Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Ellen, Alice, and Bex watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss episode 7 of the third season of 9-1-1, titled “Athena Begins”.
When a murder weapon from a case close to Athena in the early ’90s resurfaces, flashbacks to 1989 show how Athena joined the LAPD and became the police officer she is today.
Content warnings for episode 3.07:
cops, drug use, gun violence, abuse of power, misogyny and racism.
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Episode Transcript
Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1, what’s your emergency?
Bex: Welcome back to That WeeWoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show 9-1-1. I’m Bex.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Ellen: And I’m Ellen.
Bex: As always, thank you to everyone who has listened to our episodes so far, who have shared our social media posts, um, rated us on Spotify and Apple podcasts.
We do appreciate it. Uh, this week, uh, we have special shout outs to at crow8butterfly on Twitter, who somehow psychically knew that we were going to ask question of “what do you do when you are listening to our podcast” and let us know a week in advance that they leave [00:01:00] their annoying work tasks for Tuesday so that they can listen to us while they get them done.
I’m not sure that I like the association that you do annoying things while you listen to us, but I guess you’re welcome that it helps you get those annoying tasks done.
Alice: I’m glad you can do the tasks.
Ellen: Yeah, I hope we help.
Bex: Thank you also to Ginger who left a comment for us on, I believe Spotify, uh, giving us a little bit of a heads up about the legalities of axe throwing bars as they pertain in the UK, where they do serve alcohol in axe throwing bars, but you don’t get to drink until after you’ve finished throwing the axes.
Ellen: Yes, that is an excellent way to go about things.
Bex: I think that’s a very smart idea. So none of this Lena downing little mini, little, um, mini bottles of booze just before she’s about to launch into a room with, um, a baseball bat or possibly an [00:02:00] axe. I think that’s a much, much cleverer way. Uh, so thank you very much to, um, crow8butterfly and Ginger for leaving us those comments.
And remember, if you want to share your thoughts, give us your little tidbits. Um, please do. We’ve got a plethora of social media platforms you can reach out to us on, or you can do the old fashioned way and send us an email. So, this week, we’re going to be discussing episode 7, but before we do that, Alice, would you like to remind us what happened in episode 6?
Alice: Yeah, so last week on 9-1-1, Chimney was stalked by a crow while Maddie stalked a woman she believed to be abused by her husband, and Buck returned to the 118 without the warm welcome he was hoping for.
Ellen: Poor Buck. But it’s okay, because he made up with Eddie. Yes, . So that’s fine. They did. Um, so this episode is episode [00:03:00] seven of season three, which is titled “Athena Begins”.
So this one aired in on November the fourth, 2019. And the official summary says that a, a murder weapon from a case close to Athena in the early nineties resurfaces. Isn’t it, 1989, early nineties, like, anyway.
Alice: No, it the, it happens in 91.
Bex: She meets Emmett in 89, and then you’ve got the couple of years it takes her to get through the academy and become a probationary officer. By that time, it’s 91.
Ellen: Thank you. Thank you for explaining this episode to me. I clearly, I did not take all of that in at the time. Okay. Flashbacks to 1989… I should have just read the next line. Um, flashbacks to 1989 show how Athena joined the LAPD and became the police officer she is today.
Alice: Look, I only made a note because they mentioned the year I was born plus the year Taylor Swift was born.
So I was like, Oh, [00:04:00] Hey Queens.
Ellen: Obviously, uh, since we’re, this is a story about Athena and the LAPD, there’s going to be, um, cops in as a trigger warning, um, drug use, gun violence, abuse of power, as well as misogyny and racism. What a fantastic basket of goodies we have lined up for this episode. So this is going to like, I like the way they’ve done this with, um, the flashbacks.
It’s not like. I think it was “Hen Begins” where it was just all a flashback. The whole thing was just set in the past. Whereas this one has the, um, it’s more like the Bobby episodes where we flashback and forward.
Bex: And I do like the way that the flashbacks are incorporated into the present day story as well.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah. It’s, the story’s progressing both in the past and in the future. I mean, in the present. Yeah. Which is also the past because it was five years ago. But anyway. That’s timey whimey. [00:05:00]
Bex: Wibbly wobbly timey whimey.
Alice: Does anyone else feel like 2019 should have been last year? Like, how did we get to 2025? I don’t understand.
Ellen: Everything since the plague is a bit of a blur.
Alice: Literally.
Bex: Let’s start at the Grant Nash household where it is dinner and May has a boy over.
Ellen: Oh, yes. This is hilarious this scene.
Alice: He may as well be in the, like, police interrogation room.
Bex: You gotta feel sorry for him. I don’t think when May said, come over for dinner and meet my parents, that he realised that he would not only be meeting May’s mother, her stepfather, and her father.
All in one hit.
Ellen: It’s a big family meeting.
Alice: It’s all the parents.
Bex: Yes. And Harry. Who looks like, who’s having just the best time.
Ellen: Yeah. And Athena [00:06:00] is just grilling this kid.
Bex: Oh yeah.
Ellen: She, he doesn’t know whether to call her Mrs. Grant or Mrs. Nash. And um, Uh, Michael is also giving him heaps. I guess just, It’s kind of mean, but also really kind of funny in the same time.
Apparently this kid is Darius, his name is. Um, he’s taking a gap year and then hopefully he’s going to Stanford. So, they’re excited about that.
Bex: Athena’s a little bit skeptical about what you do on a gap year though. I do like, uh, May kind of chides her. You know, “Mum, be nice,” and Athena’s like, “What, am I not being nice?”
And Harry’s like, “No, you’re being like Grandma Bea,” which is her mother. And that’s cold, Harry. That’s very cold.
Very, very true, but cold.
Alice: Bobby pipes in that he didn’t even go to college, and Harry’s like, “Wait, that’s an option?” Where Athena and Michael [00:07:00] immediately and simultaneously reply no.
Ellen: So they’re just, you know, pressing about how, what kind of doctor he’s going, he’s planning on being once he is done with Stanford.
And but there’s the doorbell rings, there’s someone at the door and Bobby gets up to get it. And then May is like, “Right, we’re out of here.” Like, “Oh, we’ve got to go get going. There’s a movie. We’ve got to do the thing.” And Harry’s just like, “I thought the movie started at nine.”
Bex: And the way he says it, he knows damn well.
Alice: Oh, he knows exactly what he’s doing. But he’s being the little shit of a younger brother. Yes.
Bex: Funnily enough, May tries, I don’t, she doesn’t like just tell him to shut it. Or, you know, complain. She tries to explain to him her logic as to why they need to leave, which I would have understood if one of her parents had said, but wait, I thought the movie started at nine, but I [00:08:00] don’t know why she’s trying to explain herself to younger brother.
Anyway, maybe she’s explaining herself to her parents by, via Harry. Anyway. So she and Darius book it out the door.
Ellen: Mm hmm.
Bex: And Bobby returns back to the kitchen, but he’s got Captain Elaine behind him. I’m sure she’s got a surname, I just, I don’t know it. She’s Elaine. Yes, apparently Elaine had some unexpected news that she wanted to give to Athena in person.
And she says that they found the gun that killed Emmett. Which is absolutely news to everybody, including the audience, because none of us have any clue who Emmett is.
Alice: Yeah. My notes literally are like, who’s Emmett? And then Bobby to Michael goes, “Who’s Emmett?” And I’m like, okay, cool. Yep. Um, yep. Good.
Bex: But then I love that like Bobby asks it very quietly and Michael’s like, I have no idea. So Harry sticks his head around the door and goes, “Who’s Emmett?” [00:09:00] Like, thank you, Harry.
Ellen: Athena. Athena is just. She looks absolutely shocked. She’s just, you know, gobsmacked about this. And then, and, but she has like a flashback immediately, just, she sees Elaine as a younger woman, like standing in a street saying, I think, saying her name, like saying “Athena”.
Bex: Yeah, this is one, this is something that I think the episode does really well. So whenever something is happening in real time, we get a flashback of, something similar happening in the past. So while Captain Elaine is standing there saying, “Athena, Athena,” we get the flash to, I don’t know what rank she is, but she’s definitely not a captain.
Elaine back in the nineties saying, Athena. And we find out that Emmett is Emmett Washington and he was Athena’s fiance.
Alice: Bum, bum, bum.
Ellen: And then everyone kind [00:10:00] of, everyone turns to look at each other and go, What?
Bex: Shocked hamster meme.
Ellen: Like, both, both her husbands, uh, turn around and go, “Did you know about this?”
And, no. So, Athena, I don’t know, does she, is this the same day, like, does she go to the
Bex: I’m assuming it’s the next day, just considering how late it was. And it kind of looks daytime when she shows up at the LAPD.
Alice: At some point in time.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: It could be days later, uh, she’s sitting at a table with, um, Elaine looking at a file and they found the gun on someone who was 19 years old and much too young to be the killer.
And the gun’s gone through a lot of hands since 91. So they’ve also, I like the way this is written as well in that, um, we only get little bits of the story at a time. It’s very. showing rather than [00:11:00] telling.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Like there’s no info dump on what happens. Like. Yes. We just get bits and bits and pieces of information.
So that was cool. Yeah. Um, so they had, they, because they’ve found this gun now, they are reopening the case and they’re heading out to, to find out what’s happened. Um, but Athena, like you can see as she’s looking at the files, she’s like, the wheels are turning in her and she’s like, I am going to have to investigate this kind of thing.
Elaine apologizes for. bringing it up the other night. So maybe it was a couple of days ago.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: But Athena says, “I haven’t talked about Emmett in 20 years. There’s no way you could have known.”
Bex: That she’s kept it a secret from everybody in her life.
Ellen: Yeah. So we are going to flashback to 1989. We have some “Express Yourself”.
I do like, I do enjoy the mu, the music in this episode too. There’s a bit of 80s going on.
Bex: Yeah. Um, I do have a fun story about Express Yourself, which I’ll [00:12:00] tell the story, but I think, um, we might need to move it to the post credits. Um, so if you want to hear my fun story about the NWA song “Express Yourself”, go to the post-credits to listen to that.
Otherwise, um, yeah, we go to, I think it’s the UCLA campus where there is a, uh, career fairs going on.
Ellen: And they’re like, even the, um, the sort of hairstyles and clothing, they’ve done a great job of making it feel a bit like the eighties,
Bex: a bit retro?
Ellen: I think there’s a lot of denim around, a lot of teased, teased hairs.
Bex: This counts as vintage now.
Alice: Oh, don’t say that.
Ellen: Yeah, it did make me feel old.
Alice: 1989, um, our queen Taylor Swift was making her way into the world. Yeah. She was born right at the end of 1989, so probably wasn’t born if it’s a career fair. When did they have their [00:13:00] careers fair? Probably not December. I don’t know. And even if
Ellen: Well, it looked to be summery. It was so sunny
Bex: Yeah, but it’s L. A., so who knows? I mean, Athena’s wearing
Alice: It always looks summery.
Bex: Athena’s wearing a jumper, so it can’t have been too hot. Interestingly, the jumper that she’s wearing is a sorority jumper for the Delta Sigma Theta, which is a historically Black society, so she was a sorority girl. Um, and her other friend, who I don’t think we ever find out the name of, um, is very pointedly carrying a legal textbook with like the, the front of the textbook facing outwards so everyone can see that it’s a legal textbook.
Alice: Does it actually say legal textbook on it?
Bex: Oh, it’s like, it has a, the title of the textbook and it’s something about law and procedures. I did not pay
Ellen: And we did get it confirmed that they are studying law in a minute, when they
yes.
Start talking.
Bex: Yeah, because they are going through the career fairs, um, Athena says that it’s a waste of time for them to go through the fair because they already know what they’re [00:14:00] going to do, but uh, their friend Cheryl says that they are opening themselves up to the world of possibilities.
Um, and as they’re walking through, they walk past the LAPD stall, which is being manned by several members of the LAPD, including Emmett, who immediately jumps in front of them. Although I don’t think he’s so much interested in recruiting them as he is in getting, specifically, Athena’s phone number.
Alice: Just before Emmett jumps in front of them to, I love Athena’s comment, where she’s like, “What kind of person upends their whole life because someone handed them a flyer?”
