Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Alice, Ellen and Bex watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss episode 8 of the fourth season of 9-1-1, titled “Breaking Point”.
The 118 are called to the tarmac when a flight attendant reaches her limit with her flight’s passengers. Athena discovers that quarantine has pushed a couple to their breaking point. Buck reconnects with an old flame.
Content warnings for episode 4.08:
claustrophobia (sealed behind a wall), domestic violence, foster care system, minor gore, needles (vaccines).
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Our intro music is “Tensions” by Northern Points.
Episode Transcript
Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1, what’s your emergency?
Bex: Welcome back to That WeeWoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show, 9-1-1. I’m Bex.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Ellen: And I’m Ellen.
Bex: And rumors of our demise have been greatly exaggerated. We are still here. We are still recording. We just disappeared for a little bit again.
We are very sorry about that. Uh, thank you to Keira who, uh, called in a welfare check to make sure that we were okay. We’re very sorry for scaring you, but we, you are very sweet to check on us. We do, we do appreciate that. Thank you so much.
Alice: We do. Life’s been kicking us in the ass, but um, but hopefully things are settling down again.[00:01:00]
Ellen: You never know.
Alice: Touch wood.
Ellen: Yeah,
Bex: Touch wood, throw salt over your shoulder, turn around three times and spit, get bells and waving them in circles nine times. Whatever you need to do.
Alice: Thank you Chimney.
Bex: We do draw the line at sacrifice, animal or otherwise.
Ellen: Yes.
Alice: Yeah, we’re not okay with that.
Ellen: We’re not, yeah, we’re not on board.
Bex: No, we’re definitely not on board. Um, we would also like to shout out Jono Kuu who left a comment on our, um, episode of Jinx, funnily enough saying that they forgot how ironic and hilarious this that particular episode was, which it absolutely is.
Alice: It’s so good.
Bex: And they do very much need to go and rewatch it.
Ellen: Glad we could inspire that we had fun.
Bex: Yeah, we, I think we did. Yes. It’s been a while. I can’t remember. Speaking [00:02:00] of being unable to remember things, um, Alice, would you mind reminding us what happened Last episode in 9-1-1?
Alice: Yes. So last week on 9-1-1, Michael and Bobby played amateur detectives and caught an illegal surgeon, Buck’s terrible date, introduced Albert to their new neighbor and Hen’s mother arrived into town to stay,
Bex: but after all of that heartache last week, she didn’t show up at all this week. Yeah. We don’t see her this week.
Ellen: Oh, yeah, that’s right. She doesn’t,
Alice: even though she apparently lives there, she’s just, she’s gone. Yeah. She was having a sleepover. You know how it is.
Ellen: Yep. All right. So this episode is episode eight, titled “Breaking Point”. Um, and it first aired in March. On March 8th, uh, 2021. The official summary goes, the 118 are called to the tarmac when a flight attendant reaches her limit with their flight’s passengers, [00:03:00] Athena discovers that quarantine has pushed a couple to their breaking point.
Um,
Bex: drink.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s, it’s even in the actual summary this time. Yeah.
Alice: Already it’s in the summary.
Ellen: Mean. Meanwhile, Eddie worries Christopher will not accept him dating, comma, Buck reconnects with an old flame,
Buck reconnects with an old flame, and finds himself in the middle of Albert’s new relationship. And Maddie and Chimney make a
Bex: comma,
Ellen: comma, and Maddie and Chimney make a big decision about their baby. Those are three separate incidents. Buck is not in the middle of everybody’s relationships. Sad, um, or not sadly, as the case may be.
Alice: I mean, he usually is, but you know,
Ellen: yeah.
Bex: Not this time.
Alice: Not this time.
Ellen: Um, so yeah, in this episode, we do have the triggers include claustrophobia, which is being sealed behind a wall. We have domestic [00:04:00] violence, uh, foster care system, minor gore and needles in the form of lots of people given a vaccine. We’ve got some theories as to why this, um, scene is actually in this episode, so,
Bex: okay. Let’s get into it then. Uh, so we are going to start, like the summary said on the tarmac at an airport. We’re not exactly, we are not told which airport we’re at, we’re just at a generic airport on a generic airplane, which is currently, uh, waiting for a gate.
And it appears that it’s been waiting for a while because our two favorite baggage handlers are just hanging out on one of their baggage carts.
Ellen: Yeah. And yeah, I saw these guys and I was like, I’m sure we’ve seen that guy before. He was he one of the guys? Yeah.
Bex: So you and [00:05:00] Buck are on the same wavelength there.
Alice: Yeah. I didn’t recognize him at all. I was like, what?
Ellen: I don’t know why I recognized him. I just looked at him and went, I’m sure we’ve seen that guy before, but, yeah.
Bex: Yeah. So they, uh. Uh, Darryl, one of which is the, um, the more, oh, what is the word I’m looking for? Conscientious worker of the two of them, the, um, tells us that the flight from Orlando has been delayed again.
Ellen: Yeah. I feel sorry for these plane passengers because, I mean, Orlando is in Florida, right? So it’d be like a, I don’t know, five hour flight or something across the country. And then they’re stuck on this plane.
Bex: So they’ve already been waiting for a little while and then we cut to inside the plane and we’re told that they have to wait for another 30 minutes.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. So one of my friends was actually on a flight this week, and her flight was delayed after they’d already boarded all the passengers. So before they left, they were just stuck on the [00:06:00] tarmac for three hours.
Ellen: Oh, three hours.
Bex: Oh my God. Three hours.
Ellen: Well, that happened to us when, when we were leaving Melbourne the other few weeks ago. We were stuck on the plane for like an hour before we left, but it wasn’t three hours.
Alice: Oof. Yeah.
Bex: Why didn’t they deboard the plane? Is that because I, they didn’t have to take all the luggage off as well?
Alice: I assume so. I’m not too sure. All I know is that she was stuck three hours. Luckily she wasn’t flying alone, so she had someone to chat to. But yeah, far out.
Bex: Oh God. So for reasons known only to the writers of 9-1-1, um, there is only one cabin crew working this entire plane.
Ellen: Yeah,
Alice: yeah. I don’t know what happened to the others. Like they got lost up mid-flight, but there’s usually more than one flight attendant.
Bex: Well, judging by the number of rows across, I’m guessing that these guys are, my only explanation is that these guys are [00:07:00] business class or first class. ’cause there is a shot at one point where we see kind of a curtain behind the back row. So I’m assuming there are more cabin crew like further down the plane.
’cause there’s no way that you would have like a row on the, they have three rows columns? So you’ve got two seats downs down the side row. You’ve got seats in the middle and then seats at the window. There’s no way the plane would have like that many rows and then that’s just it.
Ellen: Yeah. It does seem like a very small…
Bex: it would have to go back further.
Ellen: Yeah, you’re right. Yeah. But even so, there should be at least one, like I feel like there should be more crew around there should at least. Right?
Bex: Definitely. And there should be more crew when like Molly loses her shit later on. Yeah,
Ellen: yeah.
Bex: The chief, the chief purser should be coming up to like, what the fuck is going on woman. But we’ll get there. So we have to, we have to see the, the chaos. Um, ’cause the passengers are, um. They are very frustrated, uh, to be [00:08:00] sitting in the airplane and they’re starting to get restless.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Alice: They’re reaching their breaking point.
Ellen: Breaking point.
Bex: Yeah. For safety reasons, they have to stay like in their seat with their seat belts on because the plane might start moving at any moment.
Um, but they’re done. Like one gentleman gets up to try and get his bag out of the overhead locker, um, which pisses Molly off. ’cause she’s like, you have to, like, your bag can wait. And he’s like, no, I’m getting it now. And then I will sit down. There is a child who requests apple juice and because they are still technically taxiing, there is no, um, there’s no beverage service at that point.
And this child, the child’s mother has requested the apple juice. The child is too busy sneezing and then pulling its mask down to wipe its nose on its sleeve.
Ellen: Ugh.
Alice: It
Ellen: And then they sneeze in Molly’s face as [00:09:00] well.
Bex: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because, because at some point the, the mucus gets too much and the mother like yeets the kid into the aisle to get a tissue.
Um, and when Molly kind of crouches down to go, I’ll get you a tissue, but you gotta get back in your seat. He it full on sneezes in her face.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Sends her flying backwards. But that’s, that’s not what. That’s not the straw that broke the camel’s back. The straw that broke the camel’s back is another gentleman, um, who had got out of his seat to go to the bathroom, which again, you are not supposed to do when the plane is waiting because technically it’s taxiing.
The toilets are closed because it’s a safety issue. Uh, when Molly goes flying backwards, he takes the opportunity to cop a feel as he so gentleman gentlemanly helps her to her feet.
Ellen: Ugh. Yeah. And yeah, she just loses her shit at that point.
Bex: I’m pretty sure the like five bottles of airplane alcohol that she downed….
Ellen: oh [00:10:00] yeah.
Bex: to try and calm her nerves did not help.
Ellen: She, at one point when she went into the front there to hide, to kind of gather her wits and pulled out a bunch of little bottles of alcohol and just swilled them, um, yeah, that’s not helping.
Bex: After she begged the captain, why can’t we just push the other plane outta the way? Yeah. The captain’s like, yeah, we can’t do that. Just calm ’em down. So she, you know,
Ellen: her breaking point is rapidly approaching and she’s about to get this.
Bex: Yes. So she’s boozed up, she’s pissed off. She’s just been sneezed on and groped. So she gets back onto the loudspeaker and uh, says that “on behalf of the entire flight crew,” and I’m like. What flight crew?
Ellen: Yeah. Where are they?
Bex: That, well, let’s just say that on behalf of the, on behalf of herself, um, that all of her passengers are a bunch of [00:11:00] ungrateful, disgusting, miserable, spoiled brats. And she is done. So she asks all of her passengers to put their tray tables in the go screw yourself position and place your personal belongings where the sun don’t shine because this is where she gets off and she grabs a bottle of champagne out of the galley fridge, um, deploys the emergency evacuation slide and declares “Molly out.”
Alice: I know this part is actually based on a true story where, um, a flight attendant like quit and just used the emergency exit to yeet himself outta the plane.
Bex: Yes. But what, what I, what I found hard to believe was that after all of like the actual emergency cards that you get in the back of your, like seat pocket, show you the correct way to go down the slide.
And I’m sure anybody who works,
Alice: It’s not to just jump off? Like an idiot? [00:12:00]
Ellen: She just throws herself down and she doesn’t even try,
Bex: she just throws herself down. And I’m sure that the cabin crew would have training on how to properly, like slide down the slide safely so that they can, you know, land elegantly and be ready to help the passengers as they come sliding off with their pet carriers and their luggage.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, but she doesn’t, she, she just yeets herself. Um, and goes rolly poly-ing down, Darryl sees this, um, and he has, he jumps into the baggage carrying cart and starts driving towards the plane and the slide so that he can offer assistance. And I think we are supposed to believe that the rolly poly-ing action was enough to cause pressurized the pressure to build up in the champagne bottle and it caused the bottle to release the cork prematurely.
Alice: [00:13:00] Yeah. She must have been starting to undo it as she’s jumped out or jumping out or something
Bex: because Yeah, because we see where that cork ends up in a second and it still has the muselet, which is the little wire cage that goes over the top of the cork, which is to stop the cork from flying off.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Um, so how so unless she had completely loosened that before she, uh. It’s so very much for the drama,
Ellen: for, for the drama, the champagne cork… Like he tries to, Darryl is running towards her, basically gonna catch her as she comes down the slide. Yes, I know what he, dunno what he’s thought he was, was gonna do. Um,
Bex: I don’t know
Ellen: but she like barrels into him and he ends up like, we don’t actually see what happens to him, but, but we see Wade the other guy and he is like, “Oh my God!” He’s like freaking out about it.
Bex: We hear like champagne cork popping 31 [00:14:00] wav. Um, yes. And then we see the other guy freaking out and then we get the title card.
Alice: Yeah. And after the title card, we get the 118 on the tarmac. Just, you know, for a change.
Ellen: I, I, I don’t know if the, um, the airport has their own, I’m assuming this is LAX, I don’t know if the airport has their own firefighters, but that doesn’t matter because the 118 are there. And screw those guys.
Bex: I’m going to assume. I think they do, but they still call external. We must have had this discussion before because this is not the first time that the 118 have been called when airport,
Ellen: yeah.
Alice: The most interesting part is that, so the 118 had been called, they, they get onto the tarmac and over to the plane. Darryl can’t breathe. This entire time. And yet they’ve been dispatched, got to the airport, got onto the tarmac, which surely re like, requires some sort of
Ellen: security clearance?
Alice: Clearance. Yeah. Um, and he’s [00:15:00] still like struggling to breathe. Anyway, so
Ellen: Yes. So he must be able to breathe a little bit then. But he’s having trouble breathing.
Alice: I dunno.
Ellen: That’s what Wade says.
Alice: So, um, um, Hen’s trying to deal with Molly and Wade is just like, “no, like ignore her.”
Bex: Yeah. Like the 118 immediately just zero in on Molly and they’re like, “no, no, no, no. Ignore her. She’s the whole, she’s the reason that this has all happened.”
Alice: Yeah. She’s fine. Ignore her.
Bex: “Ignore her. She can deal with her consequences of her own actions. Work on my friend here.”
Alice: Um, yeah, because yeah, Darrell has a cork in his throat, the whole thing thing including the, the metal cage.
Bex: Yeah. And unfortunately it’s exactly where you would do a tracheotomy. So they can’t even trache him to help him breathe. Not,
Alice: I would thought that they could cut a hole in the lungs or something like that.
Ellen: Dunno. But, and I would’ve thought that if he can breathe somewhat, then maybe they should have been hurrying [00:16:00] him off to the hospital so that he would be in a more sterile and, and, you know, expertise
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Environment. But no, we need, need to take the cork out right here
Bex: because we need to get the, the the joke about operation, they have to,
Alice: of course, right.
