3.15: Eddie Begins

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

In this episode we discuss episode 15 of the third season of 9-1-1, titled “Eddie Begins”.

Eddie’s journey to rescue a boy from a well turns into a mission to save himself from his past.

Content warnings for episode 3.15:

discussion of cancer, claustrophobia (buried alive), child at threat, threat of drowning, gun violence, helicopter crash, hypothermia, references to post-traumatic stress disorder, and images of war.

Also mentioned in this episode:

• The Australian Coffee Menu Explained

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Our intro music is “Tensions” by Northern Points.

Episode Transcript

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

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

Alice: I’m Alice.

Bex: And I’m Bex.

Ellen: Thank you so much to everyone who has been listening to our episodes and we have to say a big like happy anniversary to that we were show ’cause it is our one year anniversary this week, um, as we are recording. It’s like a week ago for everyone else, but you know, it’s been a whole year. How amazing.

Bex: Yay!

Alice: We’ve been yapping for an entire year.

Ellen: Yes. Thank you. Thank you both of you for coming to do this with me.

Bex: Thank you for suggesting it

Ellen: What a lot of fun. Ah, that’s such a lot of fun.

Alice: Yes. Thank you for making this [00:01:00] a possibility.

Ellen: Even though we may rip this show to shreds, we do love it quite a lot. A big lot. And um, and we are very grateful that everyone has been listening for all this time. And so we are gonna continue and talk about “Eddie Begins”. But before we get into that, um, Alice, you wanna remind us what happened last time?

Alice: Yeah. So last week on 9-1-1, the 9-1-1 dispatch center was taken hostage. That that was it. That, that was the whole episode. Uh, none of that even matters because this week we’re not gonna talk about it at all.

Ellen: That’s true.

Bex: That is very true. It completely disregard everything there,

Alice: there are no repercussions.

Ellen: That’s true. ’cause this episode like could be a complete encapsulation. Like you could put it pretty much anywhere in this season. Right? It doesn’t have to come before or after anything.

Alice: Yeah. So we did talk a little bit last time about how like Eddie isn’t in it [00:02:00] and it’s possible it’s because he was, he,

Ellen: he wasn’t in the last one,

Bex: he wasn’t in “The Taking of Dispatch 9-1-1”.

Alice: Yeah. He wasn’t in, um, “The Taking of Dispatch 9-1-1” and it’s Yeah. Possible that he was off filming his extra scenes for this.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So the summary, the a, the official promotional summary for this episode says that Eddie’s rescue mission turns into a fight for his life when his journey to rescue a boy from a well turns into a mission to save himself from his past in an all new “Eddie Begins”.

So it’s another one of the begins episodes. I guess we should probably quickly go through the triggers because this is quite a, as Ellen has discovered, quite a traumatizing episode. Um. Yes. To go into blind.

Ellen: Yeah. We’re gonna have to put some big kind of trauma warnings on the front of this one. ’cause I was, [00:03:00] I watched this whole episode just having a panic attack. It was like, oh my god, this is awful.

Bex: Uh, so triggers are discussion of cancer, claustrophobia, specifically being buried alive. Uh, child at threat, uh, threat of drowning gun violence and injury. Helicopter crash.

These are not in order. ’cause I’ve just realized they’re completely out of order. Hypothermia, uh, references to post-traumatic stress disorder and images of war.

Ellen: It’s, it’s an incredibly tense episode. And I hadn’t realized before I went in that it was gonna be like, you know, a child at threat and, being, uh, in danger of being buried alive and all that stuff.

That, that is just like, I don’t know, a big trauma, like a big, um, I guess trigger for me. I don’t know. I, I just watched it…

Bex: no, I’m the same.

Ellen: …between my fingers. I couldn’t, I couldn’t, [00:04:00]

Bex: I don’t enjoy children being put at threat. I think with 9-1-1, however, there is that little safety net of, to date, they have not had a child die as part of an emergency or rescue gone wrong. Yeah,

Alice: they have in flashbacks for, in Lone Star, however, I Oh, and flashbacks in for Bobby’s kids.

Bex: We’ve had Flash, that’s it. We’ve had flashbacks where we’ve known the child is dead, but then we’ve gone back and we’ve seen them alive and yeah. But we’ve never had an instance where we meet the child, we get connected to the child, and then the child dies.

So I’m really hoping that however else this season goes in, its, this show goes in its next couple of seasons that they always stick to that.

Ellen: But in this episode, we do switch between flashing back to Eddie’s past and the, and a present emergency like we did with, [00:05:00] uh, other Begins episodes.

Bex: But interestingly enough, I think this one sort of thematically and structurally is the same as “Chimney Begins” in that Chimney has, you know, been bleeding out on the steps of Maddie’s apartment building for four months while you were off camping and flashes back, um, to, to, um, to,

Ellen: I’m never gonna live that one down, am I?

Bex: No, no.

Alice: Poor Chimney. It’s okay because he has a blood kink, so he’s good.

Bex: Oh, good Lord. I’m, I am not gonna be able to look at that hashtag again in the same way um. But where we had Chim sort of flashing back, but we saw his progression as to how he became a firefighter as he was flashing back. Um, Eddie, we don’t really get the, this is how Eddie became a firefighter because the reference to him being a firefighter [00:06:00] was, “I applied for jobs in Chicago and LA” and that was it.

Yeah. It’s more flashing back to

Ellen: to trauma?

Bex: To Pretty much to trauma. Pretty much. And then, and then Eddie using that trauma to get himself out of the traumatic situation that he found himself in. So, sim same, same, but different.

Ellen: Yeah. Okay. Well, we’re, okay, so we we’re starting with a flashback.

Alice: We are starting with a flashback.

Ellen: Chris is being born. We’ve got Shannon back again this episode, justice for Shannon. Um, poor Shannon.

Alice: Shannon deserved so much better.

Ellen: She’s, uh, she’s like, you know, in active labor. Eddie is doing that useless husband thing and just hovering, looking like he doesn’t know what’s going on. She gives birth. And once again, actually you’ve got in the notes here, you [00:07:00] say to, she gives birth to the biggest, oldest newborn in the world.

And I was like,

Bex: oh my God. He’s huge,

Ellen: I was watching it going, this is the point where all the moms go that is not a newborn, but yes, it is a beautiful baby.

Bex: Just He’s a beautiful baby. It’s not a newborn baby.

Ellen: No, no. And he is not crying like a newborn, it sounds like. No, he is at least a month old. But anyway,

Alice: he’s already lodging his taxes at this point.

Bex: There is this cute little moment where the, the, the doctor’s trying to involve Eddie in the, in the birth, and they ask if he wants to cut the umbilical cord and he freaks out. His voice hits like several octaves higher than it normally should. And Shannon finds it hilarious that, you know, he’s a combat medic who’s done God knows what on, in, you know, in the fields of war.

Yet he’s freaking out about the idea of cutting his son’s umbilical cord.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Which is literally just, they’re gonna hand him the scissors. They’ve already clamped it, they’re gonna hold it steady [00:08:00] for him. He just has to do one snip.

Alice: I’ve cut several umbilical cords, but they’ve all been puppies, so it doesn’t really count I don’t think,

Ellen: Aw. Um, so Eddie’s parents are there. Oh, this is a bit later. Sorry. There. She, they’re not there at birth. I just realized how that sounded.

Bex: Oh, 100%. I bet Helena wanted to be there. I can imagine her being in the waiting room.

Alice: Yeah. I’m surprised that sh I’m surprised that, um, Helena wasn’t there to catch Chris, honestly.

Bex: Yeah. Um, so yes, we flash a little bit later when it’s visiting hours and Shannon’s been cleaned up a little bit and Chris has been cleaned up a little bit.

Um, and they’re still talk and Eddie’s still talking about, you know, he had to cut the umbilical cord. Um, and he turns to his father and asks his dad, “why didn’t you warn me about the umbilical cord?” And I would like to bless whoever did the captions for this episode because Eddie [00:09:00] asks his, his father in Spanish, and the person who did the captions actually captioned the Spanish.

So we know what he said.

Alice: Yeah, I think it’s because it’s an important part of the conversation. But yeah, it was nice that it wasn’t just “speaks in Spanish”,

Bex: I would say that anytime any character is speaking another language on screen is important.

Alice: Oh yeah, absolutely.

Bex: Any, anytime. I don’t care if it’s just, you know, Tia Pepa mumbling in the corner. I wanna know what she’s mumbling.

Alice: Yeah, it’s ’cause she’s mumbling, “Oh my God. Eddie and Buck are so…” Er, so anyway, um,

Ellen: I mean it just putting, just putting, putting speak Spanish is is pretty lazy. Like, so lazy. But this time we do get, um, the actual Spanish. That’s great.

Alice: Um, so yeah, we find out that Ramon didn’t warn Eddie because he wasn’t there.

He was away when Eddie was born. Uh, he was away when Eddie’s sister [00:10:00] was born. And then the, the last one was an emergency C-section and so he wasn’t there for that either.

Bex: Which, interestingly enough, makes Eddie the eldest of the Diaz siblings. I, he always gave me youngest energy

and I still, I was, I still maintain that he is the youngest. But no, if you go by the way, Helena is talking where she’s saying that.

Ellen: Yeah. Well she won’t, she might be talking about it out of order.

Bex: I don’t know. I feel like you can, it, it makes sense if Eddie is the eldest, he just gives off like baby energy, like youngest, youngest brother energy.

Alice: Yeah. There are moments later in the series where they sort of allude to him being the eldest as well.

Bex: So it makes sense that based on that information, if she’s going a chronological order like you were born and then Sophia was born and then Adriana was born. Um. Mm-hmm. But [00:11:00] yeah, I don’t, I don’t buy it.

He’s, he’s so like baby brother sometimes. Uh, but Ramon says that he might not have been there for the labor, but he’s there for the, uh, the good part, which is the, like the taking the cleaned up sleeping baby and snuggling with it.

Ellen: And snuggle. You’re cuddling them. Yeah.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Aw, which is the good part, to be honest.

Alice: Um, so yeah, while they’re like gooing over Chris, then Shannon’s mom arrives, who we haven’t met before,

Ellen: and she says she like, you know, they’re all surprised to see her and she’s like, “Yeah, I couldn’t get here fast enough. Like, I, I wouldn’t miss this,” you know? And Eddie’s mom asks her how she’s feeling and she said She’s got a clean bill of health and a new set of boobs.

And Helena’s like, they look great.

Bex: She’s trying [00:12:00] to be polite, but she’s so fucking judgmental.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: And it just goes straight over Janet’s head. She’s just like, “Great, thank you. Call me hot granny.”

Alice: Yeah. Um, this is where we find out that yes, this is Christopher. ’cause they announce his name, Shannon’s mom gets to hold him and then asks how long Eddie’s gonna be there. And he’s back to Afghanistan next week, so he’s only having a couple days.

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, I, I, I was gonna say, Shannon gets in like all of the eye rolls in this episode, but she absolutely deserves to because he’s only gonna be there for like, hardly any time before he disappears again.

Bex: Yeah. To be fair, she’s probably very lucky that they managed to get him back in time for the birth to begin with.

Alice: Yep.

Bex: ’cause extraction, especially if [00:13:00] he’s in like active war zone extraction would be very difficult.

Alice: Um, but it’s, but yeah, his excuse is that the sooner he goes, the sooner he finishes his tour and come back home for good.

Bex: And to that end, Shannon gives him a jewelry box with a silver medallion that has a sink.

Christopher, um, etched on it, which she says is, uh, St. Christopher is the patron saint of Travelers and she says the medallion is to protect him and keep him safe and remind him that he has a family to come home to.

Alice: Yeah. And Eddie says that he, he loves them both and no matter what happens, he’s always gonna fight to come home to his family.

Bex: That’s a very important line for the rest of the episode.

Alice: Uh, ’cause we immediately cut to rushing water. Falling mud, thunder, lightning and Eddie’s unconscious

Bex: and underground.

Alice: Yeah. [00:14:00]

Ellen: And he manages to find a radio and yell, like, you know, speaks into it and says, “Can anyone hear me? I’m alive down here.” So all of this before the title card, setting it up for what’s to come.

All right. So we’re going to the station, like to the 118 station house.

Bex: Yes. Where Bobby is doing a radio check with everyone.

Alice: I forgot that this, this scene was in this episode. It’s such, because I’ve seen it so many times and I couldn’t, like I had no idea which episode it was in. Yeah. And so I was already laughing.

Bex: I I was starting to sort to laugh at it ’cause I knew what was coming. But then the, the idea that you went from Eddie on the radio begging for someone to answer him to tell it because he’s still alive. And then the very next line of dialogue is “Firefighter Diaz, do [00:15:00] you copy?” Bobby it back to him.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. The, um, segues in this are great

Bex: Yes. Uh, big, big props to, um, Christopher Monfette and Robert Williams who were the. They wrote the story, they co-wrote the story. Christopher Monfette wrote the tele play and then Robert directed the episode. So very good work guys. Yep. So yeah, radio checks. Eddie’s radio works.