And then Emmett’s just like, “Hello, would you like a flyer?”
Ellen: “Here, take a flyer. It’s got my number on it.” And they, they just sort of like brush him off. They’re like, yeah, we already know, we’re already on our career paths. But, um, he says lawyers and police are all part of the same system. We just get to the bad guys [00:15:00] first.
Alice: Yeah. “But the only people folks hate more than lawyers are cops.” Thanks, Cheryl.
Ellen: Yeah. Oh, and then he says “People only hate police until they,” does he say, okay, this is where the, I heard something different than the transcript. Transcript says “People only hate police until they need us.”
Bex: What did you hear?
Ellen: I heard “until they meet us,” because he was smiling and looking all charming and I’m like geez man, but “until they need us” makes a lot more sense.
Alice: But he’s just very charismatic.
Ellen: Yeah, like, wow.
Bex: I mean, if you had told me that Emmett had said they only hate police until they meet us, I would, um, I would 100 percent believe that was something that he said.
But no, they, until they meet us.
Ellen: He’s a bit of a smoothie. Yeah. Anyway, Athena seems very taken with him because, partially because he writes down his number and hands it to her. And says, “in case you decide to give us another look.” [00:16:00] And Athena’s friend is like, “I wouldn’t mind giving him another look.” Ooh.
Alice: Oh, she’s given a name. Gabby.
Bex: Ah. She’s given a name in the transcript. She’s not, once again, she’s not actually given a name in the episode. And I only count the names if somebody actually name drops them in the episode. So she’s still nameless as far as I’m concerned.
Alice: But yeah, basically Emmett writes his number on the back of a pamphlet for the LAPD and hands it to Athena, who then
Ellen: sticks it on her fridge,
Alice: upends her whole life.
Bex: Um, And we know that she sticks it to her fridge because we then cut to, um, Athena and Beatrice at Athena’s, I want to say, dorm room? Apartment? I’m not entirely sure where she’s living at this point.
Ellen: I mean, it doesn’t look like a dorm room, like a dorm situation, it looks like.
Bex: Looks like a little, like, apartment.
Yeah. So [00:17:00] apparently Beatrice has come up to, from Florida to visit. Mr. Carter, whose name I cannot remember, has gone full, like, weaponized incompetence. Like, “Where’s that soap you put in the dishwasher? Which dry cleaners has got my blue suit?” Like, sir?
Ellen: Uh, he, apparently, uh, Athena’s dad let, um, Bea come on her own, which, which she’s absolutely shocked about.
She’s like, “He knew better than to try to stop me.” But they, they, she also says that she’s trying to make him move out to LA so that they can see Athena more often. And Athena’s like, you’re not going to get him to do that.
Bex: Beatrice says he’ll move if there’s grandbabies.
Ellen: Ugh, yeah.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Which Athena is not impressed about, she’s like, “nah, I have to finish law school, I have to get a job, then I’ll find a good man, I will give you grandbabies. You do not get to shuffle the order because you’re [00:18:00] bored in Florida.”
Bex: So they’re having dinner at this point, Athena gets up to clear the plates and then we see her walk into the kitchen and we see the um, The LAPD, uh, brochure stuck to the fridge. Um, and then Beatrice decides that this is the perfect time to segue into news from back home.
Um, specifically that Mrs. Kingston passed away. And in case you have forgotten, Mrs. Kingston, the Kingstons were the family of the little girl that went missing when Athena was a child. The unsolved case that Originally was the reason that Athena went into policing, or so we were told, until this episode came along.
Ellen: Oh, yeah. Well, that was when she was still keeping this a secret, I guess.
Bex: Yeah, I,
Alice: yeah, I have, I have things, like, thoughts about this episode, but I’ll, I’ll leave them to the end.
Bex: We’ll discuss it at the end?
Alice: Yeah. [00:19:00]
Bex: Yeah, because I’ve got thoughts too. Okay. Funnily enough, surprisingly in a shock move that nobody saw coming at all, I have thoughts.
Alice: Bex has thoughts.
Ellen: We should rename this podcast.
Bex: Oh no,
Alice: we need a segment like, um, like SPN Then And Now do with like Rich’s dumb notes. We, I mean Rob’s dumb notes. We need like little jingles.
Ellen: I didn’t know they did that, it’s funny.
Bex: I’m sorry. Look, if I, honestly, if I am talking too much, please tell me to shut up.
Ellen: No! No, no, no. That’s perfect. We love it. We love the thoughts.
Alice: We love Bex’s dumb thoughts.
Ellen: No, they’re not dumb at all. That’s the point.
All right, where are we? Oh, Mrs. Kingston,
Bex: yes. Mrs. Kingston, um, Beatrice says that she died of cancer, but she thinks that she died of heartbreak because she never got over losing Tanya. [00:20:00]
Ellen: They never found out what happened.
Bex: They do, Beatrice says that Mrs. Kingston went to the police station every month begging for help, looking for answers, maybe she has them now.
And they do have Athena cut back to looking at the LAPD brochure. So, I don’t know, maybe that’s how they get around the difference in the storylines, but we can, like, we’ll discuss that a little bit more at the end. Um, instead, right now we’re going to cut to the Brolly Hut, which was a burger joint in, I think it’s down in Crenshaw, in South LA, where, um, Emmett and Athena are either on a recruitment drive or a date, not entirely sure which.
Alice: Bit of both. Yeah. A little from column A, a little from column B. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, well, Emmett’s certainly telling her all about it. Yes. “The department’s goal is 20 percent [00:21:00] female officers and we’re about halfway there.” That’s not good.
Alice: Whoa, we’re halfway there.
Ellen: And Athena’s like, “10%? I’ll, I’ll be outnumbered 9 to 1?” Hopefully it’s a little better than 10 percent these days, but yes.
Bex: Not under Trump’s administration because they wouldn’t have that 20 percent quota anymore because you’d be hiring for merit, not for DEI reasons.
Ellen: That’s right. Anyway. Anyway, let’s leave the real world out of this because, oh my god, how depressing.
Um, I mean, this is not much better this episode.
Bex: This episode is sad enough as it is. We don’t need to bring in current politics. But, um, yes, Emmett, uh, very smoothly says that he would imagine that Athena would stick out in any crowd regardless of the demographic makeup.
Ellen: Oh, what a smoothie.
Bex: Which then Athena calls him on and goes, “Well, now I’m starting to wonder exactly what it is you’re trying to recruit me for.”
They do, they have a little bit of back and forth and it shares his origin story as to [00:22:00] why he joined, um, the LAPD, which basically boiled down to, he had a pair of narcotics detectives came to his class in sixth grade to show them crime scene photos as a don’t do drugs deterrent.
And Emmett took umbrage with the way that the police officers talked about, um, what he’s called “our world, our community.” It kind of opened his eyes to how broken the system was and he knew he had to do something to make it better. So that’s why he became a police officer. So Athena says in voiceover, “I quit law school six weeks later.”
And we cut, and we’re still at the Brolly Hut, but it’s now 2019, and Athena is getting burgers with Hen.
Ellen: Yeah, I had to, like, rewind this and see, and work, try and work out if it was actually the same place though, because it looks exactly the same, but yeah. It still [00:23:00] exists. Yeah. That’s amazing. It’s like 30 odd years. 35 years or something.
Bex: Um, so Hen, Athena has told Hen all about Emmett, and Hen is absolutely amazed because she had no idea.
Alice: Yeah, Athena told nobody about Emmett.
Ellen: Yeah, she said she locked it all up in a box, and that was the only way she could move forward, Hen says, “How does it feel now that Pandora’s cracked open that box?”
And Athena says, “It feels like I’m the one who’s cracked open.” So now, now that she, it’s sort of all come out, she’s like, it’s all coming, like she’s been triggered basically. It’s all come flooded back and she is not coping well with it.
Bex: She’s not ready to talk to anybody else, so she is hiding with Hen.
Ellen: Yeah. But yeah, Hen’s sort of asking about the gun and whether it can be tracked. [00:24:00] And Athena’s like, “Well, I can’t really do anything technically. I’m just supposed to let the detectives do their jobs,” and Hen, uh, Hen, she’s like such an enabler, here. She’s like, “You’ve never been one to be hung up on a technicality.”
So then Athena goes into Snoop mode. Um, as, as always, it’s going to take matters into her own hands. But in this case, she’s got good reasons to want to be involved.
Although she’s a little too close to the subject material.
Bex: It doesn’t really reflect the rest of the LAPD in a very good light. I mean, she’s obviously, she must think that Romero and the others are absolute idiots.
And that, you know, they couldn’t detect their way out of a paper bag if she has to, like, roll up her sleeves and storm in and, like, Fine, I’ll do it myself. Yeah.
Alice: Like, Athena isn’t a detective, is she?
Bex: No, she’s sergeant. She’s, uh, she’s patrol. [00:25:00] Detective, um, which apparently I’ve learned from my binge watching of The Rookie, that’s a separate, you have to take an exam.
And then you get moved into a separate division. So she hasn’t taken that. She’s taken her sergeant’s exam, so she’s now a sergeant, but she has to then take another exam if she wants to become a detective.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: And finally, with the Rookie, um, the actor that plays Romero is also a detective in The Rookie.
And The Rookie is set in LAPD. Um, so, but he’s an absolute arse of a detective in LAPD in The Rookie. Like a completely different character.
It’s just, it always makes me laugh whenever he would come up because, you know, it’s either, If all of the TV shows are in the same universe, so you know if Supernatural exists in 9-1-1, then you would also think that, um, Athena exists in the same universe as the Rookie. So you’ve got like two Romeros who are like evil twins or something, just separated birth, just both happen to end up at LAPD and both happen [00:26:00] to end up detectives.
It’s just, it’s just funny.
Ellen: Ah, the multiverse.
Bex: Yes!
Ellen: Ah. So, apparently Romero is the one working the case at the moment.
Bex: Which I don’t think he should be allowed to either, because I, if, Athena’s too close…
Alice: Apparently very close to it.
Ellen: Yeah, he says Emmett was his partner.
Bex: Yeah, so I would have thought that he should possibly be, you know, stepped away as well, because he’s also too close.
Alice: Yeah, so apparently Emmett was his partner, and we also find out later that Emmett was his best friend. And it’s like, yeah, Romero, you can work this case, I’m sure this is fine.
Ellen: Yeah, no conflicts of interest at all.
Bex: I guess it’s because they couldn’t hire another actor and quickly retcon a new character in.
They’re like, we’ve already got one guy on the books as a detective, let’s just use him.
Alice: Yeah, but they could have, like, why make Emmett his partner?
Ellen: Yeah, he could have just been someone.
Alice: He could have just known him, like.
Bex: Because then we don’t get
Alice: Or not even known him, [00:27:00] like
Bex: But then we don’t get the fun flashback of young Romero.
Alice: Yeah, true.
Bex: Anyway, so Athena has come in and she has bought Romero coffee, which looks like it’s like LAPD coffee.
Alice: Yeah, literally she just like gets a styrofoam cup, fills it out in the hallway and comes in I would have thought if you’re trying
Bex: to like butter him up, you would have gone to like Starbucks or something and bought a decent cup of coffee for him.
Um, but I guess it doesn’t really matter cause the coffee is just a ruse.
Alice: Romero is a terrible detective, mind you.
Bex: He gets there in the end.
Alice: Eventually he does work it out.
Bex: He figures out in the end. But, um,
Ellen: but it’s not his fault. He’s a terrible detective for plot reasons.
Alice: Yeah. Um,
Ellen: He’s a victim of the plot.
Alice: It just reminds me of Brooklyn Nine One One now, It’s like, “This is my partner, terrible detective.”
Ellen: I really need to watch that show.
Alice: It’s so good.
Bex: So the coffee is a diversion. Athena has purposefully made it wrong, [00:28:00] and rather than going to fix it for him, Romero goes up to get the sugar to put in his coffee that Athena has conveniently forgotten. And as soon as he walks out of the bullpen to fetch said sugar, Athena goes full into snoop mode.
Ellen: Oh my god, there are other people in that room.
Bex: Yes!