Bex: You 100%. Right. They should, they should have packed that. They should have done something to get him as much oxygen as they could and whisked him off for, to hospital for emergency surgery. Yeah.
Ellen: In my professional, not very professional opinion,
Bex: when is this show ever done what is actually what they should be doing?
Ellen: So they, they work out that he’s, he doesn’t have any fluid in his lungs and he’s not coughing up blood.
Bex: What’s funny is that we’ve got Chim and Hen working on, um, Darryl and the, the cork, Eddie is working on Molly, Buck is just kind of looking backwards and forwards and staring at Darryl, trying [00:17:00] like, you can see his brain ticking over.
Ellen: He has got an amazing memory for faces.
Alice: The one brain cell, like considering, considering Eddie is working, like, so he’s got the brain cell at the moment. Buck is doing his hardest to get it back. He’s like, no. Give it just, just for a sec. I just need it for a sec.
Bex: You finally goes, “is it just me or does this guy look familiar?” and Bobby’s the one that connects the dots and goes, “oh yeah, this is the guy we pulled outta the jet engine.”
Alice: Yeah, I don’t know how they remember that. I remember nobody ever. Didn’t remember this guy. Like
Ellen: Eddie goes, um, “his job seems more dangerous than ours.” Yeah. But, um,
Bex: yeah, I’d agree with
Ellen: they, Chim says that they can’t, if we try to pull it out, it’ll clip the arteries because of the metal.
And Hen just says “you gotta try and pull it out really carefully because we don’t have another choice.” Like, Hen you do have another, like no,
Bex: we kind of do have another choice,
Ellen: but okay, let’s do [00:18:00] this. Meanwhile, Molly is in the background, you know, getting,
Bex: yeah. We don’t care about Molly
Ellen: getting a neck brace and stuff on her and yeah,
Alice: we don’t talk about Bruno, we don’t care about Molly.
Bex: We don’t care about Molly
Ellen: Uhhuh. This is where Chim talks about Operation. It’s like, “I guess all that time playing Operation is finally gonna pay off.”
Bex: Uh, Wade is trying to, to um, to inspire Darryl to, you know, keep breathing and survive this whole ordeal and says that, you know, “I know that I give you a hard time ’cause you love this stupid job, but it’s really inspiring. I just, I wish I cared about anything as much as you care about these bags.”
And Molly’s in the background, like, “Oh my. God, shut up. Try flying the unfriendly skies. It’s all rainbows and unicorns on the ground,” and Wade’s like “You don’t know what Darryl’s been through, lady.”
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: he got sucked into a jet engine with a bunch of golf [00:19:00] clubs and he was fine.
Bex: I feel like we’ve seen him before as well. Or is it just that?
Alice: I think it’s just Darryl,
Bex: just that one.
Ellen: He might have been in Supernatural so I dunno, I didn’t look these guys up for that reason. I’m totally gonna Google it now though. Hen and Chimney are playing operation.
Bex: I don’t know what Hen’s doing though.
Alice: I think she’s trying to move the metal bit out of the way so that they can pull it out easier. ’cause they don’t wanna shred his windpipe with the metal bit.
Bex: Yeah, I don’t know. But they’re poking around around something and even and she needs to, she needs to concentrate so that she can like fiddle around in the wound so that then Chim can very carefully pull the cork and the muselet out without causing more damage. Which he does.
Ellen: Yeah. And there’s still a great big hole in his neck and they cover it up.
Bex: Let’s stuff it full of gauze
Ellen: and hopefully he [00:20:00] survives. I know we never find out. But he can breathe again trying to, but yeah,
Alice: Wade is like, you know, “I knew he’d pull through. Nothing stops Darryl, not a jet engine. Crazy white ladies. He’ll not quit.” And theDarylyl like, waves wade over and just goes, “I quit.”
Ellen: And then Molly says, me too. And then Buck utters the
Alice: Exposition Buck.
Ellen: Yeah, utters the episode title. “Everyone, I guess everyone has their breaking point.”
Bex: Drink.
Ellen: I feel like I’m actually gonna need like, some alcohol for this episode to get all the way through. Oh, it’s very,
Bex: oh, yeah,
Ellen: yeah,
Alice: yeah. Full disclosure, we are not, we’re not the biggest fans of this episode. Um, so if this is your favorite episode for some reason or another, um, we’re really, sorry,
Ellen: sorry, sorry.
Bex: I think, I think I even put in the group chat before I started watching this episode again. I’m like, guys, I don’t like this episode at all. And it’s only gonna [00:21:00] get worse once I actually start dissecting it.
Alice: Interestingly, I looked it up because, you know, I always have the 9-1-1 Wiki open while we’re recording. This was the winter final.
Bex: Oh,
Ellen: oh, okay.
Alice: Yeah. So like, this is what they left everyone with for however long the, the winter break is.
Bex: Hmm. Gross. I, I don’t know that I would’ve been inspired to, you know, wait a couple of weeks after that episode.
Alice: Yeah, I think it’s like two months or something that they, oh, I don’t know about the Fox schedule actually. Okay.
Ellen: The, the guy who plays Wade is called his, his name is Daniel Curtis Lee. He’s in, he’s actually in two episodes of 9-1-1.
Alice: Oh, so he must have,
Bex: yeah, this one.
Ellen: And he’s in an episode, uh, in season three, “Christmas Spirit”. Is that the one that Yeah, the same one. So he was in, yeah, he was in the previous one as well.
Alice: He was in the jet engine one
Ellen: he’s, he was also in as,
Alice: I don’t recognize anyone ever. Also,
Ellen: he was also in Glee and he was in one episode of the Shield.
Alice: So [00:22:00] how was this the winter final when it aired on March 8th?
Bex: I dunno,
Alice: what, when did “Blindsided”…. okay, so it air on this, air on, what did I just say? March 8th? Yes. Um, it, then it didn’t come back till April 19.
Bex: Yeah, that was the, the spring.
Ellen: There was a short hiatus and middle there.
Alice: Yeah. The, yeah, yeah. There’s like a, always a short, but yeah, I don’t know why.
Anyway, um, yeah, so this was like the, the hiatus and it’s a very much filler episode anyway. Then we get the weirdest
Bex: it’s, this is, oh my God, this is, this is so bad.
Alice: It’s so weird.
Bex: So we come back from commercial and it is. A closeup of what looks to be a date night. We have a, a table that’s [00:23:00] set with candles. There’s wine, there’s mostly eaten plates of food. The food looks terrible. Um, and look at it, it’s iceberg lettuce with pasta, with like big cubes of cheddar cheese. Oh. In the pasta and the sauce.
Ellen: I didn’t look that hard.
Bex: Like, what the hell?
Alice: No, I wasn’t looking that close. Oh my God. Speaking of close, though.
Bex: Like, there’s like sultry r and b music playing, and we hear Ana, Ana and Eddie, and Ana’s like, “oh,” Eddie’s like, “no, let me,” Ana’s like, “oh, you’re almost there. You’re so close.”
And the camera’s panning away from the table across the living room. We see honest heels have been kicked off. And then instead of getting the sex scene that the writers are like, trying to make the audience believe that, um, we’re about to see, instead we see, [00:24:00] um, Eddie struggling to do fourth grade math.
Alice: It does, it makes no sense. Like the, the context makes no sense.
Ellen: No. And why are they doing it on a date night?
Alice: No sense.
Ellen: Like, I know Ana’s a teacher, but like
Alice: why is Ana like, oh my God, you’re almost there.
Bex: She’s also an English teacher.
Alice: You’re so close.
Bex: Why are they doing math’s homework when she’s an English teacher?
Ellen: Is she?
Alice: I don’t understand this scene at all. Like, they just wanted to like, they just wanted to put in the, uh, we’re gonna think that they’re having sex scene, but it makes no sense. No. Like, they could have done this so much better. And they did not. It’s so bad.
Bex: It’s, it’s so bad because they completely underestimate the audience’s media literacy. Like nobody was watching that scene going, oh my God, we’re about to see boobies. ’cause somebody’s getting some, like, no, you are not gonna see anything. It’s gonna be a bait and switch. And that’s exactly what it was. It’s so like what, like the end… [00:25:00] anyway, so Eddie is struggling to do fourth grade math,
Alice: They’re doing math. Eddie’s mad because they’ve moved, like they’ve changed the way that they do it, um, because they do, what’s it called now? Common Core or some shit,
Bex: uh, in the States. Yes. It hasn’t really changed for our kids, but it has, it’s changed quite a bit for the kids in the States and he’s still struggling. But the lead up for this is Ana offering to come over and help Christopher with his math homework.
And then Eddie absolutely freezing and panicking at the suggestion because he’s not ready.
Alice: Eddie, panicking around a girl? That doesn’t sound, um, anyway. Uh, yeah. So, um, Ana completely understands that there’s, there hasn’t been anyone else since he lost, since Chris lost his mother. Um, Christopher’s very sensitive.
Um, Eddie is like, “You’re an amazing, amazing woman, and a great cook and a terrible math teacher.”
Bex: I throw in terrible cook too, ’cause that that meal looked pretty shite. [00:26:00] Really.
Alice: I, I’m pretty sure Eddie can’t cook either, so
Bex: he’s getting better. We do have to mention that she, that Ana has this habit of Edmundo-ing him and
Ellen: Oh yes.
Bex: He melts every single time. Yes.
Ellen: The heart eyes definitely come out when, when she Edmundos him.
Bex: So, um, the amazing woman, terrible math teacher, um, is apparently like student teacher flirtation because, um, Ana then pushes back saying, “oh, sure, blame the teacher. That’s what all the lazy students do.” And Eddie’s like, “Oh, lazy?”
And Ana’s like, “You heard me.” “Well, maybe you need to keep me after class.” And the entire time he’s doing this, he’s leaning in closer and closer and she’s leaning in closer and closer and they’re angling their heads. And, um, Ryan does like the, the [00:27:00] fingers under the chin to like tip the chin back a little so that the perfect angle for kissing.
Ellen: Aw.
Alice: And then Eddie’s phone alarm goes off
Bex: and then his alarm goes off. Yes. Like they’re inches, inches away from kissing. They are like smelling each other’s breath at this point. And the alarm goes
Alice: literally like, and he just stops. He’s like, ah, you know I’ve gotta get home. Yep.
Ellen: Yeah, that’s what you get talking instead of going in for it.
Alice: You couldn’t wait 30 seconds like Jesus christ
Ellen: Just shut up and do it.
Bex: No, it’s that alarm’s gotta go off and he’s immediately packing up his books and hurrying outta the house. And an has slept on the couch going, “Oh, class dismissed.” Yep.
Ellen: Poor Ana.
Bex: So Eddie rushes home, but he doesn’t rush home fast enough because as he sneaks in the front door, he gets a very accusatory, “You are late” from the babysitter who happens to be booked, who is lurking [00:28:00] by the front door waiting for his husband, I mean, his friend to come home.
Alice: No wonder Christopher’s struggling with Eddie dating Buck. Eddie wasn’t even there for it.
Ellen: So yes, Christopher is already in bed and apparently that makes Buck a miracle worker, but Buck says no, he’s just an excellent negotiator. Um, he got in the bed and got ready for bed, but he, he was not allowed. Buck was not allowed to turn out the lights or tell him a story.
That’s your job basically. And Eddie’s like, “It just, probably just as well after you told him that little thing about the kid in the rotisserie,” it’s like, oh my God, what is this story? It sounds awful.
Alice: Yeah. Like
Bex: I wanna hear this story.
Alice: Yeah. Apparently it wasn’t a story, it was a cautionary tale,
Bex: which means that it was 100% a call that they went on. Right?
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Sounds kind of horrific. But anyway. Yeah, [00:29:00] but Eddie doesn’t even, doesn’t even see Buck out or anything. He’s just like, oh, well thanks for watching him. And then he like pisses off into the room and Buck’s like, okay, bye. Oh, but not before he asks how the big date was.
Alice: Yeah. And Eddie’s like, “it was nice. She taught me math.”
Ellen: Buck’s like, “I thought I’d been single too long.” it’s like, oh, Buck, I’m sorry.
Alice: Poor Buck. And yeah, then just Buck clearly just like leaves himself because Eddie just goes into Christopher’s room.
Ellen: He didn’t say bye or anything. He’s just like, okay, you’re done. Bye. Yeah. I mean, off you go.
Alice: Yeah. Um, but yeah, so Chris is very, um, accusational when Eddie gets in and he is like, “where were you?”
Uh, so Eddie says that he told Chris he was at dinner with an old friend, and Chris is “from Texas?” But no, “from the Army?” “No.” And yeah, Eddie’s being very evasive.
Ellen: I missed Chris. We haven’t seen Chris in ages, and this scene [00:30:00] was so lovely.
Alice: Yeah, he hasn’t been in the last few episodes, so it was so nice to see him.
Ellen: Yeah, I, I missed him. It was really nice to see him again.
Alice: But yeah, so Chris asks again who he was out to dinner with, and Eddie says, “Nice try, but we both know you’re supposed to be asleep. We can talk about everything else another day.” So Chris goes, “Okay, tell me a story.” And when Eddie asks, “Which one?” He goes, “The one about your friend,”
Ellen: cheeky.
Alice: Oh, such a little shit.
Bex: Eventually Eddie manages to escape. Christopher must go to sleep, and we are going to check back in on Buck who has just returned to his loft. It’s dark except for the sort of the flickering lights of the tv. So he heads towards the TV where he can see Albert, Albert sitting on the couch.
