This is the 9-1-1 episode we needed after Bobby’s (Peter Krause) heartbreaking death. The penultimate episode of Season 8 continues to dive into the grief of those left behind, from Athena (Angela Bassett) and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) both struggling with the fact that Bobby gave him the only dose of the anti-viral and died to Hen (Aisha Hinds) figuring out if she wants to be the new captain, from Buck (Oliver Stark) trying to check on everyone and hold it together himself after Bobby’s last words to him to Eddie (Ryan Guzman) dealing with how he found out and the fact that he wasn’t there. And it does so in typical 9-1-1 fashion, interspersed with the types of calls we’ve come to expect from this first responder drama.
The episode opens on everyone at the 118, including Eddie and Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody), back when he was probie, gathered for a meal — including Bobby. At the 118, the captain says, we work as a family, support each other as a family, and eat together as a family. He’s recalling when they delivered all those babies back in Season 1 and … Buck’s really just sitting alone at the table, remembering.
Buck’s been doing psychological assessments of everyone’s grief level (Eddie got a 12, Hen a 17), and Eddie’s worried about him spending all his time worrying, he shares with Hen and Karen (Tracie Thoms). (Give us more of these three together ASAP. Why did it take this long?!) Eddie admits that he couldn’t remember when he last spoke to Bobby after he got the news; it was a text exchange about slow cookers. When Karen remarks on him still being in Los Angeles, Eddie admits he hadn’t planned on staying this long but it’s nice being home and spending time with his Aunt Pepa (Terri Hoyos) after her stroke (she’s good). Hen and Karen don’t let him get away with calling Los Angeles “home,” with the latter pointing out there might be an open spot at the 118 soon for a paramedic with Hen offered the captain position. Hen agrees he should come back, whether she takes it or not, but he’s gotten a job offer from a fire department, too — in El Paso. He hasn’t told Buck.
Buck goes to confession — Welcome back, Father Brian, if only we saw his reaction to Bobby’s death — and Googles the steps of it on his phone. He’s trying to get a message to his friend whom he’d go to for advice, and while people always talk about feeling a loved one’s presence, he hasn’t yet. Once the priest leaves him alone, Buck gives talking to Bobby a try: “Cap, Bobby, you were wrong. You said I’d be okay, and I’m not. And they don’t need me. I keep on trying and I reach out, but everyone is just spinning away. We don’t talk, we don’t even eat together. Everything is falling apart, and I don’t know how to fix it. So I need you to — I need you to come back here and I need you to tell me what to do. I need you to give me a sign because…” He’s getting emotional when an earthquake (more about that later) hits (which he thinks could be that sign).
By the time Eddie walks into Buck’s/his old house, his best friend has found out about the job offer in El Paso. (Hen told Chimney she wanted to throw him a surprise BBQ, and Chimney told Ravi, who then asked Buck if he should bring a gift.) Both get emotional and both lash out, driven by the anger in their grief. Buck thinks everyone’s been tiptoeing around him because they think he’s too fragile to accept the truth, and Eddie argues he wouldn’t have been happy for him and instead makes it all about him and “the trials and tribulations of Evan Buckley, a tragedy in 97 acts.” (The positive spin on this? Only people as close as they are to each other know where to hit where it really hurts.)
Eddie says Buck has been spiraling since the funeral, but he’s not the only one who lost him. They all did. “You never asked what it was like, waking up, in the middle of the night, to that news,” Eddie shares, as a flashback shows just that moment and then him sitting on the floor, crying. “Sitting alone in the dark, trying to keep it together, so I don’t scare the crap out of my kid. And when he woke up, I had to tell him another person he loved was dead.” Bobby saved his life, and Eddie will always wonder if he could have made a difference if he was there. Buck asks if he doesn’t think he did everything he could to save him, but Eddie doesn’t know, because he wasn’t there. He walks out, and the next morning, Buck finds the blankets folded on the couch and a note, “Went to the airport.”
So, Buck’s surprised when he gets home later to find Eddie there. He thought Buck could use some cheering up, so he went to the airport to pick up his son, Christopher (Gavin McHugh). Buck and Christopher share a sweet hug and condolences about Bobby’s death before Eddie reveals more of his family there: Aunt Pepa! She, too, greets Buck with a hug, and she’s the one Buck opens up to.
