What Chicago Fire Does Better Than Any Other TV Show, According To The Showrunner

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What Chicago Fire Does Better Than Any Other TV Show, According To The Showrunner

Here’s how Derek Haas believes Chicago Fire beats the competition!

           Chicago Fire is going strong at eleven seasons and counting with the heroes of Firehouse 51 braving the most dangerous situations in the Windy City to save lives. Although the show is currently on a break before returning early in the 2023 TV premiere schedule, the fall finale delivered a sequence that – according to co-showrunner Derek Haas when speaking with CinemaBlend – shows off what Fire does better than any other show on television.

In the fall finale, a motorcyclist with very bad timing ran the gate on an elevated bridge as it was raising, and he was stuck on an almost vertical incline, clinging to the bridge grating with his bike in the perfect position to fall on top of him and carry him to his death. Luckily for him, Squad 3 and Truck 81 were on the scene and worked together to rescue the man, with Severide climbing up the bridge, swinging over the top edge, and then belaying himself down while Kidd worked to get the aerial in position and Carver got control of the bridge.

Chicago Fire pulled it off with a series of practical stunts, with actor Taylor Kinney extremely high up on top of the bridge and doing most of the stunt himself. When I spoke with showrunners Derek Haas and Andrea Newman, I noted that the bridge emergency was one of Chicago Fire’s most impressive and believable stunt sequences, and Newman praised it as “amazing” and “incredible,” while Haas explained why he thinks the NBC drama beats all the competition when it comes to stunts.

Taylor Kinney and any stunt performers may not have been in any real-life danger for the bridge sequence in the fall finale, but the Fire team found a way to shoot it without removing the sense of dread that something could go very wrong for Severide and the man he was trying to save. The stakes feel sky-high on Chicago Fire because of the very real stunt sequences, rather than stunts completely faked with special effects. Just take a look at some behind-the-scenes drone footage of Taylor Kinney himself on the top of the bridge:

Not all shows can pull off sequences like that, let alone with an actor who already has more than a decade of experience in doing many of his own stunts! The bridge certainly wasn’t the first impressive stunt sequence in the show’s history (and not even the only one in the episode thanks to the explosive cliffhanger), with plenty of examples over the years.
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