But before he gets there, he accidentally hits a basket of laundry that’s just like in the middle of the walkway,
Alice: literally just in the middle of the floor,
Bex: nowhere near the couch. It’s like someone came around the steps and just dropped the laundry basket by the steps. [00:31:00] Um, and if that’s not weird enough, what’s even weirder is that there is a bra in the basket of laundry.
Um, and unless Albert has really been feeling himself, now that he’s in the States, I don’t think it’s his, it doesn’t look, the, the strap does not look like wide enough to fit around Oliver’s chest. So it’s probably not Buck’s either.
Alice: Hey, he’s not that much of a brick wall yet, but yeah, no, it’s not. Um,
No, it’s Veronica’s. Um, but yeah, Albert, she’s like, “oh, Buck, what are you doing home? We thought you were babysitting!” And Buck’s like, “yep. And now I’m home.”
Bex: But he, but he also picks up on the, the “we”,
Alice: He did not expect to see Veronica here in his apartment. Apparently they were doing some laundry and Netflix and chilling.
And at this point I was like, okay, I have to head canon that Veronica [00:32:00] also lives with an annoying brother-in-law in her studio apartment, because why aren’t they at her place?
Ellen: Well, they thought Buck was gonna be out babysitting all night,
Alice: but it’s not even Albert’s house. Veronica has her own house
Bex: and she had to haul her laundry from her apartment down the hall to Buck and Albert’s apartment.
Ellen: Yeah, I I, that doesn’t explain why they’re doing laundry at hi at Buck’s place, but
Bex: No, no, because they’re not do, like, they can’t do the laundry in Buck’s apartment. They would have to go down to like the laundry room. Right? So all they would be doing would be possibly folding laundry, which she can’t, can’t do anything once it’s folded because she can’t put it away. It’s just the weirdest thing.
Ellen: It is weird.
Alice: I don’t understand why they’re at Buck’s place and not her place. ’cause like Buck’s gonna come home at some point.
Ellen: Yeah. But maybe they thought he was staying there one night night.
Alice: Why not just go to Veronica’s place if Veronica lives alone?
That would be easier for them. So I don’t, I ha I’m like, now I have to head canon. It’s that Veronica [00:33:00] also has an annoying roommate who happens to be home and that’s why they’re at Buck’s Place. Because otherwise, I don’t know why they’re not,
Bex: I mean, the reason they did this, ’cause they had to, you know, we had to rub Albert and Veronica in Buck’s face, which then causes the whole thing with Taylor later on, yada yada yada.
Alice: But yeah, it makes no sense. I don’t like it.
Bex: No. So Buck peaces out, goes up to his loft, says that he’s just gonna go to bed. Veronica pipes up. “Yeah, us too.” And I’m going, bitch, where are you sleeping?
Alice: Yeah. Where, where are you going? Albert’s on the couch.
Bex: Please tell me that you are not sleeping on the couch with Albert. Because I know it’s a nice couch, but I don’t think it fits both of you.
Alice: She can sleep on Albert who’s sleeping on the couch
Ellen: and don’t sleep together on Buck’s couch and like, as in don’t have sex on Buck’s Couch.
Alice: Yeah. And yeah. Don’t have sex on someone else’s couch. It’s very rude
Ellen: when Buck is there in a studio apartment.
Bex: And considering that’s a loft, that’s not an enclosed space. No. So he can [00:34:00] 100% hear anything that’s happening downstairs.
Ellen: Yes. Please go to Veronica’s place.
Bex: Go. Yes, Veronica, go home. Take Albert with you.
Ellen: Yeah. Ugh. Anyway. Buck’s mad.
Alice: So weird. So fucking weird.
Bex: Buck is really mad.
Ellen: Alright, we’re gonna check in on, uh, Maddie, who is gigantically pregnant right now.
Bex: Yeah,
Ellen: she’s huge. She’s gonna pop, but they’re, they’re having an appointment, uh, via Zoom,
Bex: which why?
Ellen: Yeah, I’m, I’m pretty sure that you’re allowed to go to the hospital for an appointment because
Bex: here’s the thing. They’re talking about the numbers that they sent doctor, the, the ob GYN, which is like blood pressure, kick count, everything.
So they would’ve had to have gone to a clinic or a hospital to like get those numbers, right. So why didn’t they just go to her office to get it?
Alice: Yeah. It’s so weird.
Bex: This, this storyline is ridiculous. Like, oh, most of the [00:35:00] storylines in this episode are ridiculous. This one I found even more ridiculous. But anyway, we will continue.
So the point of the phone call is that Dr. Heller needs Maddie to reconsider her birth plan because Dr. Heller cannot guarantee that she will be the person standing at the foot of the bed when Maddie goes into labor. Um, her reasoning is that they’ve had to pull people off the OB GYN floor to help out in the ER and.
So that their, her office’s protocols are changing. So she’s going to send all that information over to Maddie. And Maddie and Chim need to have a look and then reconsider what they want to do. And Maddie is just shellshocked.
Alice: It’s in America. It, it weirds me out because doctors deliver the babies and not a midwife. So in Australia, our babies are generally,
Ellen: if you go to a private hospital, it’ll often be the obstetrician who will deliver.
Bex: Yeah, you, [00:36:00] you can go private, you can get an ob, GYN who will manage your, the care during the pregnancy and who will supposedly be there for the delivery. But yes, in Australia there is no guarantee that your OB, GYN will be there unless you are having an induction or a scheduled C-section because they might not be on call when you go into labor.
They might be away. They might, something might have happened. So you can pay through your private health insurance to have this OB, GYN and still end up with somebody else at the foot of the bed. Yeah. There is never a guarantee that your primary care provider is going to be there when you give birth. That’s just the reality of pregnancy and labor for everybody.
Alice: Oh yeah. ’cause it’s all like, you never when it’s gonna be. Um, but yeah, like, so in, in Australia, generally it’s the nurses that deliver the babies, not the doctors, unless it’s a C-section, in which case, like obviously it’s a surgeon.
Bex: Um, but to bring it back to 9-1-1, apparently nobody has told Maddie that this is completely normal. That your ob [00:37:00] GYN may not be the person, um, at the end of the bed. Um, I think she is slightly worried about the COVID protocols as well, which, yes. That, that cracked down on how many, like, people coming into the hospital and, and whether you could have somebody with you during labor.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Alice: Yeah, I know my best friend gave birth in 2020. Yeah. September, 2020 was when her son was born.
Ellen: Ah. Oh.
Alice: And her husband was allowed to be in the room, but then like, as soon as the baby was born, he had to leave. Like he wasn’t allowed to stay there overnight. He wasn’t allowed to, um, like be there for a prolonged period.
Uh, her mom wasn’t allowed to visit ’cause she really wanted her mom there. And her mom wasn’t allowed to visit. Um, her husband wasn’t allowed at any of the ultrasound appointments.
Ellen: That sucks.
Alice: Um, she had a really bad experience at one of the ultrasound appointments and. Like her husband was just at work.
Ellen: Hmm.
Bex: Like 100%. It makes sense. You don’t want someone who’s immunocompromised to possibly be exposed to COVID and [00:38:00] then you don’t want Yeah. Babies to be exposed to COVID because they have absolutely no immunity themselves yet and have never, but it’s sucks for the, the grownups.
Alice: Yeah. That’s it.
Bex: So Maddie’s issue is that pregnancy and labor and birth is supposed to be a joyous occasion, and suddenly it’s being very sort of medicalized and it’s, it’s not very joyous right now. Yeah. So she says, I, she’s not having our baby in a parking lot and she’s not doing it without chimney, so she has decided they’re going to have a home birth.
Alice: I dunno why her first thought was parking lot. Like she’s, she’s still allowed in the hospital, even if her doctor’s not there. But Sure.
Bex: I mean, we do see later on the, uh, with the, with Taylor storyline that there are marquees set up in the parking lot with like COVID overflow treatment rooms.
Alice: Yeah. Maybe [00:39:00] that’s, it’s just, it’s, yeah.
Ellen: So she’s worried about there being no room for her at the hospital at all.
Bex: Yeah. I mean, you could, you could theorize that she’s like catastrophizing at this point.
Ellen: Yeah. Um, I mean, people, people do still have home births in this day and age and they’re, they’re totally fine, but yeah. She’s like, changed her mind completely and decided she wants a home birth. But Chim just stares at her and um, then we cut to a commercial and when we come back we get Channel Eight news and Taylor Kelly,
Alice: yay!
Bex: Yay Taylor.
Ellen: She’s back.
Bex: She is covering a standoff with a crazed gunman is what the um, channel eight news sort of ticket tape on the screen tells us.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Apparently there was a man caught breaking and entering. He decided to run from the LAPD, um, by going out a second story window and running across the [00:40:00] rooftops.
Um, he is not exactly the brightest bark because he ran into or followed the houses into a cul-de-sac and now he’s got nowhere to go.
Alice: But he also doesn’t wanna get off the roof. So he is just waving his gun while standing up there.
Bex: Yep. They’ve deployed, like everybody is there. They’ve got the 118 there on standby. They’ve got LAPD have cornered off the area. Um, they’ve got like negotiators in to try and talk him down off the roof, much to disgust of, I don’t know if it’s his house or one of the homeowners in the cul-de-sac. Actually it is his house. My apologies.
Alice: It’s his, yeah.
Bex: Who just, who just wants the kid off his roof. He doesn’t understand why everyone is just standing around.
Ellen: Yeah. ’cause no one can go anywhere or leave until they get this guy down. So they’re all just sitting around waiting and watching.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: And, but it gives them a good opportunity to [00:41:00] air all of their grievances that are going on in their lives and have a chat about, you know, catch up what’s been happening with everybody.
Bex: Yeah. ’cause they’re there for hours, what else are they gonna do?
Ellen: Exactly.
Alice: Honestly, this this segment, like, like this scene is probably the, um, my favorite part of the episode.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Like, it’s so dumb, but
Ellen: it’s the most interesting.
Alice: It’s so good because they’re all just bitching at each other. Like I’m pretty sure like, Buck’s bitching at just a random cop. Oh no. Is it Eddie that’s bitching at a random cop at one point, or B Buck?
Ellen: They, I think they both do at different times.
Bex: No, Buck.
Alice: It’s Buck. Yeah. So Buck’s like bitching at a random cop at one point and he’s just like, okay. Like
Ellen: I thought he was bitching at the, um, the hostage, the, the negotiator guy who
Bex: he was, yeah, he was, it was the hostage negotiator and I think, I swear he must have given Buck a time limit because Buck’s talking about what he is talking about and then the negotiator’s watch goes off and he is like, oh, time’s up.
Ellen: He was, he was probably on break and he got like bailed up by Buck and he’s like, okay look, I gotta go again. [00:42:00] Bye.
Alice: It’s so great. Yeah. Bye. Um, yeah, so Athena’s there, obviously the 118 are there, um. It’s, and Taylor Kelly’s there,
Bex: the 118 are putting money on what is gonna happen to the guy. Hen’s got 10 bucks on that he falls off the roof. Eddie’s got 20 that he makes a jump for a tree. Um, I think Chimney goes in on one of those as well.
Alice: Eddie’s reasoning is that the guy’s got at least one more bad life choice left in him.
Bex: Um, do, do we think that Hen gets it because she, she said,
Alice: oh, I dunno,
Bex: he falls off the roof.
Ellen: Yeah, she must take it.
Bex: Does that count as, does that count as falling because it was an assisted fall?
Ellen: I mean, he still falls.
Alice: They do. Um, they do, they do actually explain why they’re just leaving him on the roof. Um, so like he hens, like, it’d be tragic if it wasn’t so [00:43:00] moronic, but, um, yeah, so they don’t storm the roof because it’s a tactic that, that the negotiators use to drag out the process in order to wear down the suspect and eventually the suspect will just hit a breaking point.
Bex: Drink. Thank you Bobby.
Alice: Yeah. Um, they’re literally just letting him like yell himself, horse and pace back and forth. Yeah, to get himself down because he does have a gun, so it is a dangerous situation. They don’t want him to shoot anyone and hurt anyone. But yeah, so that’s why they’re all just hanging out.
So we get captions as well.
Bex: Yes, we do get the captions like one hour in, two hours in. So after the first hour, um,
Alice: yeah, let’s break this down hour by hour. So what, one hour in
Ellen: Yeah. Buck has found Taylor
Bex: and in between her bits to camera, she’s hearing him bitch about Albert and Veronica.
Alice: Yeah. Same in between like when she’s reporting live, he’s filling her in on the thing. So like as soon as the cameraman’s [00:44:00] like, and we are clear, Taylor goes, “so you went to apologize about the date,”
Ellen: poor Taylor
Alice: and Buck’s like, “Yeah. So then Albert walks out of her bathroom in a towel.” So like, clearly they’d been mid-conversation and they’re just like, oh, Taylor, we’re an hour in. We have to give her an update. And they just continue it. It’s great.
Bex: But what I love about this exchange is that Taylor is not amazed at Albert’s audacity.
She is amazed that Buck has an apartment. ’cause the last time she hooked up with Buck, he had just moved out of Abby’s apartment and was sleeping on somebody’s couch. I think it was still Maddie’s at that point.
Alice: Yeah. And then, so I think from Maddie, from Maddie, he moved to Chim’s, I think.
Bex: Yes.
Alice: Um, and yeah, so they were hooking up in first the karaoke bathroom and then the um, then the back of her news van. So yeah, she’s very amazed that, um, that he has an apartment. Then we go to two hours in and we’ve got Hen and Chimney and Yeah, he [00:45:00] and Hen’s like, “so Maddie really wants to have this baby at home” Chimney’s like, “I was a nurse, you’re a paramedic. What could possibly go wrong?” And Hen’s like, “yeah, I feel like a 9-1-1 dispatcher should know the answer to that question.”
Bex: She really should. Uh, three hours in and the LAPD are taking Cody’s lunch order, which infuriates the homeowner. Like why are they taking lunch orders instead of arresting him?
