Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Bex, Ellen, and Alice watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss episode 4 of the fourth season of 9-1-1, titled “9-1-1, What’s Your Grievance”.
Athena investigates a mysterious murder during a neighborhood block party. The 118 rush to save lives endangered by a bomb threat. Chimney has a hard time keeping secrets when Maddie and Buck’s parents come to town.
Content warnings for episode 4.04:
bad parenting, blackmail, a dog at threat (it survives), gun violence and bomb threat at a workplace.
Mentioned in this episode:
- We have stickers and other things on Redbubble!
- A video of corgis working
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Episode Transcript
Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1, what’s your emergency?
Ellen: Welcome back to That Weewoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show, 9-1-1. I’m Ellen.
Alice: I’m Alice,
Bex: and I’m Bex.
Ellen: Uh, welcome back to season four. Thanks to everyone who’s been listening to our episodes so far in this season and sharing our social media posts.
Okay. So we have to do a, an extra special shout out. As always, we always love hearing from people, and Keira seems to be getting back to us after every episode. Thank you so much. We really love it when you, um, send us comments, but, um, she’s let us know that it, it is actually possible to use lights on an emergency vehicle without the keys and without the car being turned on, which is great to know because we [00:01:00] were all like, how is she turning the lights on? But yeah.
Bex: So that was in reference to whichever episode it was when Athena’s standing on top of the car.
Alice: Yeah, episode two of season four. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, with her light and after it had slid down the hill and been half buried in mud and then she was able to turn it on, so thank you. That makes a lot more sense now.
But she’s also saying that, somehow I’ve managed to keep talking when you guys are doing the thirsting over Kenny the whole time. I’m like, cute. I don’t know how that happens. Just,
Bex: and we will apologize in advance to you, Ellen, because not only do we get Chim shirtless, but we get Albert shirtless this week as well.
So who knows? Yes. What’s gonna happen?
Ellen: Look, I’m, I’m not immune to these things just for some reason I’m able to form words after it apparently. I don’t know. So we’re up to see, we’re up to episode four. Um, but before we get into that, Alice, do you [00:02:00] wanna remind us what happened last week?
Alice: Yeah, so last week on 9-1-1, uh, we did Lone Star.
Um, so last week on 9-1-1 og uh, which was two weeks ago now for us, Eddie found himself under attack by a prying smart device Hen found herself under attack by a know-it-all, 20-year-old and Chimney found himself under attack by the Buckley Family Secrets.
Bex: We’re going to continue with the Buckley Family Secrets in this week’s episode, which is called “9-1-1. What’s Your Grievance?” It originally aired on February 8th in 2021, and the official summary tells us that in this episode, Athena investigates a mysterious murder during a neighborhood block party and the 118 rush to save lives endangered by a bomb threat. Meanwhile, Chimney has a hard time keeping aforementioned Buckley Family Secrets when Maddie and Buck’s parents come to town.
And the [00:03:00] triggers for this episode include bad parenting, blackmail, a dog at threat. Don’t worry, it survives, uh, gun violence and threat of workplace mass violence via a bomb.
Ellen: That’s right. And I’ve gotta say Chim is the star of this episode. Well,
Alice: He really is.
Ellen: There’s like, obviously Maddie and Buck are all so great, but he just cracked me up all the way through this. It was so great.
Alice: Seriously, like you’re like, you’re reading the trigger mornings and it’s just like, oh my God, this is gonna be such a dark episode. I was laughing my head off the entire thing.
Ellen: Yeah,
Bex: it is. It is such a good episode. The way that they weave the, um, intense emotional trauma of the Buckleys with all of the other storylines, which I know that sometimes, which the show often does.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, there aren’t many other storylines.
Bex: Well, you’ve got the block party and then you’ve got like just Chim with his inability to keep him, keep [00:04:00] everything together. And then you’ve got the main,
Ellen: oh, the bomb threat I guess. Yeah.
Bex: And the bomb threat. Yeah. Which 9-1-1 have done before. It’s not, we’ve commented before that the show tends to juxtapose really deep, dark storylines and then like whiplash as they go to the next emergency. But it works in this episode.
Alice: Yeah, it does.
Ellen: Yeah. It’s not so much whiplash. Yeah, it’s lighthearted fun, but it’s not too light, I guess.
Bex: Yes. And it all thematically makes sense.
Alice: It does, yeah. And like in character makes sense as well.
Ellen: So who wrote this one?
Bex: Um, this is Nadia. That’s all I remember of their name. I’ll have to look up.
Ellen: Um, hang on, I’ve got it opened here. Do i? Nadia Abass-Madden.
Bex: There we go.
Ellen: Who wrote “Pinned”, uh, co-wrote “Pinned” and co-wrote “The Taking of Dispatch 9-1-1” [00:05:00]
Alice: Oh.
Bex: And which I think are like episodes that we’ve all highly rated, so Yeah.
Ellen: And this is the first one that she’s done alone. So great job Nadia.
Bex: Well, that she gets full credit for, so yeah. I think I’m adding Nadia to my list of my favorite writers for the show.
Alice: Yeah, shout out to Nadia. We know you’re listening.
Ellen: Okay, so we start in suburban utopia, well, potentially a, a cul-de-sac where there is a street party going on. There’s kids everywhere. There’s people with tables of food and barbecues and they’re having a great time.
Bex: They’re all having a great time Delia is not having a great time.
Ellen: No. There is one person who is not enjoying the party and she’s especially not enjoying the fact that kids are on her lawn, even though it’s outside her fence, [00:06:00] her very high wooden fence. They’re shooting each other with water pistols and she’s like, get off my property.
Alice: Get off my lawn.
Bex: Very much so. Yes. Um, and one of the boys accidentally shoots Delia in the face with the water pistol. Um, and so she
Alice: accidentally quote unquote,
Ellen: accidentally on purpose?
Bex: Well, the camera is kind of like when they show this, the boy is pointing the gun directly at the camera. So I don’t know whether it’s just that’s where the, his friend was, but.
I’m putting a pin in whether it was accidental or not. Um, but Delia is not having it and she storms off, grabs her phone and she calls 9-1-1 and she’s very lucky that it is May at the end of the line because this could have gone so badly, I think if it had been any other [00:07:00] dispatcher because she calls in to report that armed hooligans are running down the street and shot at her.
Alice: Yeah. Which isn’t a complete lie, but is definitely not the truth.
Bex: Well, I like May is immediately thinking armed hooligans as in adults with full guns.
Alice: Yeah, with actual guns
Bex: like actual weapons firing bullets. Not eight year olds with water pistols especially at least one of the boys, maybe two of them are Black. So this could have been a very, very bad situation.
Ellen: Well she, she keeps a very level head about it and um, asks if anyone’s injured. And Josh, we can see that Josh is sitting next to her, like listening in so that at least she’s not on her own with this, like he’s there.
Bex: Thankfully at some point Delia does actually explain that it’s kids with water cannons [00:08:00] and May suggests that if Delia would like to make a noise complaint, she could call a different number, not 9-1-1. She doesn’t quite get that far though because Delia pulls Karen and immediately wants to speak to May’s supervisor, which Josh is ready to jump in and take the call. May holds up a hand, stops him in his tracks and immediately puts Delia in her place.
Ellen: She’s her mother’s daughter in this moment.
Bex: It’s so Athena.
Alice: It’s so Athena.
Bex: May informs Delia that, uh, using 9-1-1 system for a purpose other than reporting an emergency is a misdemeanor under the California penal code. Which impresses Josh. I don’t know whether it’s because May is so forthright in, um, addressing Delia or that she knows the penal codes off the top of her head.
Alice: both? I think both.
Bex: Possibly a little bit both. Delia
Alice: I’m impressed
Bex: is not impressed. Delia is [00:09:00] not impressed. Um, and she says that if you people aren’t going to handle the situation, she’s going to take care of it herself. Um, but before anything can happen, we hear the sounds of Delia being surprised, she’s talking to somebody else and then we hear Delia say, you know, “How did you get in here? Like, get outta here.”
Alice: Um, yeah. So May like pushes the button to dispatch units, uh, because it sounds like a, an assault is now happening. Um, like the sounds of struggle. We don’t actually see…
Ellen: There’s definitely a struggle going on.
Alice: Yeah. We don’t see anything from, um, Dahlia’s.
Bex: No, we stay on May and Josh
Alice: side. Yeah. This, um, and May’s definitely starting to look concerned. So she dispatches units, um, to a possible assault in progress. But then there’s sounds of a struggle, a gunshot and water splashing, and then [00:10:00] there’s no response and May just sort of turns to Josh and is like, “what, what just happened?”
Bex: And then we go to title card and when we return, we find, uh, Delia floating face down in her pool.
Alice: Her now very bloody pool as well.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Ew.
Bex: Um, and we can see that Bobby and Athena are walking around the outside of the pool.
Ellen: This is one of those scenes where everyone’s wearing a mask, so you have to kind of concentrate on what people are actually saying because you can’t see their faces.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: But they all do very good eye acting.
Bex: I just, I constantly have subtitles on, so
Alice: Yeah. I always have subtitles on. Yeah. I can’t hear the TV without subtitles.
Ellen: Sometimes I miss jokes if I don’t have the subtitles on, but
Alice: um, yeah, so Athena’s like walking around the perimeter of the pool and explains that she had a gunshot wound [00:11:00] to the chest and was already dead when the officers got there.
Bex: Yeah, they pretty much call the 118 just to get medical confirmation that Delia is dead and like she looks pretty dead,
Alice: like she’s face down in the water with blood everywhere
Bex: and she’s been there for a while. So, but Chim is on it, so he,
Alice: I don’t know how they know that she has a gunshot wound into her chest when she’s face down in the water.
Bex: I was going to assume that they heard a gunshot and they see blood in the water and they kind of just, either that or Athena’s got like magical x-ray vision and she can like, just diagnose just by looking
Alice: anyway, it’s such a good scene. I didn’t, didn’t wanna think about it too much.
Ellen: They might have tried to pull her out already and just sort of left her there ’cause they couldn’t, it was just Athena there, whatever.
Bex: I, anyway, I don’t know. But anyway,
Alice: such a good scene. Just keep going.
Bex: Chim steps up to, um, to do the medical confirmation, but Buck [00:12:00] is standing in his way so he very sort of politely says, excuse me, to Buck as he kind of works his way around him and Buck is like, “What? I’m sorry. Did you just say, excuse me to me?”
Alice: And look like quietly to Eddie, he’s like, “Chimney’s being weird,” and Eddie’s like, “How can you tell?” but yeah, so Chim gets Delia over to the edge so he can like assess her. Meanwhile, we’ve got Dumb and Dumber playing detective over here.
Bex: Oh, they’re so cute,
Alice: so funny. Um, so yeah, so Buck and Eddie have decided that they’re going to solve this crime. And Buck like, looks over and sees that the, the gate is wide open and there’s a big like, footprint on it. And he is like, “Oh, oh, whoever killed her, kicked that gate in good. Saw a clean footprint on it.” And Athena’s like, yeah, “That, that was mine.”
Ellen: That was me
Alice: “The gate was latched. So [00:13:00] like I, I kicked it open.”
Bex: Wait, wait the gate, wait, the gate was latched not locked? Why didn’t she just reach over and unlatch it?
Alice: They do mention later that it’s like, locked, locked. So
Ellen: it was really high, and Athena’s kind of short, right?
Alice: Anyway, so yeah, the gate, the gate was locked, the front door was locked, so Athena kicked it open. Um, and yeah, then Eddie’s like, “Oh, if everything was locked when you got here, had the murderer get in or out?” And then we get Buck going, “It’s a locked room mystery.” and Eddie going, “It’s a locked yard mystery.”
Ellen: They’re so cute.
Alice: They’re having the best time. And Athena’s like, there’s, there’s a dead body here, guys.
Ellen: Um, and she’s like, “Are we making a true crime podcast?”
Alice: Yeah. Because yeah, Eddie is like, “What do you think? Home invasion gone bad? Murder for hire?” Um, Buck suggests like, “Oh, was she married? ’cause [00:14:00] the husband’s usually the culprit.”
Bex: Thankfully, thankfully, Hen’s on the scene and she can just bring everything back to business. Um, she’s officially calling that the, that one, Delia is dead. Two, that it’s possibly a homicide because there are signs of a struggle, um, including a ripped nail.
Ellen: Oh, it’s gross.
Alice: It was, yeah. They close up on it so many times. It’s like, please stop closing up. Closing up on the,
Bex: it’s important. You need to focus on the nails. Yeah. Um, when Hen asks if they have any ID for their paperwork, um, Detective Romero walks in and tells us that the, or tells them, ’cause we already know this, um, that the victim’s name is Delia Narwood, but as he’s walking to join everybody poolside, he trips over one of the tiny little gnomes that are dotted [00:15:00] around the edge of the pool and Eddie has to catch him before he face plants.
Ellen: I’m like, that’s Chekhov’s gnome.
Alice: There’s so many gnomes in this yard that it just reminded me of The Sims.
Ellen: Yes.
Alice: But yeah, Eddie grabs him so he doesn’t fall in the pool and, um, Eddie’s still trying to solve this case.
Bex: Yeah. He’s noticed that there is a pile of mail on the patio table, and he’s noticed also that none of the mail is addressed to Delia and none of the mail is actually addressed to the residence that they’re currently standing in.
Alice: Yeah. So, she was stealing other people’s mail. Yeah. “And maybe she saw something she wasn’t supposed to and it got her killed.” Thanks Buck.
Ellen: It’s like, turns out to be almost true the truth. They, they nailed it. Right?
Alice: Well, [00:16:00]
Bex: he’s half right.
Ellen: She was stealing, if
Bex: He is half right,
Ellen: she was stealing the lady’s mail and it, but I mean, and she, the method of her killing…
Bex: and she was stealing people’s mail
Ellen: wasn’t correct.
Bex: She, she saw something she wasn’t supposed to, it didn’t get her killed though,
Alice: like she ended up dead because of,
Bex: yeah. Anyway, two out of three is not bad for a kid.
Ellen: Um, they’re not bad detectives after all.
Alice: Yeah, he’s a, he’s a rookie. Give him a break.