Ellen: And she just looks around like, not suspicious. This, don’t, don’t look at me. I’m not doing anything over here that’s suspicious. And then she goes and just
Bex: she immediately dives into Romero’s computer, uses his access to access the records for the 19 year old who found the gun, and then prints it all out, shoves it all in a handbag, and then when Romero comes back with coffee that is now actually drinkable, as far as LAPD coffee is drinkable, which is, you know, probably not very drinkable to begin with, she’s like, “oh my god, will you look at the time, I’ve got to go pick up the kids. See you later, [00:29:00] Rick!”
Alice: Yeah. Nice to see you for 30 seconds. Bye.
Bex: But they do do this thing where she starts to walk away and Romero goes, “Wait, hey, Athena, wait.” And the show sets it up to make you think that Athena’s been busted. She like freezes and slowly turns around, there’s really dramatic music and all Romero says is, “I promise you we’re going to find him.”
Alice: Yeah, we’ll get him. Like thumbs up and winks.
Bex: Like who were they fooling? Did, did anybody fall for that?
Ellen: But she, she agrees with him, like, he says, does he say, I promise you, I’m gonna, we’re gonna find him.
Bex: We’re gonna find him. And like, yes. we will. We will. And that’s the royal we here, I’m not talking about you, I’m talking about me.
Alice: Yeah, literally. She’s like, yeah, we will, and he’s like, why’d you do quotations, and she’s like, I [00:30:00] don’t know.
Ellen: All right. So. Young Athena. By the way, this actress is absolutely gorgeous and she does a fantastic job of playing, like, a young Athena.
Alice: Yeah, apparently, um, apparently Angela Bassett helped cast her.
Ellen: Ah.
Bex: Oh, that’s interesting.
Ellen: I mean, she’s got a lot of the mannerisms down. She’s done, done a great job of getting that character.
Bex: I do love it when they have actors that are cast as younger versions of an adult actor and they actually take the time to watch that actor’s previous work so they can try and, um, portray them properly or portray them accurately.
Ellen: Yeah. So, young Athena, she is now a rookie. She’s got into the LAPD and she’s getting, like, they’ve done their training, I think. Part of their training.
Bex: Yeah, so she’s, she would have [00:31:00] graduated from the academy and she’s now a, Watching The Rookie was a terrible TV show, 100 percent do not recommend, but I’ve got all this knowledge about LAPD now.
It’s great. So she’s now a P1, which is a probationary officer, and she’s been assigned to a, um, I think it’s somewhere in South Central, she’s a station. This is her, her first year out of the academy actually working as a police officer.
Ellen: Mm hmm.
Bex: And fun fact, not so fun probably, um, but. She’s wearing long sleeves as her uniform, which was a, a hazing ritual that training officers or higher ranked officers used to do to probationary officers, to the rookies.
So they’d make them wear their long sleeve uniforms, even in the middle of like L. A. ‘s hottest summer, just because they could. With the idea being that once you passed your [00:32:00] first year and you, you know, actually were going to make it as a cop, you could then wear the short sleeves and be a little bit more comfortable out on patrol.
Ellen: So the, the boss says that Carter is going to be assigned to McCluskey and he’s like an older kind of white guy. He looks sort of rolls his eyes and like, Oh, great.
Bex: Yeah. He doesn’t look too thrilled with it. To the point that when Athena goes over and introduces herself to him, he complains that he keeps getting shouldered with schooling you people.
And Athena kind of gives him a look and he’s like, oh, no, no, no, that’s, that’s not what I mean. It’s she’s, he’s not talking about the fact that she’s Black. He’s talking about the fact that she’s a woman, because he has gone through, she is his sixth female rookie, and the other five have all, you know, got left the force to have kids.
So he has, what do you call it? Abandonment issues. I [00:33:00] mean, it’s a, it’s a nice, it’s a nicer version of the same speech that Gerrard gives when Hen was going to become a poli going to become a paramedic. Like when Gerrard was saying
Ellen: Marginally nicer.
Bex: Marginally nicer. But it’s the same idea. It’s the why bother putting, why bother spending the money putting, um, women through these courses, spending the money on them.
Um, if they’re not going to actually do the work. So it’s, it’s not pointing McCluskey in the best light at the moment.
Alice: No. I do want to mention the, like the watch commander who’s giving the assignments.
Bex: Oh, he’s so funny.
Alice: He’s so funny. He’s like, don’t get dead and don’t dent my cars. Like that’s his whole thing for the day.
Um, and then when we go to.
Bex: The first thing Athena does?
Alice: Literally the first thing Athena does is gets a suspect to run [00:34:00] straight into the squad car that McCluskey’s driving.
Bex: I love that because my notes have got the, the, the suspect runs into the car and I’ve got, gee, I hope he didn’t dent the car. The very next scene is the watch commander going, um, “What the hell did I say about my cars vis a vis dents, Carter?”
Ellen: Yeah. But before that, you forgot about the needle drop because we had.
Bex: Oh, no, I was ignoring it because it was stupid.
Ellen: It was stupid, but it was like, the most dramatic thing that I’ve
Bex: It was the most dramatic thing, but it was stupid because it didn’t make sense.
Ellen: No, it didn’t make sense.
Bex: Okay, alright, go on.
Ellen: He’s saying that she has abandonment issues, and then she’s just putting him in his place, going, “Look I’m serious about this job. You can teach me what, you know, you should treat me the way you would any other officer.” And then she basically does this hair flick and just walks off in slow motion. And then there’s like, “Ladies [00:35:00] First” starts playing and it’s like
Bex: That is not the mic drop moment, Athena.
Like that is not the, “You should treat me like you would treat any other officer. Athena out.”
Ellen: Yes. I was just watching it go. Okay. That was dramatic.
Bex: It’s dramatic on the surface, but when you actually look down into the depths, there are no depths.
Ellen: It looked cool though.
Bex: It looked so cool. Um, like the music is amazing.
Alice: I guess back in the nineties, like the early nineties, she’s like, Hey, maybe don’t treat me like a piece of shit just cause I’m a woman. And he’s like, Oh wow. That’s the first woman who’s ever screwed up to me.
Ellen: Yeah, maybe.
Bex: I don’t know. I suspect they blew their music budget on this episode though, because they’ve got such good music in this one.
Ellen: Yeah, but it’s all like 30, 40 years old, so, you know.
Bex: It’s still good. [00:36:00] I defy you that like when they had the Emmett and Athena scene at the Brolly hut, they had Busta Move playing. I defy that you are not dancing in your seat when you, when you Because that’s such a bop.
Ellen: It is, it’s great music. It’s just um, the the rights are all kind of done.
Bex: It’s 70 years. We’re not, we’re not up to 70 yet. This is only in the 80s and 90s.
Ellen: Some days, I wonder.
Alice: My back begs to differ.
Ellen: Yeah, my knees, my knees say otherwise. Anyway, um, where are we?
Alice: So yes, Athena, Athena dents the car immediately.
Ellen: And gets in trouble for it. And then Emmett shows up at Athena’s apartment later and he is like, “How was the first day?” And she doesn’t even say anything. She just grabs the bottle of wine off him.
Alice: Yeah. He’s got a bottle of wine and a bouquet of flowers and she doesn’t even pay any attention to the flowers, just grabs the bottle of wine. And he’s like, [00:37:00] Oh,
Ellen: okay. One of those days.
Bex: Yes. We get, um, more footage of Athena being a badass and, you know, being able to, um, hold her own. We get a little note from the watch commander saying that the LAPD is on track for the fewest number of officer involved shootings since 1981.
So let’s try not to shoot anyone until the nineties, which must be like the tail end of Yeah. Um, we get Athena meeting Mrs. Washington for the first time. Looks like they’re all going to church together.
Alice: Mrs. Washington’s like, “Hope you brought protection” and Athena’s like, “Excuse what?”
Bex: But see, I wonder did Athena’s mind go to her gun or did she go to something else?
Because my brain immediately went to, is Athena, did, did you mean like her sidearm? I don’t know if you’re supposed to be armed when you go to church.
Ellen: Do you mean, Your angel blade? [00:38:00] That’s where my mind went.
Alice: He had his angel blade.
But no, she meant from the girls at church. Because when they see Athena with her boy.
Bex: Yep. Outsider coming in and poaching one of their men.
Alice: Then we go to New Year’s Eve, so clearly it was the very tail end of 89.
Bex: It’s like 11. 59 and like 30 seconds, because they’re all standing around the bullpen counting down to midnight as McCluskey and Athena walk in with a perp who’s got like a party hat on.
Alice: Yeah, um, so they like throw him in the holding cell and then they’re like, “Okay, come on, after midnight’s when the real crazies come out, I don’t want to miss it.” And Athena goes, “You’re just excited you get to shoot people again.”
Bex: Yeah, exactly. Because it’s now the 90s.
Ellen: You wouldn’t be able to say that in this day and age, would you?[00:39:00]
Bex: I think it’s a joke. But it does show the interaction between Athena and McCluskey. They do look like they’re genuinely fond of each other and they are working really well together, despite his initial misgivings. So then we’ve got a random scene where Athena and McCluskey have joined with a bunch of other officers Is it a traffic accident?
Is it some kind of I was looking at it on a small screen, I didn’t exactly catch what was happening, but a lot of people are being arrested and there are a lot of vehicles on the scene.
Alice: I think it’s drugs.
Ellen: Yeah, I imagine they’re just busting a bunch of people because there’s a like a line up of guys who are in handcuffs, right?
Bex: Yeah, there’s like six guys sitting on the curb in handcuffs and Athena throws another one onto the onto the curb. Yeah. Who tells her, who calls her a bitch and tells her to watch the cuffs. And she tells him to exercise your right to be silent before I force it upon [00:40:00] you.
But as she’s doing that, Emmett calls her over and objects to her, sort of playfully objects to her being there because where she and McCluskey are, there’s not her sector. Athena shoots back that McCluskey doesn’t believe in being confined to sectors. They just go wherever the work is.
Ellen: Which sounds familiar.
Bex: Yeah, I wonder where Athena learned that from. Yes. And then I think the, pretty much like the one reason that we get this scene is that while Athena and Emmett are flirting but trying to not look like they’re flirting because I think they’re still hiding their relationship, um, Romero calls over to Emmett, that he’s taking their wounded friend to Mercy West, and I swear to God, it sounded like the original Romero.
It’s like they got present day Romero to do the voiceover, but then when you cut, it’s a younger guy. [00:41:00] So that’s, we kind of, we get the, um, the showing that Romero and Emmett were working together.
Alice: But Emmett asks Athena before he leaves if she’s working on Sunday. And she says, she’s off. Um, why? And Emmett says, “You’ll see.”
And so then we cut to Sunday.
Ellen: Yeah, where they were supposed to be going out, but instead they got busy.
Bex: Yeah, that was the implication I got too.
Ellen: But, because they said they were going to be late when they were getting dressed again.
Bex: But then I questioned it because the bed behind them looked made. So unless they were not getting busy in the bedroom?
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: We know Athena’s a bit of a freak, let’s be real.
Ellen: Maybe they, uh, I don’t want to go too far down that rabbit hole.
Bex: Yeah, I know, yeah, it’s, it’s strange because they’re, they’re saying that they’re going to be late and [00:42:00] they’re quite clearly getting dressed. But maybe just, we’ve just got such gutter minds that our brains immediately have gone to, well, they must have been fucking before they went.
And that’s why they’re going to be late, where everybody else in the general audience is like, oh no, they must have just got held up doing something else. Maybe they were doing a puzzle. or something.
Alice: Yeah, they were grocery shopping.
Bex: But Athena
Alice: Playing cards?
Bex: It was Sunday, maybe they were at church.
Ellen: Scrabble.
Bex: Maybe, I don’t know. Um, but Athena counters the, we could be, we could rush and be late for the dinner, or we could just stay in and order pizza and, you know, have more sex. Which Emmett seems quite happy with that arrangement.
Ellen: He’s down. Yeah.
Bex: So Athena, they both go to look, they’re looking for the phone so they can call the restaurant and cancel the reservation, I guess.
And Athena looks under the pillows of the made bed.