And Athena is trying to explain to him, they, they think that the food will build trust. Um, at this point, a pizza delivery man is let through the cordon with like an entire stack of pizzas. And she’s like, “oh, good lord, how much trust are we building?” But no, that’s not for the, um, the thief. That’s for the 118.
Alice: Eddie’s like, that’s for us. Um, so the homeowner’s just like, “Why has everyone gotta eat but get to eat? But me, maybe I’m hungry too.” And Eddie’s like, “Do you want some, like, you can have some.” [00:46:00]
Ellen: And he can just, he just shrugs and goes, okay, whatever. Just give me the damn pizza.
Alice: Uh, so then four hours in is my favorite part.
Bex: Buck has moved on to talking to the police negotiator.
And, um, I think he’s after a male point of view because he’s claiming that what Albert did, breaches the bro code, except the negotiator has never heard of the bro code before. Buck’s like, “Yeah. You know, the, the unwritten rules of male friendship.”
Alice: He’s clearly never watched How I Met Your Mother. And Yeah, the negotiator’s like, “I don’t think that’s a real thing.”
Buck’s like “How do you know? It’s unwritten.” Uh, so, and the negotiator asks how long he Buck dated the woman and Buck’s like “90 minutes, maybe less. ’cause we took dessert to go,”
Bex: even if there is a bro code, that would not at all.
Alice: Yeah. Less than 90 minutes I don’t think.
Bex: Doesn’t count.
Alice: Think counts. Yeah.
Bex: At that. That’s the point. The negotiator’s alarm [00:47:00] goes off and he is like, “and I’m done. Good luck.” Um, five hours in is my favorite, like four hours was funny. Five hours is my favorite because everyone has just given up and they are now chanting softly begging this dude to jump.
Alice: So the camera pan slowly over 118.
So the 118 are all leaning against the firetruck, and it starts on Eddie who’s just “jump, jump, jump, jump.” And then it hands over to like, Hen and Chim “jump, jump, jump”. And then it pan over. And Bobby is also “jump. Jump.”
Ellen: Yeah. He’s got his little hands up, like
Bex: six hours in and the dude has not jumped. He’s still up on the roof.
Alice: He’s still there.
Bex: Um, Eddie is now talking to mom and dad, AKA, Bobby, and Athena about his woes, um, being, how does he tell Christopher that he’s a dating [00:48:00] and b dating Christopher’s teacher?
Ellen: They tell him that, that he should,
Bex: that’s pretty much all it is.
Ellen: He should rip off off the bandaid and tell him before he figures it out on his own.
And Eddie’s still uming and ahh-ing. He’s like, I don’t know what to say. Buck is still, Buck is talking to Taylor. He’s bailed her up again.
Alice: Buck’s back to Taylor.
Bex: He’s gone back to Taylor.
Alice: Yeah. He’s looped around. He is gone back to Taylor. He’s spoken to everyone and he is gone back to Taylor.
Ellen: Oh, I dunno.
Alice: Poor guy. He, he thought this was gonna be his year ’cause he started going to therapy.
Bex: Yeah. But now the crux of the problem,
Alice: but now working on his issue with his parents and he felt ready to meet someone and start a meaningful relationship. Um, I do love that Taylor’s like I’ve met the people you work with. Your life is nothing but meaningful relationships.
Ellen: Aw.
Bex: Buck’s like, yeah, but I can’t sleep with any of them.
Alice: Yeah, right.
Bex: No,
Alice: it’s, I’ve tried. Eddie keeps turning me down.
Bex: No Buck’s response is I, “it doesn’t seem the same.” Um, and [00:49:00] Taylor asks, “Do you ever think maybe you just need to be patient? Let the universe come to you?” And Buck gives her the, like, the side eye. Have you met me? Do you even know me at all? She’s like, yeah, no. Hait,
Ellen: let let the universe scream at you.
Bex: Yeah. The universe doesn’t scream, Buck. Um, while these two are having their conversation in the background, Mr. Knowles has taken matters into his own hand and he’s found a ladder and you can see him walking past with this ladder tucked under his arm.
Um. So the negotiator is still working with, um, our wannabe thief who is now treating this as a therapy session. Um, yeah.
Alice: The poor negotiator is, it’s, is literally just being a therapist.
Bex: Yes. Mm-hmm. And the thief’s name is Corey. He’s, you know, complaining about his mother and his brother and how his mother loved his brother more, and his brother got everything he wanted.
And Corey never got anything. [00:50:00] Life never went his way. When is it my child?
Alice: Corey wanted a dog.
Bex: I don’t care. Nobody cares.
Alice: Corey always wanted a dog.
Bex: No, it doesn’t matter because the, all it is, is it’s a lead up to him going, “Life always goes his way. When is it my turn to fly?” And suddenly he goes flying off the roof.
Mr. Home just climbed up the other side and pushed him off the roof and Corey goes flying straight into the car parked. I’m assuming that’s Mr. Knowles’s car.
Alice: Yeah. Right. It gotta be the homeowner’s car.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: And he shouts from the top of the roof. He is like, “The rest of y’all can get outta here too.” it’s like, wow, dude.
Bex: But it’s, uh, everyone, it’s such a relief because the 118 just immediately start running into action because, you know, finally they’ve got something to do. The negotiators to sort of clutching his pearls going, go “Corey, no!” ’cause he thought the kid jumped. [00:51:00] Um, but no, he was pushed, he did fall though, which is why I think Hen should be entitled to the, the pot
Ellen: uhhuh.
Bex: Yeah. And uh, yeah, that six hours later they can all go home now
Ellen: I wonder if that that was the, I wonder if they were on overtime after that. Like if that was the end of the shift and they just not allowed to leave. So, or if it, they had to go back to the station and sit around for a little while more.
Alice: Yeah. Right.
Bex: They probably did.
Ellen: Well now Buck’s at home
Bex: doesn’t look like daytime.
Ellen: Yeah, he’s got some groceries and he’s putting them away but that just, then Albert comes in and he also has some groceries and he’s like, “It was my turn to buy groceries.” But Buck says that he’s been spending so much time at Veronica’s that he bought some anyway.
Alice: Yeah, so Albert is allowed at Veronica’s, but I don’t, so I don’t understand what, anyway,
Ellen: he offers to stop seeing Veronica if Buck would like that and Buck’s like “No, no, it’s [00:52:00] fine.”
Bex: Yeah, but it’s not, I’ll stop seeing Veronica. It’s just, you know, like, “it was so hard. I was so lonely and I, you know, I didn’t get to meet people and suddenly I met this cool chick, but I will stop seeing her if you really want me to.”
Ellen: Yeah, that’s not really giving
Bex: Of course Buck’s not gonna turn around and go.
Ellen: It’s not really giving Buck much of an opportunity to say no. So Buck’s just like, no, it’s fine. And Albert’s, so Albert’s happy, they’ve got, they’re gonna work on it together. Um, on Thursday
Bex: they have to work through the awkwardness. So yes, they are going to work through it together at Veronica’s Thursday night for dinner.
Alice: Yeah. Which sounds so much fun.
Ellen: It sounds extremely awkward.
Bex: And Albert kind of rubs, he rubs salt in the wound, he says, “Don’t worry about, um, being a third wheel,” which to start with, I thought, oh, that Veronica was gonna bring a friend to
Alice: Yeah, same
Bex: set Buck up [00:53:00] with, um, but, but even if she was, she’s not gonna get the chance because Bucks immediately are like, “oh no, I’m not a third wheel. I have somebody that I can bring to dinner. Like I’m seeing somebody right now.” Um. Albert’s like, “Oh, that’s great. I didn’t know you were seeing anyone new.” And Buck’s like, “oh, she’s, she’s not new.” And then we cut to Taylor on the phone with Buck as he asks her what she’s doing Thursday night.
Alice: Oh, Taylor. Oh, Buck.
Bex: But before we find out, uh, how dinner’s gonna go Thursday night, we are gonna go to the dispatch center where, Maddie’s kind of heading into Gloria territory.
Ellen: Oh, she’s having a time.
Alice: Yeah, she is a little bit,
Ellen: she’s cranky.
Bex: So she gets an emergency. Russ and Cindy’s car was broken into, it’s parked on the street because, uh, Russ wasn’t gonna pay to pay in a parking lot ’cause that’s extortion.
[00:54:00] Um, and he didn’t even wanna go downtown. Cindy was the one who wanted to go downtown because they were gonna meet Cindy’s friends. And Cindy’s like, oh my God. Excuse me for having friends. Maddie’s like yelling at at the phone.
Alice: Yeah. She’s like, oh, hello? Like,
Bex: “You called me.”
Alice: Yeah. Where are you? Are you at the car now? And they’re not answering. They’re too busy bickering. Um, and then, yeah, I love the, yes, we’re here. What? She’s like, you called me.
Bex: So she gets the names and description of the car and as this conversation is happening, Athena and May are walking up to Maddie’s station and they hear her tone and they just kind of stop and look at each other.
So Russ gives name, gives car model, and asks, “are you sending the police?” And Maddie’s like, “I’ve relayed the information and someone will get there when they can.” Russ is very irate about this. Like when they can what? We’re supposed to just sit here and wait and Maddie’s like “Yes,” and hangs up the call despite us being told over and over that [00:55:00] they’re not supposed to hang up on their calls.
Alice: Yeah,
Bex: she does.
Alice: But yeah, Maddie even says, “I’ve had enough.”
Bex: And then she gets up, turns around and sees Athena and May with like identical looks like, girl, are you okay?
Ellen: And she’s like, “oh hi. Hi Athena. Uh, it is nice to see you.”
She Athena’s just swinging by to have lunch with May. Um, and she’s like, “are you okay?” And Maddie scurries off to the break room. She’s like, “I need a minute.” Um, and then she says like, Athena comes in to check on her. Basically,
Alice: I’m hoping this is like after lunch, otherwise Athena ditched May for lunch and spent her with, with Maddie instead. So,
Bex: oh, I immediately assumed that she looked at May and went, uh, I’m gonna go to, to her. And May’s like, yeah, you, you go talk to her. We don’t need to have lunch. You go deal with her. It’s fine, mom.
Alice: [00:56:00] My, my husband’s son’s sister needs me.
Ellen: Yes. Yeah. Well this is like I, this is where I started actually worrying about Maddie.
’cause she’s like, “That is not even the first caller I’ve yelled at today. It’s maybe the fifth,” and I’m like Maddie, why are you at work? Like you clearly, you should not be here.
Alice: I know. right?
Bex: Sue. Sue should have taken her off.
Alice: America doesn’t have maternity leave.
Ellen: Like not just for the maternity leave, but like if she’s in such a bad mood that she’s starts yelling at five of her callers, she should not be there. You know?
Bex: Yeah. Josh or Sue should have reassigned her at this point, honestly. Or just sent her home.
Ellen: Yeah. But those guys can hear everything that goes on in all of the calls, remember. So they should have heard.
Bex: Josh is at home on his day off and is suddenly just sat bolt upright and gone. My spidey sense tingle.
Ellen: Something’s wrong.
Bex: I feel a disturbance in the force,
Ellen: something’s wrong with Maddie
Alice: rushes in from the lobby again.
Ellen: [00:57:00] Apparently she also yelled at her mother on the phone this morning. But I think that happens fairly regularly, so we don’t need to worry about that too much.
Alice: Yeah. Even Athena’s like she probably had it coming, so
Bex: honestly, Margaret deserves it. I don’t even know what they talked about. I don’t know what Margaret said, but I am a hundred percent on board with Maddie yelling at Margaret.
Ellen: Well, she said she was worried about her having a home birth. So, yeah. Yeah. So grounds for yelling. Margaret was actually worried
Alice: about Maddie having a home birth and when Athena’s just like, oh, I’m surprised.
Given your, Maddie assumes she’s gonna say age. Yeah. And Athena’s like, no, no background. You were a nurse. I figured you’d be all in for giving birth surrounded by all the medical bells and whistles. Um, and then we get the whole like, discussion again about how, you know, Maddie was really excited and
Ellen: COVID had fucked everything up, basically.
Alice: Yeah. Had this idea in her head how it was gonna go. And now it’s about protocols and tests and masks and no visitors at the hospital or at home. So the home birth was her way of [00:58:00] trying to get back control.
Bex: Yeah. So Athena tells Maddie about her, um, her pregnancies and her labors with the whole, the entire point of the story is that it didn’t matter what the pregnancy was like, it, what didn’t matter, what labor and delivery was like.
All that mattered was when they placed the baby on Athena’s chest. So it doesn’t, the, the, the journey doesn’t matter. It’s the destination. And so she’s, she trying to encourage Maddie to not focus on the bells and whistles and the, what labor is like, and just be excited and be ready, however she gets there to meet her daughter.
Ellen: Yeah. Maddie says that she can’t wait, but there’s part of her that wishes she could keep her inside and safe until the world gets better. I’m like, oh, Maddie. That’s, that’s really sweet. I remember thinking that too. It’s like, do I really have to bring the baby out of [00:59:00] here? But, um, Athena says a really touching thing.
She’s, she’s says, maybe you’ll find the world gets better once she’s in it.
Bex: Aw. So
Ellen: thanks mom.
Bex: So, from one set of mothers on mother’s debate to another set of mothers, uh, we’re going to, the Wilson House Hen is studying at the dining table when suddenly we hear Karen sort of screaming from the kitchen because she has been attempting to have an important phone conversation while chopping vegetables and inevitably has ended up chopping her finger.
Yep. And she’s freaking out,
Alice: in fact, she thinks she’s chopped it off
Bex: she’s being such a baby about it. It’s, it’s quite hilarious actually.
Ellen: Maybe she’s afraid of blood.