Bex: Um, Athena is just done with them and calls them Cagney and Lacey, which makes Bobby and Detective Romero laugh. Nobody else gets the reference. Not even Chim. But I don’t know whether that’s just because
Ellen: Or me.
Bex: Chim’s so preoccupied that he wasn’t even here. You didn’t get Cagney and Lacey?
Ellen: Well, I assume they were like oldie timey detectives, but I don’t know who they are.
Bex: It’s an eighties TV show, but yes, they’re detectives.
Ellen: Okay.
Alice: Honestly, the only reason that I understood this reference is because, um, in Brooklyn Nine Nine, um, Terry’s daughters are Cagney and Lacey. [00:17:00]
Ellen: Oh,
Bex: oh, sorry. That just added another layer because I did not actually, so they’re detectives, but they’re female detectives.
Alice: Oh yeah, they’re women.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Amazing.
Bex: Right. So with with, with that and not like, very, very interesting choice for a reference. Um, the 118 leave because, you know, there’s nobody for them to rescue to save, so they’re no longer needed which leaves Detective Romero and Athena to discuss the crime scene and we discovered that.
Alice: Yeah. Do the actual police work,
Ellen: the adults are gonna do their work now.
Bex: Yes. Um, and we learn that Delia treated 9-1-1 like her own personal grievance hotline. ’cause in the last six months she made 13 calls and we get a, a slight [00:18:00] nod to the episode title. So everyone take a shot. ’cause the word “grievance” was used.
Obviously we’re not gonna get the whole like “9-1-1. What’s your grievance?” spoken so I’m just choosing to use grievance as our episode take a shot cue.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: So yeah, 13 in six months
Ellen: Can we just say, I hope no one is actually using our podcast as like a drinking game because that would be bad.
Alice: We take no, um, no responsibility for how hungover you are the day after that you listen,
Bex: We implore you to drink responsibly.
Which is a nice segue because while we’re slowly killing our livers, um, Chim’s making a smoothie. I mean, it, it could be a frozen margarita, I don’t know, but I feel like it’s, you know, early enough in the day that it, it’s just a smoothie. Um,
Ellen: yeah.
Bex: And Maddie, he’s at the Madney apartment. [00:19:00] Maddie is getting ready to go somewhere and Chimney notices this and stops the blender so that he can talk to Maddie so that we can get a little bit of, you know, um,
Alice: exposition.
Bex: Yeah, exposition. Um, Maddie is going over to Buck’s because she needs to tell him that their parents are coming to town.
Ellen: Chim is absolutely dying with the knowledge that Maddie has in given to him.
Alice: Oh my God. Poor Chimney this whole episode. He’s like, “That’s the thing you need to tell him. Not the other thing that you told me that I’m not allowed to talk about?”
Ellen: He isn’t jumping out of his skin to tell somebody about this and like to tell Buck about this mainly. He’s like, we, ” Needs to know this.” And Maddie’s like, “No, you can’t tell him or anyone.”
Alice: I do love that Chim’s like, “I’m not allowed to talk about it.” And Maddie’s just like “And here you are talking about it.” Like she’s so done with him already.
Ellen: She’s fed up, yeah. I’m [00:20:00] so glad I told you about this.
Bex: The point is that all… maddie says that all she really needs to tell Buck is that our parents, their parents are coming to LA and she stops and asks Chim, how do you think he’s gonna take it? At which point Chim has returned back to his smoothie and he gives her the deadliest side eye over his shoulder before very pointedly turning on the blender. That’s his answer.
Alice: Like it’s the best passive aggression.
Bex: And it’s, it’s obvious, it’s honestly, it’s not a bad response because then we cut to buck and he is absolutely shocked. Like someone has just stuck him in a blender and pressed, full power is, he doesn’t understand why one, Maddie has invited their parents to come to LA and he is just learning [00:21:00] this now.
Alice: Yeah, so Maddie’s excuse is that Buck was in Texas,
Bex: which they had to throw in for like continuity sake. I’m like, ma’am, phones exist. I like, Texas is south, but it’s it’s not like another country. You could have at least texted him.
Alice: Yeah, he was on his phone. He was on Insta that whole time.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Um, but yeah, Buck’s real mad about it. He is like, “You’re just telling me now that they’ve crossed the California state line and it’s too late for me to talk you out of it.”
Bex: Which is probably why she held off so long.
Alice: Yeah, a hundred percent. Um, but yeah, he does not understand why she’s invited them and Maddie’s like, “I just want my little girl to have a normal family, you know, uncles and grandparents that she might actually know,” and Buck’s like, “Well, maybe you should have got knocked up by a guy who has one of those,”
Bex: which is so savage.
Ellen: Damn.
Alice: It’s like, that’s so mean
Ellen: Chim’s not even there to
Bex: Albert is right there. [00:22:00]
Ellen: Oh, yeah. But that’s mean,
Bex: yes. That, that’s a very low blow. But what I love is that they Buck eventually comes around to the fact that his parents are gonna be there, but he tells Maddie, it reminds her that they are a team. They’re, they’re going to put up a united front.
“You are not allowed to leave me alone with them.” And Maddie’s like, “I promise I won’t. And don’t worry, chimney’s gonna be there too.” And then she stops for a second and goes, “and Albert.” Buck’s like, “Albert’s coming?”
Ellen: At this point. I’m like, what? Why does he not want, like, what has happened here? Like why, why is he not wanna be left alone with them?
Like I was, my mind was going some weird places here because amazingly, I, I haven’t, hadn’t been spoiled for this secret. So,
Alice: well, you still haven you still don’t. Like
Ellen: Yeah, well I still don’t know.
Alice: You know part of it, [00:23:00] you still don’t know. Yeah. Which is, I was the same. I had no idea. And it was nice, like, ’cause I did not avoid spoilers at all. And it was nice having no idea what, what happened here.
Ellen: Yeah. And the reveal was so gradual in this episode. It was great. Brilliantly. Yeah. Done. Anyway, Albert will be there and
Bex: Albert will be there.
Ellen: We cut to a basketball court where, um, the brains of everyone check out because both Chim and Albert have no shirts on and are playing basketball and sweating in a quite attractive way.
Bex: They’re both in a very good shape. Yes. Um, it is a very good scene. I, I’ve said it before, I say again, I don’t know what was going on with, uh, Kenny in season four, that he was shirtless so much, but I think they need to bring it back.
Alice: Yeah. 10. Outta 10.
Bex: So they’re playing, they’re shooting hoops. Um, Albert is,
Alice: were they?[00:24:00]
Bex: Uh, Albert is kicking Chim’s ass. Um, Run DMC’s “Tricky” is playing over the top. Um, and Albert to segue from our previous scene with Buck and Maddie asks Chim and sounds like this is like a yet again. He’s asking this question is “Why must I be at the family dinner?” And Chimney says, “because I have to meet Maddie’s family. You are my family. Ergo you have to meet Maddie’s family.”
Ellen: And Albert’s like, “Is this a punishment?” Chim’s like, “yes.” Yeah, he’s being weird. Um, Albert says that Buck thinks you’re hiding something and Chimney’s like, “Because I am.”
Alice: Yeah. Chimney flat out tells him, um, he’s like, “yeah, I am hiding something. Maddie told me a secret, a really terrible life altering Buckley family secret that Buck can never know about.”
Bex: Albert is horrified.
Alice: Albert’s like, “She told you?”
Bex: [00:25:00] She told you, and Chim’s like, “I know. Everybody knows that I can’t keep a secret except this time I really, really have to. I can’t tell anyone. I can tell you though,” Albert’s like, no.
Alice: Yeah, no, Chim to Albert’s credit here. Chim’s like, “What do you mean, no? I can’t tell Hen or Bobby about it. We all work with Buck,” and Albert’s like, “yeah, I live with him.”
Ellen: Yeah. I thought when, when he said “except you”, I was like, oh no. This is gonna be one of those episodes where everyone knows before Buck does. Because once you’ve told one person, then everyone knows because that one person tells one other person and then all of a sudden everybody knows
Bex: which to be fair is what normally happens in the 118, but this time
Ellen: yeah. Yeah.
Bex: This like, we haven’t, we haven’t factored Albert into this situation because he goes, he sort of nods. All right, fine. Chim braces himself to reveal the big, big dark Buckley family secret. And Albert legs it for the hills [00:26:00] just takes off running.
Alice: Yeah. Like “Tricky” starts playing again and he’s just gone like into the woods. It’s like, where are you going?
Bex: Anywhere but where Chimney is gonna reveal a big dark secret that Albert then has to keep from his roommate.
Ellen: I mean, good on him.
Bex: Yes. And he runs us into commercials. When we come back um, it is shift time and the 118 are in the kitchen getting ready for family dinner. Uh, Bobby’s cooking Hen is tossing a salad and Chimney looks like he’s setting the table.
Um, Buck is not there. And Eddie tells us when he arrives that he’s probably downstairs, somewhere on the phone with Dr. Copeland having an emergency therapy session. And
Alice: don’t blame him.
Bex: I, at this point, I went, oh, that’s so nice. Buck has told everybody that he’s, you know, in therapy. And then I remembered, no, he told Chim and Chim has told everybody that Buck’s [00:27:00] in therapy.
Ellen: Oh, yeah.
Alice: Whoops.
Bex: Which kind of just, you know, secure, which kind of just reinforces the point that you don’t tell chimney something if you don’t want the rest of them to know.
Alice: This. This scene’s another one of those really funny ones in this, the whole episode is just filled with funny things. Yeah. Um, so Bobby’s shocked that he’s, again having an emergency therapy session and Eddie’s like, “Yeah, he had to ask her for some advice on some deescalation techniques,” And Bobby’s like, “What, is he afraid his parents visit’s gonna turn into a hostage situation?” And Chim just like drops everything he had in his hands
Bex: because there’s this loud clattering noise that attracts everybody’s attention. Like, what are you doing?
Ellen: Yeah, I’m just like, what is, was there a hostage, like the mind is going crazy at the moment, so, yes. Um, and then when he looks back, everyone’s just staring at him and he’s like trying to back out of it. Like, “uh, none of us has any idea. It’s just, you know, [00:28:00] if we all knew we could talk about it and then we’d all know and no one would be keeping anything to themselves.”
Um, and they’re all just looking at him like, what are you talking about?
Alice: And then he immediately drops the cutlery and is like, “I’ve gotta go.”
Bex: No, but okay. We gotta mention though, that when he’s, um, going on this little monologue about, you know, I, which basically I’ve got a secret and I need to tell you, he does mention that it’s potentially explosive information, which kind of,
Alice: I didn’t even pick that up. That’s so funny.
Bex: Which sets up the whole like, parallel storylines that are going on in this episode because this whole time Chim looks like he’s about to explode. He can’t tell this secret and he’s calling the information explosive and that all pays off at the end of it. But then once he’s,
Alice: oh, that’s amazing.
Bex: Once he said that he literally runs out of the kitchen, pauses long enough to open the safety gate so that he can jump onto the [00:29:00] fireman’s pole and slide out of view.
Alice: Yeah, he doesn’t usually… he slides down the fireman’s pole and just bolts and Eddie’s like, “Do we even wanna know what that’s about?” And Bobby’s like, “Nope.”
Bex: It’s just, I, I love that just this little like hesitation where he has to stop and open the gate. It would’ve been quicker to run down the stairs because there’s no gate there. But no’s gotta stop, open the gate and then step through and close it behind him and then go down the pole.
Alice: So funny.
Ellen: Safety first.
Bex: The writing in this episode is so funny and the blocking in this episode is so great. Just like these little moments,
Alice: like, and like Kenny’s acting is just so on point.
Bex: Yes.
Alice: This whole, oh, I love him so much.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s amazing.
Bex: Um, we do have to do a quite quick segue over to Michael’s apartment because we need to keep going with May’s storyline, um, where she’s having trouble dealing with the fact that she was [00:30:00] on the phone when Delia was shot.
Ellen: Yeah. So rather than having her, um, mandated therapy that she was supposed to be going to last episode, is that last episode, maybe two? Anyway, um, she,
Bex: last episode
She’s instead talking to her father.
I’m assuming that this is in addition to mandated therapy because the whole point of talking to Michael is that, um, she’s trying to work out,
Ellen: she’s trying to avoid talking to her mom about it
Bex: pretty much, but she needs advice on how to like pick up and move on if you’ve seen and heard the things that she’s seen and heard.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Which Michael can’t help her with because Michael says that Athena never bought that home. She took off the uniform and she left everything like at work. So he never had to deal with the, um, [00:31:00] the after effects of a bad call with Athena
Ellen: and it, but if in, in the end he tells her to go and talk to her mom because he can’t help, but she probably can. So
Bex: she probably could. Uh, but Athena’s a little bit busy. She’s trying to solve a possible murder. Uh, so she and, uh, Romero are back in Delia’s neighborhood and they are about to interview all of the neighbors
Ellen: Oh they’ve gotta talk to these people. I, I was just not interested in this at all. I’m like, go back to the Buckleys. I wanna know what’s happening with them! I, we have to go through this murder. Come on.
Bex: I, I like Romero. I think he’s fun. So I was,
Alice: I gotta say I did enjoy this storyline better the second time because yeah, this, the first time I was the same. I was like, no, I don’t care.
Ellen: Please, please tell me.
Alice: Go back to the secret
Ellen: I’m gonna explode! I’m like Chim, I need to know. Anyway, yes, they go to, yes. Um, talk to some of Delia’s neighbors.
Bex: Yes. Because [00:32:00] apparently in addition to making 13 calls to 9-1-1 in the past, however months, I said that she’d made them, um, she had also, uh, filed lawsuits against her neighbors, lodged complaints to the building department, the zoning board, and the Department of Waste Management, which Romero says, “Well, come on Athena. Everybody knows you’re supposed to bring your trash cans in before 8:00 PM” Um, which apparently yes you are. I don’t, I just discovered that the other day
Ellen: before 8:00 PM?
Bex: Yeah. Uh, at least in my council area, there is a time left timeframe, at which point you have to bring your bin. It’s in off the street.
Ellen: Really? I wonder if we, yeah, I don’t think we have that.
Alice: My old council did, but no one ever enforced it.