Alice: I think that they’re finding the phone so that they can call and order pizza. Because remember that used to be a thing, you had to call for, like, to order things?
Ellen: The beginning of the 90s [00:43:00] you did, yeah.
Bex: Yeah. Okay, maybe it’s to call to order pizza. I assumed it was to cancel the reservation so they didn’t get hit with the, um, because you sometimes pay, you know, for reservations.
Regardless of the why, they’re looking for the phone, and Athena does not find it under the pillows of the made bed, but she does find it under a pile of clothes in the middle of the maid bed, which is hence why I’m wondering where they were having sex if they weren’t having sex on the bed. Um, the phone is there along with a ring box, which she opens to reveal a diamond ring.
Ellen: She looks a bit shaky, but
Bex: Emmett kind of appears back in the doorway and says like, you know, he had a whole speech planned and he was going to do it over dinner when they brought out the tiramisu. And Athena’s reaction is just, “I love tiramisu.”
Ellen: And Emmett goes, I know, [00:44:00] it’s so romantic.
Bex: Honestly, the bar is so far on the floor that the fact that he knows that she likes tiramisu is an amazing thing.
So he asks her to marry him, and she says yes. And they all live happily ever after.
Alice: For the next 30 seconds.
Bex: Except then we cut to her current husband coming home with pizza. It took a long time for that pizza to get there. So long that she went through two husbands.
Ellen: Oh my gosh.
Bex: Um, So, Bobby comes home, he’s got pizza, they obviously didn’t get that delivered, um, and he walks in on Romero and Athena fighting, because Romero has finally figured out that he was duped.
Ellen: Yeah, you played me.
Alice: Um, yeah, Athena says that she wanted to keep him out of it.
Ellen: How did he find out?
Alice: Because he’s a detective.
Ellen: It was probably someone [00:45:00] else in the room who said, “oh, by the way. Athena jumped on your computer while you were out of the room.”
Alice: You know Athena was totally like just on your computer while you were getting sugar.
Bex: I have a feeling they also track access to records. Maybe somebody
Ellen: Yeah, but he was on the case.
Bex: Was he?
Alice: Yeah, because he was logged in, I’m pretty sure.
Bex: No, his computer was logged in, but was he so she could access
Ellen: He’s got the file. He’s about to give her everything they have.
Bex: Who knows, nobody has actually thought about this, so we’re not going to think about this.
Ellen: Okay, details, too many details, okay.
Bex: For the drama, he found out for the drama.
Alice: Um, Athena tells him to fuck off, basically.
Bex: But nicely.
Alice: She says he can’t be a part of it because she doesn’t know what’s going to happen, but there’s a pretty good chance that she’s going to be out of a job when it’s done, and she doesn’t want to take him down with her.
And although Romero’s willing to take that risk, Athena’s not, so Romero’s just like, yeah, [00:46:00] okay, cool, here’s the file. You
Bex: Which I would say would make him liable to, you know.
Ellen: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t know why he, like, for the drama, he rolls over quite easily here. I feel like this would be much more of a fight.
Bex: And it’s not even like, I’m just, oops, I’ve dropped this file here. I’ll just walk away and not pick it up. He literally hands it to her. There’s no plausible deniability there. And Bobby is standing right there. Like, help. Like, shows her the highlighted sections. Yes, on page five, you will see that I’ve highlighted some interesting ATM withdrawals.
I suggest you start there.
Alice: Page seven, I’ve put an arrow and put, Athena, read this.
Ellen: And then he says, and then he sort of turns around and goes, “Hey, Bobby,” not, not like surprised that Bobby’s there at all.
Alice: What up, Bobby?
Ellen: And then Bobby proceeds to get mad with her.
Bex: Kind of, yeah, as mad [00:47:00] as Bobby can get. Although, having said that, he did just slam some guy up against the side of a duck factory, so, you know, he can get violent when he wants to, so.
He’s not gonna get violent with Athena, though. He’s just gonna be, I’m not mad, I’m disappointed.
Ellen: I just, I love her reaction where, he’s like, “This man’s gotten away with murder for 30 years. You think he’s going to be happy to see you show up on his doorstep?” And she’s like, “I don’t much care about his feelings.”
Bex: But she’s very adamant that, um, the guy who killed Emmett needs to pay for what he’s done. And she needs to make sure that it happens. And it has to be her that makes sure it happens because she has been carrying an entire luggage. Department’s worth of, um, guilt, because she says that she is the reason that Emma was killed.
Ellen: Yeah, I’m the reason [00:48:00] he’s dead.
Bex: But we’re not going to get an explanation about that, yet. Um, instead, we’re going to cut to Bobby telling her ex husband this entire story. Gossiping as he does. Bobby Nash is such a gossip!
Ellen: While Michael is off his face, like, really.
Alice: So, while, um, Romero’s there, like, Athena’s sitting out on the, like, back patio.
But she’s got two drinks with her. I think Michael was there somewhere? No, like, I was like, oh, so, like, maybe she made a drink for Romero. And he just like, like she, he walked in all mad and she’s like, here, I made you a drink. And then I was like, okay, like clearly not. So maybe she made it for Bobby, but Bobby doesn’t drink.
So I’m like, who’s, what? And then when he gets home, she just like gets rid of both the drinks, like just tips them down the sink. And I’m like, what the fuck is she doing? Did she need two drinks? I’m so confused. It’s a two, it’s a
Bex: two bottle day.
Ellen: Maybe she made two drinks for [00:49:00] herself. I don’t know.
Bex: Who knows.
As well as time being all timey wimey, the set designer is having fun and games with props. How many wine glasses are set out? Or maybe they like filmed all of this stuff in the same day and they just left the glasses. Like maybe they shot Michael and Bobby first and then the glasses are still on the table when they shot Athena and Romero.
Yeah, so they’re just like, Athena just interact with these glasses. And nobody is kind of tweaked to the fact that that’s from the previous scene and they should have been cleared.
Alice: Or Romero comes over and she’s like, “Hey, let me make you a drink.” And he’s just like, “You accessed the files.” And she’s like, “Yeah, so do you want one shot or two?”
Bex: Who knows? Once again, we are putting the focus on things that 100 percent should not have focus put on them because it’s like pulling back the curtain, revealing the man behind there.
Ellen: Yes. Well, in any case, Michael has been, also been having a two bottle day, or at least a one bottle day.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: He’s in his [00:50:00] cups. Um.
Bex: Completely.
Ellen: And, He’s saying that, like, “She, she kept a secret from both of us, and we told her everything. We, we told her our secrets, and she told us nothing.” I’m like, hang on, hang on, Michael. This is like
Alice: Michael did not tell her his secrets.
Ellen: Just because you told her your secret doesn’t mean she has to tell you all of hers.
Alice: But also, like, Michael’s like Um, because Bobby says that his hands aren’t clean and he’s hid things from a lot of people. And Michael’s like, “Which she knew before she even walked down the aisle. Look, we told her our secrets, we spilled our guts, man.” You didn’t tell her for like 20 years! Like, don’t, don’t act like you, like, told her everything the day you met, Michael.
Bex: But also, Emmett really doesn’t have anything to do with either of them. Michael’s secret very much affected, um, Athena. Bobby’s secret didn’t really affect [00:51:00] Athena until he got called out and then he got fired, which point it did start to affect her, but nothing about Emmett, prior to this situation affected them.
Ellen: It’s not important for them to know it. No. Really. No. So. Really. Yeah, I think, I think Michael’s been a bit harsh in this case.
Alice: I mean, Michael was the one that stormed around after he didn’t get an invite to their wedding.
Bex: Michael is a dramatic little bitch. Even more so when he’s drunk.
Ellen: Apparently so.
Bex: And apparently everybody knows this because while he pours himself another glass of wine, uh, May comes in and informs the two men that she’s moved her things into Harry’s room, at which point I’ve gone, why the fuck did you do that?
Why can’t your dad sleep on the couch?
Alice: Yeah, I don’t understand. Where’s Harry gonna sleep?
Bex: Harry’s sleeping in Harry’s room. May is bunking in his room so that Michael can sleep in May’s room.
Alice: But yeah, they have a [00:52:00] couch.
Bex: Yeah, exactly. Why can’t Michael sleep on the couch?
Ellen: He’s like “A guest in my own damn house. I built this patio.” I’m like, Oh my God, why are you here, Michael?
Alice: Why are you part of this episode?
Bex: Because he’s family.
Ellen: It’s fine. He can be part of it. It’s fine. It’s just that, you know, you don’t live there anymore.
Um, he says, May says that, uh, asks whether they’ve heard from Athena, and they haven’t, and she, and she says, “I could text her, say I’m at the hospital or something, and she’d come running,” and Bobby goes, “yeah, then she’d kill us all,” because, but she’d still come. And then, and then Bobby
Alice: She’d still come, because she’s my mum.
Ellen: She’s my mum. And then Bobby gets a light bulb above his head, and he’s going to bring in reinforcements. But we don’t get to find out who that is,
Bex: [00:53:00] No, we’re going to go and follow Athena while she does some, um, old school detecting. And this is, this is the sequence that I really like the way they’ve done this, where they cut the past into the present.
So we get, um, Athena sitting in her car in present day, spliced in with Athena sitting in a patrol car with McCluskey, while McCluskey teaches her about policing 101, which is following the money. So first step is to a pawn shop where the 19 year old bought the gun from.
Ellen: Yeah, this is an interesting scene because she’s following where, where the gun has been for all this time.
So, you know, she finds someone who’s, uh, you know, a couple came in who said they found it in an attic and then [00:54:00] she finds the girlfriend of the guy who pawned it. And then, you know, it, it leads her on this chase for, you know, for a while.
Bex: But it’s interesting. It’s, I mean, it, it takes a long time, but the way they kind of cut it, it’s, it’s interesting her, um, the progress that she makes.
Ellen: Yeah. it’s cut with the past as well where McCluskey is teaching her about how to You know, how to, how to catch crooks, basically.
Bex: Eventually, um, Athena traces the gun through to a guy named Maurizio, who found the gun in a motel. He was prepping one of the rooms. I don’t know what he was prepping it for, but he was taking a cover off one of the vents in the rooms, and he found the gun.
Alice: Painting. He’s painting it.
Bex: Thank you. Um, he found the gun in the vent, behind the vent cover, and he just took it. And [00:55:00] Athena wants to know which hotel it was, hoping that they would have records of like, who rented that room so that she could continue her leads. But Maurizio tells her that it was the Crestview on Crenshaw, which was torn down ten years ago.
So she’s, she’s reached a dead end.
Ellen: I’m sure that happens all the time with detective ing.
Bex: See, and I
Ellen: Which is totally a word.
Bex: Romero could have got there. Athena did not need to do all that. Romero would have got there, and if he couldn’t have got there, then he had no business being a detective.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: I know, this is Athena’s story, not Romero’s story.
Ellen: So, she goes home, and, uh, walks in saying, “Oh, something smells good.” But, Bobby and the kids, and Michael, are there, but, You know who else is there? Her mum. And she said, she sort of goes, “Mama?” And then Beatrice says, “I heard your life blew up [00:56:00] again.”
It’s like, oh, thanks Mum. Hi.
Bex: Nice to see you too.
Ellen: How are you? Lovely to see you.
Bex: So after dinner we get a, a little scene with Beatrice and Athena where Beatrice tells Athena not to be too hard on Bobby for calling in the reinforcements. And I think this is, she likes Bobby after this. Whatever she thought about him before, she’s kind of, I think he’s now her favorite because he admitted that he needed her help.
Ellen: Yeah, any hope she had of keeping any of this a secret has gone out the window because apparently Bobby’s just going to tell everybody.
Bex: Beatrice says that she has never spoken about Emmett because she thought that by not talking about it, it would let Athena heal, but she never healed from this. And Athena says that she thought that if she could find the man who killed Emmett, Emmett would finally be at peace.
And Beatrice says that he has been at [00:57:00] peace, you’re the one who’s not at peace. So we get the reinforced again, Athena’s belief that he was there, he died because of her. She looks back at her family in the kitchen and says that she doesn’t know even how to begin to tell them about Emmett. And while Beatrice has been sitting out on the patio, she’s got one of those old fashioned paper envelopes full of printed photos.