“Bobby was our center,” he says. “Without him, everything feels off-balance, kind of like the gravity is gone, you know?” Pepa tells him that after her stroke, she was afraid because she couldn’t move her hand and thought her life would never be the same, but thanks to a lot of prayer and occupational therapy, she’s accepted that life is change and it’s unavoidable.
Meanwhile, Athena is all on board with Hen being the 118’s new captain — it’s the best thing for everyone, as she sees it — but the paramedic/firefighter still thinks of Bobby as Cap. He’d want it for her, his widow adds. But Hen isn’t sure if she wants it and points out Athena turned down a promotion herself (to lieutenant, which would’ve meant more paperwork than protect and service). But things get awkward when Chimney walks in, having taken his daughter and Hen and Karen’s kids to the movies, and Athena is very obviously not happy to hear or see him.
When Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) arrives home, it’s to find Chimney putting together a crib. He tells her about Athena and the conversation he and Bobby had about the captain looking after Maddie and the kids when he thought he would die. Chimney knows that Bobby must have known at that point he was infected and thinks he decided to sacrifice himself because he reminded him he had a kid on the way. (Showrunner Tim Minear told TV Insider, “You can see even through that goddamn face mask, that is the moment that Bobby makes the decision that if there’s a choice to be made Chimney’s walking out and he’s not.”) Maddie points out that even if that’s the case, Chimney had no idea that Bobby had been exposed and wasn’t trying to manipulate him. She’ll be forever grateful for him saving Chimney’s life. As much as Chimney wants to take care of Athena like Bobby would have with Maddie, it seems impossible for now.
That is something that both Chimney and Athena agree on, as the latter opens up to Karen — 9-1-1 is giving us so many pairings/groupings we’ve wanted over the years, so can Eddie and Maddie please be next? — when she brings by a housewarming gift: a framed photo of the 118 from Hen and Karen’s vow renewal in Season 5 (you can just see Lucy at the end). Athena doesn’t blame him, she stresses, and she knows it’s not fair, but she still sees Bobby, who’s not here, when she sees the man who is, Chimney. “You’re grieving, so fair can go mind its own damn business,” Karen assures her. “We just want to be there for you, Athena. You don’t have to do this alone.” For now, Athena decides, she and Chimney will just be professional. Karen just makes sure she knows that when people ask about the same photo she gave her in their house, she doesn’t say Hen’s coworkers but rather, “That’s our family.”
Meanwhile, that earthquake causes a crack at the Los Angeles Headworks Reservoir Southeast Division. It upset an underground gas pocket, leading to methane bubbling up from water with explosive results. That includes calls at the dentist — Hi, again, Lorna (Phoebe Neidhardt), from Season 3’s “Christmas Spirit” — and a woman’s bathroom when her tub blows up. The 118 is called to a multi-story structure fire at a commercial building, with Gerrard (Brian Thompson) still around as captain and very complimentary. (He also still doesn’t feel like Gerrard but this weird mix of the captain the 118 needs in the body of someone familiar played by an actor who clearly cares about these people.) With their water resources limited, and with the 118’s idea for a hose relay, directed by Maddie, they’re able to put out the fire before it becomes too dangerous as it encroaches on the area where lithium-ion batteries are stored (which would result in a toxic blaze).
With Gerrard passing out satisfaction surveys, Chimney can’t wait for Hen to be back in charge, but his ride-or-die reveals she’s turned down the job. She doesn’t want to be the captain, she explains. She’s not good at telling people what to do because she tells them what to do then steps in and does it herself. She’d rather be a hands-on paramedic, then go home and be hands-on mom and wife and she thinks Bobby would understand that.
Finally, the set-up for the finale emergency comes during Athena’s call. She encounters Graham the Cart Cop again (Season 8’s “Wannabes”) as he’s now going after people in his building for shirking and leaving their clothes in washing machines after they’re done. Just as she’s left after being called about him again, there’s an explosion in the building in front of her and it collapses. Athena gets out of her car and radios in for help.
What did you think of how 9-1-1 handled everyone’s grief in this episode and the set-up for the finale emergency? Let us know in the comments section below.