Bex: Oh yeah. I don’t think it’s enforced.
Alice: And now I live in the middle of nowhere, so like, if anyone’s gonna complain,
Bex: nobody’s gonna care. But apparently, apparently Delia cared.
Alice: Delia does [00:33:00] care.
Bex: So Romero and Athena go around to talk to all of the neighbors who were subject to Delia’s intense caring about matters of compliance with,
Ellen: oh my God.
Bex: Um, minor things like, she, um, lodged a complaint about an unlicensed business being run out of somebody’s house, which was a lemonade stand run by a kid.
Alice: Yeah. The flashback has like, it’s on, um, Delia and she’s like yelling, like ” All sidewalk vendors require business, tax and health permits. Do you have those permits?”
And then it switches around and it’s this like 6-year-old selling lemonade and just like, like
Ellen: shrugs.
She just lifts up her hands like, I dunno, poor, poor little thing.
Bex: Then we meet the, the second set of neighbors. Which is Melvin and Rita. They don’t appear to have been, [00:34:00] uh, affected by Delia at this point. But Melvin says that he thought that she was just sort of deeply unhappy.
You know, the type, they’re miserable. They want everybody else to be miserable too, but Rita says that she won her over with zucchini bread.
Alice: Um, speaking of zucchini bread, uh, she has brought some out and sets them on the edge of the porch and then like backs away so that Romero and Athena can actually like pick them up. ’cause we are still apparently in COVID time,
Bex: everyone is maintaining social distancing, which is good to see.
Alice: Um, I mean, there was just a block party, but sure.
Bex: But did you notice that the block party, everybody was wearing a mask and the tables were spaced really far apart?
Alice: Oh, that’s so cute. Oh, I didn’t pay that much attention, honestly.
Ellen: I just saw the kids running around playing together.
Alice: Yeah, literally I was watching the kids.
Ellen: There’s germs all over that place.
Bex: The kids had masks on too, so it was a very COVID safe party.
Alice: Well, well, they were [00:35:00] armed bandits. So
Bex: armed and masked. Oh my god. They could rob a bank. They probably do a better job than the actual
Alice: terrified for life. Um, but yes, so baking has become Rita’s new obsession and every time the husband turns around, she’s covered in flour, which is now Chekov’s flour.
Bex: cause she was one of those sourdough people over COVID.
Ellen: Yeah. She got sorted into the sourdough house.
Bex: Yes. Um, the third set of neighbors that we meet are Joe and John, um, who are absolutely hilarious because while everyone else is like, you know, trying to appear at least a little bit remorseful over Delia’s death, Joe’s just flat out “She had it coming.”
Ellen: They didn’t like it very much, but they had a good reason because,
Alice: oh, we missed Rita’s. We, we missed Rita’s best [00:36:00] line though of the like, interview is that Athena asks about the block party and Rita’s like, “oh, it was such a lovely gathering. I mean, up until the murder.”
Bex: I will say Rita is hilarious, unintentionally hilarious.
Alice: She’s so funny
Bex: the way that they’ve written her. She is very funny. Um,
Alice: and then her husband’s just like, “yep, that’s Rita. Never missed an opportunity to ruin things for everyone else.” It’s like, I don’t think that’s…
Ellen: like, damn, they’re not very remorseful either by the end of it.
Bex: Yeah. But they, at the, at least that they’re not, you know, outwardly glad that Delia carked it um, Joe’s husband is kind of like, “you know, you, they’re investigating a murder. Maybe you shouldn’t be, you know, quite so gleeful.”
Alice: Yeah. Joe’s like, “Well they, they knew we didn’t kill her. You do know that, right?”
Bex: Um, but the aforementioned good reason is that to sum up, um, Archie, they have this adorable [00:37:00] little Corgi called Archie who is getting all of the scritches and pets and good boys from Romero at this point. Joe and John’s backyard, they are direct neighbors with Delia and apparently Archie had a habit of slipping under a fence or through bushes.
Not entirely sure what’s going on there, but he gets into Delia’s yard quite a bit and Delia was very unhappy about that and she fed Archie some poisoned meat.
Alice: Fucking bitch.
Ellen: Yeah. Poor Archie. Justice for Archie. I mean, he’s fine.
Bex: Yeah, he’s totally fine. They got him to the vet. Um, I always find it funny when they have animals sort of pretending to be sick.
So they had Archie like lying the Corgi lying on his side, uh, with like foam painted around his mouth and you can just see him just sort of lying there with his eyes on his handler going, I’m being the bestest boy, aren’t I? Look at me pretending to be [00:38:00] sick. I love animal acting. It’s so cute.
Alice: I love them so much. It like, now that I do dog training, some of it I’m just like, God dammit, I can see what they’re doing. Yeah. Um, but yeah, this one was cute ’cause the dog was being the goodest boy while lying flat on the ground.
Bex: Yeah. So Joe continues to make himself prime suspect number one, because when Athena asks whether they had words with Delia after Archie was poisoned, Joe said, “I said, I hoped she’d burn in hell. And look, wishes do come true.”
Ellen: Yeah. These neighbors really don’t like her.
Alice: I don’t blame them.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But apparently all of the suspect have alibis. Unfortunately, all of their alibis are each other. So Romero thinks that it might be a Murder on the Orient Express situation. Which
Alice: did we mention that the reason [00:39:00] that she poisoned the dog was just because the dog got in her yard?
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I’m pretty sure it was given. Yeah.
Ellen: Um, maybe she did get what was coming to her then.
Bex: Yes. Yell at six year olds about their lemonade stand all you want, but do not touch the dogs. And I’m just gonna check something.
This Murder on the Orient Express, I’m pretty sure it is like your classic locked room mystery
Alice: locked yard mystery?
Bex: Locked train mystery.
Alice: Ooh.
Bex: Um, so the other reason for Romero’s reference to Murder on the Orient Express is that in that, spoiler alert, for anybody who has not read the classic Murder on the Orient Express and plans do in the future, everybody did it. Whodunnit? Everybody.
Alice: Everybody.
Ellen: Everybody did it?
Bex: Everybody did it. Like apparently the victim was found, stabbed, and apparently [00:40:00] everybody, all of their suspects had taken turns in stabbing the victim. So they couldn’t actually tell.
Ellen: Oh God. Okay.
Bex: Which one had killed them
Alice: Talk about goals. Damn.
Ellen: Damn.
Bex: But not like in a sort of, we’re all gonna stand over and stab simultaneously. There’s like one person stabbed them and then disappeared and the next person snuck in and stabbed them thinking they were still alive and
Ellen: Oh, oh my God. Okay. I haven’t read that. No.
Bex: So yeah, so that’s why Rick says, you know, it’s the, it’s a Murderer on the Orient Express situation. Maybe they all did it.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: So now we’re gonna go, now that we’ve progressed that storyline, we are gonna go back to the Madney apartment.
Ellen: The parents are about to arrive, so they’re getting everything ready. Buck got, yeah,
Alice: Buck’s. Got a lot of wine. Um, he’s got red, white sparkling just for, you know, Maddie, um, oh no wait, sparkling wine. Yeah. So mad doesn’t even get any of this.
Ellen: No
Alice: red, white sparkling in case they wanna do any celebratory toast. Maddie just has to sit out apparently because he also got tequila, [00:41:00] two bottles of it.
Ellen: Not sure why we needed them, but then Chim takes them and he is like, “those are for me.” Oh my god, Chim. He’s still trying to explode.
Alice: Um, meanwhile, Albert’s very mad that, uh, Chim’s wearing jeans because Albert was told he wasn’t allowed to wear jeans. But Chim doesn’t care. He’s literally opened the tequila and is taking a shot. And like, they haven’t even arrived yet. Chim’s never met them. And he is like, yep, no, tequila.
Ellen: Buck is absolutely treating um, Albert like he’s another brother, you know, a brother of his, he’s like, “you stop whining, put the oven on.” It’s like, whoa.
Alice: The Buck sass is definitely out.
Ellen: He’s going to make some baked brie with fig jam. Like, Ooh, I’m coming over to Buck’s place. That sounds delicious.
Alice: Yeah, right?
Ellen: And there’s a knock on the door and they all look around and go, oh shit, here [00:42:00] we go.
Alice: Um, yeah. Then like when the door, when there’s the knock on the door, Buck just throws the cheese at Albert. Mind you, Maddie also can’t have soft cheese. So they’ve got all this alcohol and baked brie and what the, what’s Maddie supposed to do here?
Ellen: Maybe she can have baked brie.
Bex: No,
Ellen: it’s to do with the, the bacteria on it. Right?
Bex: I don’t, yeah, but it, you’d have to bake it at such in order to kill the bacteria. I, it would be inedible. Yeah, they’re, you’re just heating it enough to soften it. You’re not, you know, trying to nuke it. Um, nobody’s gonna be able to eat it though, because when Buck tosses the cheese to Albert, Albert, Albert literally just throws it straight into the oven and slams oven door,
Alice: literally just yeets it in the oven, like, opens the door, chucks it in and shuts the door again.
Bex: I’m like, I mean, I know you’re supposed, I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to like, wrap it in foil before you [00:43:00] put it in the oven. I don’t think the wrapper counts though.
Alice: No. And I’m pretty sure you supposed put it on the tray, like on the oven tray and not just throw it in the back of the oven.
Bex: So baked brie is not on the menu for this evening no matter what.
Alice: No.
Ellen: That’s so sad. What a waste of beautiful cheese.
Bex: Well, we’re assuming Albert actually preheated the oven, so
Alice: Yeah, that’s if Albert even turned it on,
Bex: but yes. Enter the Buckley parents.
Ellen: Yeah. Maddie opens the door and I’m like, oh, I know that lady. She’s from Supernatural.
Alice: She was the one that clocked Dean in like three seconds.
Ellen: Yeah. She was the thirsty one who was like hanging out with Eileen.
Bex: Yes. Much, much better character in, um, in Supernatural than she’s in this. And also as I discovered when I have been starting [00:44:00] to watch, uh, classic movies with my kids, she was the mom in ET
Ellen: Yeah. Did not know that.
Alice: Yeah. I haven’t watched ET since I was like eight, nine.
Bex: Well, that’s the, that’s the great thing about having like eight or nine year olds that Yeah. You get, you have an excuse to watch these movies again. Yeah. Um, so not only is it the Buckley parents, but they have come bearing gifts because apparently spoiling grandchildren comes with the job of being grandparents.
Ellen: Yeah. They’ve literally got arms full of stuff. There’s like a, a rocking chair, which like a rock, like a rocking horse I guess, which is an elephant chair.
Alice: It’s an elephant, but Yeah.
Bex: Rocking elephant. Yeah.
Alice: Um, and a giant like gift basket thing. Um, but yeah, their dad says that, you know, they’re grandparents now, spoiling comes with the job. And Chim very quickly steps forward to introduce himself as Howard Han, [00:45:00] which is always funny to hear.
Bex: And Buck is just awkwardly lurking in the background.
Alice: Yeah. Buck is acting like he’s never seen these people in his life.
Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know if he’s waiting there for them to say hello to him or whatever, but
Bex: I think he, I think he was, I think he was waiting for someone to acknowledge him. Um, yeah. And then once they’re inside the apartment and Chim has sort of been intro introduced himself. He is like, okay, nobody’s gonna say anything. I bet it’s my turn. I’m gonna have to step up and like be the, be the first person to speak.
And it’s so awkward. Like you would would not know that these are his parents by the way. Both he and they are acting.
Alice: Yeah. Um, like his dad just goes, “You look good,” and Buck’s like, “Uh, yeah. So do you.” And thank God for Chim. Chim introduces Albert, um, and yeah, introduces him as um, “this is my brother Albert and Buck’s roommate.” [00:46:00] And immediately, um, Margaret Buckley goes “Buck, you’re still letting people call you that?” And apparently they hate nicknames.
Bex: And we get the most interesting lore drop because Chim looks at Maddie and goes, “but your name is Maddie.” And Maddie is like, “It’s the name on my birth certificate.”
Alice: Yeah. They didn’t look one, I can’t believe that Chim didn’t know that already. Like that’s kind of hilarious that he is like, with this woman has knocked her up and has had no idea that Maddie wasn’t short for something.
Bex: He doesn’t know her full government name. Yeah,
Ellen: yeah,
Alice: yeah. And Albert very quickly goes, “Yeah, does anyone wanna drink? We have many options. I’m starting with tequila.”
Bex: And then Philip, um, to make conversation starts talking to Chim and he goes, “So Howard, wait, do people call you Howard?” And Chim opens his mouth, looks at Maddie. Maddie’s like, no. He’s [00:47:00] like, “Yes, yes. People call me Howard.”
Alice: Yeah. Maddie’s like very quickly, like nodding her head just like, yes, people call you Howard. He is like, yep, everyone calls me Howard.
Bex: Uh, so the Harn brothers are doing the heavy lifting in this, um, social event. So they lead the Buckley parents into the living area,
Alice: It’s all that tequila. Clearly
Bex: He’s a lightweight. He didn’t have that much I don’t think. I mean, he could have had two shots in the time that we didn’t see him on camera, but I’m pretty sure it was just one that, although it was one very large shot.
Um, but Maddie and Buck kind of hang back and Maddie says, “We got this.” I don’t know if she’s telling Buck or if she’s trying to reassure herself. Um, but they got this, she holds up her pinky and Buck links his pinky with hers as like a callback to that really cute moment after, um, that episode at the end of the last season and says, “Yes, [00:48:00] united front. We got this.”
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: They kind of don’t got this though.
Alice: They absolutely do not have this. Um, after the commercial break, we are still in the Madney apartment.
Bex: Dinner’s progressed though. There’s food on the table. Although interestingly, they’re sitting around the coffee table, not the dinner table.
Ellen: Yeah, they’re not sitting at the table. I guess they’re having finger food, but yeah.
Bex: I dunno if that’s just because they don’t have enough chairs to fit everybody around the table, but they can fit everybody.
Alice: Or maybe it’s still appetizers, like maybe they’re still doing the baked brie,
Bex: I don’t know. But the Buckleys are sitting around the table. The Han brothers are in the kitchen doing something.
