9-1-1 season 8 episode 16 recap: What exactly are we doing here, folks?

Last episode, 9-1-1 season 8 did the unthinkable: it killed off Captain Bobby Nash (Peter Krause). After that solid punch to the gut and a two-week break to stew on it, fans tuned in with baited breath for episode 16, “The Last Alarm”, and Bobby’s funeral. And, well… a funeral definitely happened. And it was, indeed, an episode. Here’s a recap… 

Bobby’s death in the final moments of “Lab Rats” sent shockwaves across the internet, despite the fact that his funeral was literally livestreamed on TikTok by a random LA man just two weeks before. But still, it hurt like a sucker-punch to the face. 9-1-1 never kills off its main characters. That’s why many people watch it. It’s fun and silly and exciting and emotional, but its ensemble of fantastic first responders and the wonderful dynamics between them are what keep people coming back for more. 

The captain of the 118 dying – especially in a random episode in season 8, with a ninth season on the way – just didn’t make sense, which is why many viewers, including the one writing this, didn’t accept his fate and spent the last two weeks theorising about how he could still be alive. (Government biotesting lab, anyone? We still haven’t seen a body, and there was a delay in releasing his remains… something still feels suspicious to me.)

After such a huge loss to the 118, it’s only natural that everyone will be feeling some kind of way about it. Unfortunately, much of that processing seems to happen off-screen, so let’s break down each character’s grieving process, one by one. 

First up is Athena Grant (Angela Bassett). As Bobby’s widow, Athena obviously has a hard time accepting Bobby’s death. This isn’t the first time she’s lost a partner, as we were reminded in the season 8 opening emergency as she transported her long deceased love Emmett’s killer to LA. She was always going to have complicated feelings around losing Bobby beyond the regular grief of a spouse. But the way she works through this loss is, for some reason, by getting stuck into a random side plot with a random woman looking for her dead son. Sure, her story encapsulates the same themes, keeps Athena busy and helps her work through her feelings, but it also takes up almost all of the episode. 

No offence, but Bobby Nash is dead! Everyone is devastated! We don’t have time for these poignant but time-consuming shenanigans! Usually, I would be all for watching Athena set up camp in the kitchen with some lanterns and a portable printer, and going off-grid so she can solve an eight-year-old crime with nothing but a blank wall, some string to connect the dots and a really cool leather jacket. But time is really of the essence here. We’ve got three episodes of the season left, and about 50 million characters’ psyches to dive into. 

The only person seemingly having as hard a time as Athena is Chimney (Kenneth Choi). As the guy who got the vaccine that could have also saved Bobby in “Lab Rats”, Chim is understandably distraught about the whole thing. He’s riddled with survivor’s guilt, and attempts to deal with it through taking up running and avoiding talking to his wife, Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt). Chim is definitely the standout this episode. We don’t usually get to see him in this kind of headspace – angry and confused – and his classic one-liners hit with a little more venom through his grief, which adds an interesting layer. His episode arc comes to a head with him chugging a bottle of vodka on the fire station roof before the funeral, and spilling his guts out to Buck (Oliver Stark), who’s come to collect him. Chim gets MVP this week. 

Buck, on the other hand, doesn’t do that much in terms of expressing his emotions because he’s, and I quote, ‘done a lot of therapy at this point’. Okay, sure. Yes, he got his emotional moment with Bobby just before his death in the lab. But you’re telling me that Buck, the same man that spiralled to a stratospheric degree about his best friend moving to Texas, has suddenly become the emotionally stable friend after his surrogate father permanently moved six feet underground? This definitely feels like the show is setting Buck up to become a great candidate for the next captain of the 118, but couldn’t they have done that after Bobby’s funeral? Couldn’t Buck have at least had a little cry first? 

Another person who could be up for the captain’s chair is Hen (Aisha Hinds). However, she also didn’t get to experience much in terms of grief or character development this episode. In all fairness, we did get a little treat in the form of a couple of tender Henren scenes, featuring Karen (Tracie Thoms) making Hen breakfast and the pair sharing a lovely moment on the morning of the funeral. But beyond that, Hen felt like she was most there to provide exposition about the time jump and someone for Athena to monologue at. It was a great monologue, but Hen screen time is sparse in this economy. 

Speaking of sparse screen time, here comes Eddie (Ryan Guzman). Don’t even get me started on Eddie. His El Paso move in “Voices” mixed things up for a few episodes as we got to see him make his way as an Uber driver and fix his relationship with Christopher, as well as see Buck have yet another Menty B over people suggesting he’s in love with the man. But things came to a standstill with Eddie three episodes ago, leaving him to exist mostly off-screen. When we joined him in El Paso, he’d already reunited with Chris after however long apart (god knows how the 9-1-1 timeline works at this point). Since then, he’s been living his own life away from everyone else, only reconnecting with the team through FaceTimes with Buck. 

I thought the final straw was Eddie not being present for Bobby’s death, but it actually turns out that I have more straws that I didn’t know about hidden all over me. Eddie finding out about Bobby’s death happens off-screen. Eddie processing his grief and apparently growing the start of a beard? Off-screen. Eddie reuniting with Buck? Off! Screen! Instead, he’s thrown in towards the end of the episode in a fun but jarring ‘hey, remember this guy?’ moment. The only member of the 118 we get to see him reunite with is Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody), of all people. Like, I’m all for Eddie/Ravi bestieism, but not when Bobby literally just died and Buck, Hen and Chim are there too. The show’s been doing Eddie dirty for too long. Was Ryan Guzman busy or something? Are they slowly writing him off? Whatever’s going on here, I don’t like it.

The final main, Maddie, gets off scott-free on this one. Working in dispatch, she didn’t have as much to do with Bobby as the rest of the gang, so it makes sense that she’d be the emotional support in this scenario, and she does it beautifully. She’s there for Buck at the start when he needs it and she lays it down for Chim when he’s floundering, and she does it all while being extremely heavily pregnant. Ten out of ten, no notes. 

Overall, the episode contains some beautiful and poignant moments, like the reveal of Bobby’s final resting place in Minnesota and the whole firefighter funeral procession, but it still feels somewhat hollow considering the circumstances. 

I wouldn’t go so far as to call “The Final Alarm” a waste of time, but it does feel like it’s wasting time. We’ve got two episodes left of the season. Bobby’s dead, Hen’s barely had any A plots, the Buck and Eddie romance hints went from Niagara Falls to a full-on drought in the space of three episodes, Athena’s still living on a building site, and Maddie is just about ready to pop… What are we actually doing here, folks? Are we really going to cram it all into the last two episodes? Why is Vincent Gerrard and a woman Bobby saved eight years ago getting this much screen time when we have more pressing matters at hand? 

Two weeks ago, 9-1-1 did perhaps the worst thing it could possibly do for the sake of shaking things up. It now has a chance to do just that, but it doesn’t need to be so bloody maudlin about it. It needs to remember what’s always been at the heart of the series: love, family and friendship. It needs to rediscover its soul, which lies within the ensemble of incredible characters the audience keeps coming back for. The world is depressing enough – we don’t need to be miserable when we’re trying to escape from it.