Alice: Oh, luckily Hen’s the medical one in the Yeah. Hen’s the medical one in the family.
Ellen: She’s like, I think I chopped it off.
Bex: And Hen’s like grabbing at her hand and examining the wound and she’s like, no, no, no, your [01:00:00] finger’s still attached.
But when she goes to get the, like the teeny tiny family first aid kid out so that she can start to patch Karen up, she discovers that there are absolutely no bandages or gauze or anything. All that’s left in the first aid kit is like an ice pack, some tongue depressers and Q-tips.
Alice: I was very surprised that Hen’s first aid kit was so small because like
Bex: Right? I would’ve assumed she had like a massive one,
Alice: literally. So like my mom was a nurse and still works for like a hospital. And our first aid kit is literally like one of those big like plastic tubs that you get Oh wow. From like Kmart or Bunnings. Um, and it’s just full of like random shit, like including, we’ve got oxygen and everything because so many of us have asthma.
Oh yeah. But yeah, like we have oxygen. There’s a nebulizer at the bottom of it. Yeah. There’s so much shit in that first aid kit. There’s, so like whenever Mom’s just like, oh, I’ve used like a, like one thing of um, like bandages, she goes and buys like four [01:01:00] more. Um, whenever I’m like, oh, I cut myself, I need some bandaids.
Mom’s like, yeah. Yeah. It’s in the first aid kit and there’s like 12 boxes of different shapes and sizes and
Ellen: Oh, good. Good to be prepared.
Alice: Um, and there’s the one, the car ones, which are like still twice the size of Hen’s, home First aid, like Hen’s one. Yeah. So yes, I was very shocked that hers is tiny.
Bex: So was I.
Alice: The set, set dec people clearly, um, or the props department clearly aren’t from a medical background.
Ellen: No. We’ve established that already, I think.
Bex: But even, but even in just the tiny little, like a, someone who is a paramedic would have like a, a much, much more detailed, much more fully stocked first aid kit in their house, especially with a child in the house.
Ellen: Yeah, I would’ve thought so.
Bex: Um, but despite the size of Hen’s first aid kit, what’s important is that the gauze and [01:02:00] the alcohol wipes and the bandaids and the rolled bandages, um, are scattered across the floor in a path leading to another room in the house.
I don’t know which room she’s in, but Nia has taken all of the, um, medical supplies out of the first aid kit and is running a illegal doctor’s surgery out of her room. And all of her stuffies are her patients.
Alice: It’s the guy from last week except much cuter.
Ellen: Yeah. Like 30 years earlier.
But this little actress is just so gorgeous.
She’s like,
Alice: she’s so cute,
Ellen: “There you go, all better, Mrs. Pig.” And then she’s gonna help Hen fix mommy’s finger.
Bex: How are they going to like, take all the gauze, which has now like been contaminated ’cause it’s on the stuffies and put that on Karen’s hand?
Ellen: I don’t know. Hopefully some of it’s wrapped up in plastic somewhere still and unused.
Bex: Hopefully she hasn’t [01:03:00] un she hasn’t opened everything.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Well it sounds like Karen probably only needs like a bandaid. Like has she really sliced her finger open that badly or is she just worried about the blood? I don’t know, but, but anyway,
Bex: I dunno.
Ellen: She’s like, come on. Um, but we’ll make it better, Mommy.
Bex: So while Nias gathering up her medical supplies, um, Hen remembers the other part of the, what Karen was trying to do. She was trying to, she was chopping, but she was also having an important conversation. So she checks in with her wife. “Hey, what was the important conversation?” Um, the important conversation was apparently that Deidre, the social worker wants to come see Hen and Karen this weekend and Hen’s like, wow, why is Deidre coming to see us?
And more importantly, why is Deidre letting her know that she wants to come see us? Karen theorizes that Nia has been with them for almost a year, and that’s usually when they start [01:04:00] talking about permanent placement.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: And say, and Hen goes adoption, but before the conversation further, that’s any further
Alice: that’s permanent placement means, but Sure.
Bex: You apparently 9-1-1 audience is stupid, so they’ve gotta spell everything out. Um, but the conversation doesn’t go any further than that because Dr. Nia is ready to see her patient.
Alice: Yeah. Yes.
Bex: Speaking of stupid,
Ellen: oh no.We g
Bex: Get another 9-1-1 call.
Ellen: This is so dumb this one.
Bex: Do we, do we ev do we even have to go through this? ’cause this is so fucking stupid.
Alice: It’s so weird.
Ellen: We don’t have to go through it in detail.
Bex: Okay.
Ellen: Let’s, we can just explain what happens and,
Bex: okay. So Maddie gets a 9-1-1 call because there is a security alarm that is continuously going off and the neighbors are getting sick of it. So she dispatches, uh, LAPD to do a welfare check, which of course means Athena gets dispatched.
And yes, there is indeed a security alarm that continues to go [01:05:00] off. Even once the homeowner enters in the code, the alarm will then reset and continue to go off.
Alice: Pretty sure this isn’t how home alarms work for sure.
Ellen: There’s like blue tape all over the house on the floor and the walls and everything,
Bex: everything in the room that Athena can see has stickers on it.
Um, Athena in attempting to be helpful, tries to reset the security alarm and the little panel says that the error or the reason why the security alarm keeps getting triggered is in the downstairs bedroom. So she goes down to examine the downstairs bedroom with the homeowner’s consent and we get, like, the tension starts to build because in this downstairs bedroom there is a large chest freezer and Athena sort of starts to unsnap her holster because a large chest freezer, she doesn’t know what it could be filled with.
Ellen: Yeah. Why would the alarms going off [01:06:00] about a chest freezer? I don’t know. But anyway, she opens it. I don’t know. It’s, and it does not have a body in it.
Bex: It’s a fake out. It it has meat. It, yeah. A but it, it’s not a body, it’s animal meat. Um, it’s fine. Apparently the, the homeowner’s husband is a carnivore and he was just stocking up to make sure they had enough meat.
Why the freezer is in a bedroom? I don’t know.
Alice: It’s funny ’cause I had, um, I had a big chest freezer over COVID and it was just full of dog fur, dog food.
Bex: Dog fur?
Alice: But dog food.
Ellen: That makes sense.
Bex: Uh, said husband is not on the premises, he’s apparently away on business. Um, mm-hmm. The alarm goes off again.
Athena sees that the reason that the alarm is going off is because there is a contact, um, that has come loose. There’s a, something stuck on the inside of a windowsill, so she tries to stick it back to the window sill. It falls off again, triggering the alarm. And then we hear thumping [01:07:00] noises from behind Athena because the homeowner’s husband is not away on business. She bricked him inside the wall.
Ellen: And I don’t know how Athena immediately jumps to the conclusion that her husband nope. Is behind the wall. She just,
Bex: Nope.
Alice: She has x-ray vision, like her husband’s fine.
Ellen: Oh, it’s, anyway.
Bex: So apparently these two were going to get a divorce and then COVID hit. The courts shut down.
Uh, they couldn’t get their divorce decree and the husband removed, uh, refused to move out. So the blue tape was them kind of delineating their areas in the house. The stickers were him picking what he was going to take with him. When he did move out, uh, the homeowner reached her breaking point. Everyone take a drink and stabbed him in the back with barbecue tongs or barbecue fork.
It didn’t look like that series of a [01:08:00] stab wound. And then. I don’t think you can brick up a wall and plaster a wall that quickly. No, I don’t That he would still be understand like semi-conscious and semi breathing behind the wall.
Ellen: Yeah. And she’s also done such a good job of it that it looks perfect. Like yeah. It, it’s doesn’t look like a DIY job
Bex: ’cause it’s COVID. She’s not getting contractors to come in and do it, so she’s having to do it herself. But yes, that’s what she’s done. She stabbed her husband and then she brick, she built a tomb for him in the downstairs bedroom.
Ellen: And when they find him, when Bobby says, looks with the infrared camera and says he’s still there. And she goes, “What? He’s still alive. I mean, great.”
Alice: Yeah. Somehow he’s also still alive.
Ellen: So how is he still alive? I don’t know. But anyhow, it’s, it’s, yeah.
Alice: How, how long has this been? How, yeah.
Bex: It just doesn’t make any sense. And the, the thing is, I could possibly [01:09:00] accept this, like the complete ridiculousness of this storyline if it moved another storyline on further. But it doesn’t, it’s a standalone storyline just about someone reaching their breaking point, but it just does not make sense. It’s weird.
Alice: Yeah. None of it makes sense.
Ellen: And her, this lady’s breaking point is sending her to prison.
Alice: I don’t never find it entertaining.
Ellen: We don’t even care.
Bex: Nope. Nope.
Alice: Yeah. Like some of them are like, make no sense. But are funny. Like this, I don’t get this one. Like, it’s not funny at all.
Ellen: No,
Alice: it’s just weird.
Bex: Yeah. Like I think in “Jinx” we talked about how a lot of “Jinx” and a lot of other episodes, the storylines are literally just for the drama. You have to switch your brain off and not think about it.
Alice: Like the octopus one is so dumb, like as if an octopus would get stuck to someone’s head. But it’s so funny that like, but
Ellen: yeah, that one’s funny. I like it.
Bex: But other, the other writers, the way that they tell the story, the acting in the story, the way [01:10:00] that they tie it in with the rest of the episode, it’s entertaining enough that you are willing to overlook the inconsistencies because
Alice: Exactly.
Bex: It’s, yeah. This one, I am not willing to overlook the inconsistencies. ’cause this is fucking boring.
Alice: Yeah, it’s boring, it’s dumb.
Bex: Been Okay. Who wrote this one? Who we, who we painting? Um, this was written by David Grossman, it looks like. Sorry. No, he was the director. Bob Goodman was the writer. I’ve never heard of this dude before.
Alice: Oh, that’s awkward. He is a co-executive producer on 9-1-1 and 9-1-1: Lone Star.
Ellen: Oh, well,
Alice: yikes. He wrote,
Bex: he’s like, he’s like, Tim Minear’s besty.
Alice: Oh, that’s really interesting. He wrote this one, but then he also wrote “Treasure Hunt”.
Bex: Oh man. “Treasure Hunt” was good.
Alice: That’s what I mean. Like, that’s really interesting.
Ellen: Maybe he just, they he just had a bad one, a bad writer’s room experience with this one.
Alice: He wrote one Lone Star episode. Um, he wrote 4 9-1-1 episodes. He wrote. Two in season [01:11:00] four and two in season five.
Bex: I wonder if “Treasure Hunt” is the outlier because the writer’s room came up with all the ideas and he was the one that sat down and actually put them to paper. And that’s why it’s better because other people had input and he was just the scribe anyway, um, he didn’t do a very good job in this episode.
Ellen: I mean, the, the dialogue’s funny, like a lot of it, like the, the siege thing was silly, but it, the actual execution of it was quite funny. Maybe it was just that the idea, the individual ideas themselves were kind of dumb and the some of the dialogue was, is quite good. But
Bex: maybe,
Ellen: anyway, this particular scene just didn’t hit.
Alice: Yeah, no.
Bex: Nope. So when we finally, finally get to the end of that scene, uh, we’re gonna go back to the Diaz house where it’s dinner time,
Ellen: It’s Thursday night
Bex: Eddie’s cooking. Christopher’s, [01:12:00] um, ripping up, uh, iceberg lettuce to make a salad. Holy shit. Maybe Eddie cooked dinner. He seems to have a thing for iceberg lettuce.
Alice: That’s all that they could afford in props. This week is just iceberg lettuce.
Ellen: Just lettuce and cheese.
Alice: The same iceberg lettuce
Ellen: and like a block of cheddar.
Alice: Um, oh, it’s, I hate iceberg lettuce.
Ellen: Do you?
Alice: I do not like iceberg lettuce. No hate. I like it. It’s crunchy. You can’t stand it.
I, I like, I like other types of lettuce. Like, I like rocket. Um, and I like, I usually just have rocket and spinach, but I hate iceberg lettuce and it’s in all the salads and I freaking hate it. And it’s just blah.
Bex: Yeah. It’s ’cause it’s cheap.
Alice: Yeah. Don’t like it. Not a fan of iceberg lettuce. Ah,
Ellen: the crunchiness. The crunchiness pleases me. Um, I’m easy with lettuce.
Alice: Do not serve me. Oh. I like co I like, um, the, like co cos lettuce. Yep. I like cos lettuce. I like rocket. Um, [01:13:00] do not like iceberg lettuce. I like the fancy like purple ones and stuff. Do not like iceberg. Do not feed me iceberg lettuce.
Ellen: Noted.
Bex: Well, apparently Alice is not gonna be, Alice is not gonna be having dinner at the Diaz household anymore, which is probably good because nobody’s having salad after Eddie starts his conversation with Christopher. Um,
Alice: exactly. I’m with Chris. I would also be doing this.
Ellen: You would be throwing it on the floor?
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Yeah. Eddie decides that while Christopher is busy, um, distracted. So he’s going to bring up, um, his friend, you know, the friend that Christopher was asking him about, you know, the, the the woman friend. Um, yeah.
Chris is immediately like,
Alice: he’s like, “Oh, I, there’s something I wanna talk to you about.” And Chris is like, “What’s wrong? Is the lettuce too big?” And it is like, “No, lettuce is looking awesome. Gonna be a killer salad.” It’s like, okay, whatever. It’s iceberg lettuce. But sure. Yeah.
Bex: Um, so when Christopher hears that it’s a woman friend, he’s immediately like, “A girlfriend!” [01:14:00] And Eddie’s like, “uh, yeah.”
Yeah. I, I mean we haven’t, you know, defined the relationship and, you know, decided if we were gonna use those terms. But I, I guess you could say so I really like her and, um, I think you’ll like her too. And Chris is like, “No, no I won’t.” And he slaps the salad bowl off the bench and it shatters on the tile floor.
