Call me the odd-man-out here, but I always liked Stellaride. Until now. When Van Meter expressed surprise that he gave up an extremely prestigious career at a national level because SWMBO* didn't approve? Nope, nope and more nope. And you could clearly see the resentment in his face in that scene too. Is this setting the stage for Taylor's exit down the road?

I recall that pre-strike they were saying the One Chicago shows had to reduce production costs by a fairly significant amount, and cast members would have limited numbers of episodes, so expect more leaves of absence/training assignments/etc, and fewer complicated rescues, I suspect.

Not gonna lie, I'm going to miss Brett. But it was inevitable after Jesse decided to leave the show.

Glad to see Kylie is thriving as a candidate. In a way I'd have liked to see her get assigned to E51 to keep her on the show, but I guess cast budget issues put paid to that. They could have gotten a lot of mileage out of having her stick around.

Also going to miss Gallo, but he's been more comic relief/Greek Chorus with Cruz than anything else lately. So now we're going to need a new truckee to replace him, and a new paramedic to replace Brett, the downsides being a lot of character development episodes to come, which can really throw off the momentum of a show. Not a good thing when hoping for decent ratings in old/expensive shows.

Still not a fan of Carver, to be honest, and I'd rather they'd lost him than Gallo. Carver always seems to suck the oxygen out of the room in his scenes. Removing oxygen is a good thing in fire chemistry, but not in Chicago Fire chemistry.

*SWMBO: She Who Must Be Obeyed. </rumpole>