Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Bex, Alice, and Ellen watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss episode 2 of the fifth season of 9-1-1, titled “Desperate Times”.
The 118 springs into action when a city-wide blackout and a record heatwave causes mayhem in Los Angeles. Chimney confides in Hen about Maddie’s condition and Athena’s worst nightmare comes true.
Content warnings for episode 5.02:
child at threat, child on a ventilator, discussions of police violence, abuse of power, gore from an animal attack, helicopter crash, panic attack, postpartum depression.
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Episode Transcript
Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1. What’s your emergency?
Bex: Welcome back to That WeeWoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show, 9-1-1. I’m Bex.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Ellen: And I’m Ellen.
Bex: As always, we thank everyone who has listened to our previous episodes and who’s taken time out of what we are sure of very busy schedules to share our episodes, our social media posts, and rated us on Apple and Spotify.
Uh, we really do appreciate that. I was going somewhere with that. I don’t know where it went, but there we go.
Alice: Dunno where you were going, but it was, it was somewhere.
Bex: Before we get into our discussion [00:01:00] of this week’s episode, Alice, would you care to remind us what happened in last week’s?
Alice: Yeah, so last week on 9-1-1, Eddie did not panic. While some l33t hackers caused chaos in LA by messing with the air traffic controllers and the power, once all our base are belonged to them, the court system glitched and let out Athena’s attacker who was helped by his lawyer, who slit Lou’s throat while escaping.
Meanwhile, the 118 paused to help out at a hospital who were having trouble with their generators and helicopters and Maddie continued to struggle with postpartum depression. Sad face.
Ellen: Poor Maddie. Okay, so in this week we are gonna discuss episode two of season five, which is called “Desperate Times”, which aired on September the seventh, 2021.
Uh, the official summary says the 118 springs into action when a citywide blackout and a record heatwave causes mayhem in Los Angeles. Meanwhile, [00:02:00] Chimney confides in Hen about Maddie’s condition and Athena’s worst nightmare comes true. The triggers for this episode include a child at threat, child on a ventilator, discussions of police violence and abuse of power gore from an animal attack, a helicopter crash, panic attack, and postpartum depression, and also implausible use of a fire hose.
But we’ll get to that. I dunno if I’m gonna be very positive about this episode because I watched the whole thing just going, what the fuck? Like, seriously what? Anyway, we’ll try and be positive about the whole thing.
Bex: This may be a very short episode.
Ellen: Uh, we’ll see. Um, I mean, I didn’t hate all of it. It was just parts of it were just like, really?
Alice: I had a great time. There was so much buddy stuff. Maybe it was just because I was like, I stopped [00:03:00] reading, Leading with the Left to watch this episode, so I was still grinning and kicking my feet when I went into it.
Ellen: Oh yeah. Thank you for everyone who’s been listening to the, um, our fan fiction episode. I hope you enjoyed that, including you, Alice.
Alice: I had a great time. It was great. 10 outta 10.
Ellen: That’s good. Excellent. Well, there’s plenty more where that came from, but we’ll have to wait till the end of season five to get, get into that.
Bex: We gotta get through this episode first.
Ellen: Yes. So we’ve gotta continue, um, from where we left off in the last episode.
Alice: Which is apparently watching Captain America.
Bex: It’s not even continue from where we left off. They literally replay the last like five minutes of the previous episode before the title card.
Alice: Yeah. Just in case we forgot.
Bex: And not even with a previously on 9-1-1. It’s just Oh, we are gonna start with the helicopter.
Ellen: The pilots didn’t have a chat last week though, did they?
Alice: No. They just fucked around with the heart and this week they talk and fuck around with the [00:04:00] heart.
Bex: Honestly, I didn’t need to hear them talk. ’cause it was so What do you mean? Like “this heart’s coming from the place that the place that this heart is coming from is a tragedy, but once we land it’s gonna turn into a miracle.” what the fuck? I didn’t need to…
Ellen: It was a little bit. Bit far. Yeah.
Alice: Um, anyway, like the power goes out or something. He freaks out. Even though he was like literally about to land, he’s like, oh my God, I can’t see the, it’s, it, it was right there. Just, it hasn’t moved true. Just because the power’s gone out doesn’t mean that as we last week, the hospital moved.
Bex: Don’t helicopters have lights attached to them? Like spotlights, sort of thingies?
Alice: Apparently not.
Bex: Anyway,
Ellen: they went out too, apparently.
Alice: Anyway, so yeah, the helicopter smashes its tail rotor on something which makes it spin, um, and crash into the roof rather than just landing on it,
Bex: shaking the entire building, which lets the 118 inside the hospital know that something’s going on, on the roof. Um,
Alice: so they run [00:05:00] outside to look at the roof. Um, luckily they went on the correct side of the hospital so they could see the helicopter because if they’d run out the back door, they would’ve been in the, they would’ve been like, I can’t see anything, dunno what the issue is. No idea. Um, but yeah, the helicopter’s like teetering on the edge, um,
Bex: as Eddie um, so very helpfully tells the audience once the 118 run up to the, to the roof of the hospital. Um, apparently,
Ellen: apparently it’s their job to rescue the helicopter now.
Bex: Well if they’re going after the fucking animals, then of course they’re gonna go after the helicopter. ’cause apparently they have to do everything.
Um, but the helicopter is caught on the window washing cables, which I assume that there are just like cables set up around the hospital roof permanently to help with window washes. Um, so the helicopter’s caught on that and it’s, it’s snagged. But that is pretty much all that is holding it up from [00:06:00] crashing to the ground below.
Ellen: Like this is like Bobby is like telling everyone what he needs. Like we need the ca, we need the winch, we, we need ropes, the webbing and blah, blah, blah. And Buck’s like “We’re not waiting for any of that, right?”
Alice: I don’t know who he’s talking to. Yeah, because I didn’t even see the other, like the background firefighters, but he’s like, “I want ropes, webbing and heavy winch,” and like no one goes to get it. So I don’t know who he’s talking to.
Bex: I’m, I’m assuming it was Chim because he risk, he reels off that Buck and Buck does this Eddie does that, Hen does that. And then when Hen needs the backboard, she’s radioing to Chim and he suddenly later on comes running and other,
Alice: they just forgot to show that Chim went to and it was just Chim that went to get the ropes and webbing and heavy winch.
Ellen: Buck goes, “Let’s not wait for that. Let’s just go and jump in the helicopter right now.” And Bobby goes, “okay, let’s do it.” And it’s like, yeah. Um, you don’t wanna wait until the, it’s a little bit more secure than just [00:07:00] snagged on a cable? But no, no. Jump they on, add their weights to the helicopter.
Bex: Just, yeah.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um, also, I, it took me a while to figure this out, but whoever was writing the dialogue did not link up to who was actually like blocking this scene because Bobby says that Hen and Buck are gonna get into the cabin and Eddie is gonna help him secure the scene yet gets
Ellen: Yeah, but Eddie jumps in.
