Wednesday nights are officially action-packed again on NBC in the 2024 TV schedule, as all three One Chicago series have returned. Chicago Med opened Season 10 by losing two doctors, followed by Chicago Fire's Season 13 premiere introducing Dermot Mulroney as the new fire chief and then Chicago P.D. ending the Season 12 premiere with a shocker for Ruzek. I spoke with the showrunner for each of the three series ahead of the premieres, and they opened up about their group text chain and crossovers on the way.
The tenth season of Chicago Med is also the first season for Allen MacDonald as showrunner, and he binge-watched the first nine seasons to prepare for the top job. (All nine seasons are streaming now with a Peacock subscription.) He was the first of the One Chicago showrunners I spoke with this fall, and shared this when asked if he talked to Andrea Newman from Fire or Gwen Sigan from P.D. yet:
I have, and they both were so kind. First off, I should say the three of us have a text chain and we check in with each other from time to time. But they were both so welcoming. I immediately called them both when I got the job, and they gave me a lot of good advice, because this is 22 episodes a year, and I have been streaming for a lot of years where we do eight to ten or thirteen episodes.
Prior to Chicago Med, MacDonald's most recent TV credits as executive producer were for Prime Video's Harlan Coben's Shelter and Netflix's 13 Reasons Why, neither of which had seasons that ran for more than thirteen episodes. The 22 episodes of Chicago Med Season 10 will take the medical drama close to the 200-episode milestone and were a big shift for the new showrunner. He went on:
So I kind of had to recalibrate my brain back to a broadcast order, because my career started on CSI, and we used to do 24 episodes. I know what that feels like, that kind of schedule, I know what the vibe of that is, but the little difference this time around is that I'm the showrunner. [laughs].
On the opposite end of the One Chicago spectrum from newcomer Allen MacDonald, Andrea Newman has been on the Chicago Fire team from the very first season as a producer in 2012. She became co-showrunner with Derek Haas in 2021 and then sole showrunner following Haas' departure at the end of Season 11. When I asked her about the One Chicago text chain keeping all the showrunners on the same page, she said:
We love the little mini crossovers, where the characters kind of come in and out. We'll get a Med character for a little bit. We have Trudy in an episode coming up from P.D., and I think Mouch is in a Med [episode]. It's really nice to keep the audience aware that this is One Chicago, and they're all in the same world, and we shoot a lot on their sets for our med scenes. There's a really nice synergy between all the shows. Allen is really fun to have this year. He's got a great vibe and great energy, and he knows the shows, so it's fun to have him part of this team now too.
Alas, the last three-show One Chicago crossover remains the cinematic "Infection" three-parter from 2019, and the last two-parter was between Fire and P.D. in early 2020 prior to the COVID-19 production shutdowns. Still, mini crossovers are always fun, and considering all the crises of One Chicago, it's never a surprise if the Fire or P.D. characters end up in the hospital.
As for P.D., Gwen Sigan started on the police procedural as a writer in 2016 before working her way up to showrunner by late 2021. When I spoke with her about Burzek in Season 12 and beyond, I also got her thoughts on sharing the text chain with Allen MacDonald and Andrea Newman:
It's nice, and it's fun just because we're all in the same offices. It's funny how different [it is]. You would think that we see each other every day just because we're the same universe of shows, but we don't. So it's nice to have to have connection in that way. It's been helpful, and there's a lot of episodes where you'll see, they're not crossovers in that [multi-part] way, but you'll see some of our characters coming over to Med this season. You'll see some of our characters going to Fire. It's always nice to know what they'll be doing.
For now, we can only wait and see when the mini crossovers with characters hopping from one show to the other will air. When I spoke with Gwen Sigan earlier in September, she shared that the P.D. team was writing Episodes 7 and 8 at the time, so it is safe to say that the character sharing she alluded to is coming before the end of the year. One Chicago fall finales are traditionally the ninth episode of a given season.
Keep tuning in to NBC on Wednesday nights for new episodes of all three shows, starting with Chicago Med at 8 p.m. ET, continuing with Chicago Fire at 9 p.m. ET, and concluding with Chicago P.D. at 10 p.m. ET. If you missed any of the fall 2024 premieres, you can find them streaming on Peacock.
