Chicago Fire recap: What happens to the Firehouse 51 common room?

Cindy turns up to change the Firehouse 51 common room to kickstart her interior design business in Chicago Fire Season 7, Episode 17. Meanwhile, Casey snaps at almost everyone and Kidd trusts her gut about a suspicious situation.

Chicago Fire Season 7 returned from its month-long break, quickly getting into the storylines of the episode. “Move that Wall” gave us tensions in the firehouse, as Casey proved he’s still not dealing with being shot at and snaps at almost everyone. Meanwhile, Severide backs Kidd up when she follows her instincts and Cindy makes changes to the common room.

I’ll break this recap into the three main storylines — although there are a few crossover elements and other parts thrown in. Are you ready to delve into Episode 17?

Cindy wants to go back to work

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Now that the youngest Herrmann is in Kindergarten (I remember when he found out Cindy was pregnant again and it only feels like yesterday!), Cindy wants to go back to work. She had a career in interior design but she gave it up to support Herrmann’s career as a firefighter.

To get herself started, she decides to offer to change up the common room at Firehouse 51. She even wants to hear from everyone in the firehouse to find out what they want from the place — and you know Mouch’s only concern is the couch.

Cindy doesn’t have a lot of time to do this. Her friend has pitched the idea at a major interior design magazine (Brett’s favorite, so you know she’ll offer help if Cindy needs it), but it’s clear that the firefighters aren’t too happy with all this.

And yes, it all goes as well as you would expect it. The common room doesn’t offer anything the firefighters need and Herrmann tells her his (brutally) honest opinions.

That goes down like a ton of bricks. Cindy had already told him that it was for the photoshoot and everything would turn it back to what it was. But now she needs to rethink her career. Oh dear!

Casey and Herrmann struggle to see eye-to-eye

An on-the-job mistake with parking and hoses across the road leads to an accident. Riddler is injured and put on sick for a few shifts to recover, and it immediately causes tension between Casey and Herrmann.

Casey is initially angry that Herrmann wasn’t spoken to for his decision. But then he decides to choose a floater instead of letting Herrmann doing it, but Herrmann finds out that this could be one of the worst floaters to get and calls Casey out on it. Naturally, Casey decides to shout at Boden that Herrmann would be written up for insubordination had he not been best friends with the chief.

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Boden decides to speak to Herrmann about his actions, leading to Herrmann offering to apologize to Casey. Herrmann will be the bigger man. He doesn’t quite get the chance to apologize as the floater turns up and he’s worse than you would imagine. They’re then called out on a case, which sees both working as a team again.

In the end, the two do get to apologize to each other.

Kidd and Severide get a suspicious case

During the first call, Severide notices there’s a sort of priest hole in the wall of one of the apartments. Fortunately, there’s nobody in there, but she gets a bad feeling.

With Severide as backup, they get Upton in from Chicago PD, but she can’t get anything to help them figure out what’s going on. All the evidence has been burned away.

Stellaride doesn’t give up. Both end up figuring out a way to figure out who owned the apartment and where he is now. It turns out that he’s a foster parent and Kidd immediately wonders whether he’s been cramming kids into a hole in the wall just to cash in the money.

Sure enough, her fears are confirmed. Severide nearly gets a knife to the back for his efforts to help her, but Upton gets in (because they’d called her) to arrest the guy in time. The kids are safe because of Kidd’s actions — and I couldn’t be happier to see Severide stand by her the whole time.

Upton follows up with the two to share that the guy’s scam had been running for years. Kidd’s actions saved them — and they had drawings made for her to say thank you. And it’s immediately clear that Severide still has a thing for Kidd, so can they get back together again please?

What did you think of Chicago Fire Season 7, Episode 17? Which was your favorite storyline? What do you think about Stellaride? Share your thoughts in the comments below.

Chicago Fire airs Wednesday at 9/8c on NBC.