Bex: Eddie’s the one that gets in
Alice: does the opposite. Yeah.
Bex: And Buck’s the one that secures the helicopter. I’m like, did nobody figure that out? Did nobody think that we were going to pick that up?
Ellen: Well,
Bex: I mean, it makes more sense.
Ellen: To be fair, I didn’t pick it up until you said that
Bex: It makes more sense for Eddie to get in the helicopter because, you know, he’s, he knows how to fly a fucking helicopter.
Alice: They just don’t, honestly, at this point, Eddie and Buck are just the same person, so they don don’t even know, like they don’t even listen to Bobby. They just do whatever they want and Bobby’s just like, yeah, I’m pretty sure I told Buck to do that. Buck’s in there and Eddie’s like that. [00:08:00] I’m not Buck, I’m Eddie, but Okay. Um,
Bex: but yeah, exactly like helicopter’s teetering on the edge. Let’s add two more people into Yeah, the helicopter. Yeah, it’s fine.
Alice: Anyway, so they check Manny, um, Manny says he can’t move. Hen radio’s down to Chim, who’s apparently down.
Bex: He’s somewhere
Alice: at the,
Bex: he’s not on the roof,
Alice: in the hospital? Who the fuck knows?
He’s
Ellen: gone all the way down to the, to the ambulance to get a backboard or does he just go in the hospital and yells, “Someone bring me a goddamn backboard?”
Alice: I, I have no idea what’s going on, but, um, apparently there’s also a fire, the
Bex: I assume he went down to the engine,
Alice: which I assume the fire happened when they hit the thing, but like, I didn’t notice a fire, so there was just smoke and I was like, okay, sure.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
Alice: And anyway, so they put the apparent fire out, um, they switch it all off. They Buck is just like [00:09:00] Captain America-ing.
Ellen: Yeah. He’s hanging onto the feet of the, um, helicopter to stop it from falling down. Yeah. And Bobby is too, right? I think Bobby’s holding onto it as well at one point. Oh, maybe it’s a bit later.
Bex: Didn’t, uh, I think he did it a bit later, but I didn’t really care at this point. We’re only like five minutes in. I’m already not caring. Um,
Ellen: um, Hen just, uh, diagnoses the guy of having some kind of spinal injury. So they need to get him onto the backboard, but the helicopter has started slipping and is now like over the edge of the roof. So they, they have to try and get this guy on a backboard and over, back, over the top of the roof before the whole thing just goes. So,
Alice: um, apparently also, Manny is obviously a paramedic ’cause he’s in the paracopter. Um, but he’s only been a paramedic for [00:10:00] almost a month.
Ellen: Oh geez. Bad timing.
Alice: Yeah. So they get the pilot out, they manage to get Manny onto the backward, over the window of the helicopter and pull him out. Well, they’ve gotta find a way to pull him out so they,
Ellen: yeah, apparently they don’t have any rope or anything yet.
Alice: Yeah, there’s no, because like Chim managed to get down there, got the backboard and a C collar, and came all the way up again, but they still haven’t brought any rope.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Um, so instead they use a fire hose.
Ellen: Yeah. Bobby looks around and then he goes “Ah hah!”
Bex: Chim finds, Chim finds the fire hose a
Ellen: Chim looks around. That’s right.
Bex: Question. Would there be a fire hose on the external wall of a roof of a building?
Alice: That’s what I was, I guess ’cause it’s a helipad.
Ellen: Yeah, maybe.
Bex: Okay.
Alice: Like in case the helicopter catches fire.
Bex: All right.
Alice: I, because I thought the same thing and then I was like, okay. I think because it’s a helipad, it does [00:11:00] actually have that special.
Bex: All right. I’ll accept that there is a helipad, there is a risk of fire, therefore a fire hose could be necessary. All right. Fine.
Ellen: Also. For the drama.
Alice: For the drama, there’s an fire hose.
Oh,
Bex: this whole fucking episode is for the drama.
Alice: This opening thing is so stupid. Um,
Bex: but yes, so Chim grabs the fire hose. Eddie does the worst possible knot. I don’t even think he tied a knot. He just like looped the fire hose a couple of times around one of the handles of the, um, the backboard. And then they kind of like drag Manny out of the helicopter up over the ledge of the roof with the fire hose.
Alice: Yeah, but that’s, that’s not all, Manny then panics. ’cause he goes “The heart! This is a transplant flight.”
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. Eddie tries to reach it. Or maybe it’s Hen who tries to reach it, but they can’t reach it,
Bex: Eddie.
Ellen: And so they get, they get out,
Bex: Eddie can see where it is and he is like, Hen it’s there, Hen tries to reach it, but it’s out of her reach. So Bobby’s like, “get the hell out of there.”
Um, [00:12:00] so everybody gets the hell out of there and Bobby goes, oh no wait. The heart, we can’t just leave it. And so he’s the one that goes back into the helicopter by wrapping the fucking fire hose around his waist.
Ellen: Oh my God.
Alice: Yeah. Like while he does it Buck’s like the, did the winch is right over, like, he literally says “The winch is here,” and Bobby’s like, “No time for that.” and just like jumps in the helicopter. It’s like what?
Ellen: He basically bungee jumps off the side of the,
Alice: literally bungee jumps into the helicopter.
Bex: But not only that, everybody else is, is immediately on board with this plan and holding onto the hose.
Ellen: Well, they, they don’t really have much choice.
Alice: Yeah, I don’t know what happened to Manny. They apparently just threw him on the ground and grabbed the hose instead.
Bex: There, like, there were nurses with popcorn standing in the background watching. So I’m assuming that the nurses have now taken, uh, over Manny’s care. Um, but I just like, I do not want anyone ever to give Buck any [00:13:00] shit about the stupid stuff, like the risky and the reckless stuff that he does on a job, because I’m just gonna point at Bobby and going, the dude jumped off a building with a fire hose wrapped around his waist.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: He learned it from his father. Or maybe it was the other way around.
Alice: Yeah, maybe Bobby learned it from Buck.
Bex: Uh, but anyways, so Bobby gets back into the helicopter. He’s got much, much longer arms than Hen’s. So he manages to get the heart, which is in like this weird chrysalis plastic container. And, uh, either somebody is lying to me, either Grey’s Anatomy is lying to me, or this show is lying to me.
’cause I didn’t think that they did that with organs. Um, but Okay.
Alice: I’m pretty sure it was just in the, their lunch esky.
Bex: I, I thought it just went into like a sealed bag into,
Alice: oh, sorry. Hang on.
Bex: Into esky full of dry ice
Alice: for the Americans, an esky is a cooler. [00:14:00] Um, and for the, for the Kiwis, it’s a chilly box.
Ellen: Chilly bin.
Alice: chilly bin, sorry. chilly bin.
Ellen: A chilly bin.
Alice: chilly bin.
Ellen: Um, yes.
Bex: Anyway,
Ellen: the, but. They, so they weren’t actually handling the heart really. They, it was inside some kind of hermetically sealed thing.
