Episode banner for 3.05: Michael and May Grant are in a car at night, looking out of the driver's window at a police officer who has pulled them over.

3.05: Rage

Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Alice, Bex, and Ellen watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.

In this episode we discuss episode 5 of the third season of 9-1-1, titled “Rage”.

Athena takes action after her family experiences a traumatic traffic stop; Buck’s suit against the city goes to arbitration; Eddie turns to Lena in his struggles with his anger issues.

Content warnings for episode 3.05:

Racially charged police violence and discussion of that with no real resolution, threat of police gun violence, Hollywood PETA, fertility issues, MMA fighting/boxing.

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Our intro music is “Tensions” by Northern Points.

Episode Transcript

Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1, what’s your emergency?

Ellen: Welcome back to That WeeWoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show, 9-1-1. I’m Ellen.

Alice: I’m Alice.

Bex: And I’m Bex.

Ellen: Thanks to everyone who has been listening to our season three episodes so far and all of the rest of them, obviously, um, and shared all our stuff on social media.

We appreciate you all doing that so much. And also people who have been leaving us comments. Thank you very much. We’ll, um, try and reply to all of them. I think we have, we’re up to date, but you know, we’re getting back into the new year still, so, you know, it’s an ongoing process. So we’re going to talk about, we’re up to episode five of season three.

But Alice, would you like to tell us what happened [00:01:00] last week?

Alice: No.

Ellen: Oh, come on.

Alice: Uh, so last week on 9-1-1, Hen learned the highs and lows of having siblings while her and Karen took steps to expand their family. Eddie took Christopher to therapy to deal with his post tsunami nightmares, and Buck decided to sue the city, the department, the 118, and specifically Bobby, in order to get his job back.

Bex: In this episode, we’re going to discuss the fifth episode of Season 3, entitled “Rage”, which first aired October 21st, 2019. The official summary says that the 118 races to help protesters at a slaughterhouse, and a wife who finds herself trapped in a rage room with her husband’s mistress. Spoiler alert.

Meanwhile, Athena takes action after Michael, May, and Harry experience a traumatic traffic stop. Also, the team feels betrayed by Buck [00:02:00] when his suit against the city goes to arbitration, and Eddie turns to Lena in his struggles with his anger issues. The triggers for this episode that we are, as always, getting from the wonderful Google Doc that sets out all the triggers says, or warns, that this episode contains, uh, racially charged police violence and discussion of that with no real resolution.

Episode also contains cops, uh, Hollywood PETA, uh, discussion of police violence and racism, fertility issues, MMA fighting slash boxing, aka the entire reason they had Ronda Rousey cast on this show, and threat of police gun violence.

Alice: Yeah, there’s a lot in this episode.

Bex: There is a lot in this episode.

Before we get into discussing this episode and specifically discussing the storyline of the Grant family, um, I [00:03:00] think we need to remind everybody and especially introduce ourselves to the, any new listeners who have decided that this is the episode they want to start listening to us in. Um, hello, hi, welcome.

We need to reiterate our sort of position when it comes to this episode in that, uh, we, your hosts, um, are three white Australian women and therefore we are never, ever going to be in a position to experience that anything like what happens to the Grant family in this episode, not because we’re Australian.

Please don’t think that because we’re Australian that it’s all sunshine and roses down here. We definitely have our own issues with our policing system and its treatment of our Indigenous members of society and especially our indigenous youths. Um, it’s not the same issues that they have in the U S but they are very, very serious [00:04:00] issues.

Uh, it’s basically because we’re white and we are very privileged in that our interactions with police are never going to be as fraught with danger as it is for indigenous members or for in America, Black members and people of color with the police. So. We will try to be very respectful, um, when we are discussing this storyline, but please understand that that is the lens through which we are viewing this episode.

Alice: Well said, Bex.

Ellen: Yeah. And I mean, ultimately our opinions on this stuff don’t really hold much water. We just need to listen to the people who have experienced these things and learn and try and do better. Unlearn our own unconscious biases and that sort of thing. So we’ll do our best.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Also, remember please that we tend to make light of dark [00:05:00] humor. I guess the dark things we

Bex: We tend to use dark humor to cope with deep emotions, and when we are uncomfortable, please do not think that that is in any way us, uh, belittling a situation or trying to make light of a situation. It is just, maybe the three of us need to go to therapy like Chris and find, or find our own illegal fight clubs to work out our own issues.

Ellen: Maybe that’s right.

Bex: Um, but. Instead, we may use inappropriate comments, inappropriate humor, which we recognize are inappropriate and we will try not to do it. But if something does get through the filters, please understand that we are not intending to insult or, um, offend anybody. Um, that’s unfortunately part of how we cope with things and we are learning and we are trying, but we will inevitably fail.

And then we will learn and we will try to do better next time.

Ellen: This is like, it was a [00:06:00] hard episode to watch in a lot of ways because it was very heavy subject matter a lot of the time, but, um, I guess there were light points here and there through it. So we’ll see how we get on.

Bex: It did really swing from, you know, me sobbing on the couch to me, you know, kicking my heels and giggling.

Alice: Oh my god, literally. This episode’s insane for that. I actually forgot that it all happens in the same episode.

Bex: Yes. I remember that you, um, you messaged me like a couple of weeks ago after we finished recording, um, “Triggers” and you’re like, Oh my God, the supermarket scene is next week.

And then I started watching “Rage” and I’m going, no way. There’s no way that the supermarket scene is in this episode. It must be in the next one. There’s no way that they, Oh no, it is actually in this episode. They really did go from, um, The Grant traffic stop to divorced husbands on aisle three trying to arrange custody.

Alice: Happy cat laxative powder.[00:07:00]

Bex: But anyway, let’s get into the episode itself. Because we do have a bit to get through. We’re going to start at Happy’s Rage Room, which seems to be a bit of a misnomer.

Ellen: Is that what it’s called, Happy’s?

Alice: Is it really called Happy’s Rage Room?

Bex: Yes, yeah, because, um,

Alice: Is he also the one that makes the laxative powder?

Bex: I don’t know. Wow, that was, that was really sloppy writing.

Ellen: Happy cats and happy people.

Bex: Yeah, Denise calls 9-1-1 later on and she has to give Maddie the location and yeah, she says it’s Happy’s Rage Room.

Alice: Excellent.

Ellen: Alright, so there’s these two women who are going to the Rage Room because they’re, they’re just, They need to blow off some steam because they’re angry about stuff.

Emily doesn’t really seem too convinced to start with, but then her friend is like, no, remember how angry he made you before the divorce. So they like [00:08:00] hype each other up, like by, you know, reminding of different occasions where they’ve just been really cross and then they start smashing stuff up with their baseball bats.

Alice: Yeah, poor Emily spent 400 dollars on a sous vide and boiled meat in a plastic bag and Eric didn’t even show up.

Ellen: I don’t even know what that, any of that means. What is a sous vide?

Alice: Um, so a sous vide is like, it’s, it’s like a,

Bex: It’s a cooking technique.

Alice: Yeah, it’s a mid temperature, like water. It’s not quite boiling point, I think, but you basically like put the meat in a vacuum sealed bag.

And put it in the sous vide for like 24 hours to cook it, and it becomes really tender.

Bex: It’s, you put the food in a bag and then you cook it in a water bath.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Okay. What? How have I never heard of this thing?

Bex: Because it’s incredibly wanky.

Alice: The only reason I know is because my brother borrowed a co [00:09:00] worker’s sous vide just to play with it.

I don’t know if he’s still got a sous vide, but yeah, that’s the only reason I know what it is.

Ellen: I mean, I’ve got the other end of the spectrum and the bogan, like, meat smoker. It’s the same deal, right? You just put it in smoke for hours instead of boiling it.

Alice: Yeah, that’s it. Just to make it nice and tender.

Ellen: Okay. Alright, I’ve learned a thing. Thank you. Um, so then, they just start smashing stuff up. Have either of you ever been to one of these rage room things?

Bex: I don’t think they exist down here.

Ellen: They do, they do.

Alice: No, they absolutely do.

Ellen: There’s definitely a room in Brisbane.

Bex: No, I don’t think they exist, like, down here, as in down in Tasmania, yeah,

Alice: yeah, um, yeah, a coworker, not the Christmas we just had, the Christmas before that, um, was having a really tough time.

And so we gifted her for Christmas, a voucher for two people to go to a rage room, so her and her sister went.

Ellen: Yeah, no, I haven’t ever been, I just thought, it just sounds [00:10:00] amazing, like, I don’t know.

Alice: Yeah, the one that’s near us. You, like, choose your own music, so she had, like, metal music going and was fully smashing stuff up.

Bex: I would like to retract my statement, because Google tells me that as of November, there is one in Launceston.

Alice: Well, there you go, I mean, that’s still not down there.

Bex: I mean, it’s only two hours away, but

Alice: True,

Ellen: would you go two hours in order to smash some crockery?

Bex: That’s interesting.

Alice: I drive further than that for work sometimes.

Bex: Look, if Buck can drive eight miles out of his way to go to a supermarket, I can drive Like, two hours away out to, you know, release my anger.

Alice: After driving two hours, you might need to release some anger.

Bex: Especially if they’re still doing work on the, uh, the main highway that goes between Launceston and Hobart. Anyway, yes. So, um, no, I have never been to a Rage Room. Apparently I do have the opportunity to go to one, though.

Alice: There you go. Next, next year’s Christmas trip, we all go to, go to rage [00:11:00] rooms. FaceTime each other while we do it.

Bex: And hope that we don’t smash our laptops or phones.

Alice: Um, can we mention as well that the friend goes, what about the time when he took that boy’s trip up to Big Bear? Yes. And I’m like, I can’t believe he went like three days away.

Ellen: He drove all that way.

Alice: He drove all that way.

Ellen: And when he got there he was at a ski lodge sipping bourbon and smoking cigars.

Bex: While, while Emily was at home with a sick kid.

Alice: Yeah, she was covered in puke and poop, which is very graphic. Thank you, Emily. Yes.

Bex: But the real kicker is when Denise says, “What about that thing where he barks like a seal when he’s having sex?” And Emily just stops and looks at her and goes, “I never told you that.”

And then Denise sort of listens to what she’s, replays the tape in her head and goes, “No, no, you must, you must have told me that. You tell me [00:12:00] everything.”

Alice: And then it clicks for Emily.

Bex: Yeah. Um, apparently Emily had a suspicion that her husband had a side chick and Denise has just revealed herself. And so Emily gets very, very into smashing things at this point.

To the point…

Alice: I love that Denise’s excuse was that it’s, it’s not because it wasn’t recently.

Bex: They were still married when you were schtipping him, Denise. Still counts.

Alice: Like that’s probably worse.

Bex: So Emily starts wailing on an oil drum and Denise is like shrieking and cowering in fear. Um, and then we cut to a 9-1-1 call where I’m like, I don’t know why she’s called 9-1-1.

I don’t know why she hasn’t just called the management.

Ellen: Oh yeah. You think they’d have security of some sort.

Alice: Surely there’s people in this.

Bex: Yeah, exactly. You’d think there would be people in the actual, like, [00:13:00] location that could help her, but no, she’s called from 9-1-1 at first instance, um, and tells Maddie that her best friend is trying to kill her because she has unleashed a monster.

Maddie’s response is to dispatch the 118.

Alice: Naturally.

Bex: Of course. She, like, gets a commission every time she sends the 118 out.

Alice: Well, she needs Chimney to get that cash. I don’t think she’s realized yet that, um, he gets paid regardless of whether they’re on calls.

Bex: Yeah, it’s not a per diem kind of, not a per call kind of basis here.

Alice: You’d think that she’d just send them to the really safe jobs.

Bex: You’d think, wouldn’t you? Oh, that one sounds really dangerous. I’m gonna send the, like, the 124. Um, Oh! Kitten stuck up a tree, that’s definitely what the 118 can handle.

Ellen: That would not be anywhere near dramatic enough for a television show.

Bex: No. Of course not.

Ellen: Anyway, when they do get there, uh, Hen says that apart from a blowout bar, this is the [00:14:00] dumbest thing people in LA pay money for. And I don’t, what is a blowout bar?

Alice: What’s a blowout bar?

Bex: A blowout bar is literally, uh, a salon where you go and they just blow out your hair. So you don’t get cuts, you don’t get colors, you don’t even need to get a wash, some of them will do a wash, but it’s literally they will blow out or straighten or curl your hair and style it.

Ellen: Right, okay.

Alice: Oh. Yeah. That’s not dumb at all.

Bex: It’s not dumb at all. But, I mean, considering this is coming from the bald woman, she would consider

Alice: Oh yeah, true.

Bex: The amount of money that people would spend on a blowout to be stupid because she doesn’t have hair to do that. But yeah, I loved blowout bars when I lived on the mainland.

Alice: Um, yeah, like, not, I’ve always said that if I, like, made enough money to have, like, enough play money every week, I would just pay someone to wash and dry my hair. Because I hate it and I do not have the spoons most of the time to do it. Yeah.

Bex: Yeah. I, yeah, I [00:15:00] completely disagree with Hen on this. I think blowout bars are a genius idea.

Chim also thinks that the Rage Rooms are a genius idea. And I think that if we still had, like, pre 118 Chim, he would totally be kicking himself that he didn’t have this idea. This wasn’t one of his entrepreneurial ideas that he had come up with.

Alice: I mean, he’s still mad that they didn’t take his idea for the Snuggie, which is now everywhere.

Bex: Oh, he’d be so mad every time he saw one of those infomercials.

Alice: Imagine Maddie got him one for Christmas, and he just burns it. She’s just like, wow, what the fuck? But Athena’s already there.

Bex: Of course she is.

Alice: Um, and well, I mean, I guess she’s already in her squad car, whereas they all have to, you know, get in the engines and drive there.

Bex: But there are other members of the LAPD. I mean, there are other members of the LAPD because

Alice: Apparently.

Bex: Because while the 118 are dealing with Denise, there are two officers standing over a [00:16:00] handcuffed Emily. True. Which seems a little, like, overkill, except Didn’t

Ellen: they call three police in to deal with one woman?

Bex: Yeah, I’m guessing they called Athena and then she’s called for backup. And it does seem like overkill, except when they start talking to Emily, she’s, even though she’s handcuffed and flanked by officers, she’s still lunging for Denise trying to kill her.

