Chicago Fire returned last week hitting the ground running, bringing lots of changes to NBC’s favorite firefighters, and that continued with the second episode.

With their relationship official, there’s more PDA between Casey and Sylvie, with Sylvie planning on starting a non-profit organization that has paramedics who work with frequent 911 calls for non-emergencies, because Sylvie helped out a woman needing medicine in last week’s episode.

Videos of Casey’s heroic rooftop rescue started going viral, earning him the nickname “Firefly.” Casey rejected the idea of being an internet star, but let’s be real, we all want to see him do some TikTok dances.

Despite his objections, Casey was forced to do local interviews and press pieces about the rescue, which Casey tried to make all about ambulance shortage, and Sylvie’s non-profit idea. The interview never aired, as Casey’s internet fame quickly went away.

On a rescue call that involved a car trapped under a truck, Cruz started having a panic attack while working underneath the truck to rescue the woman trapped in the car. Severide and Stella managed to rescue the woman, but it was obvious that the Cruz was affected by the rescue.

Back at the scene, Herrmann and Ritter were clearing the streets, removing the car from underneath the truck. After doing so, Herrmann, noticed that a little boy was stuck underneath the seats of the car his mom was rescued from. Despite calling for an ambulance, dispatch was taking a long time to get one to him, resulting in him calling Sylvie and Violet to come to his location. They revived the boy and rushed him to the hospital, but it sent a shockwave through the Firehouse, since they couldn’t see the boy until after they had left.

The new paramedic chief, Evan Hawkins, almost suspended Sylvie for breaking protocol for not clearing with dispatch before going to Herrmann’s scene. However, Herrmann intervened and took all the blame for it, because he didn’t want Sylvie to take the fall for it.

The team was sent to rescue a man trapped under a collapsed fire escape. Cruz decided not to help go down, rather to hold ropes down and anchor them, which Severide noticed his neglect. Gallo and Casey managed to get to the man before Severide, and rescued the man with ease.

Mouch decided to start a free library outside of the firehouse, and put a variety of books in it, including the erotic fireman book that he wrote many years ago. This served as the comedic plotline of the episode, since Mouch wanted to use this opportunity to get people to read his book. Imagine his surprise when it immediately backfired, when a 10-year-old kid read the book, with an angry mom on his case. It came to a head when someone set fire to the free library outside of the station, with Mouch calling it “the worst kind of arson.”

Mouch then tried to run a crime scene around the library, which Severide quickly solved by finding Mouch’s reading glasses, which were hit by the sun, causing the books to catch fire.

The woman and child that were rescued at the beginning arrived to Firehouse 51 to thank the team, which still deeply affected Cruz. Severide asked Cruz about how he’s feeling, and Cruz lied to his lieutenant’s face about everything. I’m sure they need this for further development of Cruz’s PTSD for the season.

As the episode ended, Casey found Griffin Darden, who’s the son of Andy Darden, a former firefighter who died in the pilot episode 10 years ago, requesting Casey’s help, leading to future plotlines as we progress through the season.

This episode solidified Herrmann as my favorite character. David Eigenberg has done a fantastic job with this character, and has grown him past a comedic side character, but to a caring, hard-working family man. It’s been exciting to watch his growth throughout the years, and is arguably the heart of the show.

I think the inclusion of Cruz’s near-death experience and lying about it is great. The way it’s affecting him and how he can do his job is great character development, especially as he goes through this next phase of life of becoming a father.

Now that Griffin Darden is going to be a character, I’m intrigued as to why they would bring something all the way from season one to this point in season ten. I think it could make for some intriguing mystery, or it could be just a one-off thing before we move to the next story.

What did you think of the episode? Should Casey have tried to do a TikTok dance? Leave a comment below!