Alice: Yep. “Five by five, Cap, over.”

Bex: So Chimney’s radio is working and he also checks in for Hen, which isn’t really the point because the whole point is ch Hen needs to check her radio, um, because her hands are full with coffee. Um,

Alice: yeah, Chimney’s like “I can already tell, screwed up my coffee,”

Bex: but before we get into Chimney’s, absolutely insane [00:16:00] coffee order, she’s only got four cups there. So who is getting coffee and who is missing out?

Ellen: Yeah,

Alice: well there are a lot more than four firefighters too. So,

Bex: but even, even if you discount that, even if you discount all of the background firefighters, she’s only got four coffees. So there’s one for Chim, I’m assuming she got one for herself.

But then you’ve got Bobby, Eddie and Buck. So who’s not getting a coffee?

Ellen: I don’t think we ever find out.

Bex: No, I don’t think anybody thought about it. They just thought, oh, wouldn’t it be funny if Hen comes in from doing and why is hen doing the coffee? Don’t they have a probie to go and do the coffee run?

Alice: I know, right?

Ellen: Apparently not. Well for the, for the like, you know, screenplay they needed her to be holding some coffee so that she couldn’t speak into that.

Bex: No, I know, but just no one, no, I’m, I do the logical thinking. I’m the one counting the coffee cups going, wait, this does not make sense. But no, nobody else [00:17:00] did.

They just thought, let’s, let’s send Hen on a coffee run and have chi have the most insane coffee outside of peppermint lattes.

Ellen: Peppermint mocha. Um, no, it sounds pretty good. Like cinnamon, coconut, macchiato, quad shot, half pump of vanilla? I don’t know. I try it, it sounds pretty strong. Quad shot. That’s, that’s kind of nuts.

Bex: Quad shot. Yeah,

Ellen: you’d be up night.

Alice: What’s a macchiato? Yeah, what’s a macchiato? And like I don’t drink coffee ’cause I’m intolerant to caffeine. Um,

Ellen: okay. I’m gonna have to look it up. I’m pretty, it’s just a type the way you make it, right? Like with the amount of milk,

Bex: it’s an espresso. It’s a espresso topped with a small amount of steam or foamed milk. So what’s the fuck the difference between a macchiato and a latte?

Ellen: Well, latte has got a lot of milk in it.

Alice: And thei as a quad shot, four shots of coffee?

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Jesus Christ.

Ellen: I mean, your [00:18:00] usual, your usual like flat white or whatever has two shots anyway. So four shots is just a, a double. A double double. Yeah, it just says here a small amount of milk. So I don’t know. Oh, here you go. There’s, here’s a diagram. Did you find the diagram?

Bex: No, I’m on Nescafe, which I, I don’t, I don’t think he’s necessarily the best source for good coffee. Uh, but they say that a macchiato is two parts espresso to one part milk.

Ellen: Cappuccino has the most milk,

Bex: whereas, yes. Well it looks like the macchiato is supposed to be served in an espresso cup, so you can only, once you put the shot in, you only put enough milk in to fill up the espresso cup, whereas the latte is in like an actual cup.

Ellen: There you go. I thought that was called a piccolo, but apparently I am wrong

Bex: Piccolo doesn’t have milk.[00:19:00]

Alice: So what’s the difference between a piccolo and espresso?

Ellen: I thought that was just es espresso. If it didn’t have milk in it. Oh my god. I can’t believe we’re tangenting about

Alice: If anyone listening is a barista… Welcome to That Wee Woo Coffee. Uh, where we talk about No.

Bex: Okay. No. Oh no. That says piccolo latte. No. Apparently piccolo has milk.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: but it’s steamed milk? Who the fuck knows?

Alice: See, even when, because I actually like coffee. I live in Melbourne, so I do get ostracized for not having a coffee. Um, so I’ll have a decaf, but even then I just have a decaf cap, occasionally a decaf caramel cap.

Ellen: This, um, “Australian coffee menu explained” website has excellent diagrams.

Bex: Apparently the piccolo is the Australian version of the macchiato.

Ellen: Oh, okay. [00:20:00] Well this, the Australian coffee menu doesn’t even say piccolo. It doesn’t even have it. It’s just got macchiato.

Alice: No, it does have,

Bex: I’m on Reddit, milk coffee. Reddit knows all.

Alice: Piccolo is there too.

Bex: Regardless if, if he’s having a piccolo slash a macchiato, why? Can you imagine the amount of milk? Or like, is that She hands him like a grande cup?

Alice: Yeah. Yeah. Well, she, he is got four shots in it, so

Bex: is it like, yeah, but still that wouldn’t be enough to, I can’t believe we’ve spent all this time on like a throwaway reference.

Alice: So based on the, this link that Ellen just shared,

Bex: which we will share for you guys as well.

Alice: Well, instead of having milk in it, they literally just put the foam on top, so it’s just a teaspoon of hot steamed milk and a dollop of foam. Whereas a piccolo is…

Ellen: So hang on. If. If it’s got, if it’s a coconut one, does [00:21:00] that mean it’s got coconut milk in it, or is it just coconut flavor?

Alice: Or is it just coconut flavor? And then I can’t tell the difference between a piccolo latte and a flat white.

Ellen: Maybe we need someone who works at Starbucks to understand

Bex: No, no, we don’t need somebody who works in Starbucks. We need someone from Australia who, who knows these. Oh, okay. although, yes. If you’re talking about why it would be a cinnamon, coconut macchiato, then yeah, maybe we do need a Starbucks person because Yeah.

Fun fact for our American listeners, we don’t do flavored coffees over here. You just get coffee.

Ellen: Yeah, you can get flavored coffee.

Bex: Yeah, but you can get like hazelnut or caramel or vanilla or peppermint. You don’t get like a, yeah,

Alice: I’ll add caramel or hazelnut, but it’s not like a fancy thing.

Bex: Also, interestingly enough, the, even though it’s Starbucks in Australia, it’s Australian coffee, so it tastes and is, it is different from American [00:22:00] Starbucks. Oh my God. Tangenting over coffee.

Ellen: Yeah, let’s, let’s move away from this coffee snobbery, Aussie coffee snobbery.

Alice: Anyway, they, they forget. They forgot Chim’s cinnamon. There’s no cinnamon.

Ellen: There’s no cinnamon. He does have, did they forget or did, just did coconut and vanilla. Bobby asks Buck to sound off and Buck just calls down from the, from up in the loft.

Alice: Literally just yells from up in the loft. We got

Ellen: visitors and Bobby’s like Buck the whole point is to say it into the, into the radio and Buck, which then

Bex: he immediately just picks up his radio and goes, “We have visitors, Cap,” into the radio. And then he, he waits a beat and then goes, “Hey, did I pass?” I mean,

Alice: bless his little self.

Bex: I guess you, even your, your radio did work eventually once you remember to use it. [00:23:00] Um, but yes, the 118 do have visitors. Um, Christopher and Carla have come, not so much to visit. I dunno why he’s here. I don’t know why he’s here. I don’t know why they need it. Like, I know it’s for the drama, but surely this could have been an at home after work conversation.

They didn’t need to come into the firehouse for this conversation.

Alice: Oh, they absolutely didn’t. It seemed like they were like driving to school and Chris was like, “I wanna see Dad,” and Carla was like, “Sure. Okay.”

Bex: Or like after school or something. ’cause Chris is in his uniform.

Alice: It’s before because it’s like the tense is he’s supposed to tell Ms. Florence it’s what he is preventing to show and tell on Friday

Bex: today. So they needs to go to school anyway. Um, so yes, show and tell and apparently the hamster, apparently Chris has a [00:24:00] hamster, um,

Alice: A new hamster

Bex: is so, so passe, God knows what happened to the old hamster. But this new one is so passe, he doesn’t wanna take it to school.

He’s been rifling through Eddie’s things and found his silver star. Did you know that Eddie has a silver star?

Alice: Eddie has a silver star? Eddie would never do anything illegal. Has a Eddie has silver star.

Bex: Yes,

Ellen: I know this is a reference to something that…

Alice: Besides the illegal fight club

Ellen: happens in the future,

Alice: um, besides that illegal fight club, uh, Eddie would never do anything illegal. ’cause Eddie has a silver star. Exactly

Ellen: right. Well, when he looks at the Silver Star, he has flashbacks. So maybe it’s not such a great thing. Um, he,

Bex: but it’s not just that he wants to take the Silver Star in, he wants to take the Silver Star and its recipient, and he wants, he wants Eddie to tell the class what he did to get his Silver Star.

Alice: Hang on, hang on. Can we, like, [00:25:00] can we talk about the cutest part? So like Buck just appears and

Bex: Oh, yeah. Because Buck is just irresistibly drawn to his family. Whenever they’re, they’re around,

Alice: he’s like, oh, my kid’s here. Um, and Buck’s like, “Oh, do you ever just wear it?” And Eddie’s go like, clearly his go-to line is “never found an outfit to go with it.”

And Buck goes, “if I had a medal, I’d never take it off.” And Eddie just goes, we know,

but yeah. So Chris wants to take the medal and Eddie to school, um, and Buck’s, “like is that a story you can tell fourth graders?” And Eddie’s like, “uh, no.” Um, but yeah, so he promises he is coming to school with Chris on Friday morning to tell appropriate for fourth grader war stories. Um, very important that he’s promised that Friday morning he’s coming to show and tell.

Bex: [00:26:00] Yes.

Alice: Okay.

Ellen: You promise?

Alice: Promises.

Ellen: Yes, I promise

Bex: He promises. Yes.

Alice: And ’cause he has a silver star,

Ellen: he would never break a promise

Alice: and he’d never do anything illegal.

Ellen: I look forward to finding out what it is, the future that you’re talking about. Uh, it may be some time in the future.

Bex: Well, right now the 118 are off on an emergency call.

Um, we get stock footage of the engine truck and the ambulance down the interstate lights and sirens going. At some point, the ladder truck joins them and they pull up to a, a farm. Um, I look, I don’t know anything about LA or um, like how big it is or what like the, the environs are like, but I’m pretty sure that that amount of land and that kind of farm would not be sort of within the city.

Alice: You don’t think it’s [00:27:00] next to the beach that they go to regularly?

Bex: I, I just, I wonder, like, I know that each firehouse has its own kind of area that that’s the area that it manages. How the fucking big is the 118’s area?

Alice: It’s the whole, it’s the entire state of California at this point. Like why,

Bex: why, why do they have other firehouses? Because apparently the 118 just gets sent everywhere. Yeah.

Alice: Like they, they even get sent to Texas at one point, so like, let’s just not question

Bex: Texas. The the Texas one is a special, is special. We, we get the Texas one, I mean, the Texas one is kind of the equivalent of our, you know, Victorian fireys getting flown over.

So, you know, I’ll let that one slide. I just don’t see how an inner, which what I’m assuming is an inner city firehouse is out on fucking farmland.

Ellen: Yeah, you’re right. It doesn’t make much sense.

Bex: No, but they’re out here and funnily enough, [00:28:00] so is Athena. So how the hell is she out there as well?

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: And how did she beat them there?

Alice: She just wanted to go tell, tell Bobby about how nice the farm is.

Ellen: Yeah. The farm must just be near the city somehow. Who knows? But there is a missing child.

Bex: Oh, sure. Let’s talk about the actual story. Yeah. There’s a missing kid.

Alice: Is there a story?

Ellen: Um, they’re, they’re all spread out across the field calling out for Hayden. Who is the kid who’s missing?

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Um, apparently they, they think it could be an abduction, but they’re gonna look for him anyway around the place.

Bex: Yeah. Athena thought that initially it was a child abduction, but then she saw an old photo of the farm way back when, where there was an old windmill.

Which I’m guessing like I would see windmill and just assume like windmill, but apparently windmill means it powered something and it was probably powering a [00:29:00] well, I don’t know, but they go from, there’s a windmill to, there must be a, well, somewhere on the property and the kids probably fallen down the well, oh, there we go.

Athena says it used to power a water pump, which means that therefore there must have been a well,

Ellen: um, they’re all looking around. But Eddie is the one who spies. He does some like, you know, master tracking work kind of thing and sees like a footprint and the, uh, like he clears some junk away and there’s like a hole in the ground.

So he’s found the well, or he’s found a well or a pipe of some sort.

Alice: I don’t understand why there was junk over the top of the hole. Like over the pipe. Like did

Bex: the kid, kid, like how did Hayden get down?

Alice: Grab a whole bunch of, there it, yeah. Did the kid grab a whole bunch of junk while he was falling? I don’t understand.

I don’t know. No,

Bex: it’s for the drama of having Eddie lift all of the stuff.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. It’s really narrow pipe. Like, [00:30:00] ugh. No, it’s just this whole scene is just so horrible. Uh, they look down, they can’t see anything. It’s too dark. Even when they shine lights down there, can’t see anything. So they, they get like a camera and like on the end of a cable and feed it down there and they go all the way down to 40 feet down and they find him.

He’s like fallen 40 feet down this, well, oh my god. The poor kid. I’m just looking at, uh, how many meters? 40 feet is 12 meters.