Bex: Again, though. Why were they pulling it out of?
Alice: I don’t know. They’ve been fucking with it the whole helicopter ride
Ellen: like shouldn’t have been. Yeah. That was just showing us what was going on. But maybe they haven’t actually contaminated it.
Bex: We’re not that stupid!
Ellen: I know, I know.
Alice: They could have just had a cooler that said heart on the side and we would’ve been like, okay.
Ellen: It said human organ transportation or something on the side of it.
Bex: We need to, we had multiple lines of dialogue telling us that this was a medevac flight coming in with a heart for a transplant.
Alice: Remember that time that, um, Athena helped out with the transplant? Yes. And she’s just like, oh, “someone’s getting a heart for Valentine’s Day.” And they were like, “It’s a kidney,”
Bex: It’s a liver,
Alice: or a liver, yeah.
Ellen: I forgot about that.
Alice: That was [00:15:00] so good.
Bex: Anyway, so back to the actual heart transplant. Um, Bobby holds up the heart very triumphantly like “I’ve got it.” Um, and the cable, the window washing cable, that was the only thing holding the helicopter up finally gives up the ghost and snaps.
Ellen: Thankfully for Bobby, he is connected to the fire hose and not the helicopter.
Alice: And also luckily there’s no one underneath the helicopter when it falls. ’cause
Ellen: I mean, if you saw a helicopter dangling off the roof of a building, I think you’d get out of there pretty quick. You were,
Alice: I dunno, people are pretty dumb.
Bex: I would hope that the rest of the 118 down on the floor have like, cleared the area,
Alice: I would hope. But I still haven’t seen any background firefighters. Um, but yeah, so Bobby hauls himself up, yeets the heart to a nurse. Um, the doctor, like
Ellen: the nurse like grabs and just scurries outta the way. Like, oh my god, these people are crazy.
Alice: Yeah, there’s a doctor who’s like hanging out even though they’re [00:16:00] super busy downstairs to the point that Eddie and Buck were bagging people manually.
Um, there’s a doctor who’s just like, “oh, that was cool. Can you do a transplant in the dark?” And Bobby’s like, “Ha ha ha. No.”
And then, yeah, Eddie and Buck say that they’re gonna get the generators running and they’re like, I’m sure the city will have power back on.
Ellen: Yeah. ’cause it’s also their job to, uh, fix the generators.
Alice: Yep. They’re multi-skilled. Um, but unfortunately
Bex: next thing we get is a caption saying four days later, and we hear the voiceover of a, uh, a news anchor telling us that after a massive ransomware attack on the city’s infrastructure, Angelenos head into day five of record heat and a citywide power outage.
And I’m at this point going, what the fuck?
Alice: Yeah. We didn’t even know about a heat out heat wave. It’s just, come on. Because of the blackout.
Bex: Did the ransomware attack trigger global warning [00:17:00] to the fact, to the, to the point that it caused a massive heat wave and a blackout?
Alice: Apparently. Yeah.
Ellen: I think that’s just great timing on the part of the hackers.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: I just, uh, see, I think I’m gonna get into this now ’cause it’s making me angry. I think I would’ve been okay if they had proceeded with the citywide, like with it’s out of power, nothing is functioning because of the ransomware attacks. Because when Taylor was doing her little spiel about ransomware attacks in the last episode, she mentioned a couple of cities like Baltimore and Atlanta who had ransomware attacks.
And it literally, literally shut their city down and they had to go back to doing everything with pencil and paper. And it took them years to get their systems back into operation. So the level of chaos that the hackers were causing in episode one, I could, I would quite happily have believed that that chaos was continuing. They did not need to bring in the heat wave.
Alice: It was just [00:18:00] weird. Like it should’ve, I wouldn’t have been mad if it was already hot. And then.
Bex: Yes.
Alice: The power went, went down.
Bex: The, that’s the other thing they’re saying four days later, but then they’re saying day five of the record heat. So that means that last episode we should have been seeing signs of it’s really hot. We should’ve had a mention of a dialogue.
Alice: Yeah. But it was like they got to season two and they’re just like, oh, let’s also do a heat wave. And didn’t mention it. Yeah. Like it was, I don’t know. It was just weird. The heat wave just sort of came outta nowhere.
Bex: Exactly. And that’s, I think that’s why I’m so mad at the heatwave storyline because it’s just so random.
Alice: It’s just stupid,
Bex: random and stupid.
Alice: Um, because they also never mention it again. Like it’s literally just like, oh, there’s a heat wave. And then
Ellen: that’s just the reason that, um, that the people are at Athena’s house.
Alice: Yeah. But they didn’t need a heat wave for that. They would, they could have just been like, oh yeah, we’re the only ones with generators. So people are coming over to charge their stuff and watch tv. Like you didn’t what, why a heat wave?
Bex: Yeah. If the ran, if the ransomware had knocked out the power, like whoever does the power in the city. So nobody could get power from the city, and so you [00:19:00] had to rely on your solar panels and you had to rely on your generators, that storyline would still work.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: It didn’t need to be the heat wave. I think the only thing the heat wave did was, uh, made everyone like all sweaty, um, which brilliant. Love it. Um, because it, it looks great. Um, and I don’t know what else triggers that everybody has to stay in the firehouse, like the emergency protocol? Which possibly could have been brought into, um, operation it’s not by the,
Ellen: Isn’t that just the power thing?
Bex: I don’t, it’s, mm. I don’t know.
Ellen: It’s it’s weird.
Bex: It’s weird. Anyway, so apparently it’s five days of extreme heat, um, which has caused rolling blackouts. The death toll has reached 15, uh, mostly due to heat exhaustion and. We hear the reporter go from television to over a radio as we follow this dude, um, walking towards [00:20:00] Athena’s house where apparently, um, Michael is throwing a party.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Oh, this is so funny. So Michael and David have just invited everyone in the neighborhood over because they have generator and um, and when he is talking on the phone to Athena about it, she’s just like, “Are you having a party?” And he’s like, “Oh no, Mom.”
I am like, not only do you go over there all the time for breakfast or whatever takes your fancy, you also just randomly throw parties.
Alice: Yeah. Why not?
Bex: In his defense, I don’t think he invited everyone over. I think everyone knows that. Like either they saw or they know that the grants have a generator and so they’ve come over and gone, Hey, can I charge something?
Can I put something in my freezer? And it’s just word has got out that the Grants, the Grant house is still operational and so everybody’s now flooding there.
Ellen: Seems that way. Yeah.
Alice: But yeah, Michael’s throwing a party. It’s a great time.
Bex: Yes. And [00:21:00] Harry…
Ellen: And David actually gets to say some words this week.
Alice: I know, right? I actually realized that David was there. It was very exciting.
Bex: Um, and Harry is using the opportunity to pad his pocket money a little bit.
Ellen: Oh,
Alice: Fucking Harry
Ellen: so, so enterprising, but also, what the fuck?
Alice: Oh, so funny.
