'9-1-1's Buck and Eddie Queerbait Backfires in the Wake of Bobby's Death as Audience Ratings Fall Again

Although we may have made it to the end of 9-1-1’s eighth season with no more casualties, viewers are committing murder on the series’ IMDb. Ratings are continuing to plummet after last week’s brief boost that was largely in part due to the return of Ryan Guzman’s Eddie. Numbers have been falling since the April 17 episode, “Lab Rats,” during which Peter Krause’s Captain Bobby Nash made the hero’s sacrifice and laid down his life for his team. It’s clear that audiences weren’t happy with where the eighth season left off, with many upset about what was presented as a building plotline surrounding Eddie and Buck (Oliver Stark) simply faded to nothing in the finale.

Before we dig into the potential “why,” let’s take a look at the numbers. Remember the beginning of Season 8 when a beenado descended upon Los Angeles? The rating for the premiere was 8/10, foreshadowing a promising batch of episodes ahead. Over the next several installments, the title shifted between 7 and scores closer to 9 until everything tanked with “Lab Rats,” which dropped to 3.7. The next week, “The Last Alarm” sank even further to 3.2 before “Don’t Drink the Water” showed some promise with a score of 8.6. It’s no coincidence that the episode saw the return of Guzman’s Eddie, who has been in and out during the season. But the comeback was brief, with last night’s “Seismic Shifts,” earning an incredibly low score of 2.9.

How Queerbaiting Backfired For ‘9-1-1’

At the center of the poor reviews is the queerbaiting that’s been happening all season between Eddie and Buck. Watching the pair’s dynamic build into a will-they-won’t-they situation has been all that fans can talk about with the network, even sending the actors out on a PR tour over the last week — a stunt that only further drove suspicions that we’d finally get a little something more from “Buddie”. Yes, we know that Eddie has been portrayed as straight, but there’s no denying the chemistry between him and Buck — something that Buck’s ex, Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) and Buck’s sister, Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), have even pointed out. When the creative team moved to make Buck embrace his bisexuality in Season 7, it appeared that the door was open for Buddie to proudly walk through. And yet, the Season 8 finale left us with a big heaping pile of … nothing.Can 9-1-1 reclaim its spot as one of the hottest procedurals on television or will decisions like the death of Bobby and the baiting of Buddie ultimately sign its death certificate in Season 9? Only time will tell, but in the meantime you can relive the glory days when everything was easy and Bobby was alive by streaming the series on Hulu.