Bex: This is another ripped from the headlines storyline.

Ellen: Oh no, really?

Bex: So a for not quite this bad, but yeah, there, um, it happened in the late eighties in Texas. Um, she was known as baby Jessica.

She was 18 [00:31:00] months old and she fell down and abandoned well on her aunt’s property. Um, if you are looking up how long and things are, um, the shaft was only 18 inches. Sorry, eight inches. It’s only eight. Only eight inches wide. And that’s what she fell down.

Alice: Oh my god. How the fuck,

Bex: she’s only 18 months old. She must have been pretty tiny.

Alice: Yeah. Jesus Christ.

Bex: But. I guess it was better than this scenario that happens in the episode because the, the well that she fell down, the, the pipe that she fell down, it had a sharp bend about 20 feet down. And so she got stuck in the bend. So she wasn’t going anywhere.

There was no risk of her slipping down further like there is with Hayden in this episode. Um, but it took them over two days to get her out.

Ellen: Oh. Oh my God.

Alice: Oh my God.

Bex: They did, [00:32:00] they did the same thing that they did in this episode. They drilled, um, a parallel tunnel and then they drilled through the rock to get to her.

Um, but yeah, 56 hours she was down in that, um, down in that pipe. And apparently she was fine because they, they lowered a microphone down to figure out where she was and they could hear her singing to herself.

Ellen: Aw.

Alice: Oh,

Bex: and they got her back out after 56 hours. She had some, um, like scratches, obviously some serious head injuries.

’cause they were worried that she might need plastic surgery later to fix it. Um, probably the most serious injury was, I don’t know how it happened, but, um, when she was trapped down in the, the shaft, one of her legs was like up above her head. Oh. So her foot ended up developing gangrene. So they had to excise some of the the flesh from her foot.

Alice: Oh my God.

Bex: That was the, [00:33:00] that was the worst thing that happened to her. And she’s, she’s still alive today and, and perfectly fine. She’s in her thirties now.

Alice: Wow.

Bex: But yeah, that’s the story of baby Jessica. It’s not quite as bad as, as, as Hayden. ’cause Hayden, we’ve got the, the constantly the threat that he’s gonna keep slipping down further and further.

’cause it’s nothing to stop him and the rain. So the threat of drowning,

Ellen: oh God, it’s horrible. But he makes it, he makes it. He’s, he’s okay in the end. Okay. Just to, just to make sure everyone knows that when we are going in,

Bex: yes, we did say that 9-1-1 didn’t has not killed a kid yet. Oh,

Ellen: well, I was pretty terrified through most of this.

So they, you know, they find him and they, they get Hayden’s mom and she’s like, you know, crying and saying, oh my baby, he’s alive. Oh. And I’m just already in tears at this point. [00:34:00] Um, they’re trying to work so it’s nighttime in the next scene. Um, they’re trying to work out how they’re gonna, how the hell they’re gonna get him out.

They can’t pull him out from above. They think there could be some drainage tunnels, but they don’t really know how they’re gonna get him out.

Alice: Yeah. The system predates the maps,

Ellen: so they decide. Bobby has a light bulb moment and decides that they’re gonna have to dig him out and like you said, just before, they’re going to get this massive drill rig.

I don’t know, it’s like humongous thing. Set up a big drill, um, dig a parallel tunnel wider so that a human can, like an adult can get down there and, um, dig across to him and hopefully pull him out that way. And Buck is questioning the digging across by hand part. So like, “It feels like that’s a long way when you’re 40 [00:35:00] something feet down,” but they can’t get you close to the pipe because they don’t want it to collapse.

Bex: Yeah, I can imagine that if you’re trying to drill too close to the whole, the, the vibrations and just the structural integrity is going to be quite dicey. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

I’m gonna reveal my stupidity here. And I assumed that the, the pipe that Hayden was sitting in kind of went all the way down and then whoever had to go down and punch across was then going to have to go through the pipe as well to get to Hayden.

Ellen: I, I don’t know, it’s a difficult kind of a, a thing ’cause like you dig across to where the pipe is and then cut, but they don’t really have any idea of where they are in relation to Hayden.

So. So they could cut the pipe. I think that worked. And then he would be way further down than you could reach still.

Bex: Like, well, no, but I think they’ve got the cables. No, they know that he’s, they’ve got the cable and they’ve been Mark, they’ve been marking off how much cable they’ve lowered down. So then they would just go, [00:36:00] okay, Eddie.

’cause Eddie is the one who volunteers to go down because uh, he has to. ’cause even though it makes more sense to send Chim down, because Chim is, you know, physically smaller, it’s not, Chimney Begins, it’s Eddie Begins. So Eddie is the one that has to go down. Um, so they would just lower Eddie to match where they, where Hayden is.

But then you’ve got the issue that he’s like slipping further and further down. ’cause you know, he’s got nothing under his feet to hold him up.

Ellen: Yeah. And you’ve gotta like cut a big enough hole in the side of the pipe that they can actually pull him through it as well. On a, on a Yeah. You know, angle. It’s not, not an easy prospect.

Bex: I think it’s, it’s, again, it’s, I, it’s one of these episodes where we have to just let it go for the drama because if we start thinking about how it’s gonna work in reality it’s, we’re just gonna, it’s gonna fall apart. Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. Anyway, um,

Ellen: anyway,

Alice: back to the episode. [00:37:00] Um, Athena gets called away, but is leaving officers behind for crowd control and Bobby’s like, “Oh, what crowd?”

Um, yeah. So the news are everywhere, like there’s press absolutely everywhere.

Bex: Um, although the first one we see is Channel Eight. ’cause you know, Channel Eight is the news, the official news of, of the 118.

Alice: Of the 118.

Bex: It’s not, it’s not Taylor though.

Ellen: Oh,

Alice: no. She does the morning news. It’s fine. But yeah, so those, and these are just the local stations.

So if the story hits nationwide, there’s gonna be a lot more media. But yeah, this is where we get like the thunder claps and everything, and they go into the Channel eight news. Who’s not Taylor Kelly Talking about the weather.

Bex: Yes, there is a weather system moving in. It was supposed to go out to sea, but now it’s moving inwards.

Um, bringing with it torrential rains and gusty winds and an [00:38:00] electrical storm just for shits and giggles.

Alice: Yeah, just for fun.

Ellen: Yay. The, but finally now I don’t know how much, how many hours have gone past, but the, the, the drill rig is ready to go. So Chim says, uh, well, Bobby’s asking Chim, um, “How, how’s he doing down there?”

And Chim’s like, “Hasn’t moved in a while. He might’ve fallen asleep.” It’s like, oh my God. Do you think he would fall asleep? I mean, I guess if he couldn’t move, could’ve been.

Alice: My stress response is to fall asleep, so.

Ellen: Oh, I God.

Bex: Yeah. Look, if he’s little, he’s probably exhausted. Then you have the adrenaline crash.

Um. Yeah, he probably could fall asleep, which I think would probably be the worst thing. ’cause then his body would relax.

Ellen: Yeah. Then he’d be all…

Bex: And he’d slide further down the pipe.

Ellen: Yeah. That’s what I would have thought, anyway, uh, let’s not worry about that. Um, he doesn’t do that. He’s,

Bex: but he’s not asleep. He’s not asleep because they send, they send out a radio just to be able to, um, not for him to talk back to them, but for them to talk to [00:39:00] him and let him know what’s gonna go on.

’cause I can imagine that if you’re stuck down on a pipe and then all of a sudden drilling starts, that would scare the hell out of you.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. So they all shut off their radios so that they can get the signal down 40 feet. And Hayden’s mom talks to him and she’s like, “can you hear me? Hayden? Hayden, please look up.”

And then they see Hayden looking up and, oh, it’s so sad. Um,

Alice: oh my God. This is where I started crying.

Ellen: Oh. Because he’s like, “Mom!”

Alice: Because he looks like he, they’re, they’re trying to talk to him and they’re moving the radio up like a tiny bit at a time to try and get signal. And then he finally looks up and then just screams mom and like, oh my God.

And then like, even the mom is like, “I’m sorry, I can’t do this.”

Ellen: Yeah. The mom’s like freaking out big time.

Alice: Um, so she starts crying, but Eddie steps forward and [00:40:00] he’s like, “Hey Hayden, my name’s Eddie. I’m a firefighter. I’m here with your mother and a whole lot of other people and we’re working to get you outta there.

Um, so just stay calm. It might get a little noisy. Don’t be scared. We’ll be there soon.” The mom thanks Eddie. And Eddie’s like, no thank us. Later when we give you back your son

Ellen: and then it starts raining.

Alice: I’m pretty sure I didn’t even hear any of that when I was watching the episode. ’cause I was too busy crying over this poor kid who’s not even trapped in a pipe in real life.

But I was just like, oh my God, this poor kid. He’s like so little and he’s just stuck and he looks so scared.

Ellen: He does

Alice: 10 outta 10 actor.

Ellen: Yes. They, they need to divert rain water away, which is a good idea. ’cause it does start pouring with rain.

Bex: I’m surprised they haven’t done that beforehand,

Ellen: right? Yeah. Um, they Buck reckons there’s another hour before they’re at the right level with the, with the drilling. But the rain is gonna slow us down. I don’t know why the rain’s gonna slow us down, but, okay. Buck,

Bex: I’m gonna assume [00:41:00] that the, the rain water’s gonna get into the trench, which is going to turn the soil into mud, which the drill is just not gonna be able to chew through. It’s just gonna like, like you wanna get a tire in mud, it just spins on the spot and can’t actually get any traction.

That’s my, like, professional drilling advi… Thinking.

Ellen: But if they’re, if, uh, let’s, let’s not go to the actual business of it. Yeah,

Bex: no, I know.

Alice: We’re not professional drillers.

Bex: We don’t even play them on tv.

Ellen: They’re arguing about how they’re running out of time because he’s going to get hypothermia, you know, blah blah. So they’re gonna

Alice: Yeah, poor kid’s been down there 10 hours already. But the main issue is that there’s a lightning storm coming and the drill operators,

Bex: I have no idea who this guy is,

Alice: but yeah, he’s some sort of drill person. Um, official driller, uh, is like, “it’s, um, hardly even a mile away. We’ve gotta pull the [00:42:00] plug.”

Bex: They have to pull the plug because the crane rig is a five story lightning rod in the middle of an empty field.

So if the, if the storm hits them and lightning decides to strike in that area, the only place it’s gonna go is into the crane. Into the drill truck.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Which is not a great idea.

Alice: Anyone else getting, um,

Bex: which is for foreshadowing?

Alice: Yeah. Anyone else getting panicked about lightning? Bex?

Bex: I just, nah,

Ellen: I, I do know about that one anyway. Um, we, let’s not go there.

Bex: Oh.

Ellen: Um, we, uh, Eddie, so they, they say, okay, we’ll we’ll pull up and we’ll have to go down with, at the level that it’s at now. We can’t go any further. Let’s, let’s go ahead. So. Eddie says that he is gonna go down there because he’s the one that was talking to Hayden.

So he knows his voice [00:43:00] and he’s not taking any, you know, argument about it. He’s going,

Bex: but once again, Eddie, check your shoulder width compared to Chim’s shoulder width. It would make much more sense to send Chim in because like, just to sort of like flash forward to when they actually do get said child. Um, Chim has the kid strapped to his chest as he lifts him out of the um, the new tunnel.

How the hell was Eddie gonna fit himself and the kid in that tunnel?

Alice: Yeah. Who the fuck knows?

Ellen: Anyway, it’s for the drama though.

Bex: For the drama.

Ellen: Eddie’s gonna do it

Bex: and because it’s Eddie Begins, not Chimney Begins. Eddie is the one that has to go down. Um, which I do. Again, this segue is amazing ’cause it goes from Eddie going “Suit me up, I’m going down.”

And then the next line of dialogue is, “Are you insane?” [00:44:00] Yes. I mean, it’s, it was in Texas like 7 years ago, but still that segue just perfect.

Ellen: Shannon can’t believe that Eddie has reenlisted without even discussing it with her. Eddie says, “I’m doing this for you.” And she’s like, “How is this doing it for me?”

Bex: Yeah, she’s angry.

Ellen: But Eddie says that someone’s gotta pay for all of this. I mean, I’m not surprised she’s angry at this point. Yeah. And she’s sort of saying that if you had been there, you would’ve known that it was Cerebral Palsy and not like an illness. ’cause he calls it Christopher’s illness.

Bex: Yeah. Eddie was saying, yeah, Eddie was saying that he needed money to pay for Christopher’s illness. And Shannon’s saying like, “If you’d been with me at the doctor’s appointments, you’d know that it’s not an illness.” And Eddie’s like, “I was in Afghanistan, not Cancun. I wasn’t off having a holiday. I was working.”

I just, I feel so badly for both of them [00:45:00] at this point.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. So interest, like, I thought it was this episode that like, obviously we get

a lot of Eddie’s backstory, but I thought it was this episode where we got the ages, but that’s not till season six apparently.