They’re not in shot at the moment. We start with the small talk and it seems like pretty innocuous small talk. Apparently Margaret and Philip, we don’t find out their names in this episode, but I’m gonna use them ’cause I know them. Um, Margaret and Philip drove from, where are they from? [00:49:00] Pennsylvania. It’s like Hersheys Country drove to California in an RV.
Alice: Um, yeah, because statistically speaking it seemed the safest way to travel right now, which I’m not sure is like COVID wise I guess, but
Bex: Yes. Um, but then Margaret has to just take it an extra step by saying we didn’t wanna take any chances giving Maddie’s condition and it being a high risk pregnancy. And here we go.
Because apparently Maddie’s over 35, so that puts her at a higher risk. So we all need to be extra careful and I mean, yes, medically, statistically, yes. But come on, Margaret.
Alice: Yeah, like Chim’s like, “Well, it’s not really high risk.” Um, Maddie’s like, “The baby’s fine,” and Margaret’s like, you don’t wanna take any chances, not when you’ve waited this long. And Albert’s just like, “Wow,” [00:50:00]
Bex: yeah, I don’t think, I don’t think anybody had prepared Albert for
Alice: No,
Ellen: no, not sure how much of the history Albert knew anyway. Like, even aside from the, the mystery, did he know about Doug and
Alice: Yeah. Right. Did anyone tell him about Doug?
Bex: Thankfully, Buck, um, Buck tries to remedy the situation and he’s like, “oh, you know, Maddie was just waiting for the right time and the right guy, right Chim?” And Philip goes, “yeah, God knows it wasn’t Doug.” Like, oh my God.
Ellen: Oh yeah. It just gets worse and worse.
Alice: Yeah. Like Maddie and Chim both like recoil. Um, at this point, Chim’s literally got his like hands on Maddie’s shoulder, and every time Maddie like goes to like, do, do something, Chim’s like rubbing her shoulders and like keeping her down. And it’s just like, it’s okay. It’s okay.
Ellen: She’s like, “Let’s not talk about him.”
Alice: Yeah. And yeah. And so Philip’s like, “oh, of [00:51:00] course. Sorry. Um, I’m just so happy to see you. Happy. So Evan, you’ve been seeing a therapist?”
Bex: like your sister might be happy, but apparently you are not. Um, this is news to Buck that Maddie had told them.
Um, I love at this point Chim’s like, I’m, I’m getting outta here.
Alice: Yeah. I’m gonna go get water.
Bex: So he disappears. He disappears.
Alice: Water, probably more tequila.
Bex: Oh, it’s definitely tequila. His dad wants to know if there’s anything that they should be worried about with Buck going to therapy. Um, interestingly at this point, Buck’s does a 180 because while he originally told Maddie and Chim that it wasn’t job related for the sake of his parents, it’s like, “oh no, it’s just, it’s the job, you know, it’s stressful.”
And Margaret sort of to add to the conversation says, “Oh, you know, your father and I went to see a therapist,” which is news to Buck, and Maddie.
Alice: Buck had no idea and asks when, and Margaret goes, “Well, after all the business with [00:52:00] Maddie and the husband who shall not be named, we felt like there were some things we needed to work through.”
And Maddie’s like, “So you went and talked to a therapist about my problems?”
Bex: Oh. And it just gets worse.
Alice: It just gets worse. Oh yeah. So Philip goes, “It wasn’t as if you wanted to talk to us about them. Buck had to call to tell us that Doug was dead.” So interestingly, he calls him Buck here.
Ellen: He calls him Buck. Yeah, I noticed that. I’m like, is he?
Alice: I just like, what?
Ellen: Is he taking the piss? Like is he, is he taking a dig at at Buck or is he
Bex: I think they just forgot to,
Ellen: they just forgot that.
Alice: I think they just forgot to write Evan. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, maybe.
Alice: But anyway, Buck’s response is the funny. He just like under his breath goes, “Well, I didn’t want you to find out on Dateline.”
Um, and Chim is like “Gonna start bringing this stuff to the kitchen. Did anyone want a refill while I’m in there?” And Albert’s like, “Yeah, I’ll help!” and Buck’s like, “Me too.” And they all just like sprint to the kitchen, which is like two steps away. Yeah.
Bex: It’s just, [00:53:00] um, oh, I hate the Buckley parents.
Alice: Oh. So yeah, once Buck’s safely two steps away in the kitchen, um, Margaret’s like, “Oh, Evan seems good after you called. I don’t know what I was expecting, but he seems fine.” And Maddie, who is always the best sister ever, it’s like, “Yeah, I think he is better at that than we think seeming fine.”
Bex: cause she knows the real reason he’s going to therapy. It’s not because of the job, it’s because, you know, he’s sad and lonely.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: As Maddie put it,
Alice: and has a lot of unresolved trauma that he doesn’t even understand at this point.
Bex: A lot of repressed feelings that are just in the mix as well, that it’s not helping the situation. So we, thankfully, thankfully, end Buckley family dinner there,
Alice: the world’s most awkward dinner?
Bex: Oh God. And we’re gonna go back to the LAPD because we still have to [00:54:00] work out who done it as far as Delia’s death is concerned. So Romero has been doing some, funnily enough, some detective work, which is, you know, really strange even though he’s a detective. He got a, he’s dropped by Athena’s desk to let her know that, uh, a uniformed officer was driving around the neighborhood and noticed that somebody had broken the seal on Delia’s front door.
And when Romero went to investigate, the place had been ransacked. And when he looked a little closer to see what was missing, he found white powder everywhere. That
Alice: this is the dumbest thing ever though.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
Alice: Like, I love this episode and it’s so funny, but this whole like, crime is just the dumbest crime ever.
Bex: So whomever was, uh, ransacking the house apparently like dipped their hands in flour literally before they started doing everything. Not [00:55:00] just flour though,
Alice: Flour with a hint of sour dough,
Bex: but the sourdough is not in the flour, the sour anyway. Yep. Um. It’s really stupid.
Alice: No. Well, he didn’t say that the sourdough was in the flour. It smelled like flour with a hint of sourdough. So possibly she’d been dealing with the sourdough and then wiped her hands on an apron.
Bex: I, anyway, it’s, it’s basically now all signs point to Rita.
Alice: Yeah. Like, ’cause I’m always rubbing my hands with flour before going to go through a crime scene.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Um, ’cause it’s not just like a little bit either, like, it looks like they’ve just like thrown a bag of flour on the dresser.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. It’s all over the place.
Bex: Um, they are not subtle in this episode. The, the whole Delia mystery is very much written for the lowest common denominator because while, um, Romero was talking about, you know, he’s found flour all over, um, Delia’s house, um, one of Rita’s zucchini breads is [00:56:00] still sitting nicely wrapped in Athena’s inbox.
And I don’t know whether she’s kept it there because it’s evidence or whether Romero tried his, and the zucchini bread is just so heavy that Athena has just decided to use it as a paperweight.
Alice: It’s funny ’cause in season two Yeah, in season two they say that they just throw out any, like, food that they get given.
Bex: Yes. It’s like they don’t the food. Yeah. Well they, she still has it so that when the detectives are talking about flour and sourdough, we can look down and get the, “oh, Rita!” moment.
Ellen: So she was looking for something.
Bex: Yes. So they head into the evidence room, because they apparently took everything outta the house that wasn’t nailed down. So whatever Rita was looking for has to be in one of the evidence boxes.
Ellen: And they find a, like Athena picks up an envelope [00:57:00] that has “Janine R Crowder” written on it, and they haven’t spoken to anyone by that name. So Romero asks, um, what was the house number? But Athena’s already way ahead of him. She’s like, typed it in, typed the name in to some database that apparently contains all the crims in the city and founded, found a wanted poster for Janine R Crowder and it’s Rita, which I think they already established. But anyway,
Bex: that’s not Rita it’s Janine Crowder who was wanted for larceny, fraud, identity theft, and bigamy.
Alice: And bigamy. Um, so yeah, Rita’s not Rita. And Delia didn’t just know that, she had the evidence to prove it.
Ellen: And it got her killed. Well, kinda,
Alice: that’s, no. Wait to go, Eddie. So proud of you. You get a cookie.
Bex: Wait, wasn’t that Buck’s theory?
Alice: Was it Buck? [00:58:00]
Bex: Yeah, I think it was Buck’s theory.
Ellen: Yeah. I think they both, I think they both came up with it. Combined, they,
Alice: they were sharing the brain cell on that scene. I didn’t really pay attention to who said who was the one that was looking at the mail. So
Bex: either way, they now have, um, well, I mean they have to arrest Rita anyway, because, you know, she’s wanted for all of this stuff. But they also have probable cause to bring her in to talk about her in relation to Delia’s murder.
Um, so they go and arrest her, which is the funniest thing.
Ellen: And her husband is like, “Whoa, my wife is not a murderer! But Athena’s like, “She’s also not your wife.”
Bex: And at this point, Rita’s head snaps around and ’cause she’s being led off into a car, and Romero and Athena are trying to hold Melvin back. And she just says to the cops, “oh, you found out about Marshall?”
And Athena goes, “oh, we thought your husband’s name was Jerome.” She’s like, “oh, damn. Now you know about him too.” Like, how many husbands do you have? [00:59:00] And Mel Melvin’s like, “Rita!” At this point, a crime scene tech shows up.
Alice: Rita’s like, “I can explain everything.”
Bex: Except crime scene tech shows up and she’s got a gun that she found in the kitchen. And Rita’s like, “yeah, okay. That one might be a little bit harder to explain.” See, the writing for Rita is so funny.
Alice: It’s so funny. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. Very witty.
Alice: And the actress is great too. Like she is just like, “oh, whoops.”
Bex: Yeah. Uh, yeah.
Alice: Um, so now we get more May trauma.
Ellen: Oh yeah. She’s really, she’s really going the dad route this time.
Bex: She’s gonna talk to everybody before she talks to her mother.
Alice: Yeah. Like she has two dads. She’s gonna utilize them. Yeah. Um, but yeah, she comes home early and apparently she was supposed to be at a pool party, and she does ask like where her mom is, but her mom’s at work. [01:00:00] And so May explains to Bobby that she was the one that took the call the other day about the lady who got shot and fell into the pool.
Bobby’s like, “Yeah, pool party may be not the thing you want to take your mind off the job right now.”
Ellen: I love how May goes, “Okay. Um, I need to know how to com compartmentalize. So you’ve been a first responder for a really, really long time.” And Bobby’s like, okay, but yeah, it’s true. It’s true.
Alice: Um, yeah, and Bobby, she’s like, yeah, I, I can’t do it. It’s like, well, cool. That’s helpful.
Ellen: Apparently, like my coping mechanism was a mix of vodka and whatever that drug’s called, which I can’t pronounce
Bex: Percocet.
Ellen: Thank you.
Alice: Um, and he does stress that
Ellen: he does not recommend.
Alice: He does not recommend that. Yeah. But yeah, he says it’s natural to go over the losses in your head to think about all the things that you could have done differently, knowing now what you didn’t know then, and May says she keeps trying to figure [01:01:00] out what she could have done better, how she could have saved her. Bobby’s like, “You couldn’t, you’re gonna lose people and it’s never gonna feel okay. But that doesn’t mean it’s your fault, just means that you care. And there’s nothing wrong with that.” Bobby’s the best dad.
Bex: Yeah, he does do good advice because I think, I feel like May is coming at this whole compartmentalizing thing of, you know, leaving everything at the job and leaving it behind and coming home and starting afresh, as in she has to literally sort of switch off her emotions.
Ellen: Yeah. She’s taking it very seriously.
Bex: And Bobby is telling her that you don’t, that’s not what it means. You can still care about, uh, the people that you talk to. Um, you can still feel bad. There’s nothing wrong with that. You just have to find a way that it doesn’t overwhelm your, your home life.
Ellen: Uh, so now that she’s sort of got over her trauma [01:02:00] a little bit, she’s gonna go back to work and Josh tells her that “It’s a big day. Are you ready?” And she’s like, “Why is it a big day?” But, um, Josh takes her to her very own station. Have your own desk.
Alice: Yeah, she’s graduated from training.
Bex: Yes. Apparently she impressed him with that shooting call. So she is, um, she’s now flying solo.
Ellen: Yeah. And she goes on to do, to answer a number of calls in which she just snappily deals with everyone.
Alice: Most of them are pretty useless. Um, so someone calls to find his gas line and she’s like, no, you meant to call 8 1 1. Apparently they tell if there’s any utility lines buried in your backyard.
Bex: Yeah. I think it’s the
Ellen: dial before you dig?
Bex: equivalent of like dial before you dig. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Alice: Yes. Another woman complains that her meter maid, gave, gave her a ticket, [01:03:00] and May’s like, “well, was your meter expired?”
Bex: I like this next one. Uh, a young man calls in and he’s like, “My freaking roommate stole all my drugs.” And May’s like, “I really don’t think you thought this call through.”
Ellen: I’ll, I’ll send a policeman right away.
Bex: Yeah, yeah. Well, we’ll dispatch some officers to, um, to deal with that. Um, sorry, but the next call is the, the real kicker. And I thought the first time I watched it that it was gonna go in a completely different direction.
Alice: Oh. I thought at this time too, I’d totally forgotten. Like, and I was like, oh, Jesus Christ, because it’s, his name’s Stan and when May asks, you know, 9-1-1, what’s your emergency? He goes, “Hey, this is Stan. You sound nice.”
Bex: Yeah, yeah,
Ellen: yeah. I was like, oh no. And I, she doesn’t need this.
Bex: Yeah. I, I know that people, there are some sickos out there who tend to use [01:04:00] kind of public phone, um, systems for their own, like, sick pleasure. And I, I really thought that that’s what we were gonna sort of start to get here. Um, but it’s not thankfully, um, Stan is calling in because he wants May to tell him why people lie, why people say that they care but they don’t, and that somebody needs to teach them a lesson.
So he’s gonna teach them a lesson. At which point May’s gone well, this is way over my pay grade and, and calls Josh over, and Josh gets there just in time to hear Stan say that he’s going to blow their lying heads right off.
Ellen: Um, may tries to work out what exactly he’s planning to do by, you know, encouraging him to talk more, I guess.