And then he makes his storms out the room as best he can. And then we hear a door slamming in the background. ’cause he’s gonna locked himself in the room. Yeah.
Alice: He’s really mad. It, it’s where it belongs on the floor.
Ellen: Oh. But poor Eddie is just looking sadly at his broken bowl and letters.
Alice: The chat did not go as he was hoping.
Bex: No. Speaking of dinners not going the way people thought they were gonna go. Um, we’re over at Buck’s Loft, sorry. Veronica’s Loft, which is just Buck’s Loft in a different font.
Alice: Same set, [01:15:00] but redressed. Yeah.
Bex: Um, where, uh, Buck is sitting in an armchair in the living room very nervously while Veronica is puttering around in the kitchen and Albert is making up cocktails.
Ellen: Um, but she’s wondering, is your date still coming because no one has turned up that, you know, Buck said he was bringing someone, but she’s not there.
And just then the, there’s a knock on the door and Buck goes to answer it. So he’s invited Taylor directly to Veronica’s house instead of his house?
Bex: Yes. It also appears that he has not told her what’s going on because she comes in and she’s all apologetic that about being late because she had trouble finding parking and Buck tells her that it’s fine.
Um, “let me introduce you to everyone.” And she’s like, “Who’s everyone?” And turns around to see Albert and Veronica just of [01:16:00] looking at her.
Alice: So she was not told that it was a double date?
Bex: No. So Buck introduces like, “Taylor, this is Albert and Veronica,” and Albert’s like, “oh, it’s nice to meet you. Buck has told me nothing about you.”
And Taylor’s gone, “Well, I have heard so much about you. Albert, Veronica.”
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Yeah, because Buck didn’t shut up about them the whole time that they were together the other day
Bex: For six hours. He talked about them
Alice: six hours.
Bex: For six hours.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Um, Veronica seems thrilled to see her because she recognizes Taylor. She’s like, “I watched you during that siege. That was great reporting.” Um, she offers Taylor a glass of wine. Taylor’s. “Oh, why stop at a glass?”
Alice: Taylor’s very unimpressed already.
Bex: Um, and when Buck leads her into the, the sitting [01:17:00] living area, she sort of mutters at him, “I thought that you were inviting me over for dinner. Maybe some sex. Like, is this even your apartment? Were you lying about the apartment?” and Buck’s like, “No, it’s not my apartment, but we could still do those things.” Taylor’s like, “Yeah, no.”
Alice: Yeah. Like, I’m still down for sex. Like, what?
Bex: No, Taylor’s not down for sex.
Alice: To be fair, It is, it is Taylor Kelly. (sighs)
Anyway, what, what happened? Um, yeah, I have no idea what they were talking about. Taylor looked real mad and it was hot.
Ellen: She does look, she does look lovely in the scene.
Alice: Stuff happens,
Ellen: but she’s mad,
Alice: like she knows what she wants.
Bex: It was not a double date. Uh, dinner is still going to be a little while, so Veronica’s whipped up some appetizers for them to enjoy while they’re waiting and they’re at the getting to know you portion of the dinner. Um, she [01:18:00] asks Taylor and Buck, “how long have you been dating?” And Taylor’s like, oh no, we’re not dating. We’re more like friends with benefits.
Alice: Yeah. “We hang out on more of an as needed basis.” Um, Buck tries to save it
Bex: tries to make it more romantic.
Alice: He’s like, “Oh, we’ve known each other for a while. Um, I pulled her out of a crashed News helicopter saved her life.”
Bex: Taylor’s not impressed.
Ellen: Yeah. But Veronica goes, “Oh, that is heroic.” And Albert says, “Well, that’s just a regular date for Buck.” It’s like, dude,
Bex: yeah. Taylor’s, Taylor’s had a enough. She just goes, “oh, we already know how you met Albert. Buck can’t stop talking about it.”
Alice: And Buck’s so uncomfortable. And Taylor’s like, yep. Now you know how I feel.
Bex: Albert’s like trying to move the conversation along. And he’s, you know, he’s, he’s never, he didn’t meet, um, jaded, cynical bit of Veronica. Um, so [01:19:00] he’s really surprised that the woman that he knows, you know, bubbly, happy, full of life, Veronica and Buck didn’t get on. Yeah. Taylor just says,
Alice: I love Taylor.
Bex: “You know, Buck can be intimidated by strong women. He needs a good ego stroke every now and then.” And Veronica’s like, “Yeah, I’m not gonna do that.” Taylor’s like, “You know what? Neither am I, I’m out.” And she gets up and literally just walks straight outta the apartment.
Alice: Yep. Just leaves. Um,
Bex: iconic.
Alice: Yeah. I’m sure it’s his ego that you are usually stroking, Taylor. But, um, anyway, so yeah, Buck chases her out and it’s just like, “Oh, it’s not what you think.” And Taylor’s like, “Oh, that you didn’t really wanna see me. You just needed them to see you, see you with me.” Um, and then calls him needy.
It’s like, “God you’re so needy.” And it’s just like, yeah, we know that, but you can’t just say that Taylor, like, oh my God,
Bex: no, no, no, no. It’s even better. She says to [01:20:00] his face, “you just can’t stand the idea of someone not liking you,” and Buck’s. Like, well, that’s not, I mean, “I’m very likable,” likable.
Ellen: I felt sorry for Buck in his moment, but yeah. So, but Taylor has,
Alice: but Taylor apologizes.
Ellen: She’s like, I’m not sticking around for this bullshit. Bye.
Alice: Um, but yeah, so Buck apologizes and was like, yeah, I did. I knew it was gonna be super awkward and um, didn’t wanna sit through it alone. So I phoned a friend and Taylor’s like, “yeah, I wish that was true ’cause I could really use a friend these days. But if this is how you treat your friends, you know, maybe the problem isn’t Albert, maybe it’s you.” And it’s like, oh,
Ellen: ouch.
Alice: Ooh. Yeah. Um, yeah, so Taylor is going through,
Bex: you’re gonna need a couple of emergency therapy sessions after this, Buck.
Ellen: Yep.
Alice: I know, right? Like, but yeah, Taylor is going through some shit and did not wanna deal with Buck’s shit while she was doing so
Ellen: Uhhuh
Alice: and good on her. Go Taylor.
Ellen: Yeah. [01:21:00]
Bex: Yep. I’m 100% team Taylor in this. I mean, I love Buck, but she, nothing she said was true.
Alice: So that writing was great. I just don’t know what happened to the last scene. Maybe they just like wrote some real good 118 scenes and then were like, oh shit, we, it’s some emergencies.
Ellen: Yeah. I dunno. Alright. Maybe we, maybe we judged, um, old mate too fast. Maybe he’s not so bad.
Bex: I’m still reserving judgment. I’m side eyeing him, so, yes. Um,
Ellen: all right, what is Eddie up to?
Bex: He is FaceTiming with Ana reporting back. “Look, I tried to tell Chris about you and he had a total meltdown.” So Ana gives Eddie the out. She’s like, if you, you know, Christopher has been through so much and she doesn’t wanna cause him any more pain.
If she and Eddie need to take a break, then that’s fine. And Eddie’s like, “no, no, we’re not taking a break. You’re not going anywhere. You got it?” She’s like, okay, I got it. Yeah, cool.
Alice: We can, we can [01:22:00] figure it out. It’s like, Jesus,
Bex: okay, we’ll figure it out. He ends the call, closes his laptop and then yells for Christopher. Nothing.
Alice: No response.
Bex: He, he’s a little bit s little bit annoyed now. Like, Christopher, get your ass in here. No response. Walks to the doorway, Christopher! Still no response. And now he’s absolutely pissed. And he goes to Christopher’s room and he is like, look buddy. I know you’re mad. Opens the door. There is no Christopher.
Ellen: Yeah, he is gone.
Alice: The room is empty.
Bex: The room is empty.
Ellen: The house is empty.
Bex: Um, so he starts, he starts freaking out. He’s like checking in the closet. He’s searching through the room, calling Christopher’s name, getting more and more frantic. Thankfully his phone starts to ring.
Alice: So his, yeah, his phone is in Christopher’s bed.
Bex: He’s gotta tear the bed apart to find the phone. Yeah, because it’s under the, like in all the sheets. He checks the caller ID and sees that it’s Buck [01:23:00] call and he is like, “Buck, you gotta help me. Christopher…” and Buck interrupts him and says “He’s here. He’s at my place.”
Alice: He is here. Um, so yeah, Christopher stole Eddie’s phone and used it to call an Uber
Bex: and Father of the Year did not notice A, his phone missing or B, his child leaving his house.
Ellen: Yeah, like did he climb out the window? Like how, how
Alice: surely he isn’t that quiet?
Bex: He can’t climb out the window,
Ellen: but how did he get out the door without Eddie noticing?
Bex: Even if he had climb out the window, like assuming you meant like out of his bedroom window. But the curtains were closed when Eddie walked in. What did, did he climb out the window and then close the curtains behind him?
Ellen: I, I don’t know. He’s he’s bigger now than he was. Like, you know, the, when we first met him. Maybe he was able to,
Alice: like, he just walked out the front door and Eddie didn’t notice,
Ellen: but yeah, somehow he got out the door. Anyway, he’s, he got, he made his way to Buck’s place and
Bex: Yes,
Ellen: he’s in, he’s sitting on the couch looking a bit sheepish,
Bex: [01:24:00] can we just, can we just, Chris had a moment where he, like, he’s hating his dad and he doesn’t wanna be at home so he goes to Buck’s.
Yeah. Can we, just a moment.
Ellen: Oh, it was so sweet. I’m like, of course he goes to bus.
Bex: It’s like he could have gone I don’t know where. No, I don’t, I don’t think he anywhere else to go. ’cause I don’t think his abuelita is available. I think she’s gone back down to Texas at this point, but still he went to Buck’s.
Ellen: Oh
Alice: yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. And they have a really sweet conversation here.
Bex: Yeah. So while Eddie is on his way to come pick Christopher up, Buck decides to have a heart to heart with Chris. And Chris is like, “I don’t wanna talk about it.” And then Buck says, “Well, we gotta talk about something while we wait for your dad, so we may as well talk about that.”
Alice: He goes, “you were there for me when I needed to talk, so now I wanna be here for you. It’s what friends do.” Yeah. I’m like, Aww,
Bex: I trauma, I trauma dumped on you, so now it’s your turn to trauma dump on me. [01:25:00]
Alice: Um, but yeah, Chris, Chris is very sad about his dad dating,
Ellen: “dad’s dating,”
Alice: but it’s not, he, Chris isn’t sad for the reason that you would think Chris is sad because like, so Buck’s like, “you know, maybe it feels like he’s forgetting your mom, but Chris, I promise you…” and Chris is like, “I wish I could forget,” and Buck’s like, “what?”
So Chris’s problem is not that he doesn’t want his dad dating and like forgetting his mom. Chris’s problem is that he keeps getting attached to people and then they go away. So not just mom, but Aita Carla and his friends, they leave and then he misses them and he doesn’t wanna miss anyone else.
Ellen: Oh, Chris.
Alice: And it’s like, aw. Like COVID would be really hard to explain to her. What is he like eight now?
Ellen: Yeah. I’ve, no, I think he’s older than that, but I’ve like, by the time you get to that age, you but know better about people coming and going, but it’s still you. You [01:26:00] still miss people. Of course you do.
Alice: Yeah. Like his mom died. That’s not just a, you know, little thing.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: And yeah. So Buck’s like, yeah, “people go away and it’s sad and it hurts, but not everyone goes away forever. Sometimes they come back and as much as we miss them, that’s how happy we are. That that’s how happy we are to see them again. Your grandma, your friends Carla, you’re gonna see them all again.”
Bex: And until then, Chris has still got Buck because Buck is not going anywhere.
Ellen: Aw.
Bex: And he gets, he gets a big Chris hug for that and Chris tells him that he’s a good friend and Buck’s face falls. He’s like, uh, “sometimes I’m a good friend,” apparently I’m a good friend to a kid.
Alice: Yeah. Like he was just told he is a shit. Yeah. He was just told he was a shit friend. And Chris is like, you’re a great friend. He is just like, yeah, to a 10-year-old. Like,
Ellen: Aw,
Alice: aw. And then Madney. Poor Chim.
Bex: Yes. It’s, I’m guessing Friday morning. ’cause all of that [01:27:00] happened Thursday night. This we come back from commercial to Chimney walking into the main part of his and Maddie’s apartment and Maddie says, “Oh, hey, you’re up.”
So I’m assuming that it’s morning time, he’s just woken up. And Maddie is, look I pregnant people are supposed to be nursing and they’re supposed to rearrange shit. ’cause you get like that urge to organize. Um, but she’s turning the living area into a, a delivery suite and she wants Chim to help her move the table because she’s going to give birth in the dining room mostly because she thinks it’s gonna be easier to clean up than the bedroom.
And Chimney loses it. She’s like, no, I can’t. The sight of the dining room table suddenly turned into a full on medical station. Probably doesn’t help situation either.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: She’s got more supplies on that table than Hen had in her medical first aid kit.
Alice: Yeah. In her entire [01:28:00] house. Yeah.
Bex: Yes. Um, so Chim tells her, “I can’t,” Maddie assumes that he means that he can’t help her move the table. And Maddie’s like, “Oh no, you, you got, you just work up. That’s fine. Go have some coffee, um, and then you can come help me.” And Chim’s like, “No, no, I’m not talking about, I can’t move the table. I can’t do a home birth.”
Um, because he needs Maddie not to die. And Maddie tells him, “I’m not gonna die.” And then Chim reels off. He has calculated and timed how long, worst case scenario it would take if they needed to get Maddie to a hospital at 13 minutes all up from a call being made, the RA being dispatched, getting the gurney up to their apartment, getting her back down to the RA unit, and then to the hospital.