Ellen: Wow. Ancient relics.
Bex: She hands the packet over to Athena and says, maybe you can start here.
Alice: I like how you say old fashioned because my first, like, full time job was in a photo lab.
Bex: Oh, really? Yeah, but when was the last time you printed? Like you, last time you sent stuff to a photo lab? Uh.
Ellen: I’ve got stuff printed at Big W before.
Alice: Yeah, Christmas the year before last.
Ellen: Like recently.[00:58:00]
Alice: I used to print a lot because, obviously, I worked in a photo lab, so.
Bex: Anyway, so, yes, old fashioned. Um, so they tend
Ellen: Back to a time when all photos had to be printed like this after they were developed.
Alice: Right.
Ellen: The film was developed.
Bex: Yeah, oh my god, they were film cameras, weren’t they? Yep. Uh, so we cut to Athena passing around the photos to Harry and May and I guess Bobby and Michael as well. They’re all sitting in the living room looking at the photos. And Beatrice is in fine form because they’re looking at, um, the photos of Emmett and Beatrice says that he was so handsome, he was the son that she always wanted. And cut to Bobby and Michael just looking at each other, who are the sons that she actually got.
Like, what the fuck are we, chopped liver? Yeah. Fun fact.
Ellen: Oh, it’s a very touching scene though. Sorry, go on.
Bex: No, I was just [00:59:00] gonna say, um, the actress who plays Beatrice is only 12 years older than Athena, the Angela Bassett. Wow. She’s supposed to be
Alice: It’s a very young mother.
Bex: Yeah, apparently.
Alice: It’s like how on Supernatural, um, JDM is only like eight years or something older than Jensen.
Ellen: Yeah, five years. Yeah.
Bex: So they’re looking at the photos, um, Harry puts his foot in his mouth slightly and says that he could have had a completely different dad. Which
Alice: Athena shuts this down very fast.
Bex: I mean, I kind of understand what he means, but it’s not, no, there is in no way, he would not, he, Harry, as he exists, is the product of Athena and Michael, and he would not exist if it weren’t for Athena and Michael.
Alice: Like, you can sort of see Michael, like, his little heart break as well.
Bex: Oh yeah, because he’s already had to, he’s already had to deal with [01:00:00] Michael, um, with Harry and Bobby. And now, and now here’s Harry thinking that he could have had a completely different dad again.
Alice: Now he’s, now he’s competing with this dead cop and he’s just like, what the fuck bro?
He’s never going to win. But no, Athena’s like, “No, no, you’d be a completely different person. You are who you are because of your dad and me and who we were when we had you. Um, I have regrets about Emmett and how he died, but I do not regret this family.”
Bex: It’s a bit of a clunky scene, but it’s a, it’s, you know, a lovey dovey touchy.
Which all culminates in Bobby telling Athena to go and get her answers.
Alice: See ya. So she’s 360 from don’t do this, you’ll get hurt, but you know.
Bex: To go and do this. So we cut to dispatch. Um, Athena is looking for the 9-1-1 records from back in the day. Um, and she’s dragged [01:01:00] Maddie along for the ride.
Ellen: Yeah, Maddie’s back. Maddie’s allowed back in.
Bex: I don’t think Maddie is. Um, because I don’t think Maddie is on duty and she’s not in uniform. I have a feeling that she’s just, that Athena is just using Maddie to get access to the records.
Alice: Okay. So Maddie’s already in trouble, and then this off streety cop And then she’s doing this.
Yeah. It’s just like, hey, I need to do this thing, which like, I’m not actually investigating a case, but can you help me, Maddie? It’s like, yeah, sure. It’s not like my job’s in jeopardy or anything.
Bex: Oh, she’s probably more like
Ellen: Because I was stalking somebody.
Bex: It’s probably like, I’m already in the shit with Sue, you know, in for a penny, in for a pound.
Alice: What’s that? You want me to stalk someone? Yeah, yeah, sure. Why not? I’m good at that. Um.
Bex: So, they’re looking for 9-1-1 calls from 91, which means that they need Terry’s help, um, and Terry says that they don’t keep calls that go back that far, um, and Maddie tells Athena, [01:02:00] no, they don’t have the audio recordings, but they will have the logs of the calls, which were, which is a lot of calls, it’s like a spreadsheet that covers three giant computer monitors.
Alice: That’s how you know a spreadsheet’s big when you have to use three computer monitors to do it.
Bex: And I don’t even think that’s all of them either. But, they start giving Terry parameters to filter down the results. “So, we’re looking for, um, calls. that were made probably in the vicinity of the Crestview Motel on Crenshaw, which is where the gun was found.”
That gets them down to 2, 000 calls. Um, and Maddie makes a comment that that’s a lot of calls. She thought the motel was in LA, not a war zone. Um, Athena said early 90s, it was hard to tell the difference sometime. So from those 2, 000 calls, she wants to know how do we get more information? And Terry says, well, I put in a request [01:03:00] and they bring it up from the warehouse.
Athena very innocently asks, brings what up? And we see her and Maddie in the conference room as they dump a document box on the table in front of her. And they, she’s sort of looking at, in horror, at the document box. And Maddie asks, do you want to start at the beginning or start at the end? Which doesn’t make sense until the camera pulls back and you see that that document box was stacked on top of another document box.
So, I Which is with a whole heap of other document boxes, to the extent that the conference table is completely covered in document boxes.
Alice: There’s a lot of document boxes.
Ellen: I really love the way they did that.
Bex: That was a good reveal.
Ellen: It was really good.
Bex: So the next five minutes is just, um, Moby playing while Maddie and Athena sort through all of the records in the boxes.
Ellen: And they’re all the, um, the red and yellow little cards, like we saw [01:04:00] in that episode where all the power went down.
Bex: Old school. Yeah.
Ellen: It’s like, ah. Um, but yeah, it takes them, we don’t know how long it is, but.
Bex: I didn’t time. I think because I was enjoying the music, like I really liked that song. It’s, um, “Honey” by Moby, if anyone was interested.
So I was quite happy just to jive along with the music. So apparently that is how you distract me from. Um, extra long, um, like filler scenes, just put on good music and I’m not going to care. But you were trying to stretch the episode out. But eventually, Maddie finds two calls from the Crestview Motel on the same night within an hour of each other on February 17th, 1991, and she asks Athena if that date means anything to her.
Alice: Okay, so, just quickly, wouldn’t you start with
Bex: [01:05:00] Athena knows what day Emmett was shot and therefore wouldn’t you…
Alice: Athena knows what day Emmett was shot. Wouldn’t you start with that day? Because they go from, they literally just look at all calls from 91 to 96.
Bex: I think they’re looking for, I think you’re making the assumption that the gun
Ellen: Yeah, you’re assuming the gun was placed there on the night that it was used.
Bex: Yes, yeah, that’s what I’m getting at.
Alice: No, well, look, like, it was, it ended up being that then, though.
Ellen: Yeah. Well, it also assumes that the
Bex: But then we don’t get five minutes of Moby. Yeah.
Ellen: It also assumes that the, the document storage system is, you know, has enough, like, it is fine enough that they could Yeah, yeah.
But could they actually search up exactly which box this particular date was…
Bex: You should.
Alice: Yeah, they should be, because if the cops actually needed it,
Ellen: they’d be able to narrow it down. Yeah.
Bex: Like, the boxes should be like, this is 1991, or maybe [01:06:00] like, this is January to June of 1991.
Alice: Yeah. Like, you would start Personally Like
Ellen: You wouldn’t start at the beginning or the end.
You would go straight for the date.
Alice: You’d go from the date that, yeah, you’d go from the date that it happened and check there and then start working back from there. Because there’s no point, like, if he died in February, which it was February 17th, you wouldn’t start in January because he wasn’t dead then. So like the gun wasn’t in the motel.
Bex: And you wouldn’t need November and December because Yeah. No, I understand.
Ellen: Alice, you’re in the wrong career. Go immediately to the police academy.
Alice: Well, I used to, like, I used to do investigating of, like, thefts and stuff at work and, or like, um, chasing up payments if people hadn’t paid and yeah, it’s not hard to find stuff and I don’t understand why they didn’t start with
Bex: Because they needed that, they needed that montage scene of them searching through all of the boxes with the, the Moby needle [01:07:00] drop.
Ellen: Yeah, clearly we can assume that the document filing system is crap.
Bex: Or, or Athena’s investigative skills are crap. Like maybe Romero, Romero would have narrowed it down.
Alice: This is why Athena’s not a detective. Because she’s like, oh, let’s check January in case the gun magically, like, was there and then came, like, left again. Like, what?
Ellen: In any case, they do find, um, they find two girls that came from the, the motel where a man was screaming and banging on the walls. So someone called up to complain about the noise.
Um, but then later that night there was an overdose and like, I don’t know how that, how she’s linked to this particular call to the owner of the gun.
Alice: Oh, cause the guy, he had lacerations on his hand.
Bex: And while Maddie’s talking, we’re getting flashbacks to the crime [01:08:00] scenes, which there was a lot of, um, shattered glass.
And they know that, she knows, like, we don’t know at this point how Emmett got shot, but she does. So she knows that it was, it was a robbery at a convenience store. So she knows that the guy who was probably high on something, smashed the glass, probably would have cut his hand. So now Maddie’s telling her there was a guy who was ODing and he had hand lacerations.
And so she’s put the two and two together and gone, that’s probably the guy that robbed the convenience store.
Ellen: So she found him.
Bex: Yeah. Cause the guy, uh, was survived. He got transported to hospital and he’s still alive. So now we’re getting to the sticky end. We cut back to 1991 after the commercial where Emmett is at work and is having On the phone with Athena for reasons, not sure.[01:09:00]
Uh, he says he’s coming home and he wonders if Athena’s mother would be good with that Chinese place, or should he be getting something fancy for dinner? Um, Athena’s trying to stall him coming home and sends him to get creamer, the one that, um, her mother likes for her coffee. And she doesn’t want him to come home right then and there because she is in her wedding dress.
Alice: Yes, she’s trying on her wedding dress with her mother.
Bex: Yeah, I think Beatrice is, um, hemming it and taking it in, doing adjustments on it.
Ellen: So they don’t It looks a lot more classical than the other wedding dress that she wore in the previous
Bex: It was the 90s and, you know, it’s her first wedding, so, you know Very traditional, yes.
It’s probably going to be in a church, so, you know, she’s got to cover up. So Eamon agrees to go and get the coffee creamer if it means that he’ll rack up some future son in law points. Yes. Athena and Beatrice continue with their, um, doing [01:10:00] whatever it is they’re doing to the wedding dress. Um, we cut to a little bit later that night.
They’ve finished, they’re putting the dress away and Athena’s gone, Ah, Emmett should have been here by now. And the phone rings and she gets a call that Emmett has been killed.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s really sad. She goes there to the convenience store.
Bex: I don’t know why they let her go down to the convenience store.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: I’m assuming it’s because she’s also LAPD, but it’s not like they needed her down there to identify the body, because everybody
Alice: He had his ID on him, yeah.
Bex: Yeah, he had his badge on him, so it was very clear who he was.
Alice: But yeah. And usually the identifying is done like, you know
Bex: Not on the scene, because he’s literally still laid out on the floor of the convenience store.
Ellen: I think Athena probably just did an Athena, and went down there.
Alice: Went down there, yeah.
Ellen: And just walked in because she’s
Bex: No, but Elaine meets her. The, [01:11:00] the clip that we got of the young Elaine at the beginning of the episode where she’s saying Athena is from this scene where she introduces herself. She says, I’m Elaine.
I will walk you through the scene. So they’re obviously very aware that they’ve either invited her to come down or she is coming down, whether they were gonna let her or not, and they’ve decided to just roll with it.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
Bex: But we find out that Emmett had walked into a robbery, and it was just the wrong place at the wrong time.
