I'm Sorry 9-1-1 For Mocking This Ridiculous 118 Call After It Just Happened In Real Life

While 9-1-1 is not a stranger to major events, there have been some that have felt more impossible than others. Yet, while unlikely to happen to the same people over and over again, most of the emergency situations were plausible. Cruise ships can be attacked, tsunamis happen, and roller coasters can get stuck. Yet, there was one 9-1-1 season 8 emergency that seemed impossible.

9-1-1 season 8 opened with a bee-nado, which many of us immediately poked fun at. There was no way something so big could ever happen, and while 9-1-1 intense disasters and crazy emergencies have been normal, they’ve needed to feel somewhat real. Well, it turns out that a bee-nado event is possible, and now I take back the jokes.

9-1-1 Season 8 Kicked Off With A Bee Crisis (& I Initially Didn't Like It)

A Bee-nado Seemed Small Compared To Previous Emergencies

The flagship 9-1-1 series has always offered some wild moments, including plane crashes and cruise ship disasters. However, 9-1-1 season 8 opened with an event that just seemed to be a complete disappointment. Ahead of the 9-1-1 season 8 premiere, we discussed how it seemed to be a lackluster way to start the new season, especially after a season with just the cruise ship disaster as the major event. There were no real ways for the traditional gruesome 9-1-1 injuries.

It didn’t help that a bee storyline had already been used two seasons earlier. While at a Renaissance Fair, a woman in armor was attacked by bees who managed to get into her armor and stung her several times. To bring the bee storyline made it feel like the show was running out of ideas by using older emergencies.

Compared to 9-1-1: Lone Star season 5’s three-part opener involving the chlorine gas, a bee-nado event came across as something purely out of fiction, especially considering the way that the crash led to the bees being released seemed unlikely to happen.

While the event did end up being bigger and somewhat more interesting than it originally seemed, it was still disappointing compared to previous opening situations. Compared to 9-1-1: Lone Star season 5’s three-part opener involving the chlorine gas, a bee-nado event came across as something out of fiction, especially considering the way the crash led to the bees being released seemed unlikely to happen. Some of the best 9-1-1 episodes have involved wild but realistic calls, allowing us to wonder what we'd do in those situations.

Instead, the entire bee-nado event felt more like a joke for the firefighters, as well. It was obvious they could dress in the gear that beekeepers would wear to keep themselves protected from the escaped swarm of bees. Sure, people in the area would be at risk, but it wouldn’t be too hard to get people back inside while the area was cleared of the thousands of escaped bees. It was child’s play compared to the tsunami event that saw firefighters’ lives literally on the line.

9-1-1 Season 8's Bee Crisis Just Happened In Real Life

9-1-1 Seems To Have Predicted A Real Bee Situation

Members of LAFD station 118 walking towards an emergency in 9-1-1.

It looks like 9-1-1 is going the way of The Simpsons in predicting events that could happen. While most emergency events in the 9-1-1 franchise are based on emergencies that have already happened, this bee-nado event predicted an emergency that actually happened. NBC News reported in June 2025 that a transport truck carrying bee hives overturned on a Washington State roadway, leading to millions of bees being released accidentally.

This will allow the bees to re-hive and find their queen, but there are still some bees that are loose and finding their way back home.

They quickly started getting the bees back to their homes, with a community of beekeepers immediately showing up to help get the situation under control, allowing the hives to be reassembled and on their way to their final destination. This will allow the bees to re-hive and find their queen, but there are still some bees loose, finding their way back home.

Residents have been warned to keep an eye out, as not only are the bees unhappy, but they are potentially stressed out trying to find their home. Originally, it was believed that around 250 million bees escaped, but that number was revised to 14 million. The road the truck overturned on remains closed but should reopen by June 7.

Now the bee-nado event doesn’t seem as ridiculous or impossible as it once was. Trucks can overturn, and bees can escape from their hives and fly off. There’s a chance that not all the bees will make it back to their hives, which can lead to some scary situations for local people.

Why Ridiculous Calls Are So Important To 9-1-1's Storytelling

No Emergency Is Too Crazy In The Real World

Ridiculous calls in 9-1-1 could seem like a way to make the story interesting and exciting, but there is much more to them, and 9-1-1 season 9 needs to continue on this trend. In real life, absurd calls can happen, and a TV show like this offers a look at what people can do when an event of this magnitude happens. It also shows people can do some wild things, and first responders have to attend to people in nightmare situations.

A show like 9-1-1 has more time to put the firefighters and other first responders in danger, showing how hard they work to keep people safe.

First responders have taken their stories online, talking about the calls they've received, and some of them seem impossible. However, they don’t go into the full details of how much work the first responders actually do. A show like 9-1-1 has more time to put the firefighters and other first responders in danger, showing how hard they work to keep people safe.

Yes, there is a dramatic element to using these ridiculous calls as high-stakes events, no matter how impossible, but they seem to draw us in and keep us watching. We want to see our favorite characters put in hair-raising situations where they need to come up with creative ways to get out of them. There’s a chance for us to root for people to find a way out of something, offering us hope that there is a third option that isn’t one of the two bad ones.

In the end, 9-1-1 is made for entertainment purposes, and it’s not a documentary showcasing emergency events. However, wild situations happen, and tsunamis, cruise ship disasters, and bee-nados can occur, and showing them on TV makes the situations feel a little less stressful as they give us a look at how we could handle them. There’s always the thought of “What would Athena do?” when facing something similar to 9-1-1.

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