Alice: Yeah, she’s not happy. So Denise has climbed into an oil barrel, which I thought we saw Emily smashing.

So I don’t know why she’s climbed into an oil barrel, but sure.

Bex: I’m going to guess that the barrel at some point flipped over and so Denise crawled into it, but then Emily continued to wail on it. It’s, it’s, it’s for the drama.

Alice: Anyway, Denise is stuck in there. Yeah. Um, she also can’t hear anything because of Emily’s pounding on it.

Um, which has given her a bit of temporary deafness. So they, um

Ellen: So they make her even more deaf by sawing through the top of the [00:17:00] barrel.

Alice: Just sawing through.

Bex: I do love this exchange though because Eddie is very confused about what’s going on and he asks that whether the point of the room is to smash the things in the room not each other and Athena explains by pointing at Emily and saying, “Wife”, and then pointing at the barrel formerly known as Denise and saying, “Mistress”, which Emily then corrects as, “Adulteress slut”.

And Chimney very calmly turns to Athena and says, “Does the adulterous slut have a name?” I just think that is just a brilliant, a brilliant exchange. But yes, they do, they get sores and jaws. Um, and Lena and Eddie finally get Denise out of the barrel.

Alice: Lena, who has totally not replaced Buck, but replaced Buck.

Bex: Oh, she’s totally replaced Buck.

Ellen: She kind of has, yeah.

Bex: It’s now like, Hen and Chim is one unit, and Lena and Eddie is another unit.

Alice: Yep. [00:18:00] And the rest of the 118s stand around looking pretty.

Bex: When they’re allowed out of the station house.

Ellen: And then they, they just basically cart her off, and Chim’s like, Chim says the words of the episode title. Um, “So much anger in the world these days. I can see why this place is all the rage.” And then he looks at Hen and goes, “See what I did there?” And it’s just like, “Oh my God. Yeah.”

Alice: Like at least they, they poke fun at it this time. Yeah. Um, cause like, Chim would be the one that’s like, see why this place is all the rage. Cause it’s a rage room.

Ellen: Uh,

Bex: can we just talk about the foreshadowing where, um, Denise is trying to convince Athena not to arrest Emily for the assault. And Athena says, “Do you want to be a better friend? Bail her out.” Considering what happens later on in the episode.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: I don’t know whether that was intentional [00:19:00] or not, but, um, that’s an interesting juxtaposition.

Ellen: Yes. Uh, and we do get a cute little, uh, side hug kind of thing from Athena and Bobby before they leave the camera. Uh, it’s like, you know, we have to shove in a little bit of, of PDA somewhere there. So they just have a quick hug before they have to run away.

Bex: Like these two are married. Remember these two are married. We got to make sure that we show that they’re married.

Ellen: I mean, if they did actually meet each other on a case like this, they probably would. Maybe they’re professional most of the time. But, you know, Just a quick kiss behind the

Bex: Gone are the days of

Ellen: They don’t have snogs behind the, uh, trucks

Bex: anymore.Bobbyby, like, almost doing the splits in order to get himself down on Athena’s level so that he can, like, kiss the hell out of her.

Ellen: That was years ago now. Ha ha. It feels like years ago, but I guess it wasn’t that long ago.

Bex: It was, what, the beginning of Season 2?

Ellen: Yeah, like, [00:20:00] a year ago? Mm hmm. How, how much time passed during season two?

Bex: Oh, please don’t make me think about time.

Ellen: Okay, let’s not worry about time.

Bex: It would break my brain.

Alice: Time doesn’t exist in this show.

Ellen: Okay, so we’re going off to Karen and Hen’s place. Karen is in bed. Hen comes in, uh, in her uniform. So she has to go to work. She’s, she thought she had the day off, but she’s got to go in.

And she said, and Karen says, “It’s fine. I’m going to have an easier day than you are.” And Hen says, “A root canal would be more fun.”

Bex: Yeah. She’s not wrong.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: She’s going to arbitration.

Ellen: Oh yeah. That’s right. Okay.

Bex: She’s going to go chat to Buck’s lawyer. Yeah.

Ellen: But we don’t know that yet.

Bex: Considering

Ellen: until,

Bex: no, but considering what happens, I’m, I’m with her with the root canal.

Yes.

Ellen: But Karen does get a message on her phone and she’s surprised by the fact that [00:21:00] the doctor has told them that six embryos have made it.

Bex: By email? Is that normal?

Ellen: Yeah, an email. I would have thought that they would have called for that information, or they would have at least made her log into whatever the health system is that would tell her that information privately, rather than just sending an email.

Alice: Nah, it’d probably be an email.

Ellen: Anyway. I don’t know.

Bex: I don’t know.

It’s for the drama.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: So they’re sending the six embryos for testing and then they can schedule the transfer.

Bex: They’re both very excited.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: So cute.

Bex: Hen makes a comment. She’s starting to, oh, this is a terrible pun, um, she’s starting to count her chickens before they hatch, um, and dreaming about how many little pairs of feet they want stomping around the house.

And then we cut to bigger pairs of feet stomping around the house with May running around frantically looking for her phone charger.

Ellen: Oh gosh.

Bex: In the Grant household.

Ellen: They’re on the [00:22:00] segues in this season, aren’t they?

Bex: Um, and Athena does the most mum coded thing possible where she complains like, “why am I the lost and found?” But she does also know exactly where May’s phone charger is. Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. In the kitchen next to the coffee maker. But yeah, Michael’s there. He’s there to pick up May and Harry.

Bex: They’re going to Gigi’s house for lunch. Which is apparently Michael’s parents.

Alice: Yeah, Michael’s mum. So, Athena and Bobby were supposed to be going to a B& B up the coast, but it was cancelled because of a lawsuit.

Bex: They have arbitration today and Bobby has to go in for that. And this is new news from Michael. He didn’t realize that this is what happened. The last time he saw Buck, Buck was coughing up lung out on the patio.

Alice: I [00:23:00] love this exchange where Athena just goes, “Oh yeah, he’s a sweet kid, but I need to stop inviting him over.”

Bex: To whiBobbybie suddenly appears and goes, yeah, um, “You know, none of this would have happened if you hadn’t invited him over.” And she’s just like, “Bitch, what are you talking about?”

Ellen: I was, I was totally with Athena here. I was like, excuse me? Like you’re the one who was going to tell him.

Alice: Like Bobby, you were supposed to tell him anyway.

Ellen: You were going to tell him.

Alice: And yeah, you were supposed to tell him at work. Like she didn’t know you chickened out. Maybe give your wife a heads up.

Bex: And Michael’s just looking at this and senses the tension, just goes, “And that’s my cue to leave. Come on, kids. There’s about to be bloodshed.”

Alice: He’s been on the receiving end of too many of Athena’s eyeballs and knows that look and is like, yep, no, we’re done.

Ellen: I do like that these three seem to be a lot more easy with each other now.

Like, it wasn’t that long ago that they were all, you know, that Michael still seemed to be a bit bitter about the whole thing and, you know. [00:24:00] But at least in this episode, they seem to be friends.

Alice: Well, they did have the chat where, I can’t even remember what the talk was, but I remember Michael and Bobby having a talk.

No, because last time we saw Michael, he was shitty about the wedding.

Bex: Yeah, he was being a sassy little, um, but the one you’re thinking about was when, um, Harry set the front lawn on fire to be more like Bobby.

Ellen: Oh, yeah. And then he went to, he went to the station house.

Bex: And then when Michael yelled at him, he went to the station house and Michael was really upset that Bobby was replacing, um, that Michael thought, no sorry, Harry thought better of Bobby than he thought of Michael, because Bobby was cool and a firefighter and Michael just handed out water during the earthquake.

Ellen: But that was like, in the last few episodes of Season 2.

Bex: Yeah, it’s, that was a while ago.

Ellen: That was a while ago, yeah, so this is

Bex: But then they bonded over, um Michael breaking up with Glenn? Is that who he [00:25:00] was dating at that stage? So they’re, they’re besties now.

Ellen: Yeah. It seems so, but he was still upset about the wedding thing.

Bex: Yeah, but I don’t think that was necessarily about Bobby. I think that was,

Ellen: no, that was just him being sore that he wasn’t involved. Um, anyway,

Alice: so, Michael is like, “okay, if we’re late, I’m blaming you kids.” And Harry just goes, “It won’t matter, it’s genetically impossible for Gigi to get mad at me.” And he does like these big puppy dog eyes. And then as soon as they leave, Athena just turns straight to Bobby and goes, “So what’s this about the Buck thing being my fault?”

Bobby goes, I think I’ll exercise my right to remain silent.

Ellen: Yeah. You do that, Bobby.

Bex: And immediately leaves.

Ellen: How dare you.

Alice: Just exit stage left.

Bex: So yes, arbitration. They [00:26:00] they have made Buck look so little.

Ellen: He looks so small.

Alice: So small.

Ellen: Poor Buck.

Alice: With these big eyes, he looks like a kicked puppy this entire time.

Bex: Like, they’ve slicked back his hair so that his, um, his face is completely open and he’s just, Oliver has managed to, like, magnify his eyes three times their normal size, and he’s just slumped in his seat. He is so baby in this episode. Like, how can you be mad at him? He’s just a baby.

Alice: Yeah, you can’t be mad at the puppy when they pee on the rug. You need to be watching them more.

Bex: So then we get into arbitration and the arbitrator, um, sets down the ground Not for anyone in the room, but for the audience. And he outlines that the arbitration is to address Mr. Buckley’s claim against the Los Angeles Fire Department for wrongful termination. [00:27:00] Bobby immediately jumps in and goes, “Buck wasn’t terminated, he’s still got a job.” And if I were the council for um, for the, I don’t even know whether he’s representing the county, whether he’s representing the LAFD, whether he’s representing Bobby specifically, but I’d be telling him to shut the fuck up.

Because he just, he hands Chase the, the Buck’s lawyer, his opening. Um, he said that, you know, “It’s our, it’s our assertion that firefighter Buckley, while not technically fired, has been constructively terminated from the components of firefighter duty, which is a direct result of a pattern of discriminatory and unequal treatment on the part of Captain Nash.”

And Bobby continues to flap his mouth and says, “Unequal treatment? I don’t treat Buck any differently than I do any other firefighter under my watch.” And Chase immediately says, “Oh, [00:28:00] really?”

Alice: Okay, I just, I so wish that we just had like one other member of the 118 in this and it’s just like, “yeah, Bobby absolutely gives him unequal treatment.

Bobby doesn’t even know my fucking name and has fired and hired Buck more than like any other firefighter. He taught him to make him dinner. He did this.”

Ellen: He’s basically his son.

Bex: We just need someone from the B shift.

Like he

Alice: gets invited to the barbecues. I never get invited to the barbecues.

Bex: I drive the fucking truck and Bobby doesn’t even know my name.

Alice: I was away for one weekend and I got back and they’d hired someone in my place, like, what is this?

Bex: The way that this scene is constructed is really clever because every time we cut back from Chase, we’re looking at someone else.

Ellen: It’s kind of, it reminds me of that “Ocean’s 9-1-1” episode.

Bex: [00:29:00] Yes. Everything else in the room stays the same, but the person sitting opposite Buck at the table is different.

So in this instance, we cut back, and it is Chimney. Who is very happy to tell Chase all about the rebar incident.

Ellen: So remember back then when we were thinking like, how has he come back to work already? Like he had a rebar through his brain and he’s already healed up and back at work. And now we find out that it was like eight weeks, closer to a month.

Bex: And then apparently it took him all of that time that he was Marie Kondo-ing his apartment, um, that was another month that he was off work. Um, so Chase thinks that’s very interesting and posits that it’s fair to say that Captain Nash has a pattern of allowing firefighters with serious injuries back after or less than [00:30:00] a month.

and it’s not Chim who answers that question, it’s Hen. She says, “No, I don’t think that it’s fair to say that.” And here’s where things take a dark turn because Chase pulls out a brochure for blood thinners and he shows it to Hen and he goes, “Can you tell us what this is?” And Hen recognizes it as medication that she once sold as a pharmaceutical rep back in her pre 118 days.

And apparently one of the claims of this brochure and that was part of Hen’s sales pitch was that the medications would allow patients to resume their normal lives. Hen tries to backpedal and says, “Look, I wasn’t a doctor at that stage. I didn’t even have any training. [00:31:00] I was a sales rep.”

Ellen: Yeah, but people can resume their normal lives and that doesn’t involve like putting yourself in danger to help other people when there’s a fire or something.

Like his, his argument doesn’t hold water here very much.

Bex: There would be a huge asterisk in the reserve, resume your normal lives and there’d be an asterisk. Then you’d go down to the bottom of the brochure and it would say like normal lives means like X, Y, and Z. It does not include, you know, operating heavy machinery, like,

Ellen: or being a firefighter.

Bex: Yeah, they would definitely be covering their asses and saying, we do not recommend that if you’re on blood thinners, that you can do X, Y, and Z. Um, yeah. So Chase pushes and says, um, Hen’s like, “I was a sales rep, not a doctor.” Um, and Chase goes, “But you were a field medic.” Which doesn’t make sense if he’s talking to Hen, but he’s no longer talking to Hen.

He’s talking to Eddie. Um, and what’s really interesting about, um, The conversation that he’s having with [00:32:00] Eddie is that Bobby, Chim, and Hen have directed all of their top, all of their words, their attention to Chase. Eddie is talking to Buck. He’s looking straight at Buck when he says all of this.

Alice: Bobby, Chim, and Hen are basically ignoring Buck’s existence.

Eddie is completely ignoring Chase.

Bex: And he’s just talking to Buck and Buck is just sinking further and further into his chair trying to not look at Eddie at all.

Alice: Like Buck’s face as it’s, like, as it’s getting further and further in, he looks like worse and, like, he looks horrified.

Yeah. He’s regretting his decision. Buck’s horrified that everything’s being brought up about it, about his friends. Because Chase’s, next words are, “Well, were you ready, Firefighter Diaz, to return to work after your wife’s death?” [00:33:00]

Bex: Yeah, so he’s told Chase all about the 118, thinking that he was telling it to Chase in confidence, and Chase is using it as evidence for, um, Bobby’s discriminate, discriminatory patterns.

Alice: Like, knowing Buck, Buck was just yapping. Like, “oh, yeah, like, well, Chimney got a rebar through his head and he came back to work.”