Bex: Yeah, there’s still, when um, when Ellen was talking in the group chat about, uh, she’s still, Alice and I are very much on the, um, we hate Helena, Helena Diaz hate train right now.

Um, yeah, Ellen’s not quite on there with us and I was thinking, but like, why is she not there? Not on there with us. Um, until I realized that there are more episodes about the Diaz family. So still have.

Ellen: Yeah, I figured there must be because I’m just watching this going they’re not that bad? Like why so,

Alice: so Eddie, um, Eddie and Shannon were [00:46:00] 19 when they got married.

Ellen: Okay.

Bex: I still don’t trust 9-1-1 when it comes to ages and times and wibbly wobbly things.

Alice: Oh, none of us do. But, um, but yeah, so Shannon is a teenager, fresh out of high school. Eddie had no degrees, so enlisted in the military to, to support the family.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: But it, it, the ages, like it wasn’t specifically said that he’s 19 in this episode. Like I thought that it was mentioned.

Bex: I think we all just assumed that they were high school. It made sense that it was high school. It’s when you look at how old Chris is and how old they are and the way they’re talking, um, about their relationship, it just kind of made sense that there were high school sweethearts that,

Alice: but yeah. So Shannon’s mom, Shannon’s mom’s already had cancer. Like was going through cancer, I guess when she was pregnant.

Ellen: Yeah. We heard that earlier.

Alice: And Eddie’s just not there.

Ellen: Yeah. It’s obvious I think from this [00:47:00] conversation and, and the other conversations that they have that they’re both in way over their head with all of this.

Yeah. Like neither of them are coping well with anything. And I mean,

Bex: and they both have very different ideas of what it is to be a parent. Like Shannon’s obviously her, she wants her idea is the two of them together in the house raising Christopher together. I don’t know whether that’s because that’s how she was raised or whether that’s the ideal that she wanted, whereas Eddie’s idea of being a parent is being a provider.

And we kind of got the idea from what Helena was saying earlier, that Ramon is a, a absent provider. Like he’s,

Alice: yeah. Ramon didn’t even see the birth of his kids, so he wasn’t there at all

Bex: because he was away working. I think we can get the implication that he was away working. So Eddie

Alice: yeah.

Bex: Has grown up.

Alice: He’s like, oh, I’m just going away to work.

Bex: He’s going away to work. That’s how he was raised. That’s what he thinks it means to be a father. Shannon doesn’t quite understand that Eddie doesn’t understand what she wants. They’re [00:48:00] just these two confused kids just way in over their heads

Alice: and not, but not only that, like Eddie enlisted without telling Shannon.

Bex: Yeah, that’s, yeah. That’s a dick move. Yeah, that’s kind of a dick move.

Alice: She, she got pregnant and he signed up and

Bex: it’s good money. I can understand why he did it. It was really good

Alice: Oh, the benefits as well, like, so Yes, in America, the cost of having a baby in hospital is like hundreds of thousands or something ridiculous. Like it’s insane.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Whereas if you’ve got health insurance, they take a portion of that. And defense has amazing health insurance, and they do that because they want kids to sign up. Like if you sign up to the military, you’re basically set for life.

Bex: So it’s, it’s not a,

Alice: or according to, it’s the propaganda anyway.

Bex: It’s easy to understand why a very young Texan [00:49:00] boy who probably didn’t have aspirations of further education, who thought he was probably just gonna end up in some kind of like blue collar job, saw the military as a really good way to make really good money and take care of his family.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah.

Bex: But while they’re fighting backwards and forwards in the kitchen, um, Christopher starts crying and then we get the, the standoff where Shannon’s just like,

Alice: yeah. Eddie says that Shannon, Shannon’s just like, “Go get your kid. I’ll get dinner.”

Bex: Yeah. Eddie’s waiting for Shannon to go get the baby. She’s waiting for him to go get the baby.

Alice: And then, oh my God. It’s the most awkward thing. So Eddie goes into Christopher’s bedroom and like picks him up. Like he’s never, he, it looks like he’s never held this child before in his life.

Ellen: He has no idea what he’s doing.

Bex: I’m wondering, like, was, did Ryan have a kid at this point? I mean,

Alice: I believe he did,

Bex: I’m going to have to google whether he did, because whether he did [00:50:00] actually have his kids, because Yeah, it never looks like he’s never held a child before in his life.

Alice: Yeah. Like I think that’s the point is that he’s not there so he doesn’t understand how to

Bex: Oh yeah. Mateo was already born, so Yeah, he’s, yeah, he’s had kids,

Ellen: he’s acting,

Alice: because I was gonna say, because the interview,

Bex: he’s doing a very good job then.

Ellen: Great acting. Yeah.

Alice: Because yeah, he does an interview about the harness that he wears later on. Yes. And um, yeah, he told his then wife, “I don’t know if we’re having any more kids.”

So yes, he had had a child. Um, but yeah, it’s definitely like, the point is that he’s never held, like it looks like he’s never held this child before.

Bex: And it’s also that while Christopher is crying to be picked up, as soon as Eddie picks him up, he starts crying harder because that’s not who he was expecting to pick him up.

And he, like, Eddie is still a, as Shannon who’s not getting dinner, she’s followed Eddie into [00:51:00] the nursery. Just to rub it in a little bit more says that, you know, “You are a stranger to your son.”

Alice: And this is where Shannon goes, “Eddie, I don’t need a provider. I need a partner.”

Bex: Yeah. And then it gets worse because she’s like, “You don’t know what it’s like going through this alone.” And Eddie snaps at her and says, “You are not the only one that feels alone.”

Ellen: Yeah, because that made it so much better Eddie.

Alice: Oh yeah.

Ellen: Though he tries, he tries to comfort Chris. Chris is like, who the hell are you?

Bex: Nope. No, I want my mommy

Ellen: not, not having it.

Alice: Like it’s such a contrast as well from earlier in this episode where like, Chris is so proud of his dad and like, oh, look at my dad’s silver star and I wanna take my dad to, um, show and tell later.

And like the bond that we’ve seen them have the entire show. And then you get this flashback and it’s like, this kid didn’t even know his dad when he was a baby.

Ellen: All right. So back to the [00:52:00] present? The present of, uh, the present five years ago.

Yes. Uh, Eddie Eddie’s ready, Eddie’s ready to go. Um, he’s got

Alice: Ready steady Eddie.

Ellen: He’s got extra oxygen, green light, full supply of oxygen in case you need it, um, because the water’s rising fast.

Alice: Yellow light means there’s two minutes left and red is empty. And Bobby says he wants to see him topside before he sees red.

They’re gonna lose comms, so he has 30 minutes to dig across. After 30 minutes, they’re gonna tug on the line twice and then they’re pulling him out. And if he finds the boy before the 30 minutes is up. Eddie tugs on the line twice, and he, and they both get pulled up

Bex: Just for the extra drama, they have put like this massive digital timer on Eddie’s wrist, which you could read out from space.

And they [00:53:00] make, they make a big deal of Eddie setting this like massive, it looks like it’s bigger than a microwave on his wrist to 30 minutes. So 30 minutes we’ve got,

Alice: they basically got like the biggest alarm clock in the world and like strap to his wrist,

Bex: strapped to his wrist just to drive it home he’s got 30 minutes and then they, um, Buck slowly because Buck’s the one working the winch, um, slowly lowers him down into the tunnel.

While this is all happening, the thunder and lightning, the thunder is getting louder because the storm is moving closer.

Alice: Yeah. It’s getting more and more intense

Bex: just to, you know, put the extra extra tension into the scene.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: And then just to make it even better, um, we cut between Eddie lowering down and narrating, like giving updates as he’s going down the tunnel and then the rest of the 118 top side [00:54:00] and they. They could be on a Discord call for all they know. ’cause the way Eddie is cutting out, they could be trying to record a podcast, honestly.

Ellen: Hey, you’re right. It sounds kind of similar!

Alice: They’re just in Tasmania,

Bex: but yeah, Eddie’s, Eddie’s talking and he’s trying, he’s telling them what’s going on and they cannot hear a word that he is saying. They have no idea what’s going on.

Ellen: So, but he says, “I dunno if you guys can hear me, but I’m gonna punch through.” So he like digs in and he, he gets, he’s got like a little saw as well that he uses to actually cut the pipe.

Alice: Yeah, he’s not literally punching through, which is what I,

Ellen: no, he’s not playing, not in Minecraft. He’s not like punching the wall

Alice: when we’re explaining the plan. I’m just like, um,

Bex: Hulk smash? Like, we’re sending Bobby down?

Ellen: Literally punching through.

Alice: He’s literally just got a little Yeah, just punching across like Minecraft.

Ellen: Um, so when he, when he cuts [00:55:00] the through the pipe, does he also cut the, the picture like the camera cable thing? Because Chim also loses the picture. You know how they fed, they fed down the

Bex: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Ellen: Pipe to see. So does he I does he,

Bex: I don’t think so?

Ellen: Do they show that? Maybe does this sort of happens at the same time?

Bex: I don’t think he cuts.

Alice: I don’t know, but it’d be really awkward if the kid was there because, and he, if he cut through the camera line, would he cut through the kid too? Like Jesus?

Ellen: Yeah, that’s what I was saying about how, like, if they get the distance wrong.

Bex: Yeah, well see if they, but they do, because we see Eddie cut the opening and sort of look through and he looks up expecting to see Hayden, but Hayden’s not there.

So then he has to sort of pull himself out, turn around, go back in and look down. And that’s when he can see Hayden.

Alice: So the kid has, so the kid slipped further [00:56:00] down, but yeah, so Eddie calls down to the kid and says, “Are you doing okay?” And the kid’s just like, “CC cold.” It’s like, oh, poor little baby. Um, so Eddie’s still like trying to update them on the radio.

He’s like, I got eyes on Hayden, he’s fallen about. And then they go up the top and literally all, all that’s coming through is static.

Bex: Yep. Yeah. And Bobby’s getting more and more panicked and he’s, he’s like, “I, I dunno what’s going on. We’re running outta time. We’re gonna bring him up.” And Buck is advocating for giving Eddie the full 30 minutes.

Like he’s, he trusts in Eddie. He’s like, “He could have the kid, he could almost have him. We just need to give him more time.” And Hen’s like, “Or he could be suffocating in mud, five stories underground. We don’t know.”

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: But while they’re talking backwards and forwards. Um, Eddie is reaching for Hayden and at some point Hayden has got [00:57:00] one arm out.

’cause when we first saw him, he’s had his arms compressed to his chest, which does not, we can’t rescue him when he is, got his hands compressed to his chest, unless Eddie’s gonna grab him by the hair and yank, which I don’t think is proper safety protocol. So they’ve managed, the kid has at some point managed to get one arm up so that we can see like this big hand coming down to, to try and grab this teeny tiny little hand.

Um, but just as Eddie gets a hold of his hand, it’s 30 minutes and Bobby gives the order for Buck to start pulling. So he does,

Ellen: I think, I thought they decided to bring him up early anyway.

Bex: No, I think but Bobby wanted to, Buck was like, no. Yeah, they wanted him time. Um, but he, they waited until the massive microwave timer went off.

Ellen: I mean, Bobby did say we’re almost down to one minute, so Yeah, they were nearly up anyway. Yeah. But time’s up, um, they pull him up [00:58:00] and he loses his grip on Hayden’s hand and um,

Bex: yeah. ’cause he’s had no warning.

Ellen: He’s like, No, no, no!

Bex: He’s like, and he he had a very precarious

Alice: there was no double tap.

Bex: Yeah. It was just the, the, his microwave timer started beeping and then boom, he’s being like express course straight up to the surface.

Um. Which,

Alice: and so naturally, because Eddie does not have the brain cell this episode,

Bex: um, nobody has the brain cell this episode

Alice: No one has the brain cell this episode, Athena took it with her.

Bex: Um, apparently. But can we just, but yeah, Eddie, the size of that fucking knife.

Alice: Yeah. Literal, he pulled out like a machete.

Yeah, where was he keeping this?

Ellen: While he’s like, going up the pipe?

Bex: Like what? It it’s so very much like Crocodile Dundee. That’s not a knife. This is a knife that he is somehow secreted on his body somewhere and managed to like, get out in that tiny, he’s managed to pull it out, [00:59:00] wedged in that tiny little pipe and Yeah.

Cut the fricking rope.

Alice: Yeah. Cuts the rope and slides down the tunnel. Um, so just quickly before we continue, um, this is the interview that I was talking about where Eddie, like Ryan was talking about the experience of filming this and he had to go down the little, like, like a little tunnely thing and he was in a harness.

And usually when you’re wearing a harness, you sort of lean back a and like don’t put all weight into it on the harness. Yeah. But you can’t, you couldn’t do that in the tunnel because it was so narrow that it, it ended up just being all of his weight on his groin.

Ellen: Oh.

Alice: Um, for hours while filming.

Bex: Oh, no.

Alice: And so he like said to his then wife, he’s like, I don’t know if we’re having any more kids,

but Yeah. Ouch. Um, the [01:00:00] things you do for art. Yeah,

Bex: yeah.

