It’s been nearly four years since we’ve seen a One Chicago crossover, and more than five years since we’ve had one that spanned all three shows: Chicago Fire, Chicago P.D., and Chicago Med.

Even NBC has tacitly acknowledged that’s too long, and now, we’re just weeks away from a new One Chicago crossover, a January 29 three-hour event involving a gas explosion at a high-rise.

 

 

With excitement building for that three-parter — and with all three shows returning with new episodes on Wednesday, January 8 — we’re ranking the franchise’s prior crossovers, even those including Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, by the plausibility of their premises. Check them out below, sorted from most contrived to most credible.

 

 

Ex-cop Sean Roman (Brian Geraghty) returns to Chicago to look for his sister and teams up with firefighter Kelly Severide (Taylor Kinney) to investigate a drug dealer with whom his sister might have been involved. Then the drug dealer turns up dead, and Roman all but confesses, while we wonder why he was ever given so much leeway on this case in the first place.

After firefighter Christopher Hermann (David Eigenberg) is stabbed at his bar, he’s treated at Chicago Med. Meanwhile, a woman rescued from a fire turns out to be one of several patients given unnecessary chemo by a doc, the same doc who killed the wife of P.D.’s Hank Voight (Jason Beghe). The former storyline feels like a natural crossover; the second feels like a total contrivance.

When fire department lockbox keys end up in the hands of house robbers, Voight gets firefighter Joe Cruz (Joe Minoso) on a secret mission to find answers at another firehouse. Cruz IDs the firefighter responsible, but then that man turns up dead. At least this undercover operation doesn’t involve firefighters going into a suspect’s house.

Intelligence has some questions for Severide after his car turns up in a fatal hit-and-run. But it turns out the firefighter was a victim of a car-stealing crime ring. Not a bad set-up for a crossover, but we all knew Severide couldn’t be guilty, so there wasn’t much dramatic tension.

When an apartment fire linked to a case of rape and attempted murder seems like déjà vu for the SVU team, Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) and her colleagues travel to Chicago to help Voight and his team with the investigation. Ah, the old “I had a case just like that” trope…

After paramedic Leslie Shay (Lauren German) dies in a fire, Severide gets a tip-off about the arsonist who may be responsible. And Fire’s Gabriela Dawson enlists the help of her brother, P.D.’s Antonio Dawson (Jon Seda). We love a sibling superteam, but why didn’t the Fire Department wanna take on that arson case?

Before Chicago Med was a thing, a hospital dubbed Chicago Med was the setting of a car bomb that injures Firehouse 51 members at the scene for a charity run. Intelligence is one of the agencies that investigate the crime. No notes — but we do wonder if the writers kicked themselves for not saving this idea for the Chicago Med era.