Like, “Maybe I can help.” And Stan makes it clear that he wants everyone to know that it was [01:05:00] him that did it and it wasn’t an accident. And May’s like, you know, he says they deserved it and May says, “What did they deserve?” And he’s like, “oh, my name’s Stanley Whitworth and I just planted a bomb.”
Bex: Dun dun duuuun!
Ellen: So here we go with the bomb storyline.
Alice: Yes. Yeah. We’re we’re at the climax now.
Ellen: Yeah. So we, like May goes on break. Like why is she in the conference room now? After the, after the commercial looking at her phone,
Bex: I’m going, I’m going to assume that, um, they’ve taken her off because that’s like a doozy of a phone, of a, of a call to take.
Um, it’s very interesting that they’re using the conference room so much for May, like we haven’t seen her go into the break room anytime she’s been taken off the floor. She’s sitting in the conference room.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But so she’s sitting in the conference room, she’s scrolling on her phone and Josh comes in to update her on the situation saying that they found Stan’s house, but there was [01:06:00] no sign of him. Um, they also didn’t find a bomb,
Alice: but yeah, they, they did go to his job and it turns out he was fired last month.
Ellen: Yeah, they found out he was fired, but they didn’t find any bombs. And then May reveals that she’s been looking at his social media and she thinks that they might have gone to the wrong job.
Bex: And this is why you don’t have Maddie train the 9-1-1 dispatchers because then they think that they can do things like stalk their caller’s social media. I mean, it works out in this instance, but Maddie, my God, stop it.
Alice: Um, but yeah, Josh is like, “You shouldn’t be doing that.” And then is like picking it up and scrolling it anyway.
Bex: Yeah. Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. He’s like bad May.
Bex: I’m going to voice my objection for the record, but I’m also going to take advantage of the information that you found. Yeah.
Alice: I’m still gonna use your, your spying. Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. Um, and they use the information that May has discovered to find [01:07:00] Stan’s first job, and they dispatch LAPD and LAFD to a office building downtown, which apparently is Gibson Homes, some kind of construction company.
Alice: So, yeah. So they’re clearing out the building and say that they need to shut off the gas and power. Bobby sends Eddie to shut off the electrical and sends Buck to go up the street and shut the gas off. I thought they had city workers to do that, but Okay.
Bex: Yeah. But remember, every time they’ve called city workers, they get like, it’s a 10 minute delay actually getting somebody down. Um,
Alice: they’ve given up and they’ve just taken the keys. Now they’re like, we’re just,
Bex: yeah. Pretty much.
Alice: We need you to shut the electric electrical off. No, the electrical’s working. We, we know.
Bex: Yes, Jamal. That is the problem. Um, we get while, um, those two are off doing that, we get a little exposition with one of the women who works for [01:08:00] kipps and Homes.
We find out that yes, Stan used to work for them and he was, um, he worked for them for nearly 20 years and before he was, injured on the job and the company blamed him for his own injury.
Alice: Yeah. So he blamed the company for cutting corners and filed a grievance over it.
Bex: Drink.
Alice: Yeah. But the company said that it was Stan’s mistake. So when they fired him, he lost his health and pension. So on Friday he sued them, his court was thrown out.
Bex: Yeah.
You may obviously sued his claim was thrown out. Yeah. Obviously sued them and caught through the claim out on Friday, which was the, uh, the trigger for this explosive event. Um, and wouldn’t you know, but Stan used to be the demolitions expert for the company, and if you don’t know what demolition means, Hen very helpfully tells us that that means that he would [01:09:00] blow things up for them.
Yeah. Like, yes. We hit, we get Eddie over the radio that he’s got the power out, but apparently there is a janitor that might be having an asthma attack and has collapsed in one of the stairwells. So Bobby sends Chimney in E I’m assuming that he has to send Chimney in because Eddie, even though he is some form of, some flavor of medic, doesn’t have a med kit on him.
So he is sending Chim in with the med kit, which has all of the, the basics to help with an asthma attack.
Ellen: Right. Bomb squad like rolls up and that’s it. They don’t do anything yet.
Bex: No.
Alice: Pretty much.
Bex: Pretty much. Oh, we’re here to squads, bomb squad’s here. Excellent
Alice: here to hang out. Place some Nintendo,
Ellen: but Chim and Eddie meet like all the power’s out, so the escalators are off. And so Chim, and like they’re crossing over each other. Like the up escalator is going in the opposite orientation [01:10:00] to the down escalator, I’m guessing. So the two of them, like Chim and Eddie meet halfway up and down. Yeah, like Eddie’s on his way up. Chim’s on his way down kind of thing.
Um, and yeah, Chim asked if he’s seen if he’s, if he’s found the asthma guy and did Eddie, uh, oh, he got word that a janitor might. I was like, didn’t Eddie find the asthma attack guy before? But no, apparently he just got word about it
Alice: I don’t know who told him, but there was, yeah, but
Bex: I’m assuming he passed somebody that was evacuating the building. They might have like passed somebody. I don’t know. It’s, it’s very suspicious, but we’re gonna gloss over it because for the drama.
Alice: It’s a good episode. Just keep going.
Ellen: Um, so Chim’s gonna go down to the basement. Yeah.
Alice: So Eddie’s, Eddie’s, Chim sends Eddie to clear the rest of the lobby and make sure no one’s in the elevators, um, while Chim goes and checks the garage underneath.
Um, and Chim does find someone,
Bex: it’s not a garage, it’s like a plant room [01:11:00] basement. I don’t know. It’s somewhere underneath. And yes, there is somebody in there with a, um, a janitor’s bucket. So Chim is all very, very professional. He’s like, “Sir, we’ve gotta get you out of here. Um, somebody said you were having trouble with your asthma. I’m a paramedic. I got some basics.”
He pulls out a canister of O2. He pulls out a, a puffer. Um, but when he stands up to offer them to the janitor, he sees that the, uh, the yellow bucket that the janitor has been pushing around is not filled with soapy water, but with explosives.
Alice: Yeah. I don’t think that’s how you clean buildings, but, you know.
Bex: No. And while the janitor’s also holding onto a mop, he’s also holding onto a detonating switch.
Alice: Not even just the detonating switch. It’s, it’s a dead man’s switch. Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. He says, “No one can help me now,” very dramatically like
Bex: Yes. Uh, because Chim said like, we, “if I can’t help you, we can get you back to the ambulance to help you.” But he’s saying “No one [01:12:00] can help me now.” Um, at this point, Bobby starts calling over the radio for everyone to check in, um, because Bomb squad is, is ready to go. Um, but he calls in for both Chim and Eddie. Neither one of them check in. So we just, so he keeps calling for Chim and I’m going like, Eddie didn’t check in with you either.
Alice: We don’t care about Eddie. It’s fine. He said,
Bex: well, I care about Eddie.
Alice: He’s just got one.
Ellen: Didn’t. Are you sure Eddie didn’t say something?
Bex: Nope.
Ellen: I thought I remembered him checking in. Okay.
Bex: Nope. He, he comes, we hear Eddie later and like he shows up later, but he, we never hear him over the radio checking in unless he like jumps in.
Alice: Maybe he check in and they just didn’t play that audio. It’s fine.
Bex: I, I don’t know. But like we hear Bobby like every couple of seconds going, Chim check in, Chim, are you there? Chim? I’m like, what about the other kid that’s like in the building? Let’s stop playing favorites. [01:13:00] So while Bobby is like incessantly getting Chim to check in, um, Stan is…
Alice: Chobby fans are having a good episode. That’s fine.
Bex: Um, Stan is sort of explaining his, uh, manifesto. He’s like, you know, I, I blow this, the mezzanine goes and then the whole building comes down because he is an expert in that sort of thing. He’s very, um, very bitter about the fact that he had to disguise himself as the fricking help just to get back in the building.
“After I gave them two decades of my life, they’ve kicked me to the curb and now I’m gonna make ’em a pile of rubble on that same curb.”
Ellen: Yeah, all the time. Ed, Chim is just standing there like not moving, going. Oh, shit, shit.
Alice: Ignoring his radio. But you can just hear Chimney, Chimney, Chimney.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And then we hear Eddie and then Eddie arrives.
Yeah. Eddie’s yelling. Hey, Chim. Um, like, “You didn’t hear the radio? Why didn’t you check in? Bomb squad’s [01:14:00] moving in.” Chim’s like, “Ah, yeah, we’ll be out in a minute.” And Eddie’s like, “Come on. If like, if he can’t move, we’ll just carry him.” And Chim’s like, “Nope. No, it’s fine.”
Alice: “We’re good.”
Bex: “We’re good. It’s all good.” And Eddie spies… ’cause at this point, Stan is kind of standing behind this concrete pillar, so you can’t really, he’s not visible, but there’s just enough of his hand sticking out that Eddie can see the detonator switch.
So Chimney sort of very, very clearly says, “Just make sure everybody else clears out.” And Eddie’s like, “Got it. Just make sure everybody else clears out. I’ll go tell Cap that everybody else is cleared out.” Um, and then literally sprints through the building and out the front to tell Bobby and the bomb squad guy that Chim is still inside with the bomber.
Ellen: And they’re all like, oh shit, there’s [01:15:00] a lot of, oh shit’s going on.
So Chim’s asking him the, like, about, because he, the guy’s struggling to breathe. He’s like, he’s actually in the middle of an asthma attack. So he’s asking him about it, like, um, “Is that why you filed your grievance?” Take another drink. Um, but Stan says he’s, he was born with it and he, they only got rid of him because of the accident.
Um, but Chim tries to give him like the, you know, the athsma inhaler stuff. The, the inhaler. He is just like, not, not coming anywhere near it.
Bex: Stan is of the opinion that, you know, he’s about to blow everyone to kingdom come. Doesn’t matter if he can breathe or not. ’cause it’s all about to be over. Um,
Alice: um, yeah, and the world’s gotta know the truth.
Bex: And Chim’s like, “You know what? I get that you’re like a ticking time bomb. If you don’t get the truth out, you’re just gonna burst.” And Stan’s like, “You don’t know nothing about it.” And Chim’s like “You wanna bet?” [01:16:00]
Alice: And then he looks at Stan and goes, “You got a minute?”
Oh, this is so funny. So outside the bomb squad are like frantic. So the bomb squad are, you know, wanting to get their men in, men in there. Um, Bobby’s like, no, you can’t do anything till we find out what’s happening with Chim. Um, Eddie’s like, “yeah, the guy’s breathing, breathing hard, um, something in his hand, probably a bomb or at least a detonator.”
And so they’re all freaking out. Meanwhile, inside Chim has just completely unloaded the Buckley family secret on Stan and Stan’s like, “he doesn’t know?”
Bex: No, no, no.
Alice: Chim’s saying like “He has no idea.”
Bex: Wait, wait, wait, wait. The great thing about this scene is it’s one of those scenes where there are parallel storylines and parallel conversations, but they keep cutting backwards and forwards and every time they cut they make sense.
So the bomb squad and Bobby are all talking and they said, “Why [01:17:00] didn’t Chim just run?” And Buck says, “I don’t know.” And then we cut to Stan going, “Wait, he doesn’t know?” And of course Stan’s not talking about, he doesn’t know why Chim’s running. He’s talking about the secret that Buck doesn’t know.
Ellen: Yeah. They kept it from him his entire life.
Alice: It’s so good. And the best part is, so like when we left Chim and Stan as well, like it was all very tense. They were sort of like having a standoff. Obviously Stan’s like got the dead man switch in his hand, um, when we cut back, Chim’s like leaning against like the wall and like they’re just chatting,
Ellen: they’re having a chat. Yeah.
Bex: Stan’s completely relaxed. He’s completely forgotten about his grievance with the company and the fact that he’s got enough explosives to blow them all to kingdom come and back. Um, he’s absolutely entranced by this story that Chim is telling him. Um, yeah.
Alice: So, so yeah, they kept it from him his entire life. Um, “The sister too? Wow.” “And then she goes and tells me,” and “What’d you even say?” [01:18:00] And then we go back to outside
Bex: and Eddie said, “well, what was I supposed to say?” Um,
Alice: Hey, is that a dead man’s trigger or,
Bex: so they’re still talking about like Chimney being in the building. Buck is trying to, uh, talk about like what kind of trigger, you know, if it’s a dead man’s switch, it’s, or if it’s this one, it’s that. And Bobby’s like, stop mansplaining. Um,
Alice: we get it Buck
Bex: demolitions to the bomb squad, Buck. We get it. Um, and so apparently bomb squad have got a visual with infrared and they’ve realized that they’re both just sort of sitting down there talking and Buck goes, “What do you think they’re talking about?” You, honey, they’re talking about you.
Alice: Um, and Stan’s like, “He never asked about it, never suspected a thing?”
Ellen: He was just a little kid. Oh, it’s so cute.
Alice: Yeah. So he was just a little kid. There’s a big age gap between him and his sister.
Ellen: Yeah. Stan can’t believe it. He is like, “Are you sure [01:19:00] you wanna be part of this family?” Yeah, he’s into it.
Alice: And Chim’s cute. He is. He’s like, “oh, Maddie’s pretty great and I’m really looking forward to being a dad. Just need to make it through this visit. And if I can just make it through dinner with them.”
Bex: Stan is all like, “wait, wait, wait. There’s another family gathering? That is,” and then we cut to bomb squad.
Alice: “Very explosive.”
Bex: Explosive. Because apparently, um, the, some sort of job site, maybe the previous job, maybe this job, I don’t know. They’ve searched and discovered that six pounds of C four are missing. Uh, they’re not missing anymore. They’re in Stan’s janitor’s bucket.
Alice: Yeah, and Bobby says he knew exactly where to f find it and Buck’s like, “yeah, maybe Chimney needs to stop talking to him. Could set him off. Uh, sorry. Bad choice of words.”
Bex: Insert the Archer meme of “phrasing”
Alice: literally.
Bex: And here we are gonna get, um, [01:20:00] Chim’s big hero movement because while, while Stan is, has been quite, um, interested in what Chim is saying, his asthma is getting worse and he’s wheezing and he’s coughing.
Ellen: Yeah. He says, “You gotta tell him. He deserves to know.” And Chim’s like, “Oh, I’ve been dying to tell someone.” And meanwhile, Stan is actually dying.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: He’s getting a lot worse.