Alice: Anyway, so yeah, Eddie, Eddie cuts the line, um, and back up at the surface, Buck’s lost the weight.

Bex: Yeah. He immediately

Alice: And Chim’s like, “What, what does that mean?”

Bex: He immediately knows, he immediately feels that Eddie is not connected to the end. So he’s like yanking up the rope double time.

Alice: Yeah. ’cause well, like, there’s nothing on the end of it now, so you can go real fast.

Bex: It is counting, it’s like 15 feet, 10 feet, five feet. Alright. And then the end of the rope comes to the surface and Bobby grabs it and Eddie is not attached to it, and they can see quite clearly that the rope has been severed and everyone just freaks the fuck out.

Alice: Yeah. Like Hen’s like “He cut the damn line” while everyone else is just like hands on head, like, oh my God.

Bex: Yeah. Like Chim’s throwing his hands up like, “oh my God.” Which we, then we go to commercial on that horrific, horrific, um, concept. And when we come back we get like, this is [01:01:00] probably the second best line of the, the episode.

They decide that they, this time they are gonna send Chim down, which makes sense for two reasons. One, because Chim will physically fit down. Um, I mean, Buck is not beef, not Season eight beef cake. But he’s still, you know, quite a bit broader than Chim. Um, also because Chim is a little bit more sensible than Buck.

Alice: Yeah. So Buck’s just like “Cap. I should be the one to go down,” and Hen just turns around and goes, “So we can end up with two cut lines?” and Buck’s immediately, like, yeah, yeah. Okay. Fair. Like, he doesn’t even argue, just like, yep.

Bex: Oh, okay. So then the camera comes back on. So Eddie mustn’t have cut the camera because we get the image again.

Alice: Yeah. Oh, but the camera’s underwater.

Ellen: Yes. Yeah. So Eddie is okay. He’s landed like, he, he was like putting his hands on the, on the sides of the tunnels to slow himself [01:02:00] down as he fell. So he must have like, not landed too heavily. But we hear Shannon’s voice saying, “Eddie, Eddie, can you hear me?” And we get the, he flashes back to, Shannon and Chris are on like a, a video call, when Eddie’s in Afghanistan, um, Chris has grown up a little bit. He’s now, uh, four years old. Do we actually get like a time like date stamps in these flashbacks that I remember?

Bex: Yeah, it does say Afghanistan. It does say Afghanistan 2015.

Ellen: Okay, good. So we know how much time has passed.

Bex: I’m not making that up. It is actually on the screen, like the El Paso and the Afghanistan ones are timestamped

Ellen: Good. Okay. Uh, yeah, the phone call is not connected very well, so they keep kind of glitching out and they can’t hear each other very well. Shannon’s asking if he found out about his leave…

Alice: Another Discord call.

Ellen: Yeah. Um, [01:03:00] but Eddie’s moving out. He’s gotta, he’s gotta leave. Um, so he can’t hang around to chat.

Alice: Yeah, but so Shannon’s asked him to take leave. Eddie’s still waiting to hear, and Shannon looks visibly upset, so Eddie’s like, “What’s going on? Like, is it Chris?”

But no, it’s Shannon’s mom. It’s cancer and Eddie’s, like, no, she had the double masta mastectomy, the odds, but it’s a different cancer. Um, it’s endometrial carcinoma stage three.

Bex: Yeah. So Shannon needs Eddie back now because she needs to go to see her mother. Um, and Eddie’s just like, “I, I, I don’t know, we, we will figure something out,”

Alice: “Call my parents,” which I’m sure Shannon totally wants to do.

Bex: Yes. Uh, but before they can [01:04:00] have, before they can take the conversation any further, the call drops. Um, and then Eddie starts slapping at the tablet like it’s rabbit ears and if he just shakes it hard enough, he’ll get reception back. Um, I don’t think that’s how it works.

Ellen: No.

Bex: So we’re going to get the, the war footage. And interestingly enough, I discovered that, um, Ryan got his cousin involved in this scene or these scenes. So he has a, a cousin who is a veteran. He did five tours. So Ryan pretty much gave him the script and his cousin rewrote it.

Ellen: Oh.

Alice: Um, yeah, like authenticated everything. So. Rewrote a bit bit of the script, um, made sure the patches on the uniforms and the equipment were correct.

Ellen: Right.

Alice: And yeah. So really cool. Hmm.

Bex: Which I think really comes through in this scene ’cause there’s [01:05:00] a lot of like the discussion over the radio that’s does not sound like the kind of radio chatter that you normally find in television shows and movies. Yeah. Because all of it, pretty much all of it is indecipherable. Like what the fuck are you guys talking about?

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: But it’s authe, it’s authentic. That’s how apparently you would talk over the radio.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So, um, good on Ryan for being that kind of serious about getting Eddie’s storyline right that he reached out for an expert. Hear that writers?. He got an expert, they got experts in.

You can do that, you know, you can reach out and get expert advice and then actually listen to expert advice.

Alice: Yeah. Good on the, to act for listening to expert advice this time. Um,

Bex: yeah, the medical consultant is pulling out her hair in the corner, but you know. [01:06:00] Sure.

So yeah, so that’s, um,

Alice: but yeah, we get some banter between the soldiers as well. Um, one of them says that like from up there it’s kind of pretty and almost makes you forget you’re flying through the valley of death.

Bex: Yeah. So they’re up, they’re up in the helicopters. They’re, the medics are in a helicopter.

They have flown somewhere to pick up wounded American soldiers and they’re bringing them back to base and they’re flying over the so-called Valley of Death, which does look very pretty. Um, but yes, one of the guys takes umbridge at the, uh, the scenery below them being called the Valley of Death, considering, you know, they are, you know, wounded and

Alice: transporting wounded. Yeah.

Bex: They’re, “There are guys dying back here!” he tells Mills and she’s just like, “well, I didn’t name it. The dead guys did.”

So then we meet Greggs. Greggs is one of the wounded soldiers and he is lying [01:07:00] on a stretcher in the back of the, um, helicopter. Eddie’s working on him and he points out that Eddie has dropped something. And it turns out that Eddie’s St. Christopher Medallion is like cheap past piece of shit because the clasp keeps breaking so it’s fallen.

Um, and Eddie picks it up, shoves it in his pocket for safekeeping. Um, Gregs recognizes it and asks him about it. Asks Eddie if he’s religious. Um. And Eddie said, no, no, not really. It just, it reminds his wife gave it to him when their son was born. It reminds Eddie of his son. Um, and Greggs says, no, that’s why I got this.

And sort of Eddie’s been cutting his shirt at this point to access the bullet wounds on his chest. And we see that Greggs has got a tattoo for his daughters on his chest. And guess he says if he ever loses that, then you know he’s got bigger problems. [01:08:00]

Ellen: Three girls he’s got, apparently

Bex: yeah, they’re, they’re trying to like David Wallace him as much as they can in the short amount of time that they’ve got.

Um, doesn’t quite work, but it is, it’s a nice little sort of banter and honestly, I think that Eddie really should just get the St. Christopher Medallion tattooed on him. It’d be so much easier.

Alice: Yeah. Yeah. Instead of dropping it all the time.

Bex: Yes. But while the, while this is going on and while we’re all haha, like look at this touching little moment, um, we hear a whooshing noise and the collision alarm in the cockpit starts going off.

And Mills who is like supposed to be keeping an eye out, spins around and then screams and panic that there is incoming and we don’t actually see it. But there has been like a missile launched at the helicopter and helicopters, which are not, you know, renowned for their maneuverability, um, is unable to avoid it.

[01:09:00] And the helicopter is hit. It goes down.

Ellen: Yeah. I don’t think, like, we don’t sort of see what happens until Eddie wakes up. Right? Like they’re under fire basically.

Bex: It’s interesting. We go from helicopter crash and it’s sunny to, um,

Ellen: to nighttime.

Bex: Nighttime. And there’s gunfire.

Ellen: Yeah. So I dunno how, how long Eddie was actually out for or if he’s like fallen over later and hit his head or something.

Because how do we go from daytime to nighttime? I don’t dunno. But anyway, let’s not worry about that.

Bex: For the drama,

Ellen: for the drama it’s now night,

Bex: yes. It’s now nighttime.

Ellen: Um, machine guns are firing,

Bex: machine guns are firing. Um, Eddie immediately takes charge of the situation. He radios back to base. I don’t know if we never hear back from base.

So maybe it’s like when he was down in the tunnel, he’s just talking into a radio, nobody can hear [01:10:00] him. But he goes about trying to get everybody out of the helicopter to cover because they’re sitting ducks in the helicopter. So he gets Mills out first, gets her over to cover. Um, and then she provides cover for him as he goes back and forth to get everybody else out of the helicopter.

But one of the pilots is stuck. While Eddie is working to a, treat the open fracture on his thigh, um, and b, get him out of the cockpit, one of the other soldiers who has a serious concussion is completely confused. Um, starts standing up and wandering around and trying to get out of the helicopter. Um, just putting himself like painting a giant target on his back.

Ellen: Um, but Eddie grabs him and, um, drags him back over, but in the process manages to get himself shot in the shoulder.

Bex: Well, [01:11:00] um, the soldier who, his name is Norwahl, which my auto correct when I was running the notes, kept changing to narwhal. Um, he gets

Alice: (singing) Narwhal, narwhal, swimming in the ocean, making a commotion.

Bex: Um, he stumbles outta the helicopter and it like almost immediately gets shot.

And then Eddie in trying to get him back to cover, gets shot as well. But they finally get, um, radio contact with the base who are six minutes out. So at least he’s not talking to, to empty air. Somebody is listening to him.

Alice: Yeah. But, but they don’t have six minutes.

Bex: No. ’cause the, the enemy are now unloading bigger and better guns, whereas the American, the American soldiers are running low on ammunition.

Alice: But yeah. So at this point, everyone is out of the helicopter except for Greggs.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: Um, Greggs,

Bex: Except Greggs is [01:12:00] dead.

Alice: Greggs has died.

Bex: Greggs died. Yeah.

Alice: Um, he didn’t survive the collision, I assume.

Bex: I’m gonna assume so. Yeah.

Alice: But yeah, Eddie is like, yeah, no, he’s coming home with us too. So Eddie goes and pulls Greggs out and then the chopper’s blown up.

Bex: Yeah. The chopper gets hit with like, yeah, it’s so well done because he gets Greggs out, like I’m assuming it’s like an rrp G hits the helicopter and you see Eddie get slammed into the side of the helicopter and bounce off from the impact.

Ellen: He bounces off the helicopter? Doesn’t he get…

Bex: yeah.

Ellen: Blown away from it?

Bex: Hang on then. Uh, yeah, he goes to the helicopter, something hits the helicopter, um, and he like, it throws him in. He, you literally see his head snap backwards and forwards as he bounces off the side and falls down. So [01:13:00] kudos to the stunt guy. Good work there.

Looks like that was before he went back to get Greggs, then he goes to get Greg and then they actually succeed in blowing the helicopter up.

Ellen: Yeah. So they all duck undercover. They’re trying to sort of return fire and stuff, but the end is in sight. Like they’re all preparing themselves. He’s having flashbacks to when Shannon had given him the medallion,

Alice: Eddie’s out of ammo and using his handgun, but gets shot from the hand and

Ellen: he’s eventually, he’s like, he’s having these flashbacks and they look up and, and a helicopter appears and that it’s someone coming to, you know, shooting at the guys who had them under siege and they’re saved.

They’re gonna be okay,

Bex: so the important point of that scene is that the St. Christopher medal was there to protect him and keep him safe and that he promised that he had, that he has a family

Ellen: he’s gonna return home.

Bex: That he needs, he [01:14:00] needs to come home to his family.

Alice: Yeah. Yeah. He’s got the, the medal and he’s also got a photo of Christopher as well.

Ellen: He ends up in a, in a medical tent a bit later and he’s got lots of bandages to show that he’s been injured, a broken bone, a dislocated shoulder. He’s sort of asking about the rest of the team and, um, that this person who’s, who talking to the medic, I guess? Uh, no, no. It’s the officer who’s come to see him.

The others aren’t like, “Greggs is dead, but the others aren’t thanks to you.” So he, he sort of looks around and sees all of his teammates and gives them stern, like, you know, solemn nods

Bex: does the head count. Everyone else is there, everyone else is still alive. He can relax.

Ellen: And then he realizes who’s talking to him.

Alice: Yeah, he tries to stand and salute and she’s like, um, maybe just stay in there. Please don’t do that. Um, she’s like, don’t attempt to [01:15:00] stand on ceremony right now or at all. Um, and that’s where Eddie confirms that Greggs died on impact. And she’s like, “yep. And you pulled him out anyway. You got them all out Sergeant Diaz. You got a bit more metal in you than you had before and no doubt, a couple of new nightmares to add to the pile, but you’re alive and so are they.”

Ellen: Yep. He needs to call Shannon, but, um, she says that he will be going home for a spell. Um, you did good.

Alice: Even Greggs, and he did good.

Bex: Eddie says that he doesn’t feel like he did good enough.