It’s 13 minutes. And so much can go wrong in [01:29:00] 13 minutes. He tells her, do you know, he see, he says, “do you know what can go wrong in 13 minutes? ’cause I do. I see it every day. We lose so many people in transit and I can deal with it if it’s other people, but I don’t think I can deal with it if it’s you.”
Alice: Poor Chim, he just looks so sad. This whole scene,
Ellen: it feels a lot like PTSD kind of thing. Like he’s seen so much and now it’s becoming real because of someone that he knows that he’s worried about. So Maddie says that he, she’s not, she says it’s okay. And she’s like, no, it’s not. And she’s like, “no, it’s okay because we, we don’t have to do this. Like, I’m not, I love you. I’m not gonna put you through that. And so, you know, we don’t have to do it here.” And Chim is so relieved.
Bex: I, I love this scene. I, I love this scene for Kenneth because we get some amazing acting out of Kenneth.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But I don’t know that [01:30:00] this scene was necessary because it feels like Maddie had already accepted the having the baby wherever. Because all that’s important is that I have a baby at the end of it, which she reached after her conversation with Athena.
Alice: Yeah, it’s weird. It’s like Athena’s like, “Oh hey, like maybe don’t do a home birth. ’cause like you have a medical background and. Regardless, like, it’s gonna be great.” And Maddie’s like, “Yeah, cool. I’m gonna go buy all these supplies.” It’s like, what?
Bex: Yeah. Yeah. Um, and then if she was so hell bent on like, turning her house into a home birthing station, would she really have changed her tune that quickly?
Alice: Yeah, it’s weird.
Bex: I don’t know. Like I said, I love it. Kenneth does amazing. Kenneth is so good at the emotional scenes. Um, I just, I don’t understand this scene. Why this scene is necessary.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. I, I don’t know. Maybe she thought that, that Chim was on board with having a home birth, so she went ahead with it and [01:31:00] then it turned out that he wasn’t, she was like, okay, okay, we won’t do that.
Bex: No, but I thought like, she was on board with having a hospital birth again. ’cause all it matters is how the baby got, how the, what was that she got a baby and not how the baby got there. So she changed her mind back to a hospital birth.
Ellen: Maybe this, but then hadn’t,
Bex: Ugh.
Ellen: Should have been this No. That ’cause she changed her mind. I don’t know. No, it doesn’t. Yeah, it doesn’t, it doesn’t make sense.
Bex: It doesn’t make sense. But no. So we appreciate Kenneth Kenneth’s performance, but we don’t think it was necessary.
Alice: Yeah. Now we get the scene that I feel like this whole episode was written for
Bex: possibly.
Alice: So we’re back at the 118 firehouse and you can hear the news in the background on the t, the tv. Meanwhile, Buck’s walking up the stairs, leaving a message for Taylor. Who we can hear on the tv, um, and Buck’s like, “Hey, hey Taylor and Buck. I was really hoping at some point you may stop ducking my calls,” and Hen just looks up from the TV and goes, “I think she’s a little busy right now.” [01:32:00] And sure enough she’s live on tv, but it’s really sad.
So the hospital is at full capacity due to COVID and that’s where we see the marquees set up in the parking lot as temporary hospitals slash treatment rooms
Bex: with a big, like we see later on, there’s a big sign across the back of one of them that says COVID Overflow. So they’re having to treat the COVID patients out in the parking lot and they are, even Taylor is telling, talking to camera, saying that they’re having to ration care, which I’m guessing, I don’t even know what that means, but it upsets her a lot to the point where she has to turn her back
Alice: At the start of COVID um, I remember Italy, it was a big thing where they basically had to choose who was gonna live and who was gonna die. So like
Bex: that’s just triage
Alice: instead of putting Yeah. But like, they literally, like, they didn’t have enough, like okay, like you’re old, you’re not getting treatment. [01:33:00] Yeah.
Ellen: They couldn’t treat everybody.
Bex: I mean, it’s horrible, but it’s, it’s triage and that’s what you do in an emergent situation. Um, I know that sounds really callous and cold for me to say it like that, but it’s, it’s, it’s triage. That’s what happens. You have to assess your patients and the ones who are at most risk, the ones that you can save are the ones that you save, the ones that you don’t think you have a chance of saving, unfortunately, you don’t, you move your resources, but to saving the people that you can save.
Alice: Yeah. But people may have just been mildly sick, but because they didn’t have enough like oxygen, yeah.
Ellen: They could have saved everybody. If they’d had enough facilities and stuff,
Alice: they literally were like, okay, you are not too bad now, but you’re also 80. So, and we’ve got a, you know, 21-year-old with kids, so we’re gonna have to give the oxygen to her instead of you.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s awful.
Alice: Um, whereas if they had all the beds and stuff, they would’ve been able to save them. Um, but yeah, so they’re having to ration care. It doesn’t really make sense. This part because [01:34:00] at the start of the season, they were lifting COVID restrictions again.
Bex: Yeah. It’s, it felt like, it feels like this. Yeah. This storyline is very pointed for the time at which it was written and aired and as if the, um, the writers were trying to get a story across and they’re like, I know that the, we know that this doesn’t fit into the COVID narrative that we’ve been playing out through this season. Fuck it. We wanna tell this story.
It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make sense to the, what we’ve set up. In universe. Yeah. So Taylor is incredibly overwhelmed by this. She has to turn her back to camera to continue to giving her piece.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: And Buck is watching her. It’s is very, um, very upset on her behalf. They finally clear and Taylor takes a moment to, um, compose herself and sends her cameraman to like, first of [01:35:00] all to leave her alone, um, to go and see what’s going on in the distance because we see a man in a lab coat having a very, um, emotional phone call as two women in Scrubs race up to him and they have a very heated conversation.
Ellen: Meanwhile, Taylor looks at her phone and notices how many missed calls that she has from Buck on it. But before she can do anything about that, the cameraman guy calls her over. So there’s obviously something going on over there. Meanwhile, back at the 118 house, um, Buck’s, phone rings, and it’s actually Taylor.
Um, and Buck answers it by saying, “Hey, hey, I wanted to apologize.” And Taylor’s like, “Shut up and listen to me. I don’t need an apology, Buckley, I need a miracle.”
Bex: I need a miracle!
Ellen: Very dramatic dialogue, but gets the point across.
Bex: So this storyline that’s about to unfold is apparently a ripped from the headlines [01:36:00] storyline. Uh, what happens next actually happened in LA in January.
Oh.
Alice: Um, which is about when this episode was being filmed.
Bex: So this episode was filmed early February, I believe, if we can trust Oliver’s social media posting.
Alice: Yeah. So it happened and then a couple weeks later they filmed this episode, basically.
Bex: Yes. Hmm. So what happened is that a hospital freezer broke and it was a freezer that specifically was storing COVID 19 vaccinations. And they have thawed and unless they can, um, get the vaccines into arms of people, the vaccines are gonna go to waste.
Um, it’s about a thousand vials in the freezer. Um, they’ve been, the hospital have been trying to get people to come in, but there are still 600 vials that could possibly go to waste. Um, and they’ve got two hours to get them [01:37:00] out and into people. So the LAFD and the l la a PD mobilized to get the vaccines out to clinics, to nursing homes, and to set up vaccination stations and get as many people through those stations and vaccinated as they can.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Including Michael who gets his vaccination as Bobby and Athena look on fondly. And I am specifically pointing out Michael, because that’s gonna be an interesting point at the end of the season.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Bex: So we’ll put a pin on that. But it works. All of their efforts, uh, don’t go to waste. They get all of the vaccines out and administered and everyone is vaccinated and it’s all is right with the world, at least for this part of it once again.
Ellen: Mm-hmm. Um, Buck checks in with Taylor.
Bex: Taylor said she was looking for a miracle and [01:38:00] Buck gave her one.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: Like she says, “I was looking for a miracle and you gave me one even after I said those terrible things. Why?” I’m like, why do you think Taylor? Because, and Buck says that’s how you treat a friend.
Alice: To get some! I mean, because that’s how you treat a friend.
Ellen: Yeah. That’s how you friend treat a friend with benefits.
Alice: Yeah. Um, then Taylor pulls down her mask and gives him a kiss on the cheek and the subtitles very helpfully put “Smooches,”
Ellen: smooches, COVID, smooches. But yes, even with the mask on, he looks very pretty in this scene.
Bex: The hair.
Ellen: He looks great.
Bex: Like I, I love his curl. He does look very good the way that they’ve got it, like the, the buiffont and the way it sort of swoops and the height to it. I don’t know what it is, but it is working for him.
Alice: Like when he, um, was leaning on the doorway when Eddie got home.
Bex: Oh,
Alice: I love that. I love that scene.
Bex: Oh yes. Speaking of Eddie, [01:39:00] we are, we are going to temporarily go back to the Diaz household, um, where Eddie has decided that he’s going to introduce Christopher to his lady friend. He apparently hasn’t told Christopher, who his lady friend is, yet he’s going to spring it on him.
Um, but the joke’s on him because Christopher sees Ana and immediately runs over and hugs her. So if he had just told Chris at the very beginning that it’s Ana.
Ellen: Yeah. I feel like, I feel like it would’ve been easier.
Bex: I think it would’ve been fine.
Ellen: Yeah,
Bex: yeah,
Alice: yeah. Like, Hey, do you miss your teacher, miss whatever, Ana’s last name is?
Bex: Flores.
Alice: Yeah. And he is like, thank you. Um, couldn’t, could not remember it. And I was just like, uh, yep. Um, yeah, if he was like, oh, do you miss her? And Chris would’ve been like, so much Eddie would’ve been like, cool, let’s go to lunch with her. And then like, oh, by then, like a day later, oh, by the way, like how would you feel like introduce it a bit better than just like, oh, I’m seeing someone random,
Bex: how do you feel if [01:40:00] Ms. Flores was your new mother? Yeah,
Ellen: just jumping ahead a little bit. But yeah, I mean, they could have just started going, like, she should could have started coming over for dinner and he would’ve been like connecting the dots.
Bex: He just had to say,
Ellen: I’m connecting the dots here
Bex: that the lady friend was Ms. Flores. It would’ve been fine.
Ellen: Yeah, he would’ve been fine.
Alice: Literally. He was just being very dramatic about it.
Bex: Oh, I’m sorry. Edmundo Diaz? Dramatic?
Alice: Yeah. Right. Who have thought?
Bex: That bitch is so dramatic. Um, from there we cut to the Madney apartment where we see chimney and packing Maddie’s hospital bag, which I, I put in the notes that when I was watching this, I don’t think that’s Chimney and Maddie, I think that’s Kenneth and Jennifer
Ellen: Uhhuh,
Bex: because Maddie says, “I love you,” and Chimney says “Ditto.” And Maddie [01:41:00] Maddie’s got like a, a, a onesie in her hand that she is like supposed to fold and put into the hospital bag and she just throws it at Kenneth and he catches it and just throws it back at her.
And I 100% feel like this was like an, an extra take that they did. And he’s just gone. I don’t like, I don’t know what the line was supposed to be, but he is gone. You know, I’m not gonna say it. I’m just gonna like muck around. And it was so cute that they kept it. Because after he throws the onesie back at Jennifer, it lands on the, like the fake belly.
She’s like, “Oh, I’m just gonna leave it there. Look how cute that is. This onesie stretched out over my belly like that. That’s so cute.”
Ellen: Yeah. It’s a weird scene for them to do, but if you think of it as mucking around, it makes a little more sense.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: That’s super good, because I think we’ve seen so many other scenes where, um, it looks like Kenneth and Jennifer, not Chimney and Maddie, like, I’m thinking of [01:42:00] the, um, the popcorn in the pocket.
Alice: I love their friendship so much. Did you see, um, yeah, the, did you see um, Kenneth’s reel where like during the hiatus he was like, “oh, I miss my wife.” Yes. And then he walks into a movie theater and was, she’s like, “I hope I can see her face.” And then she’s on the poster. Yes. Did last summer. It’s so cute. I love them.
Bex: He’s so supportive of her career outside of 9-1-1. It’s adorable.
Alice: And I love that she was supposed to be paired up with Eddie and she was like, actually, I want this one instead.
Bex: I don’t want that one. I want this one. Yeah, I want this one. Uh, so another quick scene. We’re going to go to Buck Loft, where Albert has returned from Veronica’s apartment because Veronica broke up with him.
He broke up with her, or maybe it was a mutual thing. No, I think he says he broke up with her, um, because [01:43:00] she did not approve of his friends like Buck. She didn’t approve of Buck. She probably loved Taylor.
Ellen: Yeah. He doesn’t have any other friends.
Bex: She’s just didn’t like Buck.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Oh,
Ellen: that we haven’t met any of his friends. Like maybe he does have friends now.
Bex: You’re not, you’re not wrong. But that’s so blunt.
Ellen: I’m just
Alice: poor Albert.
Ellen: Just, I’m just speaking from the viewer’s point of view. We have not seen his friends.
Alice: Yes. It’s COVID. It’s hard to get friends.
Ellen: Yeah. You can’t just go out anymore. But anyway, Buck has Thai food to make him feel better.
Bex: Yeah. The, uh, the Thai food that Albert mentioned earlier is finally, um, materialized.
So the, the two bachelors sit down for some, you know, um, curry and noodles. Eddie and Chris and Ana look like they’re getting ready to sit down and watch a movie. Um, Ana is [01:44:00] sitting on the couch and Eddie and Chris are hovering in the doorway, having a whispered conversation that she 100% can hear. It’s an adorable conversation, but.
It looks like they’ve clearly come from the kitchen with big bowls of popcorn. So why they couldn’t have had that conversation in the kitchen? I don’t know. But Christopher is happy to,
Ellen: that’s not where the camera was set up. Set up.
