazing.” Then Hanson returned to Fox and pitched them his skewed, humor-inflected version of a crime procedural.
Bones became less about Reichs and more about Temperance Brennan, the forensic anthropologist from Reichs’s novels. However, the real Reichs considers Bones “a prequel to my books” because when the series starts, the character is a decade younger than she is in the books. “She is less polished, so passionate about her work [that] she is a bit of a social nerd,” Reichs told Yahoo! “And her people skills have some developing to do.”