Bex: Um, because he’s taken the opportunity to, uh, charge the neighbors to come in. He’s like, he’s got a bouncer going with an entry fee.
Ellen: Yeah. And, um, Michael’s pretty horrified by this.
Alice: Michael’s like “we’re supposed to be helping people,” and Harry’s like, “yes, by charging them money,”
Ellen: I’m helping myself. So he makes him, he makes him give everyone back their money and he is like,
Alice: he’s such a spoil sport, but okay, fine.
Ellen: So Athena shows up at the hospital and where apparently they have their power back. I don’t know if this is the same hospital as before, but the power’s [00:22:00] back on at the hospital. So good job 118.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Um, the, uh, Athena introduces herself and Dr. Zimmerman comes and says, yes. Oh, you, we got, you know, someone called Athena to ask, asking for her. They start walking. And apparently some guy was brought in from, he was in MacArthur Park, his throat was cut, blah, blah, blah.
He lost a lot of blood, but, ” we were able to repair the wound, but it caused a stroke and we didn’t think he was gonna make it. But this morning he came to long enough to write this,” and she pulls out a set of paper and it’s got Sergeant Athena Grant written on it
Bex: in very, in completely legible handwriting may I add?
Alice: Yeah. Thank God.
Ellen: Yeah. Oh yeah. And um,
Bex: like had a stroke, but still has perfect membership.
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: yeah. Well, he’s obviously writing with his hand that didn’t have the stroke on the side of his. You know how it only affects one side anyway. Um, do you know this man? And she walks around the [00:23:00] corner and it’s Lou, he’s alive. He’s okay. Well, he’s not okay because his throat is still, you know.
Alice: Yeah. He’s, he’s not great. Can’t talk.
Ellen: He can’t talk. But he’s, he’s not well, doesn’t look well
Bex: He had a stroke. He’s not okay, but least
Ellen: he’s not okay.
Alice: He’s, he’s fine. I’m sure he’ll be right.
Ellen: He will be some form of fine in the end. Yes. Hopefully
Bex: Five days. He was in the park for five days and nobody knew he was missing. And I’m just going, how, how does someone go missing for five days?
Alice: No, no. He was brought in five days ago.
Ellen: Yeah, he was, he was in the hospital in a coma for five days.
Alice: Yeah. He wasn’t in the park for five days.
Bex: Okay. No, but
Ellen: God no.
Bex: How was he unidentified for five days?
Alice: Oh yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And like even Athena’s, just like, how the fuck did no one notice?
Bex: Because even
Ellen: the hospital has been really busy.
Bex: No, no, no, no. But okay. Even if, even if like,
Alice: did he have it, was he on vacation for five days and then just
Bex: No, but see, this is the [00:24:00] thing, even if you assume that the day that he was working and he caught Jeffrey, that was his last day of his shift, and then he went into his RDOs.
The RDOs are usually only three or four days anyway. So he should have been back at work for at least a day. How did nobody notice that he didn’t come into work?
Alice: Yeah. No one can.
Bex: How nobody noticed
Ellen: Doesn’t Athena actually ask that later?
Alice: He doesn’t have any family? Yeah, she does,
Bex: but shouldn’t.
Ellen: She’s like, how, how did no one notice?
Bex: I, I don’t, I don’t understand. Look, I can understand no call, no show. Um, but I would’ve thought that for police, they’d be a little bit more worried about the fact that one of their detectives doesn’t just doesn’t show up work.
Alice: Yeah. It’s great. They don’t care apparently.
Bex: Yeah. This
Ellen: Well, for the drama, he’s been in a coma for five days and no one knew.
Bex: This whole episode. I think I just, I realized the other realized earlier this whole episode is we want x, do we wanna tell X story? We don’t give [00:25:00] a fuck how we get to X story.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: We are just gonna hand wave all the details. You just, just, here is the end result. Just focus on that. Ignore the journey. Just go to the end result.
Alice: Exactly.
Bex: Which sucks, because I kind of like the journey sometimes.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Um,
Alice: sometimes.
Bex: So yeah. So not only did they misplace Lou for five days, um, the captain, captain Elaine is about to come to the realization that they misplaced Jeffrey Hudson for five days. ’cause he’s not in prison where they thought he was.
Alice: Yeah. How the fuck did the prison not notice?
Bex: Because Lou never got him to prison. The, all they knew was that he called Athena and said, I’ve got him. He never got him into booking.
Alice: No, because they,
Bex: he never,
Alice: they check and they’re like, oh, his cell’s empty. And it’s like, did you not fucking notice? Like what?
Bex: Well, they knew he was missing, but they didn’t realize that he’d been found again because he never officially recorded [00:26:00] in that he found him. So the prison’s just thinking, oh, Jeffrey’s on the lam. Meanwhile Athena and Captain Maynard are going, oh, he’s been taken back anyway. Um,
Alice: yeah, I guess that part sort of checks out.
Bex: So they’re freaking out because Jeffrey’s got a five day head start on them. Um, and they decide to retrace their steps and go and talk to, um, Jeffrey’s lawyer, Lila, because she was the last person who saw Jeffrey and Lou.
Ellen: This is kind of the part where Athena and Elaine start joining a load of dots that like, I know they have to for story expediency, but I’m just like, okay.
No. Anyway, um, so back to the, the 118 station house. There’s no power. So like a bunch of like, um, [00:27:00] camping lights, like lanterns around and they have to cook on some kind of gas burners, I’m guessing. ’cause none of the kitchen stuff is actually working. Bobby is cooking some kind of powdered eggs. So all of the shifts are are living at, at the station house?
Bex: Yes. Apparently. I don’t know why
Alice: they’re on emergency. Like, because it’s an emergency. They’ve just got everyone at the power, the powerhouse? The station house.
Bex: Powerless house.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: The powerless house.
Ellen: Yeah. Just in case they need them, I suppose.
Bex: Yeah. So Chim’s not upset about that. He’s upset about the fact that he’s eating powdered eggs and he wants, he wonders if Bobby can’t just have like a stash of the good stuff in the back of the refrigerator for the, uh, for the, A shift.
Ellen: For the, A shift
Alice: for the A shift.
Ellen: It’s like jeez, Chim
Bex: and Bobby is not like [00:28:00] “Chim, we’re all equal. Everybody gets food. There is no such, there’s no hierarchy.” And instead he is like, “You know what? I would, but the refrigerator, you know, we gotta cut back. our power you usage.”
Alice: Yeah. We can’t open the refrigerator.
Bex: I totally would if I could buddy. Um, so, uh,
Ellen: and then this is, this is like a bright spot in this episode actually. It’s called, yes, I love this. ’cause Chim’s like, “Can I, can I borrow your charger? My phone’s dead.” Hen comes in, Hen comes in and he asks Hen if he can borrow her charger and she’s like, “Oh no, sorry, this is my department issued personal charging device.”
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: And sharing is against protocol and Chim’s like, what the hell are you talking about?