Bex: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Alice: “And, like, then he got stabbed and he came back to work real quick and then his wife died and he just came back to work.” And Chase is writing this all down. I’m like, yes.

Bex: I don’t think Buck had any idea how this information was going to be used. And the fact that he aired his dirty look, aired the 118’s dirty laundry in front of Chase and Chase is now using it all. He is just as shocked and horrified as the members of the 118 are to be faced with this information being thrown in their faces.

So Eddie gets thrown with the, you know, “You went back to work almost immediately after your wife’s death. [00:34:00] You know, what do you think about Captain Nash letting you go back to work so soon?” And Eddie’s like, “Well, it wasn’t Captain Nash, it was Captain Han, because Bobby wasn’t there.” Chase is like, “Oh, that’s right, because he was suspended.”

And then we cut back to Bobby.

Alice: And we cut back to Bobby.

Ellen: This whole time I’m just looking at the lawyer, like, firing daggers out of my eyes, the same as Bobby is, really.

Bex: But see, the thing is, it’s a smart strategy. Oh, yeah, because Chase being the type of lawyer that he is, he doesn’t want this to go to court because this going to court is going to be super expensive and it’s incredibly risky because he gets paid based on how much his clients win.

And so there is every possibility that he could go to court and he could lose this case and he has lost weeks, months, on this case that he could have been working on other quick and easy cases that would turn around and make him money. So he’s just decided, you know what, I’m going to threaten to embarrass the LAFD.

I’m going to threaten to [00:35:00] embarrass Bobby and they’re going to want to keep all of this shit out of the papers and out of the public knowledge. So they are going to settle quickly and I’m going to get a quick and easy payday.

Ellen: Mm hmm.

Bex: Yep. It’s just, it’s a really like morally reprehensible strategy, but it is a good strategy as far as making money. Like the, the, the partners at his firm would be so happy with him over this case. Yeah. But he’s so going to hell.

Ellen: Yeah. So he tells Bobby that, like, he, attacks Bobby basically over the fact that he has his own chronic medical condition, and because the National Institute of Health classified alcoholism as a chronic brain disease, apparently. And he came back to work, and Bobby’s like, “I’m clean and sober,” um, and yeah, he, Chase is like attacking him with the fact that he had a [00:36:00] relapse, but he still came back to work.

Alice: Yeah, so apparently the relapse was a year and a half ago. So it was a year and a half ago that the plane crash was.

Bex: Yeah, that kind of tracks.

Ellen: Yeah. That was like early season one?

Bex: No. Yes. No?

Alice: Yeah. Well, Buck had been a firefighter for six months when the jet

Bex: No, I don’t believe that it’s a year and a half. We’re going to ignore that. We’re going to ignore any references to time.

Ellen: Okay, timeline is just out the window.

Bex: Timeline is wibbly wobbly, but we do agree that, yes, there was a time previous to this that Bobby relapsed because Buck was the one who found him. And then we get the rest of the 118 reacting to that particular bit of information.

Um, Where Hen looks like she’s going to reach across the table and kill Buck. [00:37:00] Um, and confirms that yes, that happened. Uh, Chim, apparently they kept that from him, because this is new information for him. Um,

Alice: Yeah, Chim had no idea.

Bex: Eddie is just furious, not because he knew about it, but because he knows that that information could only have come from Buck, and he is pissed that Buck has told Bobby’s secrets to this man.

So Chase’s, like, final blow is that, he throws that absolutely heartbreaking scene where Bobby asked for help in Bobby’s face. He’s saying, “You asked my client for his help and he helped you sober up and then you return to your full duties as captain of the 118. And so the only difference between you and Buck is that both of you asked for help, but he was the only one who did everything in his power to get you back to work.”

Ellen: It’s a low blow, man. Bobby is trying to get Buck back to work.

Bex: Yes, Bobby’s [00:38:00] situation, Chim’s situation, Eddie’s situation are all incredibly different because Buck is on fucking blood thinners.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: That’s, that is the key thing that everyone seems to be forgetting at this point.

Ellen: Bobby is protecting him.

Bex: Yes. I’m, I actually really wonder if, um, if you were a brand new recruit and you rocked up to, the LAFD and you said I would like to become a firefighter and they go great. Here is a form fill it out and there’s a question on there about like your physical health and your medical history and you go “yeah, you know what? Um, I’m clean. I’m sober. I’m healthy I am on blood thinners though.” Would they actually allow you to become a firefighter or would they go? No, actually you being on blood thinners precludes you from becoming a firefighter.

Ellen: Yeah, it probably depends on the reason that you’re on blood thinners, but

Bex: Does it, though?

Alice: Really, because blood thinners do the same thing.

Bex: No [00:39:00] matter what the reason, it’s still going to have the possibility that if you get injured, you are going to bleed out. Yeah. You’re going to be more susceptible to serious injury.

Ellen: Likely to fail your medical.

Bex: Yeah, so I think it’s perfectly reasonable that if a new recruit could possibly be denied entry, that just, that a returning member would be put on lessened duties for the same reason.

Like, just because you passed the, um, the tests doesn’t mean you’re still safe to be out there.

Alice: I think a lot of it from this, like, from the LAFD’s point of view is that Buck was also injured in the line of work, so that’s going to be controversial as well.

Ellen: That doesn’t change the outcome though?

Alice: No, like he’s still on blood thinners but like obviously him now suing them they’re just like oh fuck yeah like he was actually injured on our watch.

Bex: Oh I see where you’re going yeah. [00:40:00] So after the arbitration we cut to the very very angry 118 leaving the law firm. Um, so they’re fuming they’re all getting into the elevator. Um,

Alice: All at the same time, too.

Bex: Uh, behind them, further up the hallway, we can see Chase and Buck, and Chase is congratulating Buck, telling him that he did great.

He thought that the entire arbitration session went great and that he’d let, um, he’d let Buck know what happened. And as Buck starts to walk toward the elevator, Chim reaches over and starts frantically pressing that door close button, so that the doors will shut before Buck gets there, so that none of them have to talk to him.

And Buck is just watching the doors close on them going, Oh no. Come on guys, seriously, please talk to me.

Ellen: Nope. You made your bed.

Bex: Now you have to lie in it.

Ellen: Mhm. [00:41:00] But, Chase seems to think it went well.

Bex: It did go well, as far as Chase and Buck are concerned.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Yeah. You know, if

Alice: Well, as far as Chase is concerned.

As far as Chase is concerned. Maybe not so much Buck now.

Bex: Yeah. But I, if your goal was to try and get this thing to, this case to settle as quickly as possible. Yep. This went really well.

Ellen: Yeah. Um, now for something completely different. So we have a live stream. Like there’s comments running up the side of the screen, so trying to keep track of all that and plus what was going on on the screen at the same time was a bit, a bit difficult, but basically this group of protest, like animal rights activist protesters are filming themselves going to a duck farm where “countless innocent duck lives are being snuffed out on a daily basis” and they’re gonna shut [00:42:00] down the uh, production.

So they, they’re, they’re run into the yard, but they, we don’t, it’s not all on this guy’s phone, like we get different camera angles and stuff so we can see what’s happening all over the place.

Bex: It would be very Blair Witch.

Ellen: It would, yeah, it was a bit shaky.

Bex: We had to watch it all through the shaky phone.

Ellen: Yeah, so they, they like lock themselves to the, uh, they’ve got these hooks hanging down where they like. hang the ducks before they kill them. And like, it’s a conveyor belt situation.

And then the guy who owns the farm comes charging out and it’s like, “What the hell are you guys doing here?” And they’re like, “We’re protesting. We’re allowed.”

And the owner’s like, “No way, you’re trespassing. This is like, you know, you can’t do this.” So The, the protesters are like, using these bike lock things to attach themselves to the, the equipment [00:43:00] and they’re shouting, “Rage against the cage!”

Bex: They’re the, they’re like the solid metal bike locks that’s serious.

Ellen: Yeah. And someone opens up the electrical, like, box, the fuse box type thing and pours something all over it? I thought they were going to light stuff on fire but, They didn’t. They just poured a load of goop over it. I’m not sure what it was, even.

Bex: My, um, My sick mind thought that it was like barbecue sauce, because that’s what you put on duck. Oh. I don’t actually know what it was.

Ellen: Well, I mean, it kind of looked a bit like barbecue sauce.

Alice: I prefer hoisin sauce on my duck.

Ellen: Yeah. Well, in any case, the, the sauce, um, It seems to make, or they bumped something, I don’t know, but the machine actually starts working and starts dragging these people, um, and they start getting, like, they’re being dragged by their necks basically because they’ve put these bike locks around their heads, um, [00:44:00] and they’re choking and, And the owner is like, “Oh no, what’s going to happen?”

But anyway, he does call 9-1-1. And we get a very brief Maddie scene here where she can’t really hear what’s going on because there seems to be a lot of screaming and stuff. And the owner says, “We’ve got a bunch of idiots here about to be dead ducks.”

It’s like, oh, I’m glad you took this time to make a pun about this situation.

So, the 118 get to go to this one too. Yay.

Alice: Yeah, the owner says that he can’t cut the power because if he does that, he’s got 1, 400 duck carcasses about to rot.

Bex: So please note that he’s not saying that he can’t cut the power. He’s refusing to cut the power because he’s prioritizing his production costs over the lives of these protesters, even though they are, you know, [00:45:00] actively Well, most of them are off the conveyor belt at this stage.

The, um, the, uh, the other protesters have managed to unlock everybody else except the main dude, who we discover is called Toby, because they can’t find the key to Toby’s bike lock because Toby decided to swallow it. I guess so that he could not easily be removed from being locked on the conveyor belt, but it also just means that Toby He cannot easily be removed from the conveyor belt, which is actively trying to asphyxiate him.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, I just love how one of, one of the girls is like just sitting there with a duck in her arms, like holding the thing.

Alice: You’ll be okay, you’ll be okay.

Bex: It’s okay. Just don’t look. Okay, so, uh, they have to get Lena to come in with the bolt cutters to get Toby off.

Ellen: And Eddie’s like, “Try not to struggle.” It’s like, um, he’s being choked by a bike lock. That’s going to be difficult. [00:46:00] Anyway, she does cut it and he does get free.

Bex: And ironically, as soon as they get Toby free, that’s when the owner decides to turn off the machine.

I don’t know why he decides to turn off the machine at that point. Um, but he does make a point of, oh, everybody’s okay now, so now I’m going to turn off the machine. And it sends Bobby into a rage. He immediately, because there’s no other way to explain it. He just stalks over to this guy, scruffs him by the shirt and slams him up against the side of the factory.

Um, just yelling at him, like, “you could have done that the whole time? The whole time, the whole time?!” Um, And it’s, Hen has to run over and basically pull Bobby off this guy. So maybe that’s why he turned the machine off, just so we’d get that wonderful dramatic moment of Bobby losing his cool and flying into a rage.

Because, you know, the episode is [00:47:00] rage.

Ellen: Oh yeah, for the drama.

Bex: For the drama.

Alice: For the drama.

Bex: Um, also, also for the drama, um, Toby suddenly stops breathing.

Alice: Yeah, he’s been coughing this whole time and they’re just like, “Okay, like, you should probably go to hospital.” And he’s like, “No, no, I’m okay.” Um, but yeah, Toby has tried to swallow the key and it’s torn his trachea.

Bex: Yeah. They, first they assume that it’s like lodged in his throat, um, but then when they try to ventilate him to get some oxygen past said stuck key, the mask that they put on him just suddenly fills with blood. It’s like, okay, cool. It’s stuck and it’s cut shit up inside of him. So we really need to get it out now.

Ellen: Oof, gross.

Alice: Yeah, so Lena goes to grab the forceps, and the owners, like the owner of the farm, his only concern is that [00:48:00] this kid dies on his property.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah, don’t, don’t. Don’t die here.

Alice: And Bobby’s like, “Are you serious right now?”

Bex: Like. I wonder if that would be considered, like, a workplace health and safety death.

Because it happened on a workplace.

Alice: I’m sure WorkSafe would come out. Yeah.

Ellen: Maybe.

Bex: Or with the fact that they were trespassers and they were doing something illegal negates his liability. Anyway!

Alice: I don’t know, but I’m sure Chase will, um, work it out.

Bex: Chase, get up, call Chase up to McDougal’s.

Finally, uh, it all ends well, reasonably. They get Toby breathing again. He’s obviously still going.

Alice: They get the key out. They get the, get him breathing.

Bex: Um, and I think that the owner thinks that that’s probably punishment enough for them, so he’s not going to press trespassing charges against the group.

They’re all traumatized enough, they’re never going to do this again. [00:49:00] They probably will, they just, they’ll never let Toby swallow any more keys.

Alice: Um, yeah, I remember when this kind of protesting was massive, like it happened all the time. So I’m in like an area that’s surrounded by different types of farms.

And yeah, pre COVID, so like the year that this came out, it was massive where they’d break into farms and like lock themselves on things and film themselves doing it.

Bex: We had that kind of protest down here but it was people locking themselves to trees so they couldn’t cut the trees down.

Alice: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, I think that happens everywhere.

Ellen: All right, where are we?

Bex: Uh, we are with the Grants. Before we get into this, I’d just like to note that the transcript, um, document that I used to get for our notes transcribes lyrics as well.

So, the document went from the [00:50:00] previous scene, which was Bobby going, “you still want to press charges?” The owner saying, “I think we’re good.”

And then the next line was, “Nick, colon, I’m a sucker for you.” And I’m going, what the hell does that mean? And then it was when I actually started watching the scene, it was, they were transcribing Nick Jonas singing, I’m a sucker for you, because that’s the song that’s playing on the radio. But the transcription program had just picked up that and recognized which Jonas brother was singing.

I don’t know.

Alice: That’s, that’s the most important part of this scene, clearly.

Ellen: It’s probably the nicest part of this scene.

Bex: Yeah, it’s all downhill from here. Um, so, Harry and May and Michael are on their way back from Gigi’s. They’ve just crossed, um, L. A. city limits.

Alice: Harry is sound asleep in the

Bex: And he’s stretched out across the backseat. I’m sure that’s [00:51:00] not safe.

Alice: I’m pretty sure it’s not safe. Yeah, but he looks comfortable.

Ellen: He does. He’s bundled up.

