It’s been quite a while since we last saw our favorite firefighters take on the streets of Chicago, and they came back in full swing. Quick recap: Boden wants Kidd to be a lieutenant, Casey and Sylvie made out and then Casey let it slip that he’s still in love with his ex-wife. After nearly two months off, it’s time to get back into action.

The episode begins with Kidd and Severide arriving to work, with Severide assuring his girlfriend that he’s going to help her study for the lieutenant’s test that Boden recommended she take. As they arrive inside, Chief Boden is showing Kidd’s protégé, Kylie, arriving for her first day as Boden’s new assistant.

As Casey and Sylvie begin to have a talk about their little hook-up at the end of the last episode, the bells ring, and Firehouse 51 jumps into action. As they arrive to a warehouse that’s on fire, Kidd notices that there are people on the roof that need help, and Mouch, being the great ladder operator, hops on and steers it up. As Casey begins to climb it up to the roof, Mouch notices that the ladder isn’t secure, and Casey is flung over the side. Firehouse candidate Gallo runs up, and safely pulls him up. Mouch, ashamed of a possible malfunction, watches on as they continue to help. Inside the warehouse, Severide saves a man, who demands that they go back in to save a car, which he refuses, and Casey berates Mouch for almost severely injuring him.

At the Firehouse, Kylie gets her new boss a standing desk, which will offer the C plot of the episode.

Stella attends her first meeting for the lieutenant’s test, and Kidd meets the people who are also involved with the test, who are all impressed that she’s there.

Mouch takes the rig out so that he can look at the mechanics of the ladder, and slowly starts to become obsessed with figuring out what went wrong during that warehouse fire.

While looking at the report for the fire, Casey doesn’t think that Mouch should get any extra punishment for the ladder mishap. Severide sees the man he saved in the warehouse, named Ken, and Ken tells him that he wants to get back into his warehouse as soon as possible, leading to the concerned looks from Severide. He brings it to the headquarters, who assign him to investigate the warehouse for any clues. As he leaves, Severide sees the chief who’s in charge of the lieutenant’s test, Conway, and he says a good little biased sentence about how Kidd’s ability doesn’t matter compared to how it would look for a woman to be a lieutenant. He also says that just because she’s dating Severide, that’ll be even easier to slide through the ranks, which infuriates Severide to no other.

Gianna and Sylvie talk boys, and Sylvie brushes off any possibility that her and Casey have any sorts of relationship, and inside the Firehouse, Mouch’s obsession with the ladder malfunction continues with him scanning the handbook. Herrmann, nervous about his friend, goes to a nearby firehouse, and asks one of their crew about a similar situation where a ladder operator messed up and almost hurt someone. The crew member replied that the person in question was so far into his career, he was “going through the motions,” and he was sent to a desk job.

With incredible enthusiasm, Kidd tells Severide that she’s excited to get studying for the test, and he can’t bring himself to tell his girlfriend the horrible remarks that Chief Conway said. Meanwhile Boden tries to break his new standing desk so he can go back to sitting, but Kylie sees through the ruse and fixes it.

Now the part we were all waiting for, Sylvie and Casey have their renewed talk about their feelings. Casey said that his feelings for her are real “regardless of Gabby,” which hurts Sylvie, because there “shouldn’t be a ‘regardless.'” She tells him that that can’t happen again, because she needs to be on her own. Thus breaks the hearts of all of us fans that were shipping them.

Sylvie and Gianna get sent out on a call of a woman who was hit in the face with a drone, and the blades of the drone cut a piece of her nose off (insert some gross and oddly impressive special effects makeup). Gianna finds the piece of the nose, and they assure her that it can be reattached. The person controlling the drone tries to take the drone away, but Gianna knocks it out of the sky with a rake, and they decide to completely destroy it for Sylvie’s smash therapy (hey, that’s the episode title!)

Severide and Ken head to his warehouse, where they find the car that Ken wanted saving still in pretty good condition, so there was nothing too suspicious going on.

Herrmann, Gallo, and Kylie find some of the paperwork involved with the previous incident like Mouch’s, and Herrmann tells Kylie that she needs to be tougher than Boden if she is to keep the job, since Boden goes through a lot of assistants (except for Connie, who was a series favorite before her departure).

While sharing cigars, Casey tells Severide about him and Sylvie, and he says he’s gonna pull back on his feelings for her, for the sake of her, which hits home for Severide, since he is in a sticky situation with Kidd.

Kylie catches Boden trying to sit at his standing desk, and Kylie tells him that he can be strict, because she wants to be tough, and she wants to learn from him.

Herrmann finds out through his searching and that the manufacturer of the ladder system was supposed to have product recalls, and it never went through, and informs Mouch and Casey that Mouch did nothing wrong.

At the usual end of episode Molly’s scene, Sylvie and Kidd discuss Casey and Severide. Kidd notices the weird behavior that she’s been seeing in her boyfriend and will most likely confront him about it. Severide is then shown helping his new buddy Ken fix up the car. Ken even gives him permission to take it on its first test drive. Severide purposely ignores a call from his girlfriend, and he drives off into the night.

The episode was a nice return to Fire‘s roots. Fighting fires, with a fair amount of share between all the side plots. It was also nice to see Chief Boden attempt to work at a standing desk when he clearly wanted to be sitting. The humanity of Casey being so forgiving to Mouch for the ladder mishap was great to see, especially when Casey can be so cold during the job.

Chicago Fire is taking a two week break before returning. What did you think of tonight’s return to the show? Leave a comment below.