Alice: What are you talking about?
Ellen: Where, who issued you that? And um, and then we go back to, so this is funny because as soon as Buck shows up with the clipboard and I’m like, who the hell gave Buck a clipboard? And then later Chim actually says,
Alice: Chim literally says, who the fuck gave Buck a clipboard?
Ellen: Never give him a clipboard.
Bex: I think Buck gave himself a clipboard, to be honest,
Alice: I think [00:29:00] Buck found a clipboard in the dark and was like, fuck yeah. Clipboard.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: So, um, Buck has set up a, um, a very formal procedure-based, clipboard focused, um. Charging station.
Ellen: Like a, like a lending library? Yeah. For portable chargers.
Bex: Yeah. So once Chim has filled out the requisition form and submitted it and it has been reviewed and approved, he will be issued a personal charging device. Once the device is dead, he returns it to the probie charging pool, where it’ll be recharged for you. Said probie charging pool looks at Buck and goes, “you could just say Ravi” and then turns to Chim and goes, “Ravi will charge it for you.”
Alice: I love Ravi so much. Um, Buck ignores Ravi and just goes to “One charge per 24 hours is the limit. Do not attempt to bribe me or you will be docked two charges.”
Ellen: You better hope everyone’s got like a pretty new phone.
Alice: Yeah. Um, Chim just [00:30:00] goes, “Give me a charger or Uncle Buck will never see his niece again,” and Buck’s just like, oh my God. Give him a charger. Give him a charger.
Ellen: Yeah. Adorable.
Alice: Poor Buck, poor Chim. Um,
Ellen: poor Ravi
Alice: and then yeah, Chim’s like, “So let this be a lesson. Never give Buck a clipboard, never.” And Buck’s like, “Excuse me for being efficient.” And Chim’s like, “yeah, that’s one word for what you are.”
Bex: So it’s, Chim runs back up the stairs to show off his charging device or eat some powdered eggs, um, he crosses paths with Eddie. He’s coming downstairs possibly to return his charging, um, his charging device to the probie charging pool, um, when he gets interrupted because Christopher has arrived at the station with Ana.
Ellen: Yay. He’s so excited. And so’s Eddie
Bex: to see Christopher,
Ellen: he’s just so excited to see them. Sorry, he’s,
Bex: he’s excited
Ellen: Eddie’s really excited to see Christopher.
Bex: Christopher. [00:31:00]
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Ana has brought food. She said it was Christopher’s idea. So they’ve brought a whole bunch of salad. Um. Which is probably maybe not the best thing to have in when it’s a power outage and you need to keep Yeah. The, and
Ellen: the fridges are not working.
Bex: Fridges
Alice: also, who the fuck wants salad? Like
Ellen: Yeah. I thought they would bring like pizza,
Bex: like especially the tuna salads that that’s not gonna keep.
Alice: Yeah, no.
Bex: Um, so Eddie’s ecstatic to see Christopher, Buck is ecstatic to see Christopher
Alice: Buck is so excited to see Christopher.
Ellen: He’s so happy.
Bex: And, um, Ravi’s just kind of hanging around going, oh, who are these people? So Eddie intro. Eddie introduces Ravi to Chris. He’s completely ignoring Ana at this point.
Alice: Yeah. Ana who?
Bex: Chris looks at Ravi and he is like, “Oh, you’re a firefighter?” And Robbie’s like, “I’m [00:32:00] a probationary firefighter.” And Chris is like, “oh, did you do something wrong?” And Buck’s like, “Constantly.”
Alice: I love that so much.
Bex: Constantly!
Alice: Constantly.
Bex: Which we think is funny. Ana thinks is funny. Nobody else thinks is funny ’cause she’s the only one that laughs. And then everyone’s just standing around going, that was really weird. Why did you laugh at that again? Eddie has made no introductions. So Ana takes it upon herself to introduce herself to Ravi.
She’s like, “ah, hi, I’m Ana.” And Ravi’s like, “oh hi. You must be Eddie’s wife.”
Alice: Awkward.
Bex: And then to make it worse, Christopher goes, “Not yet.”
Ellen: Not yet. What the hell, Chris?
Alice: And so Eddie is, Eddie is totally not panicking. Like Eddie is not freaking the fuck out here. He like, he, he’s
Ellen: thankfully, he doesn’t actually have a panic attack this time.
Alice: Yeah. So Buck is just watching like Buck’s just like,
Bex: but he starts to something ’cause Buck’s looking at him going, dude, you okay?[00:33:00]
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, extremely awkward. So, um, Ana’s just sort of looking around going, “Even in the dark, this place is amazing.” And then, and he’s like, oh no, she hasn’t even ever been here before.
Alice: Yeah. So she’s also, she’s never been here, she’s never met anyone. Like Buck obviously knows who she is because Buck lives in Eddie’s pocket. Um, but yeah, full on. Eddie is like, oh, this is awkward.
Bex: And instead of going, let me give you a tour, he’s gone, “Oh, Ravi, will you take my girlfriend on a tour of my workplace?”
Alice: Literally gives her to Ravi and fucks off. And she’s like, ah, okay.
Ellen: Yeah. And Buck, Buck just looks so confused. He is like, what just happened?
Alice: What the fuck are you doing? Like what? Yeah.
Bex: No, Eddie doesn’t panic. Of course he doesn’t.
Alice: Eddie never panics.
Ellen: Oh, he’s hopeless.
Bex: I just. [00:34:00] Oh, They’ve definitely made a choice with this storyline. I don’t know where or why they’ve made this choice, but it’s an amazing choice.
Alice: It’s pretty great.
Bex: Um, so while Eddie’s not panicking and Ravi is giving, um, a tour of the firehouse, um, a SWAT team has rolled up on, uh, Lila, the lawyer’s house, um, with Athena and Elaine tagging along.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Um, and wouldn’t you know it Lila’s dead?
Alice: Oh my God.
Bex: No SWAT team needed.
Alice: Didn’t expect that.
Ellen: I didn’t, I thought they were running away together, but apparently no.
Bex: Well, that’s what Elaine thought too. She thought that the two of them were like hooking up and, um, in, she calls ’em lovers.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Athena somehow has managed to get deep psychological [00:35:00] insight into Jeffrey and realizes that Lila is more akin to the, uh, the, the fan club than she should have been.
That she was, she was smitten just like the other fools. So she says, uh, that Lila probably saw Jeffrey bring, led away in cuffs and intervened on his behalf, and then Jeffrey killed her.
Alice: Such a nice guy.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. Elaine calls her out on being too deep inside this guy’s head. And Athena’s like, “Not deep enough. He’s always two steps ahead.” yes, but they don’t, they have no idea where he is.
Bex: They don’t have no idea where he is. Elaine is assuming that he would’ve fled the city. Athena thinks that the city in crisis, um, without power, is probably a, the perfect hunting ground for a predator like Jeffrey.