Bex: So, uh, Michael tells May, who’s got her phone in her hand, despite the fact that they’re supposed to be technology free for this road trip, um, to call Athena and let them know that they’ll be about half an hour away, when they hear sirens chirp behind them and lights start flashing through the the rear window, and When Michael starts to pull the car over to let them pass, um, the car follows them over to the side of the road.

And May’s like, “Oh, I guess we’re not going to be 30 minutes away.” And puts her phone down, but she still has it in her hand. And that’s important.

Ellen: So two guys get out of the, um, car. They’re white men, older, like, okay. So there’s one older guy and one younger guy.

Bex: Yeah, so just for ease of talking about this scene, the older cop [00:52:00] is Reynolds, the younger cop is Martin.

Ellen: I am not going to remember that. Yeah. Um,

Bex: and both of them have body cameras on, which is also important for later.

Ellen: So Michael is very friendly to them when he, when he does speak to them at first. He says hi, um, The, the cop asks for his license and registration, so he says, “It’s in the glove box, may I reach, do you mind if I reach for it?” Being very careful not to make sudden movements or anything, which is protocol for

Bex: It’s very interesting that when, um, when the cop approaches the window, Michael is very pointedly got his hands at ten and two on the top of the steering wheel.

Alice: Mm hmm. Yeah, they’re in plain view.

Bex: So Reynolds takes Michael’s license and registration, doesn’t even look at it, and orders him out of the car.[00:53:00]

And May starts to arc up at this point, like, “Why do you need to get out of the car?” And Michael just tells her to sit tight and gets out. Um, apparently, Michael’s registration is expired. He said expired tag. So I’m guessing it’s like the license plate, his registration is expired. Um, And Michael seems relieved.

It’s like, oh, that’s something that’s like easy to fix. He’s like, “No, no, no. I’ve, I have the new tags in my car.” Um, and he starts to turn to go and get them back out of the car. And Reynolds is like, “Don’t move, turn around, put your hands on the hood and wait here while I go and run your plates.” And Michael’s like, “No, but I’ve got just like, wait a second.”

And he takes a step towards Reynolds and Reynolds snaps. He grabs Michael, spins him around, and slams him against the bonnet of the car. At which point, May starts filming on her phone. And she gets out of the car, and [00:54:00] she’s got her phone pointed at Reynolds and Michael. And is asking very clearly, “What are you doing to my dad?”

And both Martin, the younger cop, who was standing around at May’s side and has tried valiantly to stop her from getting out of the car, but has failed miserably, um, tell her to get back in the car. And the commotion wakes up Harry. So he sits up. And the younger cop, Martin, sees movement inside the car and immediately pulls his gun from his holster and points it at Harry through the windshield.

We have to, I have to note that both cops walked up to this traffic stop with their hands on their holsters. And it’s made very clear that their hands are already there ready to pull their weapons. So suddenly Harry’s freaking out because he’s got a gun pointed at him. [00:55:00] Michael is freaking out because this cop is pointing a gun at his son, May is freaking out because her dad is freaking out and there is a gun pointed at her brother.

And at this point Reynolds has also pulled his gun and is pointing it at the back of Michael’s head. And it’s not until Michael invokes Athena’s name that they stand down.

Ellen: And he says, “Don’t shoot my son, don’t shoot my son.” Yeah. So, it’s so scary.

Bex: It’s freaking scary. And then the younger cop, Martin, goes around and sort of checks in the back seat. And you’ve got Harry looking so tiny, just sitting there with his hands up in the air, and Martin realizes it’s a fucking kid.

And so Reynolds and Martin withdraw slightly to discuss, to talk about what’s just happened. Michael grabs May in a hug and he’s like telling Harry, you know, “you just [00:56:00] stay in the car kid. Like, I know this is scary, but I just need you to stay in the car just a little bit longer.” And the cops, you can hear them very clearly say, “It’s all good. We got this.” Um, well, you can hear Reynolds tell Martin, “It’s all good. We got this.”

And then he has the audacity to walk back to Michael and go, “You folks have a nice night then.” Then they get in the car and drive off.

Ellen: Then he goes and gets Harry out of the car and then

Bex: And then, yeah, once the cops are back in the car and it’s safe, Harry can come out.

He like, literally dives into Michael’s arms.

Ellen: Yes. Quite a scene.

Alice: But yeah, this whole scene, it’s scary, it’s frantic.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: And how quickly it turns.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: We cut to commercial, and then when we come back, it’s a continuation of this scene. Um, Michael has arrived at Athena’s house, and he is telling her what has just happened.

Alice: I do really appreciate that they don’t [00:57:00] segue into another comedic scene.

Bex: Oh god, could you imagine?

Alice: Between then and now. They just go straight into, Michael telling Athena what happened. Yep.

Ellen: Yeah, and she’s trying to convince him that it was just a bad stop, and we’ll file a complaint, there will be an investigation, and Michael’s like, “What will happen out of that? Like, we’d be lucky if they’d get a slap on the wrist. That’d be it. Like, they puedll their guns on them.”

Bex: It’s so interesting that in this scene, Athena is centered firmly on the side of the police.

Ellen: Yeah, I think she’s just trying to calm him down a little bit, right? I know, but it’s not working at all.

Bex: There’s so many facets to Athena. You’ve got Athena, the police officer, but you’ve also got Athena, the Black woman. You’ve got Athena, the woman of Black children. And in this scene, we just see Athena, the cop, who is trying to [00:58:00] defend the actions of the police officers who have traumatized her children.

And I know we’ve talked a lot about this show being copaganda. And so I don’t expect really anything else. It’s just, it’s interesting.

Ellen: Yeah. I want like, she’s also been in situations like this before with maybe not in this exact kind of situation, but where traffic stops have gone wrong. And she’s been at threat.

She’s had to do this as well. But, you know, obviously this was a different motivation that the cops had. She’s not doing a great job of, um, calming Michael down at all. And May is really cross. She’s like, I’m going to post this video.

Alice: May’s furious. Harry’s terrified still. Like, Harry’s like, “Is Dad going to get arrested?”

Bex: Because think, think about it from Harry’s point of view. So he has probably grown up knowing that police officers are the good guys because his mother’s a cop and he’s probably been around police his entire life. [00:59:00] And then you’ve got, you know, the media that we consume push the narrative that police are the good guys.

You go to police to help. Um, they are the ones that are going to keep you safe. He even says that later on the episode. “I thought police were there to keep us safe,” and that the people at the other end of the guns are the bad guys. So the police pull their, use their guns to protect you from the bad guys and suddenly he’s in a situation where the police are pointing the guns at his dad.

And the police are pointing their guns at him. And so he’s got this, he even asks, like, “Is Dad going to go to jail?” Because for his, like, very simple worldview, if you’re having a gun pointed at you, you’re a bad guy and you’re going to go to jail. And he, like, he doesn’t understand why his dad will be going to jail, but he thinks that’s a logical conclusion.

And his dad says, “Oh no, they just pulled the gun on me because I’m a scary Black man.” Which again, you’ve got, this is just going to blow Harry’s mind that people and this comes [01:00:00] up later on in the talk that Michael has to give him that people could be afraid of Michael and afraid of Harry just for who they are and not because of anything they’ve actually done.

So poor Harry’s just entire worldview is collapsed in this one night.

Alice: That’s it. Like May’s old enough to know what goes on in the world.

Bex: She’s seen it. She may have even have experienced people being racist.

Alice: Or her friend. Yeah, and if she hasn’t then, like, I’m sure she has friends that have.

Bex: Where Harry possibly has still been in this little bubble, where he doesn’t really understand how society sees Black people.

Alice: And May also saw the entire thing from start to finish, whereas Harry just saw the climax.

Bex: Yeah, Harry just popped up in the middle of it.

Alice: Yeah. But yeah, when Michael, like, sort of mentions, you know, the cops were afraid because they saw him as a big [01:01:00] scary Black man. Athena.

Bex: Oh, yes.

Alice: Goes, “Well, arguing with the police probably wasn’t the best choice.”

Ellen: But he didn’t, he didn’t argue with them though. He just was trying to get his stuff out of the car.

Bex: But he even later on said that he got too comfortable, and thinking back he knows that he shouldn’t have

Ellen: Yeah, he shouldn’t have turned around and stepped towards

Bex: Yes, and I’m saying like he shouldn’t have, as in he did something wrong.

He absolutely did nothing wrong. No. But in relation to the talk that he’s about to give Harry, the things that Black Americans have to do to keep themselves safe, he kind of broke that rule in keeping himself safe. So, yeah, on the one hand you’ve got Athena saying, arguing the police wasn’t the best choice.

Michael’s taken that as her siding with the cops and blaming him, she’s kind of reminding him that’s against [01:02:00] the quote unquote, I’m doing bunny ears here, the rules. The rules say that you don’t do this, you can’t do this. Because this is what happens when you do it. And what’s also interesting in this discussion is that May questions how Athena, as a Black woman, can be a police officer when police officers are treating Black people like this.

Like, how can she be complicit in this kind of behavior? And we get hashtag not all cops.

Ellen: Yeah, so this was before

Bex: The Black Lives movement started around 2015, but it didn’t go global until after the murder of George Floyd in 2020. So I think that’s the other thing that’s interesting about this episode is that it was written and aired in 2019 before America and the world really became [01:03:00] aware of the systemic racism that was built into police and really became aware of sort of white privilege and, and all of those things that were brought to our attention due to the Black Lives Matter movement.

Ellen: So, I mean, it’s obviously been happening for a really long time, but

Bex: And no, but it’s just that it wasn’t brought to the global, to the public consciousness. So, we’re viewing this episode through a lens that was not intended back in 2019.

Alice: Well, there was this, there was this story of um, the kid that was walking home.

Bex: Trayvon Martin, yeah.

Alice: And And thank you and got shot. Yeah, I’m trying to remember what year that was because that was definitely before

Bex: that was around 2015 That was kind of that case and there was another case, Trayvon Martin was 2013 and then there were cases in sort of 2014 2015 that really started the conversation and the movement to protect Black lives, [01:04:00] but it was George Floyd that was the The match in the powder keg that really made it go as big as it did.

Alice: Yeah, when all the like massive protests, it’s one of those things that was building for decades.

Bex: But with Trayvon Martin, that wasn’t death by police, that was just police mishandling the death of a Black man, a Black boy, because he was only 17. But so that was kind of the conversation was happening, the outrage was happening, but George Floyd, very definitely, that was murder by police.

That was very definitely police responding to a Black, a police response in a traffic stop to a Black man. So yeah, so the conversations that we’re having now and the understanding of how, like the entire justice system, entire law enforcement system, have the racism that’s sort of embedded in that and the understanding that it’s, um, You know, it’s the system that creates [01:05:00] situations like this, not just the individual cops.

Um, that’s not the conversation that was happening on a, a wider level when this episode aired, I don’t think. So we’re looking, like I said, we’re looking at this post Black Lives Matter movement and applying what we know and what we’ve learned to this episode when I don’t think that that was the intention of this episode. This episode wasn’t about racism and police, it’s about the, the unfairness and the rage of a man being treated unfairly by a system that’s supposed to protect him.

Ellen: Mm hmm.

Alice: Yeah, there’s so much of this that’s just way outside our scope of understanding even.

Bex: And I think that’s one of the things that frustrates me about this episode.

And it’s taken me a while to unpack why it’s frustrated me. And it’s because having learned, having become aware of it, I’ve learned everything that I’ve learned because [01:06:00] the Black Lives Matter and the education that the Black Lives Matter has, has given on this set of issues. I wanted more from this episode and I’ve really had to sort of step back and go, but no, that’s not what this episode is about.

It’s not about the framework, it’s about Michael’s experience, and Harry’s experience, and May’s experience. It’s, it’s the, it’s the rage of being in that situation, and not being able to do anything. The, the helplessness, um, and the fact that they are in this situation to start with for no, at no fault of their own.

Ellen: Yeah, uh, so I guess at the end of this, they don’t really resolve anything. Um, May says she’s going to post the video online and Athena tells her not to. Um, they don’t need that kind of attention. And Michael’s just sort of like, “Oh, you’re right, you’re right. Nobody got shot, right? Everything’s going to be fine.”

[01:07:00] Um, being extremely sarcastic about it. But Athena just tells him that the police are not the enemy. It’s not us versus them. And then That’s kind of the end of it because they’re still having an argument when we end the scene.

Alice: Well, Athena says that she doesn’t want to teach their kids that it’s, like, us versus them.

And Michael says, well, tell your colleagues that because that’s how I felt when they pulled a gun out on our son. Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen: Okay, so now we are going to go to a slightly lighter scene.

Alice: Yes, momentarily lighter,

Ellen: we have Eddie, we have Chris, Eddie’s taking Chris to a birthday party.

Bex: Not just a birthday party. He’s going for a sleepover. The kid’s got a suitcase.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Which Eddie is a little bit hesitant about letting him go for a sleepover because of the, the history of nightmares that he’s been having. And he says that he can get Carla to come pick Chris up after the party, and Chris is [01:08:00] like, “No, I want to go to the sleepover.”

Like, he doesn’t want to be the loser kid that gets picked up after the party when everyone else is going for the sleepover. He needs the full experience.

Ellen: Yeah. Anyway, the kid who’s Chris friend is really excited that he’s there, so that’s really cute. They, they go off together. Yeah. Towards the party.

Alice: Apparently, um, Eddie’s sent emails, plural, um, which the Birthday Boy’s mum says were very detailed.

Bex: Poor Tasha. She seems to, like, she seems to understand, though, where Eddie’s coming from, and she’s being very supportive.

Alice: And yeah, we find out Chris hasn’t had a nightmare in a week, and the doctor says a sleepover will be great for him. But Eddie is not so sure it’s going to be great for him. Uh, great for Eddie, that is.

Bex: Oh no, it’s not going to be good for Eddie. Eddie’s not going to get any sleep.

Alice: Um, but the kids are going to camp in the backyard, and the dad will be in the tent next to them, and they’ll call if [01:09:00] there’s any problem, but go relax.

Bex: Yeah. she will return Chris in one piece. Which, considering the last time Eddie handed his kid off to somebody, like, I understand why he was trepidatious.

Ellen: Yes.

Alice: I mean, it wasn’t the last time because he did go back the next day and throw Chris at Buck again. So, um, and the park seems pretty inland, so.

Ellen: Yeah. Okay. So he didn’t turn into helicopter parent after that.