Bex: Um, Christopher is happy to see Ana, but he’s a little bit apprehensive because she’s a really hard grader and Eddie says,
Alice: that’s okay. Maybe she’ll grade Eddie on a curve.
Bex: Oh, like God, that’s what she said. Um, I dunno. For some reason that line just seemed really dirty to me.
Alice: Oh, oh my God.
Bex: But it goes over Christopher’s head and he just, um, [01:45:00] heads into the, further into the room and announces that they’ve got popcorn. Um,
Ellen: so cute.
Bex: And then I apparently need to go and like, get bathed in holy water ’cause I’m an abomination. And then to end the episode, we go to the Wilson household.
Ellen: Yeah. Hen gets home. Uh, she’s, she says, “you’ll never believe what I found at the hospital gift store.” Why was she at the hospital? I, I, I, I’ve just assumed it would be like a, a carry on from the previous call or whatever, but
Alice: yeah. Why was she,
Ellen: she wasn’t at the hospital today. In this episode.
Alice: Hang on. No, she was. So she was, um, doing the COVID vaccinations.
Bex: Well, she was at the hospital doing the COVID Vaccin vaccinations.
Ellen: Yeah, but she was in the carpark. But I guess
Bex: But does that mean, does that mean that she was like administering all the vaccinations and then one when the one a team were like packing up, getting ready to go she’s like, hang on boys, I just wanna go inside and do some [01:46:00] shopping?
Ellen: Yeah. Apparently.
Alice: Yeah. Clearly.
Ellen: Uh, she notices that Karen isn’t particularly overjoyed to see her walk in the door. And um, so she turns around and Deidre’s there. The social worker,
Alice: the social worker
Bex: and Hen asks Karen, ’cause Karen looks absolutely devastated, is something wrong? And she’s sort of couldn’t put two or two together that Karen’s face is because of Deirdre. Um, and Deirdre explains that her office has been working with N’s birth mother to prepare for reunification. And it’s time to start that process. And Hen’s like, what are you talking about? And Karen says, “We have to give Nia back.”
Ellen: Oh,
Bex: and that’s where the episode ends. No, not. Oh,
Ellen: you don’t approve?
Bex: That’s [01:47:00] the whole point. No, that’s the whole point of fostering is you are giving the child a safe place to be while their parents get their shit together. And the goal is for the child to go back to their parents.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: You don’t foster fail a foster child like you can with a cat or a dog.
Alice: Yeah. Then she’s not a puppy.
Bex: She has parents and it sounds like her parent, like her mother is doing everything she can to get Nia back. So I I told you I had issues with the fostering storyline.
Alice: Yeah. It’s not, and this great,
Bex: this reaction, this thing we have to give Nia back is why I have problems with this fostering storyline.
Ellen: Yeah. Okay. But I mean, it’s the, it’s making you feel for the parent, like the foster parents who have brought this child into their home and cared for her. And then they have like, yes, they have to give back. They have to let the child go back to their [01:48:00] parents. But that’s gotta hurt still, right?
Bex: Oh, 100%. But I am, I think we should put a pin in this conversation because this storyline is going to continue and we can talk a little bit later after the storyline continues on how the show continues the storyline and how problematic I think it is, the way they continue the story line that’s storyline.
Alice: Like it’s definitely worse. Um, yeah, having seen the rest of the storyline, it’s definitely worse on rewatch.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Oh, okay. I guess I’ll look forward to that then.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Like 100% it would, I feel. Well, actually no, I don’t. In theory, I would feel for foster parents who have taken a child in and have fallen in love with them, it must be incredibly difficult to hand them back. I, but that’s not what happens with this storyline in this episode. I’m not feeling for them at all.
Ellen: I guess I’ll keep my comments until I hear more about it then. [01:49:00]
Bex: So, yeah. Sorry.
Alice: Yeah. Weird episode. Um, weird midseason finale.
Bex: So we didn’t fully, we didn’t fully discuss, um, the COVID storyline. So do we wanna go back and just talk about why we think they threw in this weird, not consistent with their in universe established COVID?
Ellen: Yes. Tell us your theories.
Bex: Um, right, so my theories was that this episode was filmed early February, and we know that because of, if we can trust Oliver’s posting of social media, because early February, like thinking like first, 2nd of February, he posted a photo of him and Gavin, um, from the scene that they did in this episode.
So early February, like January, December, [01:50:00] January was when COVID vaccines really started getting rolled out.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Um, so I think. That this episode was vaccine propaganda was pushing the go out and get vaccinated.
Ellen: Yeah,
Bex: and it was initially my thoughts that that came down like that was an edict from on high that someone in the upper echelons of the network has for whatever reason decided that they wanted to push the, let’s get everybody vaccinated message out.
Um, but considering that it’s Fox at this stage, I dunno that it did come from the network. So I’m thinking that from within the writer’s room, somebody has gone vaccine take up rates are really low. The crew and the cast of 9-1-1 suffered a lot of losses. Like we know that the first episode back for this season, they dedicated it to a crew member who died of COVID.[01:51:00]
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: So the uh, it’s my feeling that someone in the writer’s room, a lot of people in the writer’s room have gone like, people need to go out and get fucking vaccinated. So let’s put a vaccine storyline in to try and encourage, look, your favorite characters are all pro-vaccine and showing Michael and the others getting their vaccinations so you too can go out and get your vaccinations. It’s really important that you get vaccinated.
Ellen: Yeah, I’d be interested to know how it worked. Like were they’re actually people who watched this and then went, you know what, actually maybe I will go and get my vaccine.
Bex: It would be interesting.
Alice: I’m always basing my medical decisions on what I see on tv.
Ellen: Yeah. But if you’d been putting it off and then you saw this and you’re like, yeah, okay, let’s go and do it. Like, no, I’m not saying that just because these people definitely got theirs, then I must do it as well. But, you know, you, you’ve gotta plant it in, in people’s minds.
Alice: Look, I’ve done weirder things because a TV character told me to. So luckily I haven’t started dealing drugs or, [01:52:00] um, ripping off Armenian cartels yet. Considering I’m still watching the Shield. But,
Bex: but yeah, maybe it was like that, the, the final, the tipping point was, oh, you know, my favorite TV show and my favorite actors are showing the vaccines are really important.
’cause look how much they’re stressing about the fact that these vaccines could go to waste. And all of my favorite characters are rolling up their sleeves and getting their vaccines, so maybe I should go do it too. ’cause they seem to think it’s okay. So yes, that’s my theory as to why we’ve got this weird, um, doesn’t fit in their established COVID narrative. Storyline. Certainly,
Ellen: I mean, it did happen in the real world that things looked better and then they looked worse again. I mean, I think it possibly in America, it just got progressively worse as it went on. It didn’t actually, they didn’t have as many dips and troughs. Um,
Alice: yeah, see, I don’t know, because we were locked down in Melbourne for a long time, so we were very stable. Like we only opened up for like. A month. They [01:53:00] opened us up over Christmas and then closed us straight back down again. So I don’t really,
Ellen: our, our borders were closed as well. They were like, we had hardly any movement between states and everything. Like in, in Queensland, we weren’t locked down, but we had hardly any COVID because, you know, people weren’t coming and going and, and most people just stayed home and, and worked at home anyway,
Alice: that’s it. Like, it, it really hit Melbourne hard, which is why we locked down so much, um, because the hospitals started being overwhelmed. So they were like, okay, no, we have to.
Bex: Well, yeah, because you guys had the international airport, like you and New South Wales, that’s where all the travelers were coming in from. And the cruise ships were coming into Victoria and New South Wales. So you were getting all of the people who had just come back from international holidays Yep. And had brought COVID with them.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: ’cause we saw that with, um, Tasie, like we locked down and everything was fine. And then a cruise ship came in and someone decided, [01:54:00] oh, the, um, the people who live in Tassie can get off the cruise ship and go back home. Except they brought COVID with them.
Oh
Ellen: my God.
Bex: And so, like Davenport got absolutely decimated because they suddenly had all of these COVID cases.
Ellen: Oh no.
Bex: Yeah. So we got locked down even harder after that. Nobody was allowed to come back in.
Ellen: Oh, those were the times it seems like so long ago.
Alice: I know. It seems so. Yeah. It seems so weird now.
Bex: Anyway, should we talk about what we are going to talk about next week? Yeah. What’s happening next week? It’s gonna be next week. We promise it’s going to be next week.
Alice: Um, don’t promise. That’s the, that’s stage one of a medical drama. You never, never promise Jesus Christ.
Bex: Don’t say the q don’t say the Q word. And never promise to deliver.
Alice: Never make promises.
Bex: Okay. Yeah. Um, I don’t, I don’t promise. I we will try really hard.
Ellen: We’ll attempt
Bex: to get an episode to you next week, um, because next week the Athena and the 118 are going to race to save lives after a [01:55:00] drunk driver causes a deadly pile up on the freeway.
Meanwhile, Maddie goes into labor, Hen and Karen are devastated as they prepare their foster daughter to be reunited with their birth mother. Oh no, we’re not gonna mention that. Okay. Um, that’s it. You’ve got the deadly pile up on the freeway. Maddie goes into labor and Nia is going back to her birth mother.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Yep. Um, our triggers for this episode is childbirth.
Ellen: He, the baby’s coming!
Bex: Foster care system, um, multi-car, multi-vehicle accident due to drunk driving, which includes a child at threat. Uh, multiple injuries and fatalities and a minor character at threat.
Alice: Would we say minor? Semi major kind of major character at threat?
Bex: No, [01:56:00] I’m still going minor. We can discuss this further once Ellen discovers which character it is.
Ellen: Okay.
Alice: Well, Maddie goes into labor, so I’m sure everything’s fine. You know, it’s, it’s a TV show about emergencies, so I’m sure that nothing bad will happen.
Ellen: Hmm. Don’t say that! It’s gonna be fine.
Alice: Maybe grab a box of tissues before you are.
Ellen: Oh dear. Okay. Um, anything else about this episode you wanna wanna say?
Bex: On that note
Ellen: yeah.
Bex: Um, no, this episode sucked. I’m glad I don’t have to watch it again. Um, my two, the two things, the two and a half things that saved this episode were one the, um, the Buck, Eddie Christopher family dynamic. Yes. That was adorable.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, two Taylor Kelly. Yes. Icon.
Alice: Yeah. The 118 stuff was real good. Taylor Kelly [01:57:00] was real good. I just, the emergencies were real shit. Yeah.
Bex: And specifically the jump, jump, jump scene.
Alice: Yeah. So good.
Bex: Every, everything else can I, I care not for.
Ellen: Yeah. The, the whole of that, the guy waiting around on the roof thing was pretty funny actually. I liked that.
Alice: Yeah, that was great. That was the best part of the episode for sure.
Ellen: Yeah. But yeah, everything else was kind of meh, right? Not, not our favorite.
Bex: Definitely not, not the worst. But I may not watch this episode again if I decide to binge the series again.
Alice: Yeah. Like I’d fair, I’d watch a couple of the scenes again, but not,
Bex: yeah, just like skip through to watch your favorite scenes and then move on.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: You know what? I thought we were closer to the end of the season than we are. We still have like, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.
Bex: We’re halfway,
Ellen: six. We’ve got six episodes to go. Okay.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah. Whoa, we’re halfway there.
Bex: We’re living on a prayer?
Ellen: Living on a prayer? Yeah. [01:58:00] Okay.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Absolutely. Well, uh, do let us know if you thought this episode was as bad as we did, um, or, or like, let us know what the redeeming thing was for you as well. How much do you love Taylor Kelly? Yeah.
Bex: Do you have any knowledge of house building and plastering and do you know how quickly that woman could have built a brick wall and plastered it?
Ellen: Oh God. Honestly, I do not care. That was so,
Alice: yes, it was brick. It wasn’t it, it wasn’t plaster. It was brick wasn’t it?
Ellen: It it was brick.
Bex: It was brick.
Ellen: Because they, they knocked down the bricks to get to him. Yes.
Alice: Yeah. Plaster look like you can put a wall up quite quickly, like, um, ’cause we’ve just like built my little house thing and you can just get a sheet of plaster and like put a frame up and, um, nailed plaster. A sheet of plaster in it and then painted.
Bex: Oh, 100%. Yeah. But she built a brick wall.
Alice: But it was brick, wasn’t it? It was brick.
Ellen: Yeah. She bricked him in.
Alice: It was so weird. Yeah,
Bex: she bricked him in and then she put [01:59:00] like the plaster over the top of it. So that’s my question,
Ellen: No, honestly.
Bex: How long does it take to build a freaking brick wall?
Ellen: I am bricking up the memory of that call in my mind. Like I don’t, I don’t care. Don’t care.
Alice: I also forgot about it.
Bex: So we’re building a tomb for that particular emergency.
Ellen: Totally. Yep. Sorry.
Alice: That’s it.
Ellen: Alright. Let us know. You leave us a comment.
Bex: No, don’t let us know. Ellen doesn’t care, keep that information to yourself.
Ellen: Not about that. Just let us know about the other stuff that we asked you about
Alice: if you’re a brick layer.
Ellen: No, no.
Bex: Unfortunately we don’t wanna hear from you.
Ellen: No. If you have other relevant comments, you can put them on this episode’s post. Go to thatweewooshow.com. All of the details are there, um, or directly in Spotify. Or you can DM us on social media or however else you’d like to get in contact with us.
Thank you for listening this week. We’ll talk to you next time about episode nine, which is [02:00:00] called “Blindsided”. See you then.
Bex: Bye
Alice: bye.
Ellen: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you are not alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help. Just Google crisis support in your location to find out the number.
If you enjoy our podcast, you can help us out by leaving us a review on Spotify or your preferred listening app and by sharing our social media posts. Find out more at thatweewooshow.com.
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