Um, and Elaine offers to get someone to drive Athena home, and she says that someone needs to tell Emmett’s mother. And then we cut to Athena walking up to her house. Oh, this scene. Which, you would think, the way that this episode has gone, that it’s cutting, it’s Athena going to talk to Emmett’s mother, because that’s what young Athena had just said, but it’s a different house.[01:12:00]
And when she knocks on the door, she’s got her hand on her weapon already, which is a little bit of overkill if you’re just talking to your, um, fiancee’s mother, or former fiancee’s mother. Um, but instead of Mrs. Washington answering the door, it’s a young Black boy opens the door. with a Black, with a, another man, an older man behind him hurrying up and like, “Boy, what have I told you about opening the door? Get out of here.”
Um, Athena introduces herself and the guy kind of jokingly says, “Oh, which one of my kids is it?” And she’s like, “What are you talking about?” And he says, “I work with at risk kids. I see a lot of you guys. I figure that’s why you’re here.” And Athena’s like, “No, I’m here about the night of February 17th, 1991.”
And this guy just, it’s like all the strings have been cut. He just collapses.
Alice: Yeah, face falls.
Bex: Yeah,
Alice: he’s down.
Bex: So this is Dennis Jenkins. Athena comes in and Dennis is telling her his [01:13:00] story. He was a junkie and he thought about Nothing more than his next fix He went to the convenience store to get money.
He had a gun Um, he didn’t even know that Emmett was there until after he shot him. And he spent, he was, for months, for months afterwards, he was terrified that somebody was going to find him because the clerk had worked with a police sketch artist and they had a sketch of his face and he was terrified somebody was going to recognize him.
And he realizes at this point that, oh, a thing that is, he says, “You’re her.” And she sort of looks at him like, “what do you mean?” And he recites the obituary. “Officer Washington is survived by his mother, Tina, and his fiance, Athena Carter. You are Athena Carter.”
Alice: He’s a better detective than Athena is at this point.[01:14:00]
Bex: And as Dennis is telling the story. We get the flashback, um, to what actually happened, um, as he’s telling the, the story. So, yeah, he walked into the convenience store, he stuck a gun in the clerk’s face, um, when the clerk wasn’t moving fast enough, he slammed his gun down barrel first, um, the handle?
Hilt? What’s the part you hold? Doesn’t matter.
Alice: Handle?
Ellen: Handle?
Bex: He slammed, he slammed his, he slammed.
Alice: I don’t know, we don’t have guns in Australia.
Bex: He slammed the gun down sort of on the counter, which shattered the glass top, cutting his hand. Um, the clerk is, is trying to get money into a bag. The noise attracts Emmett, who comes around the corner from where he was in the dairy case, picking up the creamer.
And Dennis just sees motion out of the corner of his eyes and just turns and shoots.
Emmett didn’t even get a chance to say anything, didn’t couldn’t, didn’t even have a [01:15:00] chance to identify himself. Dennis didn’t realize he’d shot a cop until afterwards.
Alice: Until he woke up in the hospital.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: He woke up in the hospital four nights later.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Did he hit his head or something? Why was he unconscious for that long?
Bex: Because he OD’d.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Bex: So I guess the timeline is that he robbed the convenience store, he went back to the motel, he stashed the gun, then OD’d, somebody, they took him to King George, they saved him.
Ellen: Damn, that’s rough. And he says he thought they would come for me, like, you know, once he found out that he’d killed a cop, he thought they would come for him, but they never did.
And he’s Athena sort of gets to, like, he says that he, you know, tried to make up for it because he’d been given a second chance, so he helped. He, like, turned his life around and got clean and [01:16:00] went to church and started helping people. And Athena sort of gets right to the point and says, “You could have turned yourself in, but you didn’t.”
Like, he was trying to help, like, “Emmett was just trying to help out and you killed him.” You can tell that it’s sort of breaking her heart to actually tear this guy’s life apart, but she needs to do it because he, in her eyes, he must face justice for what he’s done.
Bex: Yeah, it’s interesting because she says that when he killed Emmett, he didn’t just kill Emmett, he took, um, he took the, he ruined the lives of Emmett’s mother, of his friends, of He ruined Athena’s life.
He was a wrecking ball in all of their lives. And she is essentially being that wrecking ball for him. because he is, he’s, he’s [01:17:00] become a good man. There’s a point in the episode where Dennis is talking and Athena is looking at the shelf in whatever room they’re in. And it’s just covered in trophies and plaques for recommend, uh, recognition of service to Dennis.
So he, he has become an upstanding member of society. He’s got a family and she’s coming in and destroying all of that in one fell swoop. And I guess you, It becomes the interesting philosophical argument about whether justice for Emmett is worth destroying everybody’s lives. Or whether the fact that, the fact that this guy has spent the rest of his life doing good works, whether that in some way makes up for what
Alice: Yeah, Athena even says, “You claim you’re a good man now.
But Emmett was always a good man. He believed in second chances too, he’d be impressed with the life you built, but you built it on the back of a dead man, and I for one can’t get past that.”
Ellen: Yes. [01:18:00] Feels a bit like…
Bex: So it’s not about the war at this point, it’s vengeance.
Ellen: It’s revenge. Yeah, that’s what I was gonna say. Like, revenge might feel satisfying, but does it really, is it worth it?
Alice: Because isn’t, like, theoretically, prison is supposed to be a place for criminals to rehabilitate?
Bex: No. It’s meant to. And I think Yeah, that’s what I mean. I think the justice system works better when you try to rehabilitate, but it is essentially, it is punitive. It is punishment.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I think it would be better if our system was working to rehabilitate and to get prisoners to turn their lives around too.
Um, so that they don’t go out and, um, commit more crimes.
Ellen: But like, I don’t know anything about jails in the U S really, uh, only what I’ve seen on TV, which is not a glowing report of what it’s like there. Um, but [01:19:00] you’d hope.
Alice: We’ve all seen Orange is the New Black.
Ellen: I, from what I’ve seen, Orange is the New Black is quite gay.
So that’s fine. That’d be a fun time. That aside, um, yeah. You’d hope that the good works that he’s done in his life and the fact that he’s proven to himself to be good, essentially, would help lessen whatever jail time he may have to serve at this point, like.
Bex: But the issue is also that he’s a cop killer.
And so if he had, like, if, if he had killed the clerk, then maybe whatever came next, his lawyer could argue, Yes, he killed this guy. It’s a terrible, terrible action, but he has spent the rest of his life making up for it, and um, sending him to prison now is just not going to do anything, because he’s, he’s punished himself, and he’s rehabilitated himself, but they’re just going to look at the fact that he killed a [01:20:00] cop, and just run with that, because the laws for, for, Attacking cops, killing cops, are so very different from killing civilians.
So it would, I also would’ve think it would be interesting if Hal Romero would’ve approached this. if Romero had shown up and seen what Dennis had made of himself, um, we might’ve had the same result because he was, you know, Emmett’s friend. Or if you had a random detective who had had no contact with anybody back in the nineties, who came into this fresh, whether he would have a different approach, um, a different perspective, and whether he would do the same that Athena did.
Alice: Well, the thing is like a lot of, I feel like if they weren’t, that involved in the case, they would have got to the, Oh, the motel was ripped down 10 years ago. I guess that’s a dead end.
Ellen: Oh yeah. And she, and they might not have been able to dig up the records.
Alice: They wouldn’t have gone that extra step. [01:21:00] Cause like detectives have several cases generally that they’re working on, I believe.
Bex: Yeah. They don’t have the time to just throw all of their resources on dead ends like this.
Ellen: Also, they don’t have a professional snoop like Maddie to help them out, so, you know.
Alice: Although they might have started at the night that he was killed and been like, oh look, I found it.
Ellen: Maybe, maybe they would.
Anyway, yeah, it, it kind of, okay, we’re not quite at the end, but when we get to the end, we can talk more about…
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: The justice system. Um, so after,
Alice: Unfortunately, we are just a podcast. We cannot fix the justice system
Bex: for any country at any point in time.
Ellen: Athena is watching something on TV and her mum comes in. This is, this is still back in the past.
Alice: Yeah. So this is March 3rd, 91.
Ellen: So it’s after.
Alice: A couple of weeks after.
Ellen: Yeah. So it [01:22:00] sounds like Athena, Beatrice is assuming that Athena is moving back home to Florida and they’ve contacted a moving company and then Athena is watching, she sees what Athena is watching on TV where, which is a group of police officers beating up a man in the street.
And she’s like, “Oh my God, what is this?” And Athena says it’s a traffic stop gone wrong. Someone got it on video.
Bex: First of all, let’s just, um, stop and marvel at how amazing it is that someone did catch this on video. So that meant that in 1991, this is way before body cameras for police. This is way before everybody having a video camera in their phone.
Somebody had to be down there with a full ass video camera.
Ellen: A video camera. Yeah.
Alice: It was a whole ass video camera. He was a, like, amateur videographer.
Bex: Oh, wow.
Alice: And it was in, like, [01:23:00] his study, which is why the footage starts, like, halfway through. Um, because he was watching and had to go, like, back into his house, and then he zoomed right in from the balcony on his apartment.
Bex: Oh my god. So, Athena is watching, um, the poli the footage of the police officers beating Rodney King. Which Uh, if anybody listening doesn’t know who that is, or doesn’t know what happened, um, Rodney was a, a Black man, who, it’s a whole lot, it’s so much more than just a traffic stop gone wrong. Um, Alice and I were looking at this before we started recording.
Um, so he and his friends were out, and they were drinking. Police tried to pull them over and Rodney, who was on parole, tried to, uh, run in his car. Because he didn’t want the DUI because that would be a parole violation. So he [01:24:00] led police on a high speed pursuit through LA. When they finally managed to pull him over and get him out of the car, four police officers, three white, proceeded to beat the crap out of him.
They kicked him. They used his bat, they used their batons. Um, he ended up, they tased him. He ended up with so many injuries. He ended up in hospital. And what was. It got captured on videotape, and not just the, um, the officers beating up Rodney, but the fact that multiple other officers were seen standing around watching and cheering on the other police officers.
So the four officers who were the ones that were seen in the video actively beating Rodney, uh, were charged with excessive use of force. And a jury a year later found them not guilty and South Central went nuts, they exploded and they started [01:25:00] rioting. And the riots lasted for five days and like tensions were already high in the um, LA community.
Uh, South Central, sort of South LA area, not just between police and the Black community, but also, uh, the Black community and the Latino community and the Black and the Korean community. Um, the jury that found the police officers were predominantly white, but there was also a Latino and an Asian, uh, members of the jury.
So, everybody just got swept up in this riot. Um, It got so bad to the point that Rodney King came out of hospital and made a statement to the press and said like, You guys need to stop.
Ellen: Oh, jeez.
Bex: And it’s, it’s just, it’s a, it’s a really dark day in, um, American history. So that’s what Athena’s watching. And she was right.
He was alive at the end of it. Um, and Beatrice [01:26:00] sees this as a sign that it’s a good thing that Athena is going back to Florida and she’s not going to be a police officer anymore and Athena says that she’s going to stay and she’s going to go back to policing. Uh, that she joined the force for a reason and the Rodney King incident is it’s kind of, helps put is helping her case because Athena says that the cops like the ones on the TV They think they’re doing the right thing Somebody needs to show them that they’re wrong and she’s going to be the one to show them
Ellen: Yeah, Beatrice tells her that she’s a fool I think in that other episode that she was in she also mentioned that she was a fool, right?
I seem to remember her saying this before
Bex: It must be like the worst insult in the world Is to be a
Ellen: fool. You’re a fool. I cannot allow you to do, and Athena just tells her it’s not her, not her business and not her decision.
Bex: Which it’s not, I mean, Athena’s in, what, her early 20s now. [01:27:00] Yeah.
She’s a grown ass woman. She was about to get married. I mean.
Ellen: Yeah. Mum’s just trying to protect her, but she doesn’t, she wants to stay. Um, Athena is still, back in the, in the present day, Athena is still at the Jenkins house. Yes. And she, um, is on the phone and she says, we’ll be there soon. And then Dennis’s kids are all sitting around the table and then they all get up and kind of, you know, they’re all crying and they give him a hug and they say goodbye.
And it’s really heartbreaking, this whole thing.
Bex: Wrecking ball. Absolute wrecking ball.