And the sergeant says that “It never does, but they’ll probably give you a medal for it.” And then we segue to, uh, Texas three months later, and Ramon is reading out the, um, commendation that came with the medal that they awarded to Eddie, his Silver Star.

Alice: What medal did he get?

Bex: Oh my God. Did you know he got a Silver Star?

Alice: Eddie has a silver star.

Bex: Eddie got a silver [01:16:00] star. Never do anything illegal.

Alice: Never do anything illegal. ’cause Eddie has a Silver Star.

Bex: So Ramon is reading out this citation and his sister’s getting pissed off with him. And she’s like, “We can all read it, Ramon. You don’t have to read it to us.” And their mother is just like, “Just, just let him, let him go. Like he’s proud. It’s not every day that your son comes home as a hero.”

Ellen: Oh,

Bex: and here’s where you need to hold me back. ’cause I’m about to start swinging

because Eddie walks in at this point and he’s got food and a drink for Christopher. And he just like, “I, no, I’m, I’m not a hero. I just did what anyone else would do.” Um, and he puts the food in the drink down in front of his son and his mother is immediately like, “No, he can’t drink this. He needs this, he needs this, he needs this. He can’t have this. Where are the ju juice boxes that we brought?”

And Eddie’s like, “I, I, [01:17:00] I don’t know.” And then Helena looks at Christopher in this really sugary sweet voice is like, “Well, maybe Daddy can go be a hero in the kitchen and find the juice boxes. Hmm?”

Death is not good enough for this woman.

Alice: So Eddie returns to the kitchen and Shannon’s there and asks what’s wrong? And it is like, apparently I gave my son a beverage incorrectly and Shannon goes, oh, your mother. Yeah. I’m familiar with the tone. Which am

Bex: I, I don’t know if I’m wrong to feel relieved that it’s not just Eddie that gets this, but like she’s doing this to Shannon too.

Ellen: Yeah. She’s clearly been driving Shannon up the wall. Poor Shannon.

Alice: Yeah. Poor Shannon has been like, essentially alone without a husband and having to deal with his mother, her husband’s overbearing mother.

Bex: I don’t think Ramon gets a pass either. ’cause [01:18:00] he’s like,

Alice: God no.

Bex: But yeah, I, uh, nope, nope.

Alice: But, um, anyway, so apparently Shannon wants to go to California. Um, we, we know now that that’s where her mother is. But she’s like, “We could leave in the morning, just you, me, Christopher on the open road.” And Eddie’s not about this. Like he clearly, he either hasn’t given it any thought or has like put it in the not gonna happen pile.

Um, and just goes, “We have a house full of people. Half of ’em flew here to see us, now really isn’t the best time.” And she’s like, “Well, you’re finally home.” And Eddie goes, “Yeah, and you immediately want me to get into a car and drive 800 miles with a 6-year-old.” Who Shannon reminds him is her son, uh, his son.

Bex: I don’t know if it’s, he hasn’t given it any thought or it’s not gonna happen, [01:19:00] or he’s just, he’s come back from war and pretty traumatic war. Maybe he just, as you said, he needs some time,

Alice: wants a break?

Bex: To just, yeah. Chill. And he needs to reacclimate to being back in civilian life. ’cause he’s been in very regimented military life for, this is 2015, so over the last couple of years.

So going from that to civilian life is not as easy as people would, as Shannon like to think about it. It’s not just a switch that you can flick. So

Ellen: he probably to need something probably needs some familiarity before he jumps into the next adventure.

Bex: Yeah. But all Shannon can see is that this is like her opportunity now.

Alice: Yeah, so Shannon, keeping in mind, Shannon’s mother has stage three cancer.

Bex: Oh yeah. Not discounting that..

Alice: And this is what, three months later, so like, yeah. Yeah. Um, but yeah. So Shannon just wants to go to her mom. [01:20:00]

Bex: Yes.

Alice: And like, okay, hang on. What year was Chris born?

Ellen: 2011? Maybe 2010?

Alice: I dunno. Does it actually say in the episode or do we just get 2015?

Bex: No, I think we 2011

Alice: must if he six, I think we just, yeah.

Bex: Yeah. We are guessing around 2011.

Alice: Okay. So hang on. If they were 19 in

Bex: Yeah, no, don’t do the math.

Alice: You’re like, don’t do this again. Okay. That works out with Shannon’s gravestone. Hang on.

So then

Ellen: The gravestone, oh god, we are joining the dots. We are joining the dots

Alice: We’ve connected them.

Bex: We’ve got the red string.

Alice: Okay. Hang on. I’ve forgotten how to do math. So if they were 19 in 2011, we’re now in 2015.

Bex: [01:21:00] Yes.

Alice: So she’s now 23. So she’s still a baby.

Ellen: Hang on. Did, if she, we can’t be in 2015 now. If he was born in 2011 and now he’s six. Okay.

Alice: So we’re in 2015.

Ellen: Okay, let’s, okay. Maybe he was born in 2009.

Bex: I will say that the 2011 is just, I guess, reversed engineering and it’s on the Wiki, so it’s not set in stone. We don’t actually have an official birth date for Christopher. We’re just looking at kind of, yeah.

Ellen: Oh my God. Anyway, it doesn’t matter.

Bex: Anyway.

Alice: Anyway, they’re still young. Shannon just wants to go to her mom.

Bex: Shannon needs her mother. Eddie needs time. And Shannon says very sarcastically. Yes. Take all the time that you need and storms out of the kitchen.

Funnily enough, he, no, actually, Eddie leaves the kitchen, [01:22:00] Eddie storms out of the kitchen with the juice box so that he can be a big damn hero. Um, and we, we are left lingering on Shannon.

Ellen: It’s like when he was away, they forgot how to speak to each other in a civil manner.

Alice: Think they talked to each other before

Bex: I was about to say it before went away. They didn’t know how to talk each other before. They never, they never could do talking sex. They were good at, they never could do the talking thing.

Ellen: Hmm.

Bex: But this is all in flashback and I think it’s, it must be like a dream because Eddie wakes up to Hayden calling for his mother, but then it’s also Hayden calling for his mother, um, merges into another dream where Christopher is calling for where he’s asleep. It’s really weird, but we get reminder of, oh, hey, Chris is, um, Eddie,

Ellen: he’s flashing memories the like this time. Yeah.

Bex: Yeah. Um, and then he wakes up in [01:23:00] a flashback where Chris is in bed with him and Eddie asks, “Where’s, where’s Mommy?”

Where’s Shannon? And Chris says, “oh yeah, she’s gone.” And he rolls over to find a note on his bedside table, um, that simply says, “I need some time too.” So you can kind of understand why Eddie was so pissed at her.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: The fact that she got up and left in the middle of the night and all she left was a note that said, I need some time too.

Alice: Like, I’m definitely not saying Shannon did the right thing, but

Bex: Oh no.

Alice: Like, so Shannon gets a lot of hate online about like her, everything. And

Bex: I put Shannon in this same category for me as Mary Winchester. I will stand in front of her and I will shield her with my life, and I will defend her to the day that I die.

And then I’m gonna turn around and I’m gonna slap her. [01:24:00] Yeah. And like, what the the fuck are you doing, girl? I will, I will always have your back. But damn, were you stupid.

Alice: Yeah. Yeah. Like, it’s so ha, because like Shannon was a like essentially alone with a child with difficulties as a teenager and then early twenties and Eddie gets praised and called a hero because he was off fighting a war.

And like Eddie was gone for like, until Chris was six. Eddie was gone. Not in the picture at all. And then when Shannon’s like, okay, now I need some time. Like we again, we like, she’s gone to see her mom.

Bex: She gets villainized.

Alice: Yeah. She’s completely villainized. And it’s like, okay, but like men do this all the fucking time.

Bex: But what’s worse is she’s not just villainized by the fandom, she’s villainized by the people in the show as well.

Ellen: The story. Yeah.

Bex: Like the Diazs hate her [01:25:00] for what they, what she did, what she quote unquote did to Eddie and Chris

Alice: when Eddie wasn’t there for the first six years. But that’s was fine because she was providing for the family and that’s like, okay, Buty, but she’s providing for a mom.

Exactly.

Bex: Gender roles and misogyny and patriarchy, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.

Alice: Yeah. Like she’s expected just ’cause she’s a woman that she has to. Just stay and deal with it. Whereas Eddie just kept running away. Yeah. And his family are like, oh, look at this hero. How terrible is Chris’s mom when you know you are providing for the family.

So it was great. And Shannon just wanted a partner. She just wanted help.

Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know if anyone’s in the right here, but Oh, it’s very sad. It’s very sad. The whole situation

Bex: in other sad situations. Let’s get back to Hayden. [01:26:00]

Ellen: Oh gosh. Poor Hayden. He’s still down the hole

Bex: Eddie has, finally he has, but Eddie’s finally reached him. Pulls him out of the tiny hole that he was in, into this slightly bigger hole that Eddie is in. But he at least gets, you know, a nice blank, a nice thermal blanket to try and, you know, keep him a little bit warm. And he finds yet again, Eddie again, Eddie, just get it tattooed on you.

Ellen: Seems to have fallen off again.

Bex: It keeps falling. It keeps falling off and getting, I mean, at least everyone keeps picking it up and finding it for him. Yeah. It’s not one of these situations where he completely, it gets lost. Which, you know, could you imagine the implications of him losing his St. Christopher medallion?

Ellen: Um, that would be some foreshadowing.

Bex: Oh, wouldn’t it?

Ellen: Some disastrous foreshadowing, um.

Bex: Hmm. But thankfully, as well as his, um, St. Christopher medal being found, he himself gets found because, uh, [01:27:00] Chimney lowers into frame, to rescue him.

Ellen: Yay! Yay. Chim to the rescue.

Bex: So they, they strap Hayden to Chim, and he tells Eddie that he’s gonna take Hayden up to the surface, and then they’re gonna bring down another line for Eddie. Try not to cut this one.

So Chim brings Hayden up to the surface. Um, everyone’s cheering, everyone’s, celebrating. They managed to rescue the kid. Chim gets, um, pulled out and he’s like, “Eddie’s fine. He just needs a ride.” And Bobby tells Buck, “Okay, let’s drop another line. Let’s get Eddie up and let’s all go home.”

And almost as soon as Bobby says, let’s go home that storm that has been approaching all episode, Chekov’s thunderstorm, um, suddenly hits [01:28:00] and lightning strikes that five story lightning rod, that is the, the boom of the drilling truck knocking the crane over, sending everyone scattering and, uh, caving in the tunnel.

Oh, and this, this scene, so Buck had immediate, Buck had initially knocked Bobby out of the way so that he was free from the crane when it fell over. Um, as soon as he’s sure that Bobby is fine, his next thoughts are for Eddie. He looks back and the tunnel is gone.

Alice: Oh.

Oh.

Bex: He’s so frantic,

and once again, Oliver’s voice hits that pitch that the dogs could hear as he’s calling for Eddie and literally trying to dig the tunnel out by hand to get to Eddie.

Alice: It’s insane.

Bex: And Bobby is trying to pull him off, and the, the scene ends. [01:29:00] We go to commercial with Bobby sprawled on the ground ’cause he’s been trying to pull Buck up and Buck just not moving. And Buck is, um, laying on his lap, just screaming, crying, sobbing. Probably would be throwing up too.

Ellen: Poor Buck. He’s so worried.

Bex: And I think I remember reading somewhere or hearing somewhere that the look on Bobby’s face is actually the look on Peter’s face, because Oliver just went all out in that and Peter wasn’t expecting that from Oliver.

Ellen: Hmm. I mean, he seems to have pulled himself together a little bit, um, for the next bit after the commercial. Uh, he took, he took the commercial break to calm himself a little bit.

Alice: They gave him a Valium.

Ellen: Yeah. He said he tells everyone we have to go dig and Bobby’s like, “We don’t have the drill anymore. It’s [01:30:00] now lying on the muddy field. Uh, the access road’s flooded. We can’t get another one.” So Buck’s like, “Wait, we can dig by hand.”

Alice: Yeah, we dig by hand.

Bex: No, they can’t because it’s raining. They can’t do that. It’ll just more collapse. It’s just gonna keep collapsing every time they dig.

Ellen: And Buck finally realizes that “You, you all think he’s dead.” ’cause they’re all trying to talk him out of all of his ideas. And Bobby’s like, “Nobody thinks that.”

Alice: Yeah. E everyone’s being really gentle with Buck.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: And they’re all basically treating Buck the way they treat the family. Members of victims.

Ellen: Yeah. No one’s giving up on him. We’re gonna find him.

Bex: But yeah, it is very interesting how concerned they are about making sure Buck is okay in this situation. But I’m sure all of them are freaking out about the fact that they’ve lost Eddie and they all want to be doing what they can to [01:31:00] get Eddie out. But at this point in time, their top priority is making sure Buck is calm and not gonna do something stupid.

Not because he’s Buck. I mean it could be because he’s Buck and like he’s an idiot who will go and do something stupid. But because they recognize that like I’m putting my clown makeup on here, but they recognize that there is a bond between Buck and Eddie that is sort of getting in the way here of like short circuiting Buck’s already one brain cell thinking.