He just went, eh, he’ll be right. He survived this, he’s gonna survive anything.

Alice: I mean, he was happy to hand him off to Buck, so. Oh. We don’t know, he probably has Buck’s, like, car tracked.

Ellen: Uh, when Eddie gets back to his car, there’s a guy there who is has, like, is wearing, like, a knee brace thing. And he has a go at Eddie, he’s like, “That’s a handicap spot.”

Bex: And, um Eddie’s like, “yeah, I know.” Like, [01:10:00] I know. Uh.

Ellen: “This idiot had knee surgery and had to park three rows in, but look at you, parking in the handicapped place.” And Eddie is sort of trying to tell him that his kid has CP and he’s just dropped him off. And this guy doesn’t believe him at all.

Bex: So interestingly, Eddie would be eligible for a disabled placard.

Well, actually, Chris would be eligible for a placard that Eddie could apply for, not that he could put in, on the dashboard of his truck when he’s driving Chris around.

Alice: Which would I’m assuming he does have one.

Bex: No, he doesn’t.

Alice: Do they have, is it like in Australia where it’s really like, obvious? Maybe they just couldn’t get one for filming.

Bex: Like they’re, they’re big, kind of, it’s like a big thing that you stick, like slide on top of your dashboard, like a laminated piece of paper that you put on your dashboard. It’s not like a sticker on the windshield. Um,

Alice: yeah, no, cause my grandparents have them.

Bex: Because Um, Eddie would not be eligible to use it when it’s just him in the [01:11:00] truck. He could only use it when Chris is in the car, so it has to be like a temporary thing.

Alice: Ours just hang on the, like, rearview mirror.

Bex: But yeah, Eddie, please look into getting a placard for your car, um, so that this does not happen to you again. because what ends up happening is Eddie, the guy, I’m just calling him douche in the notes, Um, says that he’s calling Eddie out for misusing the, um, the handicap zone, and says, “You got something to say about that?”

Um, Eddie does indeed have something to say about that, but he decides to use his fists, not his words. And Lena has to pick him up from the LA County Detention Center.

Alice: Yeah, we don’t even see the punch. It literally just goes straight to the detention facility.

Ellen: Incidentally, the, my child broke his leg and is in a cast up to mid [01:12:00] thigh and we are discovering just how difficult it is to actually drop people off around the place.

Like we went to, yeah, the um, Like a shopping center recently and the only place that we could work out like other than actually parking in a disabled spot as Eddie has done here and letting him out and then going and parking somewhere else. Which isn’t so easy in a shopping center, but we had to like park in a taxi rank basically and let him out and which which is on the main road just on the side of the road and um.

But to get an actual permit, you have to go through your GP and they have to apply for it, and then it takes weeks to arrive. And like, he’s only going to be in the cast, um, God willing, until a few more weeks. So, um,

Bex: It looks like it’s the same in California. He, um, they would need some kind of doctors, although there is a, a wide range, including a midwife can sign off on the, um, [01:13:00] the application, um, but yeah, he would have to get a doctor’s note saying that, you know, Chris is going to be disabled permanently, um, and they need access to disabled sites.

Alice: Yeah. Well, funny, cause like my grandparents have one, and my pop literally, like they were at the JP once, and my pop, um, like made a joke about like How do you get one of those, because he has, like, falls, and so he shouldn’t be walking too much. And the JP was like, oh, I’ll just get you one, and just, like, did the application for them, and they just got one.

Ellen: Oh, that’s nice.

Alice: Um, and so now, like, whenever we take, because they don’t drive anymore, but whenever we take them places, You can use them. Nan’s got a little thing and, like, puts it in whatever car she’s in. But yeah, when Nan first got it, um, because Pop’s a little bit older than her, so like, Pop needed it, but they were like, no, no, use it for you as well.

And so Nan said that whenever she’d get out of the car, she felt like she needed to limp or something.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Because she felt bad doing it, [01:14:00] and I was like, Nan, it’s better than you falling over, like, what are you doing?

Ellen: Well, that’s the whole thing with like that invisible illness type thing, like they, people can apply for those permits and whatever, but you don’t look like you’re disabled when you get out of the car.

Alice: Yeah. That’s it. Like when you’ve got, um, low blood pressure or fainting spells, like you don’t look like you’re like, you know, if you don’t have one leg or something. You just,

Bex: that’s another one. Um, there are, I’ve seen so many stories on, on TikTok, um, RIP TikTok, um, about people who are either amputee or like single or double amputees.

Who have their prosthetic limb under, like, a pair of jeans. And so they’re getting out of their car, parked in disabled spots, and people are looking at them going, but you’re not disabled. Because they can’t see the prosthetic under. So, can we just agree that you should not be making comments about people’s appearance [01:15:00] and judging them on their appearance, because you never know what is happening with people.

Ellen: That’s right.

Alice: Exactly!

Ellen: Anyway, major tangent there.

Bex: So back to Eddie, I mean, not major because it was kind of related to, you know, we can track how we got to where we got to, um, but

Ellen: Yeah it wasn’t quite Pinky and Brain.

Bex: Let’s reel it back to,

Alice: don’t be this douche or Eddie will punch you,

Bex: and then he ends up being, um, arrested and Lena has to come,

Ellen: In real jail this time, not just hospital jail, but real jail,

Bex: Not just hospital jail. Please. Actually in real jail and Lena has to come bail him out. Um, and she’s surprised because she did not think that they were at the bail each other out of jail phase of their friendship.

Poor Eddie says, “Well, I wasn’t going to call my abuela. I wasn’t going to call the 118 and I’m not allowed to talk to Buck.”

Alice: Oh, yeah. I love that Buck’s a separate part. Like, yes. [01:16:00] Obviously he’s not. working with them, I guess, at the moment. But, like, he specifically says he’s not allowed to talk to Buck.

Bex: And it’s not even, it’s not even that I can’t call, that I couldn’t call Buck.

It’s like, I’m not allowed to.

Ellen: Oh, it’s like a petulant child. Yes. My bestie won’t even talk to me.

Bex: He’s so, like, he’s so pouty.

Alice: So pouty. So, um, yeah. I love this exchange, though. Lena’s like, “look, I don’t mind the bailing, but I’m a little concerned about the jailing part.” And then he goes, “yeah, yeah, I guess I just snapped”.

And then she goes, “You punched a handicapped guy.”

Bex: He wasn’t handicapped though, he was a douche.

Alice: He had a bad knee. There’s a difference. Won’t happen again.

Bex: I, I think I seem to remember something about the, oh no, we, I find that out later on that, um, like the guy’s knee surgery was like years ago as well.

Ellen: Oh.

Alice: Yeah. He’s just milking it for this.

Bex: So he’s just being a real douche.

Ellen: He’s just got a sore knee.

Bex: [01:17:00] Probably not even sore.

Alice: Well, they can’t have Eddie, they can’t have Eddie punch an actual handicapped person. So they have to make him an arsehole.

Bex: Yes, we have to be sympathetic to Eddie’s plight.

Alice: Lena goes, well, I hope this guy doesn’t have a lawyer.

Which is where we cut back.

Ellen: To the lawyer.

Alice: To the lawyer.

Bex: Yeah, that’s the last thing Eddie needs, another lawsuit in his life.

Alice: Then he won’t be allowed to talk to the handicapped guy.

Bex: He won’t be allowed to talk to anybody. Um, so yes, we return to, I can’t even remember the name of the law firm, but we go back to Chase and he has a meeting with Buck because he has big news because the city has offered to settle and they have put a number on it.

So Chase writes down the city’s offer and hands it over to Buck. And Buck is just like, “What the fuck is this?” Yeah, Buck looks so disappointed. Because like, “This is, this is all they’re offering,?” And Chase is like, “Wait, [01:18:00] did I forget to put in a zero?” And takes a card back and sort of, you can see him counting, he’s like, “No, no, no, I got it right.”

Um, apparently the L. A. County is offering Buck millions of dollars to settle this wrongful termination and discrimination case.

Ellen: Hmm.

Alice: But Buck want, doesn’t want millions, he wants his job back. And Chase is like, yeah, but like, you never have to have a job again.

Bex: And Buck’s like, “Yeah, but I didn’t do this for the money.

I did it so I could be back with my team.” And Chase is like, “You really think they’re going to let you come back after what I just did to them? Because, you know, not to take my own horn, but I’ve screwed them pretty badly.”

Ellen: Yeah. And Buck looks just so hurt. He’s like, “what? I, I told you that stuff just as information.”

And you, and like, you, I’m like, why are you surprised about this now, Buck? You saw what he did.

Bex: I love that. Like,

Ellen: what did he think was going to happen?

Bex: He says, “What happened [01:19:00] to attorney client privilege?” And Chase is like, “Yeah, that’s not, that doesn’t mean what you think it means. Like attorney client privilege means that I can’t, um, disclose anything that you tell me about you and about the case, but I can do whatever I want with everything else that you tell me.”

Ellen: And he’s like, “we won.”

Bex: Yeah, he’s like, “I did exactly what you wanted me to do. I, we won this case.” And Buck’s like, “Well that’s, we didn’t exactly do it the way I wanted you to do it and this doesn’t really feel like winning.” And the scene ends with Chase going, “So what do you want to do?”

Ellen: But we never find out what he did.

Bex: No, we don’t because we’re going to cut to the LAPD. We’re not going to get a resolution on this storyline. Yet. Maybe. Kinda.

Ellen: So we do find out eventually?

Bex: No, well, I mean, we get, we see what happens at [01:20:00] the end of the episode, but, oh yeah, like, we’ll discuss that when we get there. Okay. We’ll, yeah, we’ll get there.

Right now, Athena is, uh, being a bit of a masochist and she’s watching, I think it’s Martin’s body cam footage. So

Alice: Yeah, the young cop.

Bex: Yeah, it’s the, it’s the young cop’s, um, perspective on the traffic stop. And the, uh, the captain walks into the, whatever room Athena is in watching this footage.

Alice: The, the police captain, not Bobby.

Bex: Yes, police captain. And she’s asking Athena whether Athena actually wants to watch that footage. And Athena’s like, well, no, not really, but I need to see it for myself.

Alice: So yeah, so the police captain’s going to recommend suspension without pay while the department conducts their investigation.

And she’s going to push for disciplinary action. And Athena goes, “So most likely there’ll be no real consequences for their [01:21:00] actions,” and none that will feel satisfying.

Bex: And then we find out that this is not the first time Reynolds, the older cop, has pulled this shit. He has a long list of complaints against him.

But unfortunately for the captain, he always stops just short of doing anything that would allow her to terminate him. So her hands are kind of tied and Athena very cynically and very correctly says that it doesn’t help that the complaints have all been brought to him, brought against him by Black and brown suspects.

So the captain is like, “yes, I’m aware that there is a pattern, but. I’m not gonna lie to you. I can’t, I really don’t think anything is gonna happen. This is just gonna go away the way all of those other complaints have gone away.” Yeah. And Athena’s like, “It’ll go away for him, but it’s not gonna go away for my family and it’s not gonna go away for me.”

Alice: Which is interesting ’cause it was Michael earlier that was talking about how those cops are just gonna go home to bed [01:22:00] while him and their children are terrified. And Athena sort of brushed it off, but now she is. Like, to the captain, she’s just like, yeah, no, like, my family are gonna be thinking about this.

Ellen: Yeah, obviously she didn’t brush it off quite as much as it appeared at first.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Alright, so it’s time for Fight Club therapy.

Bex: Fight Club! Yeah, we…

Ellen: We don’t talk about Fight Club. But in this case, we are going to talk about fight club.

Alice: We’re definitely going to talk about fight club.

Bex: Yeah. So we’re in a scrap yard where,

Alice: Although how funny would it be if we just skip this whole scene? We can’t talk about this. Back to Michael and Bobby.

Bex: This is the cleanest and most organized scrap yard that I’ve ever seen. And everybody has made kind of a ring. Um, using the, like the tailgating in a ring.

There are tires stacked up to be the back of the ring. Um, and everyone is sitting on their trucks, standing around, [01:23:00] watching two shirtless men in the middle of the ring, beat the crap out of each other.

Ellen: Is this Lena’s truck that her and Eddie is sitting in the back of?

Bex: It’s definitely not Eddie’s. So yeah, I’m going to say it’s Lena’s truck that they’re sitting in the back of, um, drinking beers.

And yes, Lena has brought Eddie to Fight Club. Which Eddie is very dubious about,

Alice: Yeah, Eddie’s just checking his phone, um, because he wants to make sure Christopher didn’t text. And Lena’s like, “He’s not going to text, he’s having the time of your life. You, on the other hand, are so amped you can’t see straight.”

Bex: Yeah, Eddie doesn’t see how Fake Fight Club is going to help him. Um, but Lena tells him that he is a powder keg and a place like this could be a healthy outlet for his issues.

Alice: Like, I’m not sure how healthy it’s going to be, but hey.

Bex: At which point, um, the organizer yells, “Bosco, you’re up.” And Eddie’s like, “wait, you’re going to fight.”

And Lena strips off a shirt and goes, “You aren’t the only one who’s got stuff to [01:24:00] work out. Hold my beer.” And this is the entire reason why they got Ronda Rousey on this show. For like, for this scene and this storyline. Because if you’re gonna have someone who is, um, like a world class winning MMA fighter, you’ve got to have her fight somebody on screen.

And she does. She absolutely kicks the tar out of this guy. Much to Eddie’s surprise. And I don’t know anything about fighting, but it looked impressive. So. We’re not gonna, we’re not gonna go like blow for blow and go through step by step through the choreography of the fight. It’s just very impressive.

Alice: Yeah, Lena wailed on him.

Ellen: She’s ducking and weaving, and then she smacks him. Yeah,

Bex: She has to be dragged off him by the end of it. Like this guy does not tap out because tapping out would require him to drop his guard and Lena’s got her elbows into his face pretty deep.

Ellen: Okay, time to go back [01:25:00] to the Grant house. And Michael has come over for dinner. And he’s, but he and Bobby are sitting out on the patio outside and he says, “Thanks for dinner. I really needed to see my kids.” Bobby asks him how he’s doing.