Ellen: And he says, he tells her that he’s ready and they leave the house. And then she walks him into the LAPD headquarters.
Bex: And this is all in slo mo, too.
Alice: And like, the music that’s playing and everything, it’s so well done.
Bex: Yeah, so the music that’s playing is [01:28:00] Andrew Rai’s “Rise Up”, although I don’t know who’s supposed to be rising up at this point. No, it’s just It’s very, it’s very stirring music. Yeah. Um, but they They do, they do frame it as Athena doing this wonderful thing, and like, she perp walks him into LAPD, she’s cuffed him, even though he is going in of his own recognizance and he’s agreed to do it, she’s still cuffed him and walks him in.
Um, and pretty much everyone in headquarters is in the lobby watching as she walks him in, and like, walks him straight up to Elaine and Romero.
Ellen: Yeah, and she, I mean, I don’t know if it’s the I can’t remember the music exactly, but it, it almost feels like it’s not triumphant at all. She, I don’t know. I don’t know if it was because I was watching this in kind of tears, [01:29:00] it was all a bit overwhelming.
Um, but yeah, I don’t know. It’s not as, as triumphant as it could be. Which is a good thing, I think. Like, maybe if they had made it out that, uh, he was a bad guy, we’d all be happy about him getting arrested, but
Bex: It’s definitely the fact that he is such an upstanding member of society, and he has changed his life, and he has changed lives.
Alice: And like, yeah, Athena may have found him, but Emmett’s still dead.
Bex: Yeah, it doesn’t change anything and it’s not going to make her feel better. It’s not going to bring her fiance back. It’s not going to allow her to rewind time. And I don’t think she
Ellen: No one has won anything here.
Bex: No, there are no winners in this situation.
And she might have thought that she would feel better once she caught the man, um, killed Emmett. I guarantee she doesn’t feel any better.
Ellen: So this next part, this next [01:30:00] scene is amazingly done. Um, she We have the two, the past and the future cut together here where she’s walking up to like Emmett’s mother’s house. And in the old, uh, story, it’s like the beautiful sort of front of the house and the gardens all nice. And then in the present day, it’s all kind of run down and the paint’s peeling and it, it looks very weathered 30 years later kind of thing.
And Mrs. Washington opens the door in both. timelines. And this, the first time, you know, Athena, young Athena has to tell her that her son is dead. But in the present timeline, she tells her that they made an arrest. And so in both cases, they’re kind of hugging on the steps and sobbing in each other’s arms.
[01:31:00] Um, but yeah, beautifully done.
Bex: Interestingly, in the 1991, in sort of younger Athena, Mrs. Washington’s absolutely broken down. And she’s sobbing and she’s clinging to Athena and Athena is having to hold back her own emotions so that she can be there to support Mrs. Washington.
In the present day, Mrs. Washington doesn’t even know who she is for a moment. Doesn’t recognize her. And when Athena sort of, when she finally recognizes Athena and Athena says, “We’ve made an arrest,” I think she was expecting perhaps the same kind of reaction. But Mrs. Washington’s just kind of looking at her like, oh you poor thing.
Are you still on about this? I’ve let that go, I am at peace with that. And it’s more like she is hugging Athena, supporting Athena.
Ellen: She’s comforting her.
Bex: Yeah, it’s, it’s reverse. Even though Athena perhaps thought it was going to be a replay of what happened 30 years ago. It’s a very different [01:32:00] encounter.
Um, but she still holds herself together because she’s not going to break down. She saves that until she gets home.
Alice: Yeah. So she, we cut to the Grant Nash household. Where Athena comes home, Bobby’s there, um, Athena’s just like, Yep, found him. Bobby says that he’s glad. Athena puts her bag down, takes off her badge, and it’s all very, like, Oh yeah, this is just what she does after she gets home.
But then she just absolutely collapses. And Bobby catches her and she just sobs and, like, wails in his arms.
Ellen: Poor Athena. It’s just all comes crashing down then, yeah.
Alice: And it’s just all, like it’s, yeah, it’s all come back to the surface, it’s all, like, and as soon as she takes off that badge, like as soon as she’s no longer a cop, she’s off duty, she’s Bobby’s [01:33:00] wife.
Like, she’s not Sergeant Grant. She needs a husband.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: And he’s there to catch her.
Bex: And that’s where we end the episode.
Ellen: Yeah. So, it’s Not a happy ending by any means. And I did immediately after watching this, have to go and watch some Supernatural to cheer myself up again,
Alice: which is like,
Ellen: well, you know, it’s, even though it’s also kind of sad, it’s very comforting in a way, because I know what’s going to happen.
Alice: Yeah, that’s true. That’s true. Absolutely. Could I have those comfort shows, even if they’re, you know, ones that kill their characters over and over and over.
Ellen: Yeah. Maybe that’s just the reason that I need therapy. But anyway, um,
Alice: anyway, yeah, definitely not a, um, an uplifting episode.
Ellen: No. All right. Give us the thoughts.
Bex: So we have [01:34:00] thoughts. Alice, would you like to start with your thoughts? Cause I’m pretty sure your thoughts are going to be the same as my thoughts or similar to my thoughts.
Alice: Um, I, Very sad that Athena apparently kept this in for 30 years. Um, and didn’t tell anyone. I feel like it’s a little bit retconny.
Yeah. She was like, “Oh, you know, I wanted to be a cop since I was a little kid. Cause of that other little kid that vanished.”
Bex: Yeah. Once again, we’ve got a situation where the character has revealed in an earlier episode, their motivation for. Being the person they are today. And then we get the begins episodes and it’s a completely different story.
So like with Hen, we had, “Oh, I got shot as a kid and the paramedic saved me. So that’s why I wanted to become a paramedic.” And then we find out that it’s a completely different reason. that she becomes a paramedic. And then we’ve got the same situation.
Alice: Someone had a heart attack.
Bex: Yeah. And I mean, the writers [01:35:00] do try to, they get that, like that, Oh shit moment.
Like, Oh my God, we’ve actually already mentioned a storyline previously. We need to somehow tie it to this new storyline. Um, which I think is where we get the, the name drop of Mrs. Kingston and Tanya, and then Athena is looking at the LAPD flyer on the fridge. So it’s partially. she joined because of Emmett, but it’s also, oh, I remember that when I was a kid, I wanted to become a police officer to help find her.
So maybe I will do that. Yeah, that’s right. That was that missing girl that one time. But the entire episode is pretty much, she joined the police force for a pretty boy. Yeah. For Emmett.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, she can’t really say that on the new, on the TV, you know, like that previous story that she gave was to the, for the report thing, right?
Bex: Uh, that was Hen. Um, Athena, we found out about the Kingstons when she’s just talking to, um, Bobby and she’s talking to him, [01:36:00] because it was, I think it was in “Haunted” that we got it, when they had the
Ellen: Oh, when they find Yeah, okay, you’re right.
Bex: Yeah, the skeleton, and
Ellen: They find the skeleton, yeah.
Bex: And Athena was desperate for closure, and she explains that the reasons why she was sort of desperate for closure was because, She knew of a family that never got closure.
And then when, whatever episode it was, her family comes in and insults Bobby three ways to Sunday, um, Beatrice brings that up and says, you know, like, I know you wanted to be a cop because of these, because of this little girl.
Alice: Yeah. Which is weird that like her mother was just like, Oh,
Ellen: we just that is a weird thing for her mum to say.
Alice: Yeah, because they, Emma didn’t exist until this episode.
Ellen: Uh, retcons.
Alice: Yes, retcons. So yeah, a bit retcon y. I also, so we had “Rage” two episodes ago. We then had “Athena Begins”, which is all about like, oh no, look how good the cops are. And isn’t it sad [01:37:00] that like one of them got shot when he was just minding his own business?
Isn’t that sad, guys? Look and be sad about cops. But also at the end we’ll talk about how crap they are and how Athena’s totally beating the system. Where she’s really just using the system for revenge. A lot.
Bex: I actually wondered whether these two episodes were supposed to be bookends. Whether we were supposed to go from “Rage” to “Athena Begins”.
Um, but when they were looking at the scheduling, they realized that the episode after “Rage” was going to be the Halloween episode. So they’ve gone, okay, no, we’re going to have to, like, we’ve got a Halloween episode that needs to be aired around Halloween. So we’ll push “Athena Begins” a little bit. And it’s such a standalone story.
It’s completely removed from any of the other storylines. It doesn’t really matter where in the season you put it. It’s not going to be out of place because it doesn’t connect to [01:38:00] anything at all.
Alice: Whereas I wondered if they had Athena Begins written. And then after they did Rage, and they were doing Athena Begins, they’re just like, Oh shit, quick, we better put something in at the end about how not all cops are good.
And that’s where they put the, like, Athena watching the, watching the beating of Rodney King.
Bex: I don’t think you could have a discussion about a police officer in LA in 91 and not bring up Rodney King.
Alice: True. Yeah.
Bex: I think that whenever they made the decision to have this timeline and these dates for Athena, it was always going to be, we are going to have to bring up Rodney King because that would have been a huge thing, not only for people in LA, but for other police officers in LA and for other Black people in LA, and especially where Athena, she was stationed sort of South.
Yeah. South Central and South LA, so that was her stomping grounds. So it’s like myriad of reasons that was a really important [01:39:00] event for her. So I think it would have been very disingenuous to have an episode about her and not mention Rodney King. But again, it’s interesting that we had Athena’s family have a bad traffic stop and then we get Athena watching another bad traffic stop.
Alice: But yeah, I did like the scene where, um, Athena was following the, like the gun down there. Yes.
Bex: And I think, I think it bears mentioning because you and I shit on Kristen Reidel a lot. And I do stand by a lot of what I say about her writing, but this was a Kristen Reidel episode. Um, and so as bad as she is writing ensembles and as bad as she is writing other characters, when she is given one character to write about and it’s a almost, I almost want to say like a grown up story she does very, [01:40:00] very well.
So she wrote this one. She also wrote “Fight or Flight”, which was Maddie’s episode, which was another like single character following a very dramatic serious arc. That’s it. Like she just, she sucks at ensemble cast stuff. Yeah. So please everyone who’s listening, we recognize that there are, that in Very specific circumstances, Kristen Reidel is a good writer.
Unfortunately, I don’t think she is a good writer for a show that has ensembles. Because it’s not that often that you can do a standalone episode that just follows one character, because if you do that you abandon the rest of your characters that their storylines need servicing.
Alice: Yeah, it was actually, it was in the trivia as well, um, how only 7 of the 11 main cast members appear in this episode.
Bex: Yeah, the rest of the 118 do not appear.
Alice: Yeah, they’re not mentioned, they don’t appear, [01:41:00] they’re basically non existent.
Bex: Yeah, you could pull the, like I said, this is a completely standalone episode, you could pull this episode out and stick it anywhere in any season. And you wouldn’t be able to tell that it’s out of place.
That is the type of episode that Kristen Reidel is very, very good at telling. And she did, this was very well done, very well written, and very well told. Just unfortunately, she is a writer for an ensemble show that cannot tell these kind of stories every single week.
Alice: Yeah. I also like the, the Bobby and, um, Michael friendship that’s there happening a little bit in the background, but um, I still don’t understand why Michael was there.
Bex: Because family. We know Kristen Reidel loves family. She loves like, or like actual family. So like blood family, um, legal family. So she’s going to prioritize that over everything. So Michael is the [01:42:00] father of those children, so therefore he is still part of that family.
Alice: Yeah, he’s there.
Bex: So he’s going to be there.
Alice: But yeah, I do like that it was just Athena and Bobby at the end. Because as I said, like, I like their relationship, I just wish it was slow burn, and not just one date and then they’re married.
Bex: Yeah, that time jump really, their relationship, as far as the, I am concerned, suffers from that time jump. Because we didn’t get to see it. But we get our ensemble back next week.
Ellen: Yeah,
Alice: so good, next week.
Ellen: Tell us about next week.
Bex: So next week, tragedy strikes at an ice skating show. Other emergencies include an accident involving a self driving car and a fulfillment warehouse robot going rogue. Meanwhile, Eddie’s fight club gets out of control and Hen struggles with her relationship with Karen.