Alice: Yeah. Yeah. The brain cell is not in this episode.

Bex: No. Um, and then while they’re all reassuring Buck that like nobody thinks that he’s dead, um, we get the scene from the beginning of the episode where Eddie wakes up underground and is desperately trying to get someone to hear him because he’s still alive down there.

[01:32:00] And in possibly the most on the nose segue of the episode, he is been buried alive. And we get his father saying, “You are in over your head, Edmundo.” Yes he is. But if Ramon is coming from 2017, and he’s not talking about Eddie literally being in over his head, but more figuratively with parenting.

Ellen: Um, yeah.

Bex: We are in El Paso in two th 2017, and, uh, Ramon and Helena are doing and staging an intervention, a parenting intervention on Eddie, which basically sums up to We wanna take your kid. It’s, it comes from a place of love, I think, because they’re, they’re saying, “Look, you are killing yourself. You have been working around the club, you are working three different jobs. Um, you don’t have time for Christopher, so [01:33:00] let us help you, let us take Christopher.”

and Eddie’s once again saying like, ” I, I don’t need your help.” We get the reference to he’s applied to different fire departments. We don’t know why he’s chosen to go into firefighting, why he picked Chicago or la I mean LA I understand because he’s got family out there, but why he picked Chicago and why firefighting?

We don’t know.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Apparently this is not the answer. I see. Helena was looking for though, because she says “That’s gonna be worse because you’re gonna be doing 24 hour shifts. Who, you’re gonna be leaving Christopher with God knows who.”

Alice: Um, I’m pretty sure it’s mentioned in dosed why he gets into firefighting.

Bex: Is it?

Alice: Yeah. When, um, they’re all being interviewed by Taylor Kelly, I’m pretty sure it’s then when he says that the reason that he got into firefighting was that after he left the army, he missed the comradery.

Bex: We, we do get that quote, but why [01:34:00] firefighting for comradery? There are lots of different,

Alice: I guess he likes saving people too.

Bex: He says “What I miss most about leaving the army is the camaraderie, working shoulder to shoulder with a great team. That’s, um, there’s nothing better than the one I found with the 118.” So he’s comparing, working as a firefighter, as with working in the army, but that doesn’t kind of explain why he goes into firefighting.

But that, that’s neither here nor there. The point is that he wants to be a firefighter, which means he’s gonna be working 24 hour shifts, which is not exactly ideal when you are trying to parent and solo parent especially. And his father chimes in and says that, ” what Christopher needs is consistency. Um, you know, he already got cheated about that. When he is good for nothing, mother up and left.”

Alice: I love like, Eddie’s response is like, “Hey, she didn’t leave him, she left me.”

Bex: Um, which, ouch. But you know, Eddie is always gonna be Shannon’s loudest defender. [01:35:00] Even when he doesn’t like her, he is still going to defend her against all of her, her loudest haters, which include Helena because she says she will always blame Shannon for giving up on Eddie and leaving her son.

Alice: Hmm. And then Eddie’s like, “but you want me to leave him too? How do you think that’s good for him?” And Ramon just goes, “Eddie, he barely knows you. You haven’t been around most of his life.” and,

Bex: and Eddie, Eddie has a perfect comeback.

Alice: Eddie says, “I don’t remember you being around much.” And Ramon says he was working and Eddie’s like, “So was I. And maybe you regret those life choices now, but you don’t get to make up for lost time with your children by stealing mine.”

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, he’s possibly going a little far with that because they’re not like they’re offering to take Christopher to look after him. Right? Like, Eddie’s still gonna be around. It’s not like he’s leaving to go work.

Bex: No, but he is, if he’s, he’s applied to LA and Chicago, so if he gets those positions, they’re [01:36:00] saying keep, they want Christopher to stay with them in Texas and he’s gonna go off somewhere to work.

Ellen: I don’t like that option anymore.

Bex: And yeah, I mean, he’s, he’s, he’s obviously coming at this from a very emotional place and that, you know, he’s lost his, um, his wife has left him. He’s struggling looking after. He’s obviously feeling very under pressure to look after Christopher. Um, so he’s reacting very emotionally, but I mean, his parents are not making it easy for me to feel sympathetic for them because Helene, um, Helena says to him, um, “Look, we know how much you love Christopher. That’s why we know you’re gonna do what’s right for him. Don’t drag him down with you.”

Ellen: Yeah. She’s got some cracker or awful lines.

Bex: Oh, she is so bad. And I mean, we knew, we knew that they weren’t supportive because of the conversation… [01:37:00] when is it “Stuck”? Or perhaps earlier in maybe 7.1 (2.1) when we first meet Eddie and Christopher. And we get the sense that, you know, his parents. ’cause that’s why he was so taken with Buck when Buck immediately threw himself into helping and loving Christopher, uh, because his own parents were not helping him.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: And so this is kind of the proof of how much they were not helping him or perhaps helping him in the way that he needed help or wanted help.

Alice: Yeah. That’s it. It’s very like, they’re very much not being the guidance and being the help. They’re just like, this is how you, like, I can do it better. Just let me do it. Yeah.

Ellen: Well, they’re prescribing it. Like they’re not asking him what he needs. They’re just saying, I think this is what you need.

Bex: They’re telling him what he needs,

Ellen: what this is what you need.

Bex: But while all of this is going on, Chris is sitting out on the porch and I think he can pretty much hear everything that’s being said.[01:38:00]

Ellen: Yeah, so this is now Gavin again, right? Like previously we had another actor who was playing young Christopher, and he did such a great job.

Bex: I was sure that, I was sure that the actor, that when they did the video call, like the glitchy video call, I was sure that that was Gavin.

Ellen: Yeah. It may have been I don’t remember. I don’t remember either, but no, yeah, parts of the scenes were definitely a different kid,

Alice: no, it wasn’t, because when he’s, even when Christopher’s in bed with Eddie, that’s the other actor.

Ellen: Yeah. Oh yeah. Yeah. He’s, it was so much like him. He looks so much like him. He is like a, a perfect casting, young version of, um,

Bex: little mini me.

Ellen: Gavin. Yeah. Yeah.

Bex: But yes. So cute. This is Gavin. We’re back to Gavin.

Ellen: This is back to Gavin. Yeah.

Bex: He did hear everything because, or at least he heard the tone of voices because he tells Eddie that everyone sounds mad and he’s never heard his, um, abuela and abuela yell before, which Eddie’s like, wow.[01:39:00]

It’s like they, like we’re talking about completely different people. Like, Ooh, Eddie,

Alice: I cracked up with that. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yes. And then we get like the most heartbreaking lines where Eddie goes, “Hey, did you ever miss me when I was gone?” And Chris goes, “I miss you all the time.”

Ellen: Aw.

Alice: So. Eddie goes, “you know, I was thinking about taking another trip and I was wondering maybe if you wanted to come with me.” And

Bex: together?

Alice: Christopher’s like “To together? Really??

Bex: Really?

Ellen: So finally they’re making the plans.

Alice: Yeah. Um, and Eddie goes, “yeah, I miss you all the time. True kid. I’m never gonna leave you again.”

Ellen: Cute. Such a cute scene.

Alice: Oh, it’s so heartbreaking.

Bex: It’s cute.

So from there, from his promise to never leave Christopher again, we cut to Eddie swimming through all of the [01:40:00] underground feeder pipes, drainage tunnels, um, trying to find a way out of the predicament that he’s finding himself in so that he can get home to Christopher. Um, and we get a very pointed shot of his O2 meter, which is now on red.

And uh, was, we got told from from Bobby earlier that when it was on red, he had to be topside. So instead of continuing to haul around that heavy weight, which could slow him down, he dumps his O2 and keeps swimming.

Ellen: Yeah. This is a,

Alice: it’s very disorienting,

Ellen: strange scene. Yeah.

Bex: Yeah. He’s got a, a neon green light stick.

So everything is either pitch black or this weird alien, um, neon green.

Alice: And we get like the sound of a heartbeat and, and we get,

Bex: and then we hear the

Alice: [01:41:00] voiceovers.

Bex: We start getting, yeah. And we get a quick reminder about the, um, the, the intersecting feed of pipes, the drainage tunnels and Buck saying it feels like a lot of distance to cover when you’re 40 something feet down.

And it’s almost like at that point we get the, Eddie gives up because we see him exhale, we see bubbles, and then we see him stop moving and it’s like, he’s like, it’s, it’s too much. I can’t do this. And the most, I know we talk about the, the needle drops on, on this show, but honestly, whoever picked this song, it’s a beautiful song.

And then you actually look at what the lyrics say and you’re like, oh my God.

Alice: Yeah, I know hurts. It’s hard to breathe sometimes? Yeah,

Bex: “I know it hurts. It’s hard to breathe sometimes. Is anybody out there? Can you lead me to the light? Tell me It’ll be all right. You are not alone. I’ve been here the whole time. I will carry you.”

Ellen: [01:42:00] What the hell?

Bex: So while this is playing and it’s, it’s very slow and it’s very beautiful, um, we start getting flashes about Christopher and about Buck’s family. No, not Buck’s family. About,

Alice: well…

Bex: I mean it kind of is, it kind of is. But about Christopher and about Eddie’s family. So we flash back to the first time that we meet Christopher when the first time that Buck meets Christopher where um, the first time Buck realizes that there is a Christopher.

That scene in the firetruck where Buck’s like, “Wait, you got a kid? That’s adorable. I love kids.”

Ellen: Such a cute scene in that one.

Alice: Yeah. So we get, it’s just a whole bunch of flashbacks. So it’s a Eddie and Buck in the firetruck. Um, [01:43:00] Eddie’s induction to the L-A-F-D with Christopher carrying Eddie’s helmet.

The scene from “Stuck” where the 118 are hanging out in the loft with Christopher.

Bex: It’s pretty much half of “Stuck”.

Alice: It is pretty much half of “Stuck”. Yeah, there you go. I wasn’t crazy. They actually mention it like they go back to “Dosed”

Bex: yeah.

Alice: In this with Eddie talking about, I was like, I swear I watched it recently.

It’s ’cause it’s in the flashback, duh.

Bex: It’s ’cause we, we get that voiceover. Because it’s focusing on the great team, and the 118 is the family that he chose. So we get lots of Christopher, we therefore get lots of Buck because pretty much every memory of Christopher has Buck in it. Um,

Alice: literally there’s so much Buck. Like the first time I watched it, I was like, I’m totally normal montage when you’re dying of like you and your bestie.

Bex: Look, I, once again, I’m…

Ellen: just hugging it out,

Bex: piling on, I’m piling on the clown [01:44:00] makeup because there is a disproportionate amount of buck in this thinking about all the important things in his life that he needs to come back to. But we do get,

Alice: um, I think it’s just because like the only Eddie scenes have Buck in them as well.

Bex: Pretty much. We do get a couple, like we get, um, Bobby embracing him in the hospital after Shannon has died. We get the group hug when hen comes back to the 118 after, um, like killing that cellist. Do you remember she killed that cellist?

You know, the one that she wouldn’t stop talking about for a while? Um,

Ellen: yeah.

Alice: Did Hen kill someone?

Bex: Yes.

Alice: Couldn’t remember. Um, it just reminds me, I’m gonna segue, but I mean, I’m gonna, um, tangent because that’s what we do. Mm. But I’ve been, um, I’ve been listening to the “Supernatural Then and Now” podcast, and I think I already mentioned it, but the Rob and Rich are up to season seven, with like when Dean kills Amy, and then the next episode is [01:45:00] literally half just flashbacks of Dean killing Amy.

And they’re like, yeah, we get it, Dean kill. Like, we don’t care. Why do we, why do they think we care? And I just like, same guys, like none of us know. None of us have any idea. And it’s been several years now, like it’s probably been over a decade at this point, and none of us know why we were supposed to care about Amy.

They’re like, it was this random kid that Sam knew once, like, yeah, Dean was a bit of a dick, but we don’t care. We, we don’t care.

Bex: But we do care about these flashbacks.

Alice: We do care about these flashbacks.

Bex: So Eddie is thinking about everyone who is near and dear to him, who is his family, the family that he’s chose.

Alice: We get the flashback of Shannon, um, like Shannon being dead.

Ellen: Lovely thinkg to flash back on

Alice: saying that they’re still gonna be okay to Christopher.

Bex: No, no, no, no. But we get the, the voiceover of Shannon in the ambulance going like, I’m leaving again. And she, with the ambulance, she said that she wanted a little bit more time, [01:46:00] which now that we know what her note said.

Alice: Oh,

Bex: because we didn’t know what the notes said back then. And she wanted a little bit more time. That’s why she left. And now she’s saying though she wants more time. It’s like, oh my God.

Alice: So after watching like all the Shannon stuff and then going back to Shannon’s death episode, like you can see why I noped out and just sobbed the whole time.

Bex: Yeah. Yeah.