You know, he’s telling Bobby about that what happened and Bobby’s like “I’m really sorry. I wish I could help in some way,” but Michael’s just like “no, I’m glad that you don’t have to know about this And if something had happened to me I’m really happy that they have you because I know you love them like they’re your own,” and Bobby’s just like ” Wait you stop thinking like that, like nothing’s going to happen to you and you’re going to be okay.” And this is like This scene just made me cry because, you know, Michael says at “Harry’s ten, he shouldn’t be worried about anything, and now I have to sit him down and talk to him about this.”

Bex: Has to give him the talk.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Which for, like, you [01:26:00] and I talking about giving our kids the talk, it’s probably going to be the sex talk. Or, you know, for some other kind of talk, but no, Michael has to sit Harry down and talk. talk to him about how to act when you come in contact with police. And it’s heartbreaking.

Alice: It’s so heartbreaking. Like I had goosebumps and I, this wasn’t even the first time I’d seen it and I had goosebumps.

Bex: No, no, this is, this is another one of those scenes that I cry at every single time I watch it because I just cannot fathom that this has, that this is somebody’s reality.

Ellen: Yeah, he says, Harry says, “You don’t, you didn’t do anything wrong.”

And Michael’s response is, “Well, it’s not about being right. Um, sometimes you just have to be safe.” And, um, Harry’s like, “Aren’t they supposed to keep us safe?” And Michael’s like, “Not all officers are like [01:27:00] your mom. There are some bad ones, but some of them treat you like you’re different to the others.”

Bex: Yeah, so that world view that had already been smashed earlier is just completely being shattered here because he’s suddenly being brought face to face with the idea that people are going to treat, and it’s being confirmed, people are going to treat you different because you are Black.

And as much as Michael is trying to enforce that there’s nothing wrong with him, that he is beautiful, he is smart, he is kind, he is an amazing Black boy who’s going to grow up to be an amazing Black man, there are going to be some people who aren’t going to see that. They will look at you, they will look at him and they will judge him.

And there is nothing that Harry or Michael can do to stop that. They just have to [01:28:00] unfortunately alter their behavior to keep themselves safe. So he gives him the, this is how you have to act. You have to be respectful. You have to do what they say. Don’t ever do anything to make them feel scared.

And Harry goes, “But they’re the ones with the guns. I’m like, I was freaking terrified. What happens if I’m the one that’s more scared?” And Michael’s like, “Yep. Yep, you probably are going to be, but you can’t let them see that. And you can’t do anything that might, you can’t yell, you can’t argue. You always have to keep your hands where you can see them, no sudden movements, don’t reach for anything. If you have to reach for something, ask their permission.” Everything that we kind of saw Michael doing in that traffic stop.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: It’s just, it is so heartbreaking.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s terrible.

Alice: Harry’s actor does such a good job as [01:29:00] well.

Bex: Yeah, all of the, all of the emotions are there. This, as frustrating as I find elements of this story, the actual telling of this story is beautifully done.

Alice: Yeah, and I’m really glad that they do show the other side, because until now they’ve done the whole, Like, we’ve called them out a couple of times of doing copaganda. And now they’re finally doing a story where it’s just like, yeah, they’re actually not all good.

Bex: Yeah, the writer for this episode actually pitched this storyline to Tim Minear when they were talking, uh, I, if I recall correctly, uh, they were going to do a storyline about rage and Lindsay pitched this, like, “Hey, can we do this storyline,” um, and the way that it has been. approached. It would have been very easy for 9-1-1 to go for the, the drama, like really, [01:30:00] both of the drama, the way they do with a lot of really highly traumatic storylines.

But I think they’ve approached this very respectfully and very realistically. Again, let’s just reiterate, we’re three Australian white women. We’ve have never been in this situation before, but from our perspective, it feels honest and real.

Ellen: It just breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that they even have to have this conversation in the first place.

Bex: Yes. So while Harry and Michael are having this conversation, um, Athena is having conversations of her own. Because we see yet another traffic stop. Another car is pulled over by, um, a patrol car, except this time it’s Reynolds being pulled over. And he’s being pulled over by Athena. And what’s really interesting is that as Athena approaches the car, Reynolds is immediately on the defensive, like, “I’m a cop. Can’t pull me over, I’m a cop.” Then he sees [01:31:00] which cop has pulled him over. It’s like the, the, ah, shit moment.

Alice: Yeah. Um, so Athena tells him to turn off the engine and step out of the car. And, uh, Asks how much he’s had to drink tonight.

Bex: Apparently he’s come straight from the pub. Like he’s off shift, but he has been drinking.

Alice: And she wants his license, registration, proof of insurance, and him out of the car.

Bex: So she can do a field sobriety test. Which is that um, that fun thing they do where they make you try and walk in a straight line heel toe. And stand on one leg.

Alice: So, do Americans actually do the field sobriety test? Because here, they just do, like, they just get the breathalyzer out.

Ellen: Yeah. Maybe the cops over there are not, yeah, maybe they’re not equipped with that kind of stuff in their patrol cars, where I’m pretty sure they do here.

Bex: I [01:32:00] would say even if they did have breathalyzers as part of their, um, response to traffic stops, the whole point is to humiliate him. So she might have the, he might have the breathalyzer in the car, but she’s going to make him do this because this is still an, like there are still cars going past and they’re going to see him on the side of the road being treated like an old drunk, which he is in this instance.

Alice: Yeah. So yeah, he’s like, “Legally I can refuse that.” And Athena goes, “Legally, I can throw you in jail.” Um, he’s glassy eyed, smells like alcohol, and since they’re being all by the book now

Ellen: He’s, he does apologize to her. I didn’t know it was your family when we made the stop, and Athena’s just like, “Are you kidding?”

Bex: The bad thing about all of these apologies that come from first Reynolds and then Martin is they’re not sorry that they did it, they’re sorry that they did it to Athena’s family. So they’re sorry that they did it to a [01:33:00] family that they got caught, and there are now repercussions. Yes.

Alice: Yeah. They’re not sorry about the way that they treat people.

Bex: No. They’re sorry that they got caught.

Ellen: Yeah. They’re sorry that they see the reactions to it in real time because normally they wouldn’t see any of that, they’d just be like, eh, whatever. But they’ve seen that Athena is angry, they’ve seen there, the things that are going to happen to them. Now they’re sorry.

Bex: Because if you, um, if you believe what the captain was saying and what Athena was going through all of the complaints against Reynold, there have never been any consequences because they don’t believe the people who have been bringing the complaints. But because Athena is a cop, that makes her complaint different.

Alice: Like, Athena even says if it was someone else’s family, they could be making funeral arrangements right now.

Bex: Yeah. Because we saw that it was only when Michael invoked Athena’s name and that she was a sergeant in the LAPD that they backed off, because they’d [01:34:00] realized that they had messed with the wrong people.

It would be a very different ending to that traffic stop if he hadn’t have said that.

Alice: I also, I want to, like, I know it was a couple scenes ago, but I forgot to mention it at the time. But I want to mention how Michael’s reaction was to say that his wife was a sergeant?

Bex: Yeah, yeah, that it’s He did, he did almost apologize to Bobby when he was talking to Bobby about that, but the fact that he said wife, not ex wife. But

Alice: But like, it’s a lot quicker to say my wife than the mother of my kids.

Bex: Or even like, I know Athena. Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. Like,

Bex: I’m friends with Athena.

Alice: Or like, I was married with, yeah, I was married to.

Bex: It’s very, it’s much more of a, um, a respected position to be the husband of an LAPD officer than just.

Alice: And to be fair, they were married for a long time.

Bex: Yeah, otherwise he’s just like randomly name dropping cops. [01:35:00] Yeah, exactly. And they could completely like disregard, oh yeah, sure, you know Athena, yeah, right, whatever. But you can’t kind of dispute being married to her. And they don’t know that they’re divorced.

Alice: Um, so Athena makes Reynolds stand on one leg, and says how humiliating it is being treated like a criminal, singled out for no good reason, harassed by a police officer with questionable motives.

Bex: Reynolds says that he could report her. And he could. And I think if this were any other, if this were any other TV show where they followed through on sort of traumatic storylines and didn’t drop them as soon as they were done with the trauma, he might have actually put in a case against her and we would have seen that she would have been in the shit and he would have walked away smelling like roses.

But that’s not that, that’s not this show. This show is Athena saying to him, if it were retribution, I would have done this when your kids were in the car. [01:36:00] And then she tells him to have a nice night. Which is a call back to what he had said to Michael. She gets in her car and she drives away, leaving him on the side of the road.

Ellen: I mean, she has a history of, like, she arrested that girl who had been bullying May. Like, she does This is not unexpected for Athena to decide to take matters into her own hands.

Bex: No, it’s definitely within the character for Athena to, um, to flaunt her power as a police officer for personal reasons. Um, or not even for personal reasons, I’m thinking about the other time she’s kind of abused her power in the name of police good, people bad.

Um, I just, yeah, kind of hearkening back to what we were talking about before, um, they make a very big deal in this episode about the treatment of Michael and Harry and May being because of [01:37:00] this one police officer and not the fact that it’s the, like, the entire system is against people who look like Michael and Harry and May.

And the fact that it’s focused so much on the individual, I find very frustrating. I would like to have seen it being a little bit more about, you know, all cops are bastards, that kind of, but again, this is 9-1-1, this is, you know, copic, this is copaganda. We’re not going to have that conversation. Even if they were to do this storyline today, we would still not be having that conversation.

It would still be like, it’s, it’s the one bad apple. Every, all, all cops are good. It’s just there are, like, most cops are good. There are just one or two bad apples amongst the bunch.

Ellen: Frustrating.

Alice: But yeah, it’s systematic.

Bex: Yeah, it’s very systemic. But that’s not what this storyline is about. This storyline is about the personal, not the bigger picture.

I just have to keep remembering that [01:38:00] and not trying to expect more of the show. I’m not trying to expect more from a network weekly television show. This isn’t cable. I’m not gonna get the hard hitting storylines from this show. I’m gonna get, firefighters going supermarket shopping.

Ellen: Oh my god, they’ve gone to, they, they roll up, the whole gang is there and they’re in the ladder truck, right?

Bex: engine truck.

Ellen: Okay.

Alice: They’re, they’ve got the engine truck and the ambulance.

Ellen: They’re in the, they’re in their gear and everything.

Alice: At the start it looks like a scene, yeah, so like they’re all in gear, um, Bobby goes, “Listen up, last couple times we were here, mistakes were made, that’s not gonna happen again.”

Bex: It sounds like they’re going back and they’re doing another fire drill.

It sounds like they’re trying to, um, to correct the mistakes they made when Fire Marshal Buck was writing them up for the, the way they responded to that call, but that’s not what they’re doing. They are at Howie’s [01:39:00] Market.

Ellen: Yeah, I’m just wondering if they go there. They go this place on purpose because it’s called Howie’s Market.

Alice: Chim’s moonlighting as a supermarket owner.

Ellen: Yeah, does he own the supermarket?

Bex: Look, I’m sure he thought about it at some point.

Alice: Um, so Bobby is pairing them up on their assignments. Eddie and Lena are on meats and deli, nothing leaner than 92%. Hen and Chimney are doing the baking aisle, unrefined flour this time, thank you.

And Bobby will cover fruits and vegetables.

Bex: And I have to point out that he has written down his shopping list on index cards, and he’s handing the index cards out to everybody. as he names them and he’s, there are a couple of other members of the 118. They’ve got index cards of their own. I don’t know where they’re going.

They might be going to the freezer section, who knows.

Alice: Freezer, like the snack aisle. Yeah. They’re [01:40:00] getting all the chocolate.

Bex: Yeah, so they, they get their trolleys and they.

Alice: But once they have everything on the list, they’ll reconvene at the dairy case. Yes. It’s all very, very professional.

Bex: Yeah. Chim makes a comment that this must be what the invasion of Normandy felt like.

Ellen: It’s very silly. After all we’ve just been through.

Bex: To have this scene, yeah.

Ellen: This scene is just so silly.

Alice: This is like the, this is the um,

Bex: The comedic relief?

Alice: The, yeah, the, um, yeah, comedic relief.

Bex: What was, what I found really funny watching this scene again was that not that long ago I had seen somebody post, I think on Twitter, um, a photo of them at a market with a firetruck parked out front.

And they’re like, this firetruck just rolled up and all these firefighters got out and started shopping. Is that something that really happens? Um, and in the midst of everybody going, I don’t know, are there two divorced dads having a custody disagreement in like the, the cat laxative aisle?[01:41:00]

Um, obviously a call back to this scene. Um, it was confirmed that, yeah, the in between calls, they’re going to bring the rigs and go shopping because That way, if they get a call over the radio, they can immediately sort of drop everything and respond. So they can’t really, like, leave the station house, go shopping, because then they’re not gonna have time to go back.

Alice: What if they’ve got like a full trolley, they just leave the trolley in the middle of the grocery store?

Bex: I’m guessing they have to, unless they’re like, we’re gonna leave a couple of you behind to finish ringing up the groceries, you can, you can call and someone else will come and pick you up. My immediate thought though was imagine if they managed to like get everything paid for, loaded in the back of the truck, and then they’re on their way back to the station house when they get a call.

And they’ve got all these groceries in the back of like the ambulance and back of the engine truck and blah, blah, blah. He’s like, you know what? We have to get this done quickly because there is like five tubs of ice cream in the back and we don’t have the money to [01:42:00] buy more ice cream so if this melts I’m going to make you eat it anyway.

So put this fire out quickly if you don’t want like freezer burned, re melt, re frozen ice cream.

Alice: It’s Tuesday, I bought ice cream, let’s get this done, come on guys.

Ellen: But you can totally leave a trolley of groceries on like you know, at the front of the shop and then come back for it later.

Bex: I wonder whether they would bring it up for them and just like leave it there.

Ellen: Yeah, they could do that. If it’s something that Bobby often does, then maybe they will do that.

Bex: It sounds like this might be like their local, it must be close to the station house.

Ellen: Yeah. Anyway, they are going around doing the things and doing the things on their list.

Alice: Yes.

Ellen: And, um,

Alice: Lena and Eddie are in the deli.

Lena’s very disappointed that. the guy dropped the charges on Eddie?

Bex: She’s quite disgusted that, [01:43:00] um, Eddie’s service record was brought up as, as a reason why they’re dropping the charges. She says that Captain America is a get out of jail free card.

