Salon.com > dick wolf http://www.salon.com Mon, 20 May 2013 02:00:00 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 The confident masculinity of “Chicago Fire” http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/the_confident_masculinity_of_chicago_fire/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/the_confident_masculinity_of_chicago_fire/#comments Thu, 21 Mar 2013 15:22:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13247899 “Chicago Fire,” Dick Wolf’s drama about very attractive firemen and paramedics saving lives, premiered to very poor ratings. In the five months since, something surprising has happened, especially for a show on NBC: “Chicago Fire’s” audience has grown and grown. It regularly beats its premiere ratings, wins its time slot against shows like "Nashville" and "CSI," and in the context of NBC’s ongoing ratings-catastrophe situation, it almost amounts to a hit.

“Chicago Fire” will be instantly familiar to any one familiar with “ER” and its descendants, particularly the attractive first responder show “Third Watch.”  For a series hat features people running into fires every week, it is very soothing: you know exactly what you’re going to get. A procedural soap, where the good guys will usually but not always win, where there’s enough moral ambiguity so it doesn’t feel stupid, and most everyone wants to kiss everyone else, but no one really likes to talk about their feelings all that much until they are forced to, and they are often forced to.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/21/the_confident_masculinity_of_chicago_fire/feed/ 1 “Chicago Fire”: The TV comfort food we’ve been craving http://www.salon.com/2012/10/10/chicago_fire_the_tv_comfort_food_weve_been_craving/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/10/chicago_fire_the_tv_comfort_food_weve_been_craving/#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2012 17:12:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13035787 A piece in the New York Times this past weekend described “Chicago Fire,” the new NBC drama from “Law & Order” creator and super-producer Dick Wolf that premieres tonight, as being “Dick Wolf 2.0.” Set in, yes, a Chicago firehouse, the new series is referred to as “2.0” by Wolf’s staff because it’s an update on the all work, no play dictum the “Law & Order” franchise obeys. Yet, to judge from "Chicago Fire," “Dick Wolf 2.0” is not a new version of anything at all, which isn’t exactly a bad thing. “Chicago Fire” will be instantly familiar to anyone who has ever seen an episode of “ER” or, even more precisely, “Third Watch,” the slightly gritty early-aughts series that tracked the professional and personal lives of a bunch of nice-looking, emotionally damaged EMTs, a soap opera dressed in a procedural’s clothing. Except for a cameo by Rahm Emanuel as himself, "Chicago Fire" is a predictable but pleasantly familiar throwback that could have been on TV a decade and a half ago.

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