And they hatch a dastardly plan where they decide not to warn Jeffrey’s other [00:36:00] victims, but instead dangle them like bait, hoping that Jeffrey will come back for round two, three, whatever. Yeah. So while that’s going on, we are finally catching up with the beginning of episode one because the 118 have been called for an animal attack.
Alice: Oh, this is so funny though.
Bex: Um, Buck for once is, well, not for once. Buck as always is exposition firefighter, but he’s actually saying stuff that makes sense. ’cause he is like, “So the ransomware busts open all the cages in LA Zoo and they call us. No one thinks to call, you know, animal control?” Like, yes. Thank you, Buck.
Ellen: As we ask every time there’s an animal involved.
Alice: Yeah. Um, apparently animal control were busy. Yep.
Bex: And Buck is like, “but I, I mean this is not me and Eddie bagging a turkey in South Pasadena. [00:37:00] You know, they have serious predators at the LA Zoo. They’ve got a snow leopard, a sumatran tiger.” Um, and then Eddie’s like editorializing for the rest of the 118. He’s like “He takes Christopher to the zoo all the time. He’s got the place memorized.”
Alice: So I just want to point out, just, just quickly, the last scene we saw Buck and Eddie in Eddie was freaking the fuck out because Chris was joking that Ana was gonna be his wife and you know, he just literally like abandoned Ana to Ravi. And now we get this scene
Bex: mm-hmm.
Alice: Where Eddie very proudly is like. He’s got the place memorized.
Bex: He takes Christopher to the zoo all the time.
Alice: Yep. Totally normal.
Bex: He’s so, he’s so fond and so happy.
Ellen: It’s very fond, and also making fun.
Alice: Buck’s like “a chimp, will literally rip your face off without [00:38:00] even thinking twice about it.” and Hen’s like “Just smile, Buck,”
Bex: which I would like to point out would
Alice: And Eddie just grins.
Bex: It is the, it’s just the worst thing you can do to a chimp or pretty much any predator because they,
Alice: yeah. Don’t show your teeth.
Bex: They will read the bearing of your teeth. Like humans, we see that as a happy thing. They see it as bearing a teeth. It’s aggressive, so please do not smile at a chimpanzee or pretty much any kind of predator. Please don’t. Um,
Ellen: But it is very cute that they’re all smiling.
Bex: They’re all literally grinning as they, they’re grinning at. It’s great. Um, yeah,
Alice: there’s, there’s not, there’s actually no panicking in sight,
Bex: Nope
Ellen: no, very chill.
Bex: And so they pull up to Hollywood Boulevard. Um, except unlike last episode, we get music to accompany this walk down, um, Hollywood Boulevard. We get “Welcome to the Jungle” by Guns N Roses.
Alice: Of course we do.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: And it, it’s literally they just [00:39:00] reuse the scenes, um, from episode one
Ellen: that Yeah, the whole thing is the same except there’s a couple more animals I think than there was before.
Bex: Different,
Ellen: there’s like extra,
Bex: there’s an extra bird,
Ellen: birds.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, and music.
Ellen: They’ve still got the emus and the giraffe gife and stuff. And there also. And the elephant.
Bex: And the elephant. Yep. Uh, but then we get the continuation of the scene where, um, Hen is very helpfully saying, um, “You know, someone called in an animal attack, but like I, I see the animals, but I don’t see the human that they attacked.”
And they eventually find one, he’s stuck under an incredibly heavy, incredibly dangerous patio umbrella, which is, you know, really definitely needs the 118’s help
Ellen: he’s just hiding,
Bex: getting out from under that. Yeah, I know he’s probably hiding from the dangerous animals, but I’m just like, it’s an umbrella my dude.
Alice: Yeah. Literally like, I don’t know what, anyway,
Bex: [00:40:00] um,
Ellen: he broke his leg, so he probably can’t move
Bex: he didn’t break his arms.
Ellen: Yeah. But like he’s hiding behind the umbrella and like, you know,
Bex: he’s hiding behind the umbrella from
in case they come back.
Something that’s screeched he’s hiding behind the umbrella for something that’s screeched and spat poison at him.
So, um, Eddie and Chim are assigned to help this dude out. Uh, Hen is going into this souvenir shop that apparently this guy and his boss Ivan were in when they got attacked and Ivan is still in there. Um, Buck is on animal control. And his instructions are literally, if an animal makes a move, control it.
Alice: Yep. Lucky Buck.
Ellen: He looks absolutely terrified actually.
Alice: Of course he does. Scary.
Ellen: Yeah. But the only animal who’s walk, who walks past is a camel. I mean, camels are kind of scary when you’re, [00:41:00] when you’re up close to one.
Bex: Camels are mean.
Ellen: Yeah. And they spit at you and Yeah, they do bite and stuff. But anyway, uh, inside the shop,
Bex: oh god,
Ellen: they’re trying to find Ivan. Bobby’s… this, this is so ridiculous. So Bobby is like whispering, like going, “Ivan, are you in here?” And then Ivan’s like screaming. He’s like, ah, help me. And so they find him and he’s got like heaps of blood all over the floor. And um, he looks like he’s in pretty bad shape and apparently
Bex: he’s covered in blood. He’s got a chewed up ear.
Ellen: Yeah. Whatever it is, is bitten half his ear off.
Bex: Yes. And just, uh, they’ve seen Ivan, they’ve seen the horrific injuries that he’s suffered, just as they’re about to ask Ivan, uh, what did this to him? Um, the scary, horrendous screeching poison spitting creature steps between them and Ivan. And it’s an alpaca.
Alice: It’s an [00:42:00] alpaca.
Bex: And see,
Ellen: do you think this is a real alpaca?
Bex: Oh, sometimes I think yes. Sometimes I think no.
Ellen: Yeah. Sometimes it moves in a, in a way that looks animatronic and I’m like, is this computer generated? Or like,
Bex: I dunno if it’s computer generated. I feel like sometimes it’s animatronic, like it’s a alpaca head on a stick or something. Um,
Ellen: yeah.
Bex: But yes, it’s an alpaca. And here’s the the weird thing is that they take, they play this scene absolutely seriously.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Like they are terrified of these alpacas.
Ellen: They are terrified.
Alice: It’s so funny.
Bex: Which
Ellen: it’s very Jurassic Park.
Bex: It’s, they are So
Alice: it’s, it’s actually Jurassic Park. Yeah,
Bex: it is. It’s actually Jurassic Park. But I don’t know whether it would’ve been better if they’d kind of played up the comedy of it being alpacas? ’cause I’m
Ellen: so, he calls it an alpaca and now I’m like wondering whether I’ve [00:43:00] been saying it wrong my whole life.
Bex: No, but
Alice: Bobby says Al. Bobby. No. Hen says alpaca.
Bex: Hen says alpaca. Bobby says alpaca. So,
Alice: and then immediately also changes to alpaca. And it’s like, okay.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: All right.
Bex: So we we’re going with alpaca. I feel like we have the correct pronunciation. Um, but
Alice: look, we are going alpaca. Yeah.