Bex: He says that he’s happy that he can help, um, Chim get this off his chest. Um, and Chim goes, Hey,
Ellen: such punny writing in this episode.
Bex: “Listen, um, your chest doesn’t sound too good.” Um, like just, he bends down and he picks up the O2 canister and he picks up the abuterol, which is the asthma puff.
And he goes, “look, just one hit. It’s not a trick, it’ll just help you. It’s just an asthma puffer.” And Stan, just one hit, just one hit. That’s important. Um, because Stan has lowered his guard enough that he’s like, yeah, yeah, you know what? [01:21:00] Just the abuterol will, I can do that. So he reaches for the puffer.
Chim drops the puffer, immediately grabs hold of the dead man’s switch and hits Stan over the head with the O2 canister. I mean, he was right. It’s just one hit. It’s just not the hit he was expecting.
Ellen: He’s just bang. Yeah,
Bex: it’s so smooth that it’s so good. And Chim’s like we all got,
Ellen: and I cheered like, yeah!
Bex: Yeah. Chim tells Stan, “We’ve all got problems. Yours don’t give you the right to blow up innocent people.” He’s still holding onto that dead man switch. But he kneels down. He pulls something out of his med kit and it’s like a single use injection of something I’m assuming a sedative, um, jabs that into Stan’s thigh.
And then finally gets on the radio and calls all clear.
Ellen: Yeah. “Thanks for listening to me, Stan.” [01:22:00] Yeah. Finally you got it off his chest.
Bex: Yes. The great, unfortunately neither the head injury nor the sedative has knocked Stan out completely. So he’s still conscious when they get wheel him out of the building on a, the gurney to get him into the ambulance.
Um, and as they’re wheeling him, he pa they pass behind Buck and Stan sees the name Buckley across the back of the turnout and he’s like, “Wait, hey, are you Buck?”
And Chim’s like, oh shit.
Alice: Yeah. So Buck’s like, “Yeah, sure. That’s me.” And Chimney’s just like putting the O2 mask back on him. Like, “Sit back. That’s it. Um, yep. The O2 must really be kicking in,” ’cause Stan’s like, “Ah, it’s true.” And he’s like, “What’s true?” “You’re not lying,” and Buck’s like, “Not lying about what?” And Chimney’s like “Nothing! Gotta go!” And just like slamming shut the ambulance door and like smothering Stan with a pillow in the ambulance. [01:23:00]
Bex: Stan drives away with a nice to meet you buck and buck’s.
Like, what the fuck was that?
Alice: Poor Buck is not having a good week.
Bex: He’s really not. Um, but things are starting to click into place for Hen so when they go back to the station house, she and Chim are restocking the ambulance and Chim’s a little distracted. He keeps looking over at Buck, who is in the, like the, the glass onion that is their, um, locker room. ’cause it’s like all glass. And she,
Alice: Yeah, Hen’s very confused because this is usually Eddie’s job, staring at Buck through the locker room window.
Bex: Yeah. But Eddie doesn’t usually stare at, at, um, Buck and then sort of shake his head and sigh very, um, mournfully
Alice: well, depends on the day.
Ellen: Yeah. Sometimes I’m sure.
Bex: But she fi she finally like that final puzzle piece slips into place and she [01:24:00] realizes that the thing that has been killing Chim for the last few days is about Buck and Chim puts up like a nanosecond of defense and then crumbles.
Yes.
Alice: Um, yeah, he says that he’d love nothing more than to unburden himself to Hen right now. But he made a promise and he asks if Hen’s mad and Hen’s like, “I’m impressed. You’re growing as a human right before my eyes.”
Ellen: Oh, she’s so funny. And he’s like, “They all think they’re protecting him and, but you know, he’s the only one who doesn’t know.” so.
Bex: But for the record, Hen also doesn’t know.
Ellen: Hen’s like, also I’m, I’m not in on it.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Whatever it is,
Alice: “I, I don’t wanna know. Yeah, yeah. You keep that to yourself.”
Ellen: She doesn’t try to pressure him to tell her what it is.
Bex: No. ’cause she’s a good friend
Alice: and she also doesn’t wanna deal with Buck
Bex: pretty much. Yeah. Yes.
Ellen: All right. One more bit about [01:25:00] Rita. I really didn’t care.
Bex: Okay. Romero has her in an interrogation room, um, while Athena’s hanging out in, on the little observation behind the two-way mirror and Rita is talking quite freely. She is admitting that yes, she was married to three men at the same time.
Yes, she did ransack Delia’s house, but no, she didn’t kill her. And when r
Alice: God forbid a woman has hobbies,
Bex: when Rick presents her with the gun and says, are you sure you wanna talk to me without a lawyer present? She’s like, “I am a lawyer. Well, I was a lawyer in Kansas. It was another life.” And Rick’s like, “Yeah, you had quite a few of those.”
The gun is registered to her. So Romero is like, “The gun is registered to you. Your gun killed her. We found the gun in your pantry. You kind of see the problem here.”
Ellen: Yeah. But Rita, she says. [01:26:00] “I didn’t have the gun when she was shot. She had it because she was stealing my mail and using it to blackmail me.”
And then we get flashback to what actually happened. Well, to what Rita says actually happened. So Delia is going through the mail that she’s stolen from Rita
Bex: in the backyard, by the way.
Ellen: In her back? Yeah, in her back backyard in the patio. So Rita appears with a gun and points it at her and apparently Delia has been asking her for money in order to keep it quiet.
And she’s like calling her bluff, basically. She’s like walking towards her going, oh, he’s, he’s not gonna notice the gunshot when you fire that thing, or my blood all over you? And, uh, Rita’s trips over one of the garden gnomes that are all over the backyard. And as she kind of steps back, Delia grabs the gun out of her hand and she says, if you broke my gnome, I’m gonna sue you for that too. [01:27:00] So,
Alice: such a lovely lady.
Ellen: Ugh. Yeah. Um,
Bex: So that explains how Delia got Rita’s gun. Romero wants to know. How did Rita get it back? Um, so apparently when they heard the shot, Rita immediately knew that it was her gun and she thought that Delia had shot someone else. She knew that Delia kept her place locked.
Okay, there we go. So it, it was locked. That’s why Athena had to kick it in. Um, but she knew that John and Joe Archie’s owners didn’t keep their place locked. So she snuck into their backyard ’cause they’re out at the block party and appeared over the fence and saw that Delia was floating in the pool. She also saw that the gun had somehow ended up near the bushes, near the fence line.
Like, long story short, she uses one of those like long stick tennis ball throw with
Alice: It’s a ball chucker. [01:28:00]
Bex: Yeah, a ball chucker. Um, she uses the ball chucker to one distract Archie, who has come over to investigate what’s this.
Alice: Is chucker an Australian term?
Bex: We’ll find out soon, I guess when, when the people who listen to us, um, send us messages going, what is a chucker?
Chucker is to throw
Alice: a thrower. Yeah.
Bex: Um, so Archie has come over to investigate what this strange woman is doing, sort of in his backyard, in his bushes. Um, so she throws the ball for him and uses the ball chucker to reach through that hole in the fence. Still don’t know what’s going on there to drag the gun close enough that she can grab it and take it back to her place.
Ellen: Well, obviously that is the hole that Archie was using to get into Rita’s backyard,
Bex: but I don’t understand why the hole is there.
Ellen: No.
Bex: Has he dug the hole, or was the fence not all the way down? And if it was like something’s gone there, why didn’t Delia just fix the fence to stop Archie from coming in if she [01:29:00] was so annoyed with him continually?
Alice: As a fellow owner of working dogs, you fix that hole it, another hole appears like I, I don’t know how it works.
Bex: That’s not a working dog.
Alice: Autumn’s almost made it under my house like three times. It’s fine.
Bex: That’s an animated potato. I don’t think this,
Alice: they’re a working dog! That’s what people think. And then they get corgis and they’re just like, oh shit, this dog just wants to herd things constantly. They’re a working dog. They’re bred to herd.
Ellen: Really?
Alice: What are they herding? Ants?
Ellen: I didn’t know that about corgis
Alice: no, sheep.
Bex: Are you kidding?
Alice: No, they’re working, they’re in the same group as our dogs.
Ellen: Really? Don’t they have really short legs though?
Bex: How do they herd sheep with those teeny tiny little legs?
I dunno, I dunno if you can hear that. But there is now frantic typing and I’m pretty sure that a video is about to drop in the, um, in the group chat of, of, of corgis working.
Alice: Um, um, yeah, so they, they nip and bark, they herd sheep, but they also heard cattle.
Ellen: Oh wow.
Bex: Oh, come on. The cows wouldn’t be able to [01:30:00] see them.
Alice: Well, okay. You haven’t met Autumn. But Autumn is like, she was 11 kilos soaking wet when she was younger. She’s now got up to 15 and it took a lot, lot of work to actually get her to 15 kilos. Um, they herd reindeer. Reindeer are fucking massive. Wow. Corgi versus a sheep is nowhere near like size difference.
And it’s the same with corgis versus cows. Um, so yeah, they bark and like nip, they’re basically like a, um, cattle dog, but just shorter.
Bex: So they basically annoy them into
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Where they want them to go.
Alice: Literally go. Literally, that’s what, that’s what lappies do. My dogs annoy the reindeer into going where they want them to go.
And so we call it like a, um, oh, what do we call it? The, it’s like an annoyance bark basically. Where they just bark at you constantly when they want something and it’s just like, oh my fucking God. I understand you’re trying to herd me right now, but I’m not a reindeer. Please shut up.
Ellen: I just now have a visual of a bunch of sheep and a potato trying to run [01:31:00] around.
Alice: But yes, people keep thinking that corgis are like such chill dogs. And it’s like, no, they’re a working dog. They weigh more than Autumn does.
Bex: I blame the queen.
Alice: Yeah. Um, but yes, no, they are a working dog. If you get a corgi and think that it’s going to, um, just be a potato, you are sorely incorrect and you’re going to end up with a dog that digs under the fence all the time.
Bex: Oh, okay. That was a very interesting segue. Anyway. Yeah, very interesting tangent. Um, back to the story.
Ellen: That’s a hell of a story. I’ll give you that. It, that’s what Romero says.
Bex: He says that Romero says that he’s gonna have the officers take Rita back into holding. But before his, before that they do that, his phone ring, uh, buzzes and after checking his notifications, he asks Rita to show him her hands.
And so she holds up her hands and all 10 perfectly painted [01:32:00] French manicure on her nails.
Ellen: So they come out, he comes out of the, in the, you know, interview room, and he says to Athena like, “Why did you ask me about the hands?”
And then she explains how the, a piece of fingernail got caught in the gun slide, which we, we know that it belonged to, um, Delia, because we saw that Yes, uh, Rita had all her fingernails, but Delia didn’t. So now they’re expect, they’re thinking about that delia ended up shooting herself,
Bex: which is so, so stupid.
Alice: It’s the funniest clip when they do it though. Like she manages to turn it like upside down. Oh. And she does it.
Bex: I like. Went back and watched this scene so many times to try to figure out how the hell she did. I do not think it’s physically possible for her to do what she did in this scene.
No. Which is what happens is when the kids are shooting each other and her [01:33:00] in the face with the water gun, she storms over to the patio table, which still has all the mail on it, um, and digs under a pile and pulls out Rita’s gun. So that scene with Rita obviously happened the night before the block party.
Um, and she grabs the gun and she storming towards the gate to put the fear of God into those, you know, seven year olds. But then someone behind her startles her. She spins around, she trips over the damn garden gnome that’s lining the perimeter of the pool. And as she’s going backwards, she somehow goes from holding the gun in a normal gun grip to holding it upside down and back to front in two hands so that her thumb is now in the trigger guard and the barrel is pointing straight at her chest.
And I honestly do not think that is physically [01:34:00] possible.
Ellen: Mm. But it also sounds really unlikely, like it sounds like they’re just, you know. You know, shooting the shit and they’re like, oh, what if, um, this happened? And, and then they just accept that as fact like,
Alice: but it’s, it’s funny. So I’m gonna give it to them this time because like, I, yeah, this is the sort of like cop story that I can get behind because it’s just so dumb.
Like, I hate when they’re just like, oh, you know, and then the cops came in and saved the day. This isn’t even that, this is literally just like some good old fashioned detective, like dumb detective work, which is also the reason I watch Brooklyn Nine Nine. So,
Ellen: yeah. But Brooklyn Nine Nine is funny. Is meant to be funny.
Bex: This is pretty funny.
Ellen: This is silly.
Bex: Silly. It is pretty silly because like, even if you accept, okay, yes. As she was going backwards instead of like her arms going out in order to regain her balance, she’s, you know, doing some kind of weird magic trick with the gun. [01:35:00] She goes backwards into the pool and yet when we find her, she’s face down.
Yeah. And not only that, but after she shot herself, instead of taking the gun into the pool with her, she has somehow flung it away from her body so that it slides across the patio to, into the bushes where Rita finds it.
Alice: That’s fine. That was the, that was the kickback. It’s fine. Don’t, don’t ask,
Bex: but she had two hands on it, holding it to her chest.
Alice: It’s fine.
Bex: It’s a tiny handgun.
Alice: It’s, it’s the kickback.
Bex: It’s
Ellen: for the drama.
Bex: It’s for the drama,
Ellen: she ended up face down the pool without the gun.
Bex: I, I am going to like head cannon that they actually have no fucking idea how she ended up in the pool. This is just Rick spitballing it and going, eh, yeah, that’s,
Ellen: yeah, that’s what I
Alice: The dog shot her. Let’s just go,
Ellen: what if, what if this is what happened? Okay. Let’s just take that. We don’t really know.
Bex: Yep, that works. Yeah.
Alice: But yeah, Athena assures Archie that not a jury in the world is gonna convict.
Bex: Wait, wait, wait. Because we don’t know what’s Archie yet because we’re like, okay. So she shot [01:36:00] herself in the chest.
I mean, it’s not the craziest story that Athena has ever heard. Um, but the only thing now that she and Romero need to figure out is who was she yelling at? Who, um, who surprised her? Because everybody was accounted for out in the block party. Everybody except for Archie who chooses that time to make an appearance in the backyard.