So our triggers for next week, we have, um, [01:43:00] multiple car accidents. We have depression, we have death of a patient, we have gore, which is
Alice: so much gore,
Bex: so much gore.
Alice: you guys, so much gore.
Bex: We have,
Alice: if you’re not a fan of blood, maybe miss next week’s episode.
Bex: Yes. It specifically says femoral slash brachial artery bleeds.
We have more fight club and we also have fertility issues and figure skating. Although that’s not a trigger, that’s not a trigger, that’s just something to look for.
Alice: I don’t know, it might be a trigger you guys.
Ellen: That’s just a tag.
Bex: That’s just a tag, that’s just fun.
Ellen: Um, anything else you wanted to say about this episode?
Bex: I think I’ve said enough.
Alice: I think we’ve covered it all. It’s another one of those episodes that’s difficult for three white women in Australia to discuss in some parts.
Bex: I don’t know, I think vengeance is universal. [01:44:00]
Ellen: Yeah, not much of it was racially motivated, so, apart from the ending, I guess. But, wanting justice for something that happened a long time ago is fairly
Alice: Fairly universal.
Ellen: Fairly universal.
Alice: But yes, once again, Athena doing things for her own personal reasons.
Ellen: Yeah, she doesn’t like to go by the book, does she? All right. Uh, well let us know what you thought about this episode. Um, or like, I don’t even know what questions to ask about this episode. Do you like revenge?
Alice: Have you hid a fiance for 30 years?
Ellen: Oh my God. Um, tell us all of your secrets. No. Oh my God. Uh, you can definitely contact us though. All of the ways that you can get in touch with us are listed on our website, which is thatweewooshow. com. And, or you can leave a message for us on the way that you listen to the [01:45:00] podcast. Um, I think most of them now allow you to leave comments.
So, um, go for your life. We love it. Uh, thank you very much for listening this week and we will see you next time to talk about episode eight, which is called “Malfunction”. See you then.
Bex: Bye.
Alice: Bye.
Ellen: 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
Bex: Welcome back to That Wee Woo Show, a podcast where we, what do we do? We do something.[01:46:00]
We watch and discuss. There we go. We watch and discuss. Apparently. Okay. Let’s try that again. We’re off to a great start.
Okay. So fun. My fun little story about this song, “Express Yourself”. So I remember. Um, couple of years ago, putting on the radio station and they were playing this song on repeat and I had no idea why.
And so I was, I did a little bit of research cause I wanted to be able to say, Hey, just in case it was like my brain misremembering things, I wanted to be able to come on and go and say, Hey, fun fact, there was this day, god knows when, when Radio Station played this song over and over and over again, and this was why.
Turns out it’s a much bigger story than I originally thought. So In Australia, for those listeners of our podcast who are not Australian, uh, we have the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, the [01:47:00] ABC. That’s our public broadcaster. They do television and they do radio. And one of the ABC’s radio stations is a station called Triple J and that is the youth radio station.
Ellen: Yes. And, and it has been for…
Bex: it has been pretty much since its inception.
Ellen: Many years.
Bex: Um, way before it was Triple J, um, it was for the youth. It also focus, it also focuses on Australian music and it focuses on more alternative music. So, back in 1998, NWA, which is a hip hop crew that features Dr. Dre and Ice Cube, NWA is an acronym, which I will not be saying in full, um, released their album straight out of Compton. And there is a song on that album called “Fuck Tha Police”. Triple J was the only radio station, pretty much they say, they claim that they are the only radio station on the planet who played “Fuck Tha Police” on the radio. [01:48:00]
Ellen: Right.
Bex: I’m sure that there are other radio stations that did, maybe some college stations in the US, but because of the fact that it’s pretty much N word and F word constantly throughout the song.
The profanity is off the charts. Um, so, but Triple J played it and they played it without censoring it. And they played it for about six months. Not, you know, straight in a row, but it was in their regular rotation. Um, and people had an issue with it. They had an issue with the amount of profanity and they also had an issue with the content of the song, which is about police brutality.
Alice: Fucking the police?
Bex: Well, it’s about police brutality and racial profiling and, you know, coming from a group of Black men talking about police, you can kind of understand why they, why they’re saying fuck the police. So basically, it went all the way up to the head of the ABC, and he issued an edict, you cannot play this song anymore.[01:49:00]
And Triple J went, yeah, okay, fine, we won’t play this song. Part of Triple J’s programming also included a current affairs program, where they would do investigative reporting. And one of their reporters decided to do a story about profanity in music and censorship of profanity in music. And in response to this edict being handed down that they couldn’t play “Fuck Tha Police” anymore.
And as an example of, Hey, here’s an example of. Given that there was profanity in music being censored, 22 second clip of “Fuck Tha Police”, which apparently the head of the ABC decided, breached the agreement, that they would not play the song anymore. And the reporter was summarily fired. And the other DJs and reporters and staff at Triple J were not happy, and so they played another N. W. A. song, “Express Yourself”, which happens to be the only song on Straight Outta Compton without any profanity on it, back to back. [01:50:00] They claim they played it, uh, 350 times in a row.
Alice: Oh my god!
Bex: The other reports say that they only managed to do it about 82 times in a row. But they literally just pressed play, repeat.
They occasionally broke in to remind everybody why they were doing it, it’s like we’re protesting against the, um, dismissal of our reporter. Um, and it worked, they, the guy got his job back.
Alice: Oh, that’s amazing.
Ellen: When was this?
Bex: So this happened in 1989.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Um, but what happened was then in 2014, Triple J launched a digital radio station.
And in the two days before the radio station went live, they
Alice: Did we lose Bex?
Ellen: I think so.
Alice: No, no! What happened? What happened?
Ellen: You can’t just leave us hanging like that.[01:51:00]
Bex: I mean, to be fair, they played, like, different versions.
Ellen: Oh my god, she’s back!
Alice: Oh my god!
Ellen: Sorry, you dropped out just as you said.
Bex: When did I drop out?
Ellen: You were like You’re like, in the two days leading up to it, and then it just went quiet, we’re like, oh, what happened? What happened?
Alice: What happened?
Bex: Sorry, okay. So in the two days leading up to the radio station going live, they played nothing but “Express Yourself”.
And they played, like, at least this time they found, like, cover versions, they played the original that, um, NWA sampled from. But I, like, I remember putting it on going, oh, Triple J’s got a new digital radio station, and I will put that on, not realizing it didn’t go live until like Wednesday at lunchtime.
And I think I put it on it like Wednesday at nine o’clock. I’m just going, why are they playing the same song over and over and over and over again? Um, and that was why. It was to honor a protest in the eighties that related to the NWA [01:52:00] song, “Fuck Tha Police”. Yes. So that’s my little tangent. I think it’s very interesting that, um, they used an NWA song, which I’m guessing they’re thinking is just timely, but the fact that they also have this song, “Fuck Tha Police”, in an episode which features Rodney King, and it also comes on the back of “Rage”, um, yeah, interesting.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah. There you go. We learn so much on this podcast. That’s why I do it, just to listen to Bex’s story times.
Bex: Oh god.
Alice: Anyway, we’re recording.
I’ve been listening to a podcast literally, so yesterday and today, have not stopped listening to it. It is about, I’ve got two episodes left? Until I’m up to date. But it is about the influencer who has been accused of poisoning her kid. Have you guys heard about [01:53:00] this?
Bex: No.
Alice: So it’s happening, it happened in Queensland, which is why I was just like, no, I have to see if Ellen’s heard about this.
Ellen: I have heard something on the news about something like that, but I didn’t really, I didn’t, I don’t know any of the details.
Alice: Yeah. So basically it was
Bex: Is it a Munchausen’s by proxy thing?
Alice: It sounds like it. Um, for some reason, the authorities are staying away from that wording. I don’t know why, because it looks like it fits the bill, but for some reason they’re staying away from that. Um, but basically it’s this like mummy blogger and she, um, was like posting that her kid was really sick. And I knew vaguely about her because she’s got like, her kid is a similar age to one of my best friend’s kids. Like the baby was like a year old.
And she was posting how she kept having seizures and how she was really sick and then she like went [01:54:00] in for brain surgery because she had all these tumors all over her brain and all this stuff and then next minute the dad has come out, like comes out in November last year and says, hey guys, like I had no idea about any of this.
It was my impression that the kid was really sick. Blah blah blah. I’m really sorry, and then like vanishes and everyone’s like, what the fuck is he talking about? And then the police are like, oh, yeah, we’re looking into some matters. So it turns out one of the nurses raised the alarm because like none of the things that she was saying on social media matched up to what she was, like what the medical records said, and she’s now being charged, like she was arrested ten days ago, I think.
Um, so she was arrested early last week with like poisoning the child.
Bex: Holy shit. She got charged with torture.
Alice: [01:55:00] Yeah. And torture.
Bex: Torture, administering poison, fraud, and making child exploitation material.
Alice: Yeah. So she’s, she raised over 60, 000 via GoFundMe.
Ellen: Yeah. I think that was the part that I’d heard on the news.
Like they’d been saying. someone raised a whole bunch of money when her kid wasn’t actually sick.
Alice: Yeah. And like, not only was the kid not sick, like she was making the kid sick.
Ellen: Oh, that’s awful. That’s really heinous. Like that whole thing.
Bex: That’s fucking scary.
Alice: It was so scary. Oh yeah. Massively scary.
Bex: Like I cannot imagine putting my child through that just for like my 15 minutes of fame.
Alice: Like, I feel bad standing on my dog’s paws. Like, what the fuck?
Ellen: And then someone’s made a podcast about it, like,
Alice: Yeah, so someone’s made a podcast, like, going through the facts, um, because, like, all of it was online, because it was all on TikTok and Instagram.
So [01:56:00] there’s so much evidence. And, like, looking back on things, everyone’s just like, oh shit, like, yeah, there are things that are really weird, but at the time everyone was just like, oh, you know, like, it’s just because she’s trying to cope. Like, when she made the, like, announcement video about, like, her kid having tumors all over her brain, she was literally like, yeah, so, like, we’ve just been told this and she’s got tumors all over her brain, and I really need a coffee, and I don’t have a coffee machine.
Like, that was pretty much the video, and I was just like, what the fuck?
Bex: Oh my god.
Alice: Yeah, it’s insane. Like, it just keeps getting more and more crazy as it goes on. Um, but yeah, the podcast, like, the hosts of the podcast went to the first court date. Right. And, like, watched it, and they also went to the press conference and asked questions and stuff.
Ellen: Hmm. Well, you better tell us the name of the podcast now, if people are listening to this and [01:57:00] Now I find I desperately need to not listen to it.
Alice: Yeah, so it’s called Poisoned? Yeah, wait, hang on. It’s on Spotify, it’s called Poisoned. But yeah, like the last episode came out on Wednesday, this week, um, because she was bailed.
Ellen: Oh god, so she’s out there in the community.
Alice: Yeah, because apparently she was found that she’s not a threat to the community and
Bex: No, just her own children.
Alice: Yeah, well she’s not allowed physical contact with her children.
Bex: Good.
Alice: Nice. Um, but she is allowed to video call them or call them and everyone’s just like, seriously?
But I guess like the kids wouldn’t, because there are several kids, like there are like a few kids involved.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: and I guess they don’t like understand, like it’s still their mum.
Ellen: Yeah. Geez.
Alice: So as far as I know, it hasn’t been, like, what she was using hasn’t been released yet.
Bex: Nope. And they will not release that because people will get ideas.
Alice: Yeah, right. Um, but it was [01:58:00] all, like, pharmaceuticals. Like it doesn’t seem to be anything illegal.
Ellen: Well, that sucks. Thank you for sharing that.
Alice: But yeah, I was just wondering if you’d heard, like, if it was like all abuzz in the schoolyard because you’re in Queensland.
Ellen: No, I’ve definitely heard of it, but I, yeah, no, I haven’t… This is the first detailed, um, account I’ve heard.
Alice: It’s wild. But yeah, if you’re in the mood for a true crime podcast that’s like actually happening as we speak, it’s pretty good. The episodes are really short. Like, I was listening to it while doing my washing yesterday and had it on two times speed because I have no attention span, but, um…
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