Ellen: Okay. Someone can, can correct us if we’re wrong.
Alice: We don’t care. We’re Australian. We say alpaca. Alpaca mate.
Bex: I don’t understand how we’re supposed to take this scene seriously.
Ellen: Oh, no, no, we’re absolutely not.
Alice: I don’t think we are supposed to take, we’re not supposed to take this scene seriously.
Bex: No, but
Ellen: no,
Bex: but here’s but here’s the thing.
Alice: That’s so stupid.
Bex: Why? But why didn’t they play that up? Why didn’t they have like this alpaca step out and they bring out like the bouncy circusy fun music in the background as they go through. Instead they’ve got like the really dramatic,
Ellen: because it’s Jurassic Park
Bex: music attention.
Alice: Yeah, it’s Jurassic Park.
Ellen: It, it is very [00:44:00] tense.
Bex: But couldn’t they have had like the, couldn’t they have had the exact same scene with them treating this alpaca like it was one of those spitters, but then had the comedy music playing underneath?
Alice: Nah, it’s funnier being serious.
Ellen: Yeah, I don’t know. Would’ve just had a slightly different feel to it. Maybe, but
Bex: I mean, I know alpacas can be very fierce. I mean, there is a reason why
Ellen: they’re the greenest animal, you know?
Bex: There’s, there’s a reason why they use them to protect sheep. I just don’t know that they would attack a human.
Ellen: Yeah. This alpaca has got like blood all over its mouth. It looks terrifying,
Alice: it’s literally like a blood all over it. It’s so funny.
Bex: Like it’s almost like it’s gone rabid. Like a rabid alpaca.
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: yeah, yeah. Like it’s gone in for the kill. Apparently Ivan also has a busted ankle, so I don’t know how they end up getting him out of there because they’re like cornered by the alpaca in the end.[00:45:00]
Bex: So hand takes, I hate, I hate that. I know. I hate that I paid this much attention to this scene. Hen takes a bag of like Doritos, but off brand. ’cause they couldn’t pay Dorito for the use of the license. So it’s a pair bag of off brand corn chips. And she lays a trail. It’s, yeah, for the alpaca away from Ivan.
And so the alpaca is following this corn chip trail, which Bobby is then literally dragging Ivan by the wrists towards the door. Um, but uh, just as Hen’s about to lay the last chip down, she’s got like a loud hailer strapped to her chest and it drops to the floor and it sets it off. And so that scares the alpaca and it comes racing for them.
And just as they’re about to reach the door, it stops and they’re like, why isn’t attacking? And it makes this noise. And a second rabid alpaca steps out from the t-shirts. And Hen’s like, “It’s called its friend, clever girl.”
Alice: It’s called its friend. Yeah. So they full on [00:46:00] Jurassic Park.
Bex: Yep. She literally says “Clever girl.” And so they’re just like, fuck it, we’re running. And they just yeet themselves backwards out the door, which then leads to a very, um, smirking Eddie and a Buck who thinks this is absolutely fucking hilarious.
Alice: It’s amazing. Like, “so you ran from an alpaca?” And Bobby’s like “two alpacas and there was no running.”
Bex: He’s like trying to like stuff his dignity back into his turnout
Alice: and like Buck’s, like “Uhhuh, Sure.” And Eddie’s like, mm-hmm. And like, does this like frown nod thing? It’s so funny. And I had again been reading, Leading with the Left all afternoon. I was having a great time with all the Buddie moments
Bex: and Bobby’s just so done with them. It’s just like, get back in the truck.
Alice: Get in the truck. Yeah.
Bex: Um, and then just to complete the, um, the entire moment they get [00:47:00] Ivan loaded up into one of the ambulances, um, Chim climbs into the ambulance with Hen turns to her, and very seriously says, “After careful consideration, I’ve decided not to endorse this park.”
Ellen: Another direct line from Jurassic Park.
Bex: Yep. Yep. There’s a giant dinosaur coming outta the top of Ripley’s Believe it or Not. Um, as they drive off,
Alice: like they’re shoving this, um, uh, shoving this reference, right down our throat.
Ellen: Just in case you didn’t realize. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. I would also like to have a quick shout out to, um, Boyd and Maxwell who have returned to the 118 and we have a new member in Blacks. So three more, three more background firefighters to add to my list. All right. Do we do this stupid ventilator scene?
Alice: Yeah, the,
Ellen: oh yeah,
Alice: the heartwarming scene,
Bex: which
Ellen: look, it was quite heartwarming but completely implausible. [00:48:00] So let’s just get on with it.
Bex: Alright, so kid on a ventilator, we dunno why he is on the ventilator, but he’s on a ventilator.
It’s apparently on battery power and it’s running out of battery. Um,
Alice: oh no.
Bex: And so the mother calls 9-1-1 because, you know, she needs power for that ventilator. Um, and as she’s on the phone with May, the battery finally dies. And so she’s left to manually bagging her kid so that he doesn’t die.
Ellen: I feel it would’ve been better to take him to a hospital rather than just being at home on, on battery power.
Bex: I have feeling, I have a feeling that the line that she mentioned that the kids got an infection, so they’re probably like trying to keep him isolated in a bubble. Which is, you know exactly why you leave your window open for neighbors to come crawling in and out of
Alice: Yeah. Obviously.
Bex: Yeah. So May can’t do anything, um, about getting power to the [00:49:00] house, but she has the brilliant idea to, uh, use the sun.
So she Google Maps, stalks this woman’s address and then cold calls the first house she can find that has solar panels on like Google satellites and says that she needs that woman’s house’s battery for one of this woman’s neighbors. So the woman walks outside to a, a box, um, on the outside of her house and plugs a cord into it.
At which point I’m staring at her going, what the fuck is that? And what is she like? What is that? And then I just gave up and went, I don’t care. I’m not even gonna look it up. ’cause I like my, I’m obviously missing something, but I don’t know what I’m missing. Or if they just,
Ellen: so the, the solar power solar system has to be plugged into an [00:50:00] inverter in order for it to power that house and also to send power back to the grid.
If this is in Australia, I assume it’s the same in the US I don’t know, but I’m pretty sure that you can’t just plug something into an inverter at night and have it like power something else. The only way you can do that is if you actually have a battery to store the power that you have generated during the day.
And in 2021, very few people had batteries. Um, and for someone,
Alice: yeah, they’re more common now,
Ellen: but now they’re common because the prices have come down. Yeah, I’ve got one. Yeah, it’s, the prices have come down a lot in the last year or so, like before that, it was just real way too expensive for that technology for your house, not, not worth it.
Bex: So if a triple zero operator called you right now and said, your neighbor needs your house’s batteries, could you plug an [00:51:00] extension cord into something?
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
Bex: Like is there an outlet attached to your battery that you could plug?
Ellen: Yeah. You can, well, I mean, the battery is, is hooked up to our house’s electrics.