Alice: Yeah. He’s just hanging out.
Bex: Yeah. Um, and Romero is absolutely horrified that he needs to put into his report that she was startled by a potato on legs. And that’s why she died.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: And so then we get Athena saying, “Don’t worry Archie. There is not a jury in the world that’s gonna convict you.” Mystery solved at least.
Alice: Yay.
Ellen: All right. Finally it’s time to get back to the Buckleys
Bex: for more family dinner. ’cause [01:37:00] you know, the first dinner wasn’t painful enough so we’ve really gotta,
Ellen: they’re actually sitting at the table this time.
Bex: Yeah. ’cause they’ve sent Albert home so apparently they can all fit around the table. Um,
Alice: Albert’s like, I’m not going back there. You can’t fucking make me. And they’re like, fine.
Bex: Um, it’s really interesting that everybody is kind of sitting back in their chairs sort of relaxed or at least pretending to be relaxed. Buck is hunched over his plate, eyes down, playing with his food.
Ellen: Yeah. He’s not happy.
Bex: It’s just he’s not happy. Not happy.
Alice: Yeah. So it sounds like Chimney’s been,
Bex: telling war stories?
Alice: letting them know what… yeah. Telling war stories, like telling ’em what happened that day. Uh, ’cause we start the scene with Margaret saying that she’s glad everyone’s okay and Philip saying they all seem to have very dangerous jobs and. Maddie’s like, “no, not really. I mean, most of the time it’s pretty run of the mill,” and Maddie, have you seen this show?
Bex: You send them to three quarters of the [01:38:00] emergencies. You know what shit happens to them?
Alice: Your brother was in a tsunami and a year ago, like, and under a fire truck. Like what?
Bex: Your boyfriend had a rebar through his head.
Alice: I mean, and he got stabbed by your ex-husband or your dead husband.
Ellen: Yeah. I don’t think there’s much run of the mill going on.
Bex: No, not on this show.
Alice: There there was just an earthquake and Chimney, like delivered a baby under. Anyway, um,
Bex: she’s, she’s deescalating, she’s trying to, she’s trying to downplay it. Um, but even with their downplay, Philip says that it still seems very risky.
I mean, from what he hears, Evan has spent quite a bit of time in hospital and Buck, just like “from what you hear?
Alice: Yeah. Maddie immediately like is like, oh, here we go.
Bex: Because apparently they didn’t come to see Buck in any of the times that he’s been in hospital, which we know [01:39:00] because we’ve been there and we’ve seen who’s been there at Buck’s side. Um,
Alice: yeah, like it’s Bobby’s been there.
Bex: It’s not this father. It’s his other father.
Ellen: His other father. Yes.
Alice: Yeah. Um, yeah. So then we get, interestingly Margaret saying, “Evan, I’ve told you.” Buck’s like, “yeah, yeah. You’re not good with hospitals. I’ve got it.” And Margaret immediately goes, “I’m not good seeing my children in them. You don’t know.”
Ellen: Oh, okay. Now I’ve got a better idea about what’s gonna happen next episode.
Bex: But also, interestingly, at this point, Maddie shuts down the conversation
Alice: immediately,
Bex: which is really interesting. ’cause she’s like always been, um, like, my parents won’t let me tell Buck what the deep, dark family secret is. This would seem to be the very good time for that deep, dark family secret to come out. And Maddie’s like, no, no, we’re not doing that right now.
So they decide that instead, um, it’s going to be gift time because the Buckleys have bought yet another [01:40:00] gift. Well, not quite a gift.
Alice: Well, it’s not, not quite a gift.
Bex: Not exactly a gift. It’s Maddie’s baby box.
Alice: So then there’s, there’s a little bit of, um, little bit of back and forth again where Margaret says that
Bex: I was pretending that that didn’t happen.
Alice: She good. Like Maddie. Maddie picked a good one this time and Buck’s like “Mom” and Margaret’s like “What? It was a compliment, Evan.” Chim comes back with a wooden box with the name Maddie on the lid, and apparently this is Maddie’s baby box. And Margaret thought she might wanna pass some of these things to her own little girl. One someday, Buck immediately, like perks up. He’s like, “oh, this is so cool. I didn’t know you made these for us. When do I get mine?”
Bex: Margaret and Phil have just sort of look at each other and you can see Buck deflate. ’cause he realizes I’m not getting one. He doesn’t have one. Chimney also notices the glance and Buck deflating and tries to, um, gloss over the situation and tells Buck, “Hey, [01:41:00] you know, you’re not even a grownup yet. They’re probably still adding stuff to it.”
Ellen: Ha. Backhanded compliments.
Alice: So yeah, Maddie’s like, I can’t believe you kept all this. And well, Philip says, “oh, you thought we’d throw it away?” Margaret, who apparently can’t stop being a dick, just goes, “Oh, well we may not have agreed with all the choices you made, Maddie, but we never gave up hope that you’d come to your senses and you did.” and
Bex: that just sets Buck off.
Ellen: Yeah, he’s done.
Alice: Buck is done. He’s like, “You never gave up hope? Then Maddie calls Buck Evan, which is so weird. Like every time, the first time I watched this, every time they said Evan, I was like, who the fuck is Evan? It’s just, it sounds so weird.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Alice: Um, but Buck’s like “You guys didn’t even go to her wedding.”
And Margaret’s like, “Well, she was making a terrible mistake. And we told her that.” Buck’s like, “Yeah, people make mistakes. Doesn’t mean you give up on them, but you did. She married Doug and [01:42:00] you cut her off.”
Bex: And Philip says that “at the time we thought it was for the best,”
Ellen: but apparently they didn’t know. They didn’t know that he was the way he was.
Bex: I didn’t know about Doug,
Alice: know that he was hurting you. Hurting you.
Ellen: So why did they think that she was making a mistake if they didn’t know the real reason?
Bex: I’m assuming they’re just, um, because of who Doug was. Maybe the fact that he, um,
Ellen: they didn’t like him.
Bex: Yeah, they just didn’t like him. They, there were reasons that they didn’t like him, that were, um, outside of the fact that he was abusive asshole. So yes, apparently they decided that, um, just not showing up to the wedding would be enough to get Maddie to change her mind. Um,
Alice: but yeah, they not only not showing up to the way they cut her off, they stopped speaking to her completely. And this is where like Buck loses it.
Bex: Yeah, he’s, he starts at like level 10 and he’s all [01:43:00] way up to like level hundred by the end of this scene. He’s just getting louder and louder and angrier and angrier. Um, yeah.
Alice: It’s like we get, “you should have known.”
Bex: I’ve never been able to make it through this scene without crying
Ellen: it’s, yeah, it’s harsh, isn’t it? Hard. Hard to watch.
Alice: Um, so yeah, Buck says “you were right there in the same town. How could you not know? Actually, you know what, maybe it does track because you barely knew what was going on with your own kids when we were under the same roof. Uh, maybe you never gave up hope. You sure as hell gave up on her. You gave up on both of us.”
And he gets up to leave. But before he does, he turns around and he says, “Oh, and you wanna know why I’m really in therapy? It is because I’ve spent my entire life feeling like a constant disappointment. And you wanna talk ab about our jobs? You think my job is dangerous? I have walked through fire every single day of my life because of you. This is why I’m in therapy. Because nothing I ever did was good [01:44:00] enough.”
Bex: And Philip and Margaret try to say that they tried, they tried with Evan and they tried with Maddie, but they, children, literal children, never made it easy on them.
And I think at this point, Maddie had kind of been on her parents’ side. This breaks her. She’s like, “What do you mean, I never made it easy on you? Like we were supposed to make it easy on you. We were kids.” And Margaret’s almost hysterical at this point. She’s like, “I don’t know what you expected us to do, Evan.”
And Buck’s like,
Alice: and Buck is broken. And Buck just says, “Love me anyway.”
Bex: and then he leaves,
Alice: he’s gone. Maddie’s bawling and runs to the bedroom. Chim’s just awkwardly sitting there and [01:45:00] it, the acting from Oliver is phenomenal in this scene.
Bex: Before we discuss Oliver and the acting and the sort of the, where this has come from, Chim is left at the table and the last line before we cut to commercial is him whispering to himself, “Boom.”
Alice: The explosions finally happened.
Bex: Yes. We, that explosion that we’ve been talking about all episode where like Chim thought he was gonna explode and then we had a bomb that everyone thought was gonna explode,
Alice: then we thought that Stan was gonna explode. Yeah.
Bex: We finally got an explosion. It’s just come from Buck. Nobody was expecting it. Mm-hmm. Um, yeah.
Ellen: don’t know, I Maybe they, someone was expecting, I was expecting.
Bex: Well, I mean, I, I don’t think that Margaret and Phillip were expecting it.
Ellen: No.
Bex: Um, but yeah, that, that love me anyway, line, it just, it absolutely kills me.
Alice: Oh, it breaks me every time.
Bex: Because the thing is, Buck has [01:46:00] learned that that’s what parents are supposed to do because he has a father who loves him anyway. He has a father who, he has pushed his buttons and he’s pushed his boundaries and he’s towed the line and he’s jumped over the line and he has made it real fucking hard for this father to, um, to love him. And yet he loves him anyway. And that’s Bobby.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So he’s seen that
Alice: a hundred percent. It’s Bobby.
Bex: Bobby is not biologically related to him. But he loves Buck and he loves him anyway.
Alice: And not, not only that, like there’s obviously, there’s Bobby who we know is more Buck’s dad than anyone else in Buck’s life has ever been. Buck’s best friend is a dad. And like Eddie would kill for Christopher and Christopher is not perfect and Buck sees that and Eddie loves him anyway. ’cause that’s what dads are supposed to do.
Bex: And I think the, [01:47:00] what’s real, what the real kicker here is that all of these years with Philip and Margaret, Buck has internalized that he is not worthy of that love. That there’s something about him that is just completely unlovable. But Bobby and Eddie and the 118 have shown him that he is lovable, that he can fuck up, he can do horrible things, he can sue everybody and they will love him anyway.
And yet his own parents can’t. And he’s suddenly realizing how badly his parents are fucked up.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean he already has said that they’re bad parents, but now he’s,
Bex: but now we are seeing, taking that into that level of like, it, it’s one thing to say all their bad parents and then to find out that they’re blaming their estrangement with their children, on their children.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah. You never made it easy on us. W what was kids like? Do kids ever take, make it easy on their parents? Like pretty sure? No.
Bex: No. I, I cannot, I think one of the reasons [01:48:00] that I find this scene so difficult to watch is like, obviously I’m empathizing with Buck, but I just cannot fathom, like, sometimes I don’t like my kids.
Sometimes they do things that I do not like and I don’t want to be associated with them, and I’m horrified at what they’ve done. And it’s really hard to, you know, be around them. I still love them though. I will never stop loving them.
Ellen: Yeah. I feel like maybe they’re just like partially really bad at communicating any of this to anybody, each other or them.
Alice: Are they bad at communicating? Something about a Buckley family Secret? I don’t know.
Ellen: Yeah. But like, they can’t, even if they did love him as the way that he needed, they obviously haven’t told him or made that clear in any way.
Bex: Oh, definitely.
Ellen: Um,
Alice: because they don’t, is the problem, yeah,
Bex: there’s definitely, there’s a very sort of, um, they’re from sort of a very, very sort of [01:49:00] white, very, uh, proper background. So no, they don’t talk about their feelings. This is, this outburst of Evans is absolutely horrifying them to them. I think that Margaret starts crying sort of when Buck leaves, not because he’s yelled at her, but because he’s committed the unspeakable sin of getting out from the table before the dinner was ending, not excusing himself and leaving without saying goodbye. That’s just completely unforgivable.
Alice: Oh, Jesus Christ.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, I’m, I’m guessing, like without knowing the full story, which I guess we’ll discover in the next, um, episode, like I, I feel like they’ve been through some kind of trauma themselves, which is preventing them from being available to the children at all.
Um, but yeah, we can talk about that more when I know the full
Bex: story. Yes, definitely, definitely.
Ellen: I’m guessing.
Bex: so Buck has left Maddie’s apartment, um, and the next time we see [01:50:00] him, he is punching the shit out of a punching bag at the station house, um, while Eddie is just kind of Oh, yeah.
Alice: And Eddie’s helping,
Bex: Eddie’s helping by holding up the concrete pillar that the, the, um, punching bag is next to. So, you know, the roof doesn’t fall.
Alice: He’s literally like, buck is seriously like, ha ha and Eddie’s just leaning hands in his pockets casually next to it. Yeah. Like unfazed. But he is being supportive best friend.
So. Buck’s saying, you know, “Tell mom and dad how you feel. It’ll be a fresh start. Two dinners, that’s all It took two dinners, and I’m 12 years old. Again, trapped between my sister and my parents, and now planning my awkward apology.” And Eddie just goes, “What do you have to apologize for? Did you say anything that wasn’t true?”
Buck’s like, “No, but,” and Eddie’s like, “Well, look, maybe you could have come at it a little differently, but if that’s how you feel, how they made you feel, you have every right to say.”
Bex: So Buck immediately tells Eddie that he doesn’t need any more therapy. [01:51:00] He just wants to hit things. So he keeps hitting the punching bag. Eddie immediately slaps a hand onto the strike zone of the punching bag, stopping Buck, because as Eddie says, “I’ve been down that road and I do not recommend it.”
Ellen: Aw, he’s learned something. Good job, Eddie!
Alice: I know they’re all growing up this episode.
Ellen: Oh, the therapy’s working. Um,
Alice: meanwhile, Buck’s phone has been ringing this whole time, and Eddie like, oh, buck goes to check it. And Eddie just goes, “So Maddie again?” And Buck’s like, “yep, she’s worried about me.” And then kicks the like punching bag with his foot, which nearly knocks it over.
And Eddie just like rolls his eyes and goes, “yep. Can’t imagine why.”
Bex: Can I just say that if this had been like season eight Buck kicking that bag, that would’ve gone flying.
Alice: Oh, it would’ve absolutely gone flying. Oh, this [01:52:00] is, this is why Buck’s so muscular in the later seasons is all the unresolved trauma with his parents still being worked out.
