"The Chicago Code" has nothing to do with deep-dish pizzas or the cruelly cursed Cubbies. "The Chicago Code" openly, unabashedly, plain and simple, is all about good versus evil. The good guys following "The Chicago Code" are very very good, and the bad guys breaking the code are very very bad. The windy city itself, definitely a critical element in the drama's development, lives somewhere in-between. Chicago may be "the second city," but it stands out as America's number one oxymoron. "Hog-butcher to the world," Chicago also brought us Hemingway and Frank Lloyd Wright. Home to Picasso's breathtaking artistic monument, Chicago also has been home to some monumental con artists: Rod Blagojevich comes immediately to mind. "Blaggo" is to Chicago scams as the Picasso is to the city's art and architecture. More to the point of "The Chicago Code," in just over thirty years, thirty-one second city aldermen have been convicted of violent crimes or corruption. In Chicago, graft greases the wheels and gets your streets ploughed. Although corruption may be common as camel-hair coats on the Magnificent Mile, Chicago cops still want to collar the bad guys. "The Chicago Code" attempts to dramatize how and why they do it, and it packs a pretty good punch for a network production. Critics and home-grown Chicago viewers strongly suspect "The Chicago Code" would achieve its completely gritty potential on cable, but it's hard to complain about Jennifer Beals, still fit and fabulous all these years after Flashdance, going balls-to-the-wall against the bad guys in Monday night primetime.

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