So we would have, if the, if our power went out in the area, we would still have power because it would be running off the battery. So you could just plug it into the wall and it would
Bex: Oh, and feed it out the window
Ellen: come outta the battery. Also, electric cars have very large batteries in them. Lots of people around have electric cars now, nowadays in 2025. So there would be lots of power around, but back then the only electric cars were Teslas. And there was still quite a lot of them, I guess then, but like, I don’t know. But anyway, that would ruin the story. Um, the, the, um,
Alice: well the Tesla aren’t the, the Tesla cars aren’t working. Remember? ’cause of the
Bex: No, that was the self-driving cars. There’s a difference between the electric cars and self-driving cars. Electric cars just [00:52:00] used electricity for power, but they’re still manual, as in they still need a driver.
Ellen: But Teslas were the only ones
Alice: Teslas self-driving
Ellen: drove themselves though. Anyway, don’t, let’s not go into,
Bex: so,
Ellen: so this I’m just, the, the idea of this, of the, the idea of May, looking on a satellite map, picking the nearest solar panel house and that person having a battery is,
Bex: is, yeah.
Ellen: Extremely lucky.
Alice: Very unlikely. Yeah.
Bex: Yeah,
Ellen: unlikely. Um, anyway, it doesn’t matter. ’cause they get power somehow and they attach a bunch of jumper leads or something down the street.
Bex: I think pretty much every single neighbor comes out with an extension cord or a power bank or something so they can, like, it’s, instead of hands Across America, it’s extension cords across the neighborhood.
Um, all the way to this woman’s house, except just,
Ellen: They’re lucky it’s not raining,
Bex: it’s a heat wave. It’s too hot to rain. [00:53:00] Um, and then just at the last minute they realized that they’re like a meter too short. So then someone digs up fairy lights, and so there’s fairy lights for the last stretch between the house and the, and the woman’s.
And like the, the ventilator comes back on and the kid starts breathing or the machine starts breathing for the kid and then the woman’s all like, oh my God, I love my neighbors. And the neighbors are staring from the next door neighbor’s yard staring at her creepily, like waiting for their accolades. Um,
Alice: yeah, it’s super weird.
Bex: It’s super weird.
Ellen: It’s, yeah. Anyway, it works. And they get power back and the kid’s fine.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Well,
Bex: and may feels good ’cause she’s helped somebody. The end.
Ellen: It’s, it’s a neighborhood’s heartwarming neighborhood story.
Alice: Yeah. Like, it’s, it’s cute, but it’s just very unbelievable.
Bex: Anyway, let’s move on. ’cause Buck’s got a clipboard again.
Alice: Oh no.
Ellen: Yeah. [00:54:00]
Alice: Um, so Eddie’s asleep on a cot bed. Um, we still don’t see the bunk room. We still have not seen the bunk room. No idea what the bunk room looks like. Eddie’s in the gym
Bex: the B shifts in the bunk room right now.
Alice: Apparently.
Bex: Yeah. They, they’ve set up the, the gym and the engine bay just full of cot beds.
Alice: Yeah. So he’s totally napping and Buck just like plops down and goes, “you sleeping or just pretending?” And Eddie’s like, “well, I was trying to until you interrupted.”
Bex: So was everybody else around Eddie before Buck interrupted
Alice: Molly? Literally before like boys The Giant,
Bex: once again, you were having a very private conversation out in public.
Alice: Always.
Bex: Uh, so Buck asks Eddie how he’s feeling and Eddie’s like, I’m, “it’s hot, I’m sweating” and Buck’s like, “it’s, it’s not like a cold sweat though, right?”
Alice: I’m sweating out of places I didn’t know I could. And it’s like, didn’t you, weren’t you in Afghanistan? But sure. [00:55:00]
Bex: He’s also from Texas.
Alice: Yeah. Like, how are you?
Ellen: Yeah, but that was ages ago. You can acclimatize.
Bex: Uh, so yeah, so Buck’s incredibly worried that the sweat is not just, you know, heat sweat, but it’s like heart attack, sweat. Um, and Eddie’s just like, “Oh my God, you don’t give up, do you?” Buck’s like you need, literally, “You need to tell me if something is wrong.” Like there is a demand that he be updated as to Eddie’s wellbeing.
Alice: Eddie’s status. Yeah. That’s,
Bex: I mean, in the back of my mind, I’m thinking he’s probably freaking that Eddie’s, that Eddie’s about to die and he’s gonna get Chris. He is like,
Alice: yeah. He’s like, please don’t gimme Chris. Please don’t gimme Chris, please.
Ellen: I’m, he’s like, now I’m in your will. You need to keep me updated on everything that is happening.
Alice: Um, yeah. So Eddie’s like, “I’m fine Buck” and Buck’s. Like, “well, people who are fine don’t go and see cardiologists, so you need to tell me.” [00:56:00] Um, so Eddie gets up
Ellen: finally, Eddie opens up,
Alice: up, he, he sits up and he is like, “all right. It was a panic attack, not a heart attack. Panic.” And Buck’s first thing is when? “Since when do you panic?” Like he, it’s like, it’s like it’s been a catchphrase of Eddie’s. He’s like, I don’t panic. It’s like, we’ve never heard Eddie say that he doesn’t panic, but Buck knows it well enough to be like, you don’t panic.
Bex: And he’s like, “That’s what I said.”
Alice: Yeah,
Bex: but I mean, can we give Edmundo a slight land, a round of applause here for coming to the realization that he does in fact panic. Um,
Alice: he definitely panics,
Bex: although he has narrowed down the circumstances very, very specific set of circumstances under which he does panic. Um, and he says that those specific circumstances is Ana. Ana makes him panic.
Alice: Yeah, Ana makes him panic. And fucks, like, “I thought things were great with her.” And he’s just like, “Yeah, she’s been a godsend through all this. Staying with Christopher. [00:57:00] But I think that’s what’s causing the panic.”
Bex: Can I just point out that the first panic attack happened before
Alice: Before it? Yes. Like Eddie Diaz.
Ellen: Yeah. But then he goes on to say that there, they’re a ready made family and he doesn’t, he’s not ready for that. So that started before all of this.
Bex: I know, but I, it’s just the fact, the fact that he’s attributing it to what’s happening now and makes conveniently forgetting that it happened well before the, um, all quote unquote all this,
Ellen: look, he’s coming clean. Give him some slack.
Bex: Like I said, it’s tiny, but
Ellen: he’s finally opening up
Bex: tiny round of applause for Edmundo. Um, but despite the fact that he’s come to this realization that he does in fact panic and specifically panics about Ana, he’s not gonna do anything about it because Christopher loves her. And he kind of likes her.
He says that she’s the first woman he’s ever wanted to spend this much time with [00:58:00] since Shannon. Not that he likes her, not that he loves her, he just likes spending time with her.
Alice: Yeah. So he literally says, “I’m, I think I’m just gonna stick it out,” and Buck’s like “Stick it out? That’s not the way you talk about someone you’re in love with.” and Eddie goes, “My kid loves her.” And Buck goes, “Is