Everyone here, including "Oz's" Eamonn Walker as the battalion chief, is working from the same medium-grim setting, with medium-grim dialogue, which quickly drags the story and action into the still-smoldering ruins of other fire-and-rescue dramas.
Chicago Fire isn't half bad when the fires and other crises take over as the star of the show. It's after the smoke clears and the stories kick back in that you begin to realize the only way to salvage these sorry stereotypes in uniform is to burn them the only way we know how.