Alice: It’s, yeah. Like, there’s just so much about Eddie and Shannon that is, and Chris, that is so tragic.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: But then we get the scene from triggers where Eddie says, uh, that they might have lost Shannon, but they still have each other. And then the rest of the montage is just Christopher, Christopher, Christopher. Christopher Christopher.

Ellen: Yeah. God, I didn’t realize that there was, this montage was so long.

Bex: Um, most of it’s from “Stuck”. Um, but yeah, it’s just Christopher, Christopher, Christopher. And then we get that clip from, um, [01:47:00] Shannon back in El Paso in 2015, now looking dead into the camera saying, “Eddie, Christopher needs you.” And it’s at that memory that Eddie wakes up and he starts fighting and you get the voice…

Alice: And I’m like, bawling by this point.

Bex: And we get the voice, we get the, the voiceover of “I’m always going to fight to come home to my family.” And so he starts swimming and he’s the drops his green neon green alien light and swims away from the light.

Alice: And then he breaches the surface

Bex: and then we cut to the farm and it’s the middle of nowhere.

Ellen: This, this whole scene is just like, after going through all this trauma beforehand, this scene made me laugh. I have to say, this was the funniest shit.

Alice: It’s so funny.

Ellen: Yeah, it was so funny. So he just comes to the surface of this pond basically that’s nearby and everyone else is standing around looking [01:48:00] really serious.

Like, “What are we gonna do? Like, we’re gonna have to, we’re gonna have oxygen tanks and warming blankets ready. We’re gonna start at the well, we’re gonna make concentric circles. We need to fan out.”

Alice: Like Oliver looks like he’s about to just, he’s either gonna throw up or burst into tears or both.

Ellen: Yeah, they’re, they’re all really super serious. And then, um, then Eddie’s voice just comes over saying, “oh, it won’t be easy.” And everyone’s turning around, like…

No. ‘

Bex: cause they, they’re going to, they’re going to, the search and rescue are gonna use thermal imaging to try and pick up Eddie’s heat signature. And then you just get the voice going, “It won’t be easy. I’m pretty cold.”

And then just collapses.

Ellen: And they all just, just look at him and go, “Eddie?”

Bex: Buck and Bobby immediately run to him to like pick him up. Oliver is looking at him like he’s a ghost. Yeah. Like he just, his, his acting choice was, he does not believe [01:49:00] that Eddie survived,

Ellen: but he does have a big grin on his face when he picks him up and helps him hands like, “oh, let’s get you checked out so he can get you home.” And Eddie’s like, “yeah, I got a big date on Friday. I can’t miss it,”

but the date on Friday,

Bex: What did he have Friday again?

Alice: Show and tell.

Ellen: He can’t miss it. He promised,

Bex: he promised

Ellen: he promised he would be there.

Alice: I’m honestly surprised, like when I watched this, I was actually surprised that in the classroom Buck wasn’t with them for some reason.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: Like, just like inexplicably at show and tell, it’s like, “this is my dad and this is my dad’s friend Buck.” and everyone’s like, ah,

Bex: why do you think Carla is recording it so that Buck can watch it later?

Alice: She’s not even recording it. She’s just FaceTiming Buck.

Bex: That’s it. She’s just got the FaceTime open. Yeah. Um, I’m going to, I’m [01:50:00] gonna assume that it’s a shift day and like they’ve just Eddie’s on like medical leave after the trauma that he just went through, but Buck had to go back to work.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: But yeah, Chris is, um, adorably and I don’t think that they would ever let him do this, sitting on Ms. Flores’s desk to give his presentation. Um, and he’s, and Eddie is standing next to him, like reading his script over his shoulder, making sure that Christopher said it correctly. It’s very cute. He’s so very proud of his son.

Alice: And, and like his face is all scratched up from

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: His ordeal.

Bex: Chris finishes reading his script, which, you know, said, “and this is why the Silver Star is one of the highest honors a member of the armed forces can receive. Now tell him how you got it, Daddy.”

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Eddie’s like, oh right. War appropriate stories for fourth graders.

Alice: So yeah, he, he lands on, he was in a [01:51:00] helicopter helping a wounded soldier get back home and there was an accident. Helicopter went down.

Ellen: Yeah, I like how he goes. There was an accident. It’s like, dude, you got shot down.

Bex: Yeah. Not, it’s not like we got shot down by enemy combatants. Like, it just, it just fell out of the sky.

Ellen: That was an accident, Yeah.

Bex: And it, and it somehow ended up on fire. I dunno how that happened.

Alice: Yeah. But, um, Christopher goes, “Dad got everyone out. He saved them all.” Eddie just brushes off with, he did his job.

Bex: And then we get one of the kids in the, um, in the, the, the class, um, which I think is a hilarious callback to the beginning of the episode. Put his hand up. Eddie, did you ever wear it? Yeah, like channelling Buck.

Alice: Yeah, because Buck is a fourth grader,

Bex: but Eddie gives exactly the same answer like right off the bat. “I’m not a jewelry kind of guy.”

Alice: Well, the first one was, I couldn’t find [01:52:00] anything to wear it with. So I think he has like

Bex: Oh, that’s right.

Alice: Like rotating.

Ellen: Yeah. He’s got a series of answers.

Bex: He like three different answers he just keeps going through.

Ellen: But he does wear the St. Christopher medal

Bex: when it’s not falling off his neck.

Ellen: Yes, yes. He pulls it out his pocket this time in his coat. Yeah,

Alice: it’s in his coat pocket.

Bex: Maybe he needs one of those. Um, like permanent, you know how you can get jewelry that gets like welded onto you? Maybe he needs one of those.

Alice: The forever, um, jewelry. Yeah.

Bex: Yeah, the forever jewelry. He can have like a forever necklace,

Alice: but, um, but yeah, Ana asks if it’s, if the St. Christopher medals, the, his Good Luck charm and Eddie goes, “no, he is.” And like

Bex: looks down at the actual Christopher.

Alice: Looks at Christopher. Yeah. And Oh, Christopher’s so cute. Did have we ever talked about the fact that, um, Gavin said in an interview that when he was little, he used to call 9-1-1 [01:53:00] thinking that he could talk to Eddie.

Ellen: Aw,

Bex: really? Yeah, I, I saw that he, it was an interview he did with Jennifer.

Alice: Yeah, it was with, um, Jennifer and it was just like, yeah, when he, when he was little, like when he first started on the show, he got in trouble ’cause he called 9-1-1 trying to talk to Eddie and the others.

Ellen: Oh, that’s so sweet.

Bex: Yeah. That’s adorable.

Alice: Oh, he is so cute. It’s so trippy watching like the, this season and then going to season eight,

Bex: where is like a fully grown, he’s like a whole,

Alice: he’s an an adult.

Bex: He’s an actual, an actual whole person now.

Alice: He’s almost as big as the baby that Shannon gave birth to at the side of this episode.

Ellen: Yeah. See if his birthday really is 2011, then he’s the same age as my teenager, so I ha I can relate.

Bex: [01:54:00] So apart from being absolutely traumatized multiple times, Ellen, how did you find “Eddie Begins”?

Ellen: No, I, I thought it was a great episode. Like, so much tension in like, uh, sort of woven several storylines together in a really satisfying way. It, if, if you can count, being traumatized is satisfying.

Um, but no, I, I really, I thought it was a great, very well made episode. And I’m glad I, I, I can understand why Eddie wanted to, you know, move. Well, I don’t know if we really find out the exact reasons why he decided to move to LA but I’m glad, I’m really glad that he did. ’cause then he,

Alice: I’m pretty sure LA like was it was because he had family there and also because, um,

Bex: probably as far away from his parents as he could get.

Alice: Yeah. But also because Shannon was there because like it is mentioned [01:55:00] when Shannon comes back that he’d been there for like several months and not contacted her. Yeah. And she

Bex: lived like right up the road or something. Yeah,

Alice: Yeah. Like it was a, because I think it’s Carla gave gives him shit over it or something.

Ellen: Yeah. Like we were saying, saying earlier, like, uh, because she’s been, he, he, he’d just been through so much and then for him to take that further leap to actually move to California is pretty major like, but I’m glad that he took that leap of faith and um, did it because then he actually found his chosen family in the end. So

Bex: he’s better family, family that actually helps way that he needs to be helped not the way that they think he needs to be helped. Yeah. And then yes, future husband.

Ellen: Yeah. No, I liked it. I’m not looking forward to seeing more episodes about his parents now, because at the moment I don’t hate them, but I mean, [01:56:00] they’re annoying. Um, maybe that will change.

Alice: Yeah, I don’t think I had really any notes about his parents the first time I watched. Just like I don I definitely had a note. Where is it? Yeah. Saying Shannon deserved better.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Uh, Helena has always rubbed me the wrong way. Never liked her as a character.

Ellen: No.

Bex: Ramon comes and goes, like sometimes I think, oh no, he’s not so bad. And then I’ll remember something like, oh no, he’s just as bad.

Ellen: All right. Tell me what’s happening next week then.

Bex: Uh, so next week,

Alice: well, the summary’s, not sure what’s happening next week. So

Bex: a minor accident leads Athena to a more sinister case. Um, the 118 fight an apartment building blaze and attempts a daring rescue of a, the promo says blind woman. Um, she’s not blind, she’s deaf. So that’s a whoopsie.

Ellen: Oh [01:57:00] geez. Um, oh my God.

Bex: Attempts a daring rescue of a, of a disabled woman trapped inside. Um, when Athena responds to a simple accident call, she discovers a potentially more sinister crime. Meanwhile, Hen performs a risky medical procedure after an accident at a televised cooking show, and Buck meets retired firefighter and is inspired to reuni reunite him with his lost love.

Ellen: Wow. Did that just describe the whole,

Alice: well, I don’t remember it.

Ellen: The whole plot of the episode? Okay.

Bex: That’s, that’s pretty much. Well, it’s the main plot is Buck and the retired firefighter and the other plots are the subplots kind of swirling around.

Alice: Oh, so Buck’s is the main plot. ’cause Buck’s the only bit that I remember, and so I was like, oh, like I remember the B plot and nothing else. But no, it is the A plot. Okay, cool.

Bex: Yeah, that is the A Buck’s is the A plot, [01:58:00] but the B and C plot are to get a little bit like heading into spoiler territory, are storylines that become more important so they come back?

Yeah, they have to mention, they have to mention them because they are the seeds that grow throughout the next couple of episodes,

Alice: whatever’s left. Right. Okay.

Bex: Yeah. But basically Buck the Buck storyline, which is, I hate this episode, not because it’s a bad episode, but because I just feel so badly for Buck in this episode.

Ellen: Yeah. Right.

Bex: Which we can talk more about next week. Oh, we might need some triggers just in case.

Ellen: Yep.

Bex: Very quickly, let’s just trigger off next week’s we’ve got a structure fire, um, with threat to disabled person. We have mentions of cancer. We have a character with dementia. Um, we have a home invasion. We have [01:59:00] big trigger warning for, um, sexual violence.

Um, we have a minor character death and a patient death due to medical error.

Ellen: Oh, no.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Some people are actually gonna die in this one? We didn’t have, and no, everyone lived in the last episode.

Bex: No one important.

Alice: Yeah, no one important. Isn’t that great?

Bex: No one imp.

Ellen: Okay.

Alice: Ellen’s gonna finally watch this episode and be like, oh, oh, that’s what that’s about.

Bex: But then she won’t fully understand it.

Alice: No, because it’s a meme now.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Alright. After I watch it, you’ll have to send me all the memes.

Alice: No, can’t because it’s like season 8 memes.

Ellen: Damn it. Okay. Eventually I might catch up.

Bex: I think we need to just like compile a list of all the things like, so in, [02:00:00] um, like season three episode, blah, we were talking about this, this is what it relates to, just to catch you all up.

Alice: What you mean how Eddie has a silver star?

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: And he’d never done anything illegal.

Ellen: All right. So let us know what you thought. Like I’m sure this, this episode must bring up a lot of things for a lot of people. Um, or at least a lot of, have a lot of feelings about it, I’m sure. So let us know what you thought. Uh, you can also at this point, let us know what you thought of season three altogether. ’cause we are gonna be doing our wrap up episode in a few weeks time.

Alice: Yeah, we’re almost at the end.

Ellen: Yeah. Not too many episodes to go. So there’s 18 altogether, right? So we’ve got three episodes to go after this one.

Alice: Far out.

Ellen: And then we’ll do the wrap up after that. So you can send us your season three feedback, preferably in an email or, um, [02:01:00] via DM so we can collate it.

But you can, uh, leave us a comment on Spotify to tell us or like on, on the website to tell us about this particular episode. All of that is on thatweewooshow.com. Including all the ways that you can contact us. They’re all listed there. So, uh, thank you for listening this week and we will talk to you next time about episode 16, which is called “The One That Got Away”.

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 are not alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help. Just Google crisis support in your location to find out the number.

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

[outtake]

Ellen: I’m Ellen.

Alice: I’m Alice.

Bex: And I’m Bex.

Alice: Yeah, you are! Remembered your name today. So proud of you.

Bex: Oh my.

Ellen: I don’t even know where to go from there. Um,

Bex: that one’s going straight into the outtakes.