Bex: Okay. We’ve got to wrap up May’s storyline before we can, um, end the episode. So we’re gonna cut back to the LAPD where it’s the end of Athena’s shift. She’s about to leave, but, um, Officer Williams waylays her and congratulates her and she kind of rolls her eyes and said “It was a Corgi. We apprehended a Corgi, Williams. Nobody’s getting a medal for that one.”
And Williams is very confused ’cause he’s like, “No, I’m not talking about a dog. I was talking about May. She saved a lot of people yesterday. You should be proud.” And Athena has no idea what he’s talking about, but she can’t let him know that she has no idea what he’s talking about ’cause that would make her seem like she’s a bad mother if she has no idea what’s going on in her daughter’s life.
She’s like, “Yeah, I am proud.”
Alice: Yep, super proud.
Bex: And then immediately runs to, I [01:53:00] don’t know where she goes to find out what the hell is going on
Alice: Texting Bobby. Like “WTF did May do yesterday?”
Bex: No, but Bobby doesn’t tell her. So I don’t know how she found out what had happened. Um, but the next thing we see, she’s at home and she’s calling for May to come out of her bedroom because she wants to talk to her and. Athena don’t start conversations like that. ‘Cause you’re gonna freak May out
Ellen: Jump scare.
Bex: Yeah. So May comes out of her bedroom, comes down the stairs to have a talk with her mother. But when she gets to the bottom of the stairs, she’s can see the kitchen where her dads and her brother are waiting for her with balloons and a cake and a “surprise!”
Ellen: Oh, it’s so cute. They’ve got cupcakes making “9-1-1”. Like the logo. It looks like the logo, but made out of cupcakes.
Bex: It really does, doesn’t it?
Ellen: We shoulda had that for our first birthday.
Bex: [01:54:00] Um, apparently they didn’t have time for like a custom, um, like May face cake so they went with cupcakes.
Ellen: And Harry says “you saved like a hundred people.” Bobby’s like “37 actually,” but yes,
Bex: still very impressive.
Alice: We’re still proud.
Bex: Yeah. May, um, Athena is proud of May for, um, finding her way without Athena and May says, “You know what, I’m proud of me too.”
Ellen: Cute.
Bex: So now we’ve wrapped up that storyline. We’ve got one more scene, which is Buck coming back to Maddie’s apartment, um, to decompress after the disastrous dinner.
Ellen: Yeah. I assume that the parents have left immediately.
Bex: Oh, they better have left. I am assuming that even if they are still in California, that they’re in a hotel. ’cause I don’t know that there is anywhere in Chim’s [01:55:00] apartment
Alice: they were in, they had an RV.
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Bex: Where did they park it? Like on the street in LA? Yeah, like out the front of Chim’s apartment?
Alice: Sure.
Bex: I don’t think that’s legal anyway. I don’t care where they are.
Ellen: maybe, unless it’s somewhere in the… no, it doesn’t matter, they’re gone.
Bex: Oh yes. Well, they’re not, don’t care. They’re not here. We’re just gonna talk to the siblings. Um, Maddie is checking in to see if Buck is okay. Buck is okay. He’s mostly embarrassed though about the way that he went off.
He doesn’t, I don’t know if he’s apologized to his parents, but he does apologize for his outbursts to Maddie. Um, because he knew that she was trying to fix things with their parents and he probably made things worse.
Maddie tries to get emotional with him and says, you know, just for the record, you’ve never been a disappointment, like meaning to her. She’s never been a disappointment to her. And Buck, Buck is quite evolved, but he is not quite that evolved that [01:56:00] he can handle sort of that level of emotion from his sister.
So he looks for something to change the subject and he finds Maddie’s baby box that decides that this is the perfect time to go through it.
Ellen: Yeah. and he says “This was a surprise. Never knew they were so sentimental.”
Alice: Yeah. Maddie says that they used to be different and happier, but maybe they weren’t. ’cause you take things on differently as a kid, and at this Buck pulls out a photo and it’s a young boy on a bike.
Bex: Yeah. We don’t see it clearly, but we get enough of a, a glimpse of it that it’s um, it is, it’s a young boy on the bike and Buck assumes that it’s him. And he’s like, he’s,
Alice: it’s a little blonde child.
Bex: He’s like,
Alice: that’s in Maddie’s baby book.
Bex: “There’s the handsome devil!” And Maddie starts freaking out. She’s like, “that’s not supposed to be in there.”
And Buck’s like, “Oh, no pictures of me allowed in your baby box, huh? That’s selfish.” [01:57:00] But then he starts to look at the photo a little bit closer and he goes, “This doesn’t look like our house. Wait, when was this photo taken?” And flips it over. And I’m assuming Margaret just from the handwriting, has written the date that the photo was taken across the back, which was 4th of July, 1988
Buck’s like, “Wait, I wasn’t even born in 1988. How is there a photo of me on a bike before I was even born? Wait, that’s not me. Who is this?”
Ellen: Maddie’s? The look on her face is just like, okay, now this is it.
Bex: Yeah. She’s just like, fuck it, I’m done keeping this secret.
Ellen: This is this the time.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: “That’s, that’s Daniel. He died. He was our brother.”
Bex: Dun dun dun!
Ellen: And the pieces click into place! Well, some of the pieces, some of the remaining pieces click into place. I’m like, oh, [01:58:00] okay. So I still don’t know how Daniel died, or what happened, but that’s to find out next time, I guess.
Bex: Yes. Um, so before we go on to talk about what’s going to happen next week, um, I know that you were kind of already went through this in the group chat, but, what did you think the secret was?
Did you, did you have any theories as to what the secret was? ’cause I know Alice had her theories and we know that I didn’t have any theories because I didn’t stop long enough to think about it. Um, but what were your theories about what the deep, dark Buckley’s family secret was?
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. So I think at the end of last episode, I said that I had no idea because at that point we really didn’t, there were no clues. We, we just really didn’t know. So at, I was sort of thinking maybe that they’d been involved in some like something, like even a criminal [01:59:00] thing or like a drugs or something that meant that, that they weren’t available,
Bex: I do have to say that I am quite tickled by the idea of like the Buckley family mafia.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. There’s an AU. Someone, someone write that,
Bex: I’m assuming, I’m assuming you meant more like that they were in witness protection or something?
Ellen: Yeah, I don’t, I I have no idea. But then, um, once they pulled the box out and they sort of said that there was no box, that like Buck didn’t have one, I was like, oh, was Buck adopted?
Um, and they just never told him. But yeah, now I’ve got to the end. I’m like, well, I’m guessing something happened to Daniel. And now that I’ve uh, heard that she said that she didn’t like seeing her children in hospital, I’m guessing that he was either injured or sick or something.
Alice: Um, interestingly, I can’t remember I said this last episode, um, but one of the theories going around at the time was that Buck was Maddie’s kid.[02:00:00]
Bex: No, you didn’t say it last time. I think you sent it in the group chat. ’cause we didn’t wanna influence Ellen.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: But yeah. Interesting. Yeah. I didn’t think of that at the time.
Bex: Is the age gap big enough between Buck and Maddie to make that work?
Alice: No, it’s, it’s mentioned very quickly in this episode that, um, Maddie’s only nine years older.
Bex: Damn. I mean, it’s possible, but
Ellen: That would’ve been dark.
Bex: Damn
Alice: well nine or 10 years older ’cause she’s been keeping the secret for 10 years. Um, but yeah, she’s definitely not old enough to be,
Bex: even if you add a couple of years for, you know, things that still brings her up to like 11 or 12. So no. So yes, no,
Ellen: that would be extremely dark for 9-1-1. But
Alice: I’m pretty sure, um, Jennifer Love Hewitt even like, responded to that rumor and was just like, lol, no. Yeah. But, um,
Ellen: but, but yeah, I mean that doesn’t, like, even those theories don’t explain why they wanted to keep it a secret from Buck. Like [02:01:00] Yeah. So I, I’m really interested to hear what to find out. Like I haven’t watched, I won’t watch until next week.
Alice: Um, so yeah. Fun fact, next week we’re actually going to be watching this episode together.
Ellen: Yeah. In person!
Bex: So poor Ellen is gonna be sitting there trying to Oh, watch this episode and she’s gonna have two people just staring at her the entire time, waiting for her reaction.
Alice: Bex and I’ll not be looking, looking at the screen. Um,
Bex: no. Or we’ll be doing that thing thing where we’re constantly like, we’ll look at the screen, then we’ll look at Ellen to see if she’s reacting correctly.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Bex: We’re gonna be so obnoxious.
Ellen: I’ll be like, Shut up you guys.
Alice: Yeah. We’ll, we’ll all be in Melbourne for the first time together since we started this podcast. So we’re, um, we’re catching up to watch an episode together. Uh, so yeah, that’s,
Ellen: we’re also gonna go see some, some, you know, famous people at a Supernatural convention, but.
Alice: We’re also gonna meet, meet Misha Collins. But again, like he’s cool.
Bex: Yeah. Like, we’ve met Misha before. It’s fine.
Alice: Yeah. Like we’re besties with Misha by this point.
Ellen: It’s been a few times now. [02:02:00]
Alice: It’s only my second. So he, he still doesn’t know me very well. It’s fine. Um, I do need to start packing for that actually. ’cause I need to remember to bring my copy of Dean Winchester Beat Sheet. But yes, we’re all very, we’re very excited. Um, I’m so excited to see these two in person for the first time in 18 months.
Ellen: Nearly. Yay. It’s been so long.
Alice: Well, way too long.
Ellen: Two years? No, one year? Two years. No one year.
Alice: Like, it’s been like 15 months. It was March last year.
Ellen: Oh my God. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: that’s right. It was boiling hot and like next weekend it’s gonna be freezing. Anyway. Yes. Okay. So, okay. So tell us about this episode next week then.
Bex: So we will all be watching Buck Begins together and the official summary says that the 118 race to save the lives of workers trapped in a five alarm factory fire. Meanwhile, Maddie [02:03:00] reveals a painful family secret that causes buck to confront his childhood and answer why he is the daredevil he is today.
And our triggers are, once again, because it’s the Buckley’s bad parenting, uh, death of a child, references to cancer, domestic violence. ’cause Doug, um, grief and a minor motorcycle accident, which from memory is not actually pictured, not depicted, or is it, I can’t remember. There’s a motorcycle accident.
Alice: Yeah. I don’t remember.
Bex: Okay. But it’s minor. Everyone’s okay. It’s not a David David Wallace situation.
Ellen: All right. So it sounds like I’m gonna need to pack some tissues for
Bex: Oh yeah. Uh, yeah.
Ellen: Okay. And or a punching bag to like get out the feelings. [02:04:00]
Alice: Yeah. Hopefully the hotel has a gym and we, it’ll
Bex: all go down and although apparently the Eddie, that it doesn’t end well if we start doing that.
Ellen: No, we’ll just go and hit tequila instead.
Alice: Yeah. But if, if, okay, Chim. Um, but if we’re like taking our anger out on the punching bag, what if, um, and like, you know, tall, dark, and handsome man comes and tells us that it’s not a good idea.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Okay.
Ellen: That would be fine.
Alice: Ryan just appears, holds the boxing bag. That’s, it’s not a good idea. And just leaves, it’s like, okay.
Bex: No wait, come back!
Ellen: Uh, it’s, I mean, like we said earlier, um, this episode is an excellent one. Like, it’s, it’s done such a good job of weaving in the themes without making it too ridiculous.
Alice: Yeah, it’s great. I really liked watching, like, I, the main parts I remembered were the, like, obviously the Buck stuff. Um, but yeah, on, because I was the same as [02:05:00] Ellen, I was just like, no, just get back to the Secret. Um, but on the second watch, like I actually really liked, um,
Bex: you can, you can appreciate the humor of the Rita storyline, the May storyline.
Alice: Yeah. I really liked Rita.
Bex: I think it’s incredibly witty, incredibly clever writing in this episode. And I I love the, yeah, the fact that the, the theme of the explosion and the bomb just keeps getting dropped throughout the episode and you just do not, you cannot guess where it’s gonna finally end up.
Alice: Oh my God. I just, I can’t get over the scene of Chim, just leaning back, chatting about the family secret to the bomber because he’s like, I have to tell someone if you’re gonna die, just fucking let me get this out.
Ellen: And then we cut back to them, the bomber’s like, “and he doesn’t know?” That was so good. All right. So this episode’s going up on the, uh, favorites list already for the this season?
Bex: Definitely.
Alice: Oh, this, this season just has so many good episodes.
Ellen: [02:06:00] All right. Um, so please let us know what you thought of this episode. Did you enjoy it as much as we did? Um, would you also like to, like,
Alice: How much do you hate the Buckley parents on a scale of one to 10?
Ellen: Would you like punch a Buckley parent and or a punching bag?
Bex: Honestly, when we get to see the season four wrap up, we are gonna have a comparison competition. Who is the worst parent? The Buckleys or the Diaz’s? I think it’s gonna be a very interesting conversation.
Ellen: Uhhuh, uh, well you can let us know what you thought of them. Uh, send us an email or a comment or a DM or however you’d like to get in touch with us, please do.
Bex: Smoke signals, carrier pigeons.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah. Just shout like
Bex: Message a bottle.
Alice: Send us a corgi. Um, with the note just strapped to them.
Bex: Oh, it’s gonna take them a while. They’ve got such tiny legs.
Ellen: Go to a con in the US. Tell Misha Collins and then he will tell us next week.
Alice: Um, he’s in Amsterdam this weekend actually. [02:07:00]
Ellen: Good for him. He’s gonna be so tired next week.
Alice: Oh my God. Right?
Ellen: Damn. Anyway, that’s beside the point. Um, you can find,
Alice: perform for us, dammit Misha!
Ellen: You can find all of the contact information on thatweewooshow.com. Thank you very much for listening this week, and we will talk to you next week, possibly the week after, depending on how much going to a con stuffs up the scheduling. But we’ll see. It may be an extra week, um, before the next episode, but at some point we will come back and talk to you about episode five, which is called “Buck Begins”. 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 [02:08:00] Spotify or your preferred listening app and by sharing our social media posts. Find out more at thatweewooshow.com.
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