And this is where we find out that the jackass’s knee surgery was three years ago. You’re not letting it go because, you know, that’s healthy. And then we get to, the best part of this scene is Hen and Chim are not in the baking aisle, but they are picking stuff up and putting it in the trolleys. And Hen is telling Chim that she thinks that Bobby just needs to let go of being pissed at Buck.

 And Chim agrees because apparently this whole shopping expedition is Bobby’s way of, um, distracting both himself and the rest of the team to keep their minds off Buck.

Alice: BUCK!

Bex: And Hen’s like, Buck! Chim’s like, “Yeah, we’re going to keep our minds off Buck.” She’s like, “No, Buck!” and points. [01:44:00] And there’s Buck.

Ellen: And Buck is there.

Bex: At the market.

Ellen: He’s like, hey guys, what’s up?

Bex: Oh, funny to see you guys here at the market.

Ellen: How fancy, fancy meeting you here.

Bex: Near the station house on, uh, on this day, which is usually when Bobby does his shopping. .

Alice: Um, the rest of the team seem to like appear.

Bex: Bobby is like gets summoned by magic.

Alice: It’s just Hen and Chim. But yeah, Bobby just appears and he is just like, what are you doing here, ?

Bex: It’s like they hear Buck’s name and it’s just like, sh . Um, but yeah, they ask, um, Bobby asks him like, “What are you doing here?” And Buck’s like, “Oh, I’m just doing some shopping.” And he grabs a random item of the end cap display.

To, you know, pretend like he is shopping. Uh, Chim questions that because apparently this particular market is eight miles from, um, Buck’s apartment, which,

Alice: which did you say was [01:45:00] 13, 12 kilometers?

Bex: A little over 12 kilometers. Which is probably even long, which would be like, 20 minutes for me if I were going to drive, but this is LA traffic we’re talking about, so it’s probably like two hours.

He could probably get to Big Bear quicker than he could get to this particular market from his apartment.

Ellen: I dunno. It’s pretty far.

Alice: It takes him two days just to get to

Bex: But Buck counters that it’s the argument that like this market is so far from your apartment, because apparently this is the only place that he can go to get.

And he looks at the item that he’s just picked up off the end cap display, uh, which turns out to be Happy Cat laxatives.

Alice: Happy cat laxative powder. Um, as someone who works in a store that sells cat laxative, ours is in a paste form, uh, you can just, um, like apply it to their feet so that they’ll lick it off. For easy dosing.

Bex: I’m guessing maybe you [01:46:00] mix the powder in with their food?

Alice: Guess so. But yeah, just haven’t seen it in a powder. So maybe it is the only place that you can buy Happy Cat laxative powder. But the, um, but Hen’s confused about Buck buying cat laxative because Buck doesn’t have a cat.

Bex: I will give Buck props that he just goes with this.

He’s like, yeah,

Alice: he’s like, I’ve been thinking of, uh, getting a cat.

Ellen: And Chim’s like, “Are you, you’re anticipating your new cat will be irregular?”

Bex: God bless Buck. He tries, he tries to keep the bit going and he’s like, no, I can’t do this. I can’t. Um,

Alice: it also breaks up hairballs, just saying. So like, if you’ve got a cat who has hairballs a lot, the laxative will.

Ellen: Oh, thanks. Thanks for that.

Alice: Look, my job finally has some.

Ellen: I’m learning so much today.

Alice: About illegal fight clubs, um, Happy Cat laxative powder,

Bex: sous vide [01:47:00] cooking techniques, um,

Alice: But yeah, Buck gives up. He’s just like, yep, nah, puts the box back on the shelf and goes, “yeah, I came here to apologize.”

Bex: I do love that, um, he says like, “I came to apologize,” and you can just see Eddie in the background and his eyebrows just fly up like, what? Everyone else is just watching Buck. Eddie’s starting to, to spiral.

Ellen: He’s a powder keg, remember?

Bex: Oh, he’s absolutely a powder keg. And, um, and when Buck says that he never meant for things to get so out of hand with the lawsuit, boom, that sets Eddie off.

He’s like, yep. “What did you think was going to happen? Lawsuit was bad enough, but you told your lawyer everything, like personal things about us.” And Buck’s like, “You’re supposed to be truthful with your lawyer. Why are you so pissed at me?” At this point, Eddie is standing at the back of the group behind his trolley, and he starts pushing through everyone and getting in Buck’s face.[01:48:00]

He’s like, “You’re exhausting. We all have our own problems, but you don’t see us whining about it. No, we just managed to suck it up. Why can’t you?”

Alice: And Chim jumps to Buck’s defense here. He’s like, “that’s kind of harsh. It’s not like the guy asked to be crushed by a ladder truck.”

Bex: Chim is always the peacekeeper. God bless him. He’s so conflict adverse. Um,

Alice: Chim, Chim has been hearing it from Maddie all week.

Bex: But I’m, I’m thinking about like every time we’ve seen conflict, like especially in, um, “Bobby Begins Again” when Sal was getting up in Bobby’s face, Chim was the first one to get in between them to try and calm everything down.

So yeah, he’s the peacekeeper in the team. It doesn’t work in this case because Eddie just keeps going. He’s like, “no, cause he filed a stupid lawsuit. And now, I can’t even talk to you about it. Do you know how much Christopher misses you? How could you? You’re not even around.” Like, how much Christopher misses you?

Ellen: I’m like, oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

Alice: Yeah, I’m sure it’s Christopher.

Ellen: Christopher misses you? Like, tell us what’s really going on in your [01:49:00] head here, Eddie. Come on. Buck’s like, “Oh, maybe I can come and visit Christopher. The lawsuit doesn’t prevent me from doing that.”

Bex: Like, Eddie’s like, “No, but it prevents me from reaching out to you. I couldn’t even call you to bail me out of jail.”

Alice: The camera goes around the circle at this point. Buck’s looking like, huh? Bobby’s looking like, excuse me, and Lena’s just like, oh,

Bex: she’s got her fingernails in her mouth, chewing anxiously, watching this shit go down around her.

Ellen: But she’s grinning like she’s loving it.

Bex: And Eddie’s like, oh no, I said

too much.

Like, you know, if,

Alice: “if, if that was, if that was something that had, that had happened.” And Buck’s like, “what, what are you talking about?”

Bex: He’s like, “Why can’t you see my side of it?” And Eddie is like, “Because you’re so selfish and that’s all that you can see.” And while this is happening, while these like divorced dads are having this throwdown, um, [01:50:00] there’s a road rage incident, well actually parking lot rage incident happening behind them.

And you can just see over Eddie’s shoulder this, um, these two cars battling over a parking spot.

Ellen: Yeah, I had to go back and watch it again to see what was happening because I was not paying attention to that.

Bex: So if anybody else was not paying attention, so what happens is, um, a car pulls out of a parking spot and there are another couple of cars patiently waiting to go into the parking lot.

said parking spot, but before the car can take the spot that it’s patiently waiting for, this little, um, Mini zips in and steals a spot. And the car that was initially waiting is off, the driver’s obviously just gone, oh, fine, and drives off. The other car takes umbrage at this and decides to rear end the Mini.

And the Mini driver’s like, oh, you’re gonna hit me? I’m gonna hit you too. So he starts backing up. And hitting the car over and over and over again. Um, [01:51:00] and then the car that initially started hitting goes, Oh, oh, we’re doing this? So he slams into the Mini even harder. And that’s the point that everybody in the store pays attention, and including the 118.

They’re suddenly stopped paying attention to the domestic that’s happening in front of them and start, um, paying attention to the drama that’s happening outside the store.

Alice: Um, yeah, Hen goes, “Someone should stop them,” and Chim’s like, “These two?” And points at Buck and Eddie, “Or those two?” and points out the window.

Bex: The 118 exit the market in time to see the, uh, the car that initiated the ramming decide that they’ve had enough and try to drive off. The Mini’s like, oh fuck you, you’re not getting away with this. And he side swipes the car, knocking it into a fire hydrant, um, and the fire hydrant then just starts gushing water, lifting the car up into the air.[01:52:00]

Alice: Um, this whole scene has like spawned one of my favorite Tumblr posts. Ah, it’s,

Bex: not the, not the road rage scene, but the, the supermarket scene. No,

Alice: the, the supermarket arguing. It’s just so good. Like, we’ll, um, we’ll have to link it once we post the episode, but

Ellen: it’s just a series of gifs.

Alice: It’s hard to explain. But yeah, it just like zooms in on everyone’s faces at the right time. And it’s just so good.

Bex: Little caption reactions to everything.

Ellen: Actually, looking through, looking through that post made me realize, like, understand what was happening in the scene a lot better because you don’t, you know, I didn’t realize there was so much going on in the background. And yes, very clever.

Alice: And like everyone’s individual facial expressions are so good. Like Bobby’s looking between like Eddie and Buck, like, Oh, boys are fighting.

Ellen: But let’s be real. It’s not the first time they’ve seen these guys arguing. I’m sure they must do it all the time.

Bex: No, but I think it’s different this time because Bobby is still [01:53:00] pissed at Buck.

And so normally he’d be worried about what was happening to these two because of the impact that it could possibly have on this team. Right now he could give a flying fuck about Buck. Um, he’s more worried about what the hell is going on with Eddie because I don’t think he’s ever seen Eddie react like this.

Alice: Like, sorry, bail you out of jail?

Bex: And he just, he just sounds so exhausted. Like he, all he wanted to do was go grocery shopping and now they have a call. He’s like, “All right, Eddie, Lena, saws and jaws, Hen, Chim, check on the drivers,” and everybody goes to do their jobs, leaving Buck standing there alone again.

Ellen: Oh, Buck.

Alice: And then we go to more sadness.

Bex: Yes, because Hen finishes her shift and she comes home to find Karen in the bedroom looking very sad. Because [01:54:00] while they apparently get good news by email, they get bad news by phone calls.

Ellen: Ah, yeah. Yeah, the doctor called, none of the embryos were good. And Hen can’t believe it because there were six embryos and none of them were any good, and Yeah, they had to be discarded, apparently.

Alice: Yeah, they all had chromosomal, chromosomal issues. impact? Oh my god. No, I can’t say that word.

Bex: Chromosomal abnormalities or defects.

Ellen: So Karen’s, she’s worried about trying again because, you know, she’s saying she should have frozen her eggs when she was younger, but she doesn’t feel like she can do it again because what if it goes wrong again?

And you know, Hen’s reassuring her saying this is not your fault, you did everything right. But you know, they’re thinking about maybe giving up because it’s just, it’s hard. It must be so hard to go through all that and then find out that it’s, [01:55:00] it’s not going to work out this time round.

There’s only so many times you can do that before you have to stop.

Bex: Especially when it’s, there’s something wrong with the embryos and those are, it’s not that, you know, something went wrong with the procedure, it’s the embryos themselves were not good. Um, Well, basically that Karen’s eggs were not good because the sperm donor, they wouldn’t be allowing the sperm donor to donate if there was anything wrong with, um, with the sperm.

So it has to be Karen’s eggs. She’s convinced that it’s a sign that they should not be doing this.

Alice: Karen says that her body’s been fighting her every step of the way. The IVF. The iUI, the complications and the side effects, is trying to tell me something. To give up. Maybe I should listen.

Bex: I always [01:56:00] wondered why they were so adamant that it had to be Karen’s embryos at this point.

Like, why wasn’t there, why weren’t they using Hen’s eggs?

Ellen: I don’t know.

Bex: No. Yeah, I’m not too sure. Because it always seemed, it always seemed to be. Karen. It was like, I mean, I understand why Karen was going to be the one to be pregnant because hen has a high risk job, whereas Karen works in a lab. So it makes sense for her to carry the pregnancy.

So, but why couldn’t they use Hen’s eggs and implant them in Karen? Because they’re already having to extract the eggs, um, fertilize them and then implant them back. So why couldn’t they extract from Hen and then implant them into Karen?

Alice: Yeah. Maybe Hen just didn’t, wasn’t prepared to do, because like IVF’s tough.

Bex: Oh yeah.

Alice: Like all the shit before it.

Ellen: Yeah, but if she, if, if all she had to do was, like, donate the [01:57:00] eggs

Alice: Nah, the donation part, like it’s

Bex: I mean, we, we saw how, um, how much the, the hormone treatments were affecting Karen, because she was like that horribly weepy mess. Yeah. They’re like, the ha ha ha hormonal women are so funny, because they, you know, mood swings.

It’s like that week before you, it’s like the week before you ovulate, but on like 50 million times worse. Maybe it’s just, I find it interesting that it’s never actually a, true to my memory, that’s not an option they explore in the show. It’s just always Karen. Yeah.

All right, moving on, we’re going back to the LAPD. Officer Martin, who is in civilian clothes, so he’s obviously on leave. unpaid leave, I’m guessing, um, has come to apologize to Athena. Interesting that they’re apologizing to Athena, not apologizing to Michael and the kids. [01:58:00]

Ellen: Yeah, yeah, because they’re scared of her.

Alice: Well, because they see her as one of them.

Ellen: Yeah, maybe, yeah.

Bex: It still doesn’t look good.

Alice: Oh god, no.

Bex: But he um, he apologizes and said that he did not see Harry in the back seat and by the time he did see him he reacted on instinct. Um, apparently his instinct was to draw his sidearm. And Athena scolds him. Says that when the LAPD say protect and serve, they mean protect and serve the community, not protect and serve themselves.

She says like, she remembers being a rookie, she remembers the nerves, and that it is natural to follow your partner’s lead, just don’t follow it off a cliff. The implication being that Martin has been influenced by Reynolds. Which is one of kind of the, the argument when they, they’re talking about, you know, the, the bad [01:59:00] apples.

Like, it’s, it’s not, it’s not all cops, it’s just that one or two bad apples, but if you continue the analogy, those one or two bad apples spoil the entire barrel. And we’re seeing that here, with Martin slowly being lured to the dark side. I’m assuming that this, like, Come to Jesus moment with Athena is then going to lure him back to the lights, to the, the side of the good.

And he’ll be like a good upstanding cop from now on.

Ellen: Hmm. I’m surprised Athena isn’t in this next scene actually, but

Bex: Bobby has apparently booked, booked the room.

Ellen: They’ve booked everyone in. They’ve booked everyone into Happy’s Rage Room.

Bex: Yes. And he’s invited Michael.

Ellen: Full circle back to the start of the episode.

Invited Michael to come along as well, and they’re gonna have a team building activity, but with extras, and they’re gonna beat some stuff up.

Alice: Yeah, I love that Bobby, like, they don’t try [02:00:00] and make him part of it in that way. Like, he doesn’t try and understand. He goes, “I can’t fix the world, I can’t offer some sage advice that’s going to make everything better. All I can offer is this,” and just hands Michael a sledgehammer.

Ellen: Yeah, and Michael’s just like, okay, I guess.

Bex: Everyone is there, everyone is suited up, um, apparently Bobby sprung for the deluxe package which includes a minibar, um, to which Hen is extremely surprised that if they’re serving booze at this place they don’t get more calls from the rage room.

Because, yeah, alcohol plus, you know, smashing shit does not really seem like it would go together. It always makes me surprised when you have, like, the axe throwing rooms. where they’re like, with bars. Like, I don’t know that you should be combining alcohol and sharp objects, but you know.

Ellen: I didn’t [02:01:00] know they served alcohol at those places.

Bex: Oh yeah.

But it’s not just the 118 and Michael who were invited to this team building activity. Um, Buck got invited.

Ellen: Yes. Buck is there too. And he wanted to apologize but Bobby’s not having it, “You’re gonna get a call tomorrow from the chief and you’re being reinstated.”

And Buck’s like, “Oh, that’s awesome.” Bobby’s like, “They gave me the option to transfer you. They understand how I might not want you back.” And Buck’s like, “oh.” But, Bobby says, “I said, no, you’re coming back to the 118 or I can keep an eye on you.” And this is the bit where, this is the kind of look Bobby’s giving him where he’s got that kind of resting smirk face on.

And I can’t tell whether he’s being serious or if he’s fucking around with Buck. Like, um, so I don’t know if he’s fully [02:02:00] like, you know, forgiven him for what he put them through, but at least it’s all going to go back to how it was before. So, “My house, my rules. Remember that?” And Buck’s like, “Oh.”

Bex: Yeah, so this is where we bring up the question of what did Buck decide to do with the, um, the settlement that the LAFD and the county offered him. Because obviously he wanted his job back. And he’s kind of got his job back, but did he take the money as well? Or did he

Alice: Surely he can’t get the money and the job?

Ellen: Yeah, did he renegotiate for the job instead of the money?

Bex: Yeah, that’s the question is because Chase was saying that the initial offer was like the offer that the county made was just the first offer and they could go back and renegotiate. Uh, like counter offer. So did they go back and counter offer, but was it counter offer, like, we’ll take the millions [02:03:00] plus written confirmation that Buck has his job back?

Or it was, was it, I don’t want the money, I just want my job back? Because I know

Alice: Surely it was the second.

Bex: Because I know that a lot of fan fiction that’s written sort of post the lawsuit era, um, Buck is written as being rich because he has like not only the compensation money from the Um, the fire department after his injury, but he’s also got the settlement from the lawsuit.

So there are people in the fandom who assume that he took the millions as well as got his job back, but it’s never actually confirmed in the show, right. That he took the money.

Alice: Yeah, I mean, he does, does live in a nice loft on his own in LA.

Bex: Oh, he’s obviously wealthy, but is he like, um, you know, at some point in the, the fan fiction.

Um, when he’s in this loft, he’s saying like, “I, like, I bought the loft outright,” i, you can, it’s usually other [02:04:00] characters, move into the loft and he’s like, “You can live in the loft rent free. I don’t need the money cause I’m loaded because I got money from the lawsuit.” Um, so yeah.

Alice: Which is interesting because he’s like, he’s renting the loft when we first see the loft.

Hmm. Because he signs the lease.

Bex: There is a, there is a, um, There was a discussion in Reddit, I want to say, where someone was questioning how can Buck afford the loft, um, on a firefighter’s salary. And several people piped up and went, you obviously don’t know how much firefighters make. Like, they’re loaded.

Alice: But also he can’t, that’s why he keeps asking people to put in. What? Um

Bex: Like the median salary plus like the, the, um, sort of the danger plus all the OT, they earn quite a bit of money.

Alice: Not only that, but like Buck doesn’t, like he doesn’t really do much. He just goes [02:05:00] to work. Like what’s he spending all the money on otherwise?

Bex: He can afford the loft on his own, that’s fine. But like, does he have now extra money from the city? Behind that. Who knows?

Ellen: Mm hmm.

Bex: Let us know if you have opinions on whether Buck took the money or whether he took the job.

Alice: How rich Buck is?

Bex: How rich is Evan Buckley at this point?

So then we are going to cut to the end episode voiceover slash montage, where Eddie is going to explain to us the point of this episode, um, while everybody else wails on stuff in the Rage Room. And it’s really interesting that it’s,

Alice: yeah, so, we should mention like everyone’s at the Rage Room except Eddie,

Bex: except Eddie, yeah, um, and it’s interesting because you’ve got Bobby, and Michael, and Ch I need to say this correctly, Chim and Hen in one room, and Lena and Buck are in another room on their own.[02:06:00]

So obviously the the others weren’t ready to invite Buck sort of back into the fold fully, so Lena being sort of the outsider is like, I don’t actually have a dog in this race, so I’ll hang with the the outsider. And we’ll bash.

Alice: She’s like, so what’s with you and Diaz? um, Like is Chris your kid or is Eddie’s kid?

Ellen: You wouldn’t have thought that Buck would want to go anywhere near her since she’s replaced him.

Bex: Yeah, I think it’s like the, that’s the best he’s going to get though, because obviously he’s not going to get anywhere near the others because they’re still mad at him, but he doesn’t, it’s like, it’s not personal with Lena.

Yeah, okay. So Eddie explains in the voiceover that rage is defined as an intense or violent type of anger. It explains it could be road rage, office rage, even airplane rage. It seems like the whole world is on the edge of snapping. It talks about the other ways that we use the word rage, [02:07:00] like a raging fire, a raging storm.

Things that are out of our control, and maybe that’s where our rage comes from. Feeling that our world, our lives, are out of control. And as we get through the next part, we get, um, cuts of different characters. So he’s saying that, uh, we feel rage when we feel helpless and we cut to the Grant household where Harry and May are watching the video that May took of the police and her father.

When he talks about feeling powerless and weak, um, we get a random shot of Maddie, who has apparently spent this entire episode parked out the front of Victor and Tara’s house.

Ellen: Oh yeah, there’s like one single tear rolling down her face.

Bex: Yes. I have to, when, um, when this scene came up and we got this shot of Maddie, because of the way that I do these episodes, it takes me a couple of days to get through them.

So we got to Maddie and I’m like, Wait. God, it seems like it’s been [02:08:00] ages since we saw Maddie. When did we last see Maddie? And I’m scrolling up to the start of the episode to remember how long it’s been since we’ve seen Maddie and I went, No, wait. We haven’t seen her since last episode. She’s not in this episode at all.

Ellen: She was right at the beginning when they called from the panic room.

Alice: Yeah, that’s it, she’s only in the, um, she’s only at Dispatch,

Ellen: but not at all else.

But that’s it.

Bex: She doesn’t have like a storyline in this episode, but they’ve obviously grabbed footage from last week’s episode and just chucked it in here, um, because they need to, maybe it’s in her contract that she needs to appear in every single episode.

Um, or maybe it’s because they know that they’re going to continue Maddie’s storyline so they need to remind the audience, hey Maddie’s still here, this is what Maddie’s up to.

And then Eddie’s talking about when we’re feeling helpless, powerless and weak, the rage starts to build and it needs an outlet. And at this point, um, [02:09:00] Buck asks Lena where Eddie is and she says that he has other plans. And the way that she said it made it sound like she doesn’t even know where he is. Um, and that’s because Eddie’s back at Fight Club.

I mean, this time he’s fighting. Well, he’s getting the crap beaten out of him. To start with, he’s shirtless and he’s sweaty and he’s bloody.

Ellen: And you’re quite enjoying this scene, ?

Alice: Oh yeah. I’m this, this is for the, um, , like this is for Bex.

Bex: If this, if this is what, if obviously this is why they had, um, or may not obviously, but maybe this is why Ryan went for the really short hair to go with this.

And if the consequence, if the, if I have, if the payment for getting shirtless, sweaty, bloody Edmundo Diaz is that fucking haircut, then I will take it. I will suffer through the haircut if I get Fight Club Eddie. [02:10:00]

Alice: Like he’s screaming at the sky and everything.

Ellen: It is extremely dramatic. But he’s, he’s real mad.

Bex: The voiceover asks, when the rage starts to build, it needs an outlet. This is obviously his outlet. So what happens when we let the rage take over? Do we regain control by unleashing our fury, or have we crossed a line that we can’t come back from? And that’s going to be the question we’re going to answer later on.

Is this a good thing that Eddie’s beating up guys instead of going to therapy? Or is it going to be

Ellen: I’m going to say no.

Bex: Well, it’s

Alice: It’s good for Bex’s sake. Yeah.

Bex: Yep.

Ellen: Not good for him actually hashing out his feelings with Buck.

Bex: Not good for him for hashing out any of his feelings. I mean, he should Yeah, that too.

He should, you know, take a leap. [02:11:00] It’s, it’s, the irony is that he is adamant that his kid should go to therapy. Except he’s not going to therapy himself.

 He’s not even talking to a priest like Bobby does. He’s, you know, he’s at fight club.

Ellen: Yeah, we also get, as part of the, um, montage, we also see May and Harry watching the video of their traffic stop thing on May’s phone.

Bex: Yeah, that was when they were talking about being helpless.

Ellen: Yeah, so obviously they’re not gonna let this one go either. Well, not obviously, but maybe they’re feeling

Bex: I mean, knowing what happens the rest of the season, I couldn’t answer that question, but also, just knowing 9-1-1 and the way it tends to like bringing up trauma for its characters and then dropping it like a hot potato as soon as it no longer serves the storyline, we can probably guess whether it comes up again.[02:12:00]

Ellen: That’s a shame.

Bex: So that was “Rage”.

Ellen: Yeah, very full on episode. I mean, parts of it are full on and the rest of it’s just kind of funny fluff. But yeah, heavy, and then the supermarket.

Bex: Yeah, the irony that the supermarket scene happens in this episode.

Ellen: Yeah. So where are we going? What’s happening next week?

Bex: Next week we get my favourite Halloween episode.

Ellen: Oh, we’re back to Halloween?

Bex: Yes, because it’s going to be, uh, October 28th next week. Oh. In 9-1-1 airing time. Like, not, in reality. Like, time isn’t wibbly wobbly in the real world. Um, but

Alice: I don’t know, somehow it’s almost February and I don’t know how that happened.

Bex: But back when 9-1-1 was originally airing, next, the next episode aired on October 28th, so it is a Halloween episode.[02:13:00]

And the summary points that out by saying the first responders deal with some scary emergencies on Halloween. Um, including a flock of crows terrorizing a field trip, an office employee having a close encounter with an eight limbed creature, which took me a minute to remember what that one was, and I don’t know that that qualifies, but okay, and a ghost like girl wandering a neighborhood.

And meanwhile, Maddie remains convinced that she is doing the right thing in taking a 9-1-1 call into her own hands.

Ellen: Oh, Maddie. Okay.

Bex: And there is, like, there’s an entire storyline with Buck as well that they’ve completely just glossed over.

Alice: I literally remember nothing from this episode except the crows.

That’s it. That’s all I remember is the crows.

Bex: In the, the triggers that we get from our Trigger Warning episode, it says the triggers for this one is a car accident, um, child abuse, neglect, um, gore, and stalking. I remember the gore. I love the [02:14:00] gore. I think that’s, I think that’s a great storyline.

Alice: Yep, all I remember is the crows. Triggers, flock of crows.

Bex: Yes, if, uh, if you don’t like birds, perhaps don’t watch this episode.

Alice: If you, your name is Chimney Han, maybe don’t watch this episode.

Ellen: Oh no. Oh, yeah, he doesn’t like animals. That’s right. God, that was a long time ago. We last talked about that.

Gosh, must have been like the first episode or something.

Bex: I think it comes up constantly because it was the dogs and the snake,

Ellen: Oh, yeah.,

Bex: there was also the, the birds at the, the haunted hay ride that confused the hell out of us.

Alice: The bats?

Bex: The bats, that’s right.

Ellen: Oh, the bats, yeah. Okay. It just feels like a long time ago.

Anything else you want to say about this episode?

Alice: I hope we’ve covered it respectfully.

Ellen: Yes. Yeah. Yeah, it’s hard in a way to talk [02:15:00] about it because I don’t feel like I can say anything that’s gonna be relevant to the conversation, if that makes sense.

Bex: No, that makes perfect sense. It’s almost like we’re completely unqualified to have any kind of opinion about this episode.

Alice: Yeah, absolutely. Except for the supermarket.

Ellen: Well, yeah.

Alice: In which I am very, I’m actually very qualified.

Bex: But on the other hand, this episode, I mean, I don’t know what the, um, the breakdown of viewership and the intended audience for 9-1-1 is, but I’m going to assume that it’s predominantly white. So perhaps this episode was intended for us to, um, to educate the white audience as to what happens.

Yeah.

that our experiences with police are not the universal experience with police.

Ellen: All right. So if you have big feelings about this episode, like we did, um, of course you can [02:16:00] always, always let us know by leaving us a comment, wherever you listen to the podcast. Um, and you can always come to the website to find out all the ways, the different ways that you can get in touch with us.

Um, the website is thatweewooshow. com. And Thank you everyone for listening this week. And we will, we’ll talk to you about episode six called “Monsters”. See you then.

Bex: Bye.

Alice: Bye.

Ellen: (over outro music) 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you’re not alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help. Just Google crisis support in your location to find out the number.

If you enjoy our podcast, you can help us out by leaving us a review on Spotify or your preferred listening app, and by sharing our social media posts. Find out more at thatweewooshow. com.[02:17:00]

[outtake]

Alice: Um, but yeah, like a girl who’s apparently, her name’s Claire. Um, cause we didn’t say anything about swallowing the keys.

Bex: Hi Autumn.

Alice: And Chim just goes, Oh, you withheld information from your team. How’s that working out for you? Autumn, can you not?

Ellen: What is she doing?

Bex: She’s got a new squeaky toy.

Alice: Can I have it?

The problem is she has three of the same squeaky toy. So if I take one, she’ll just get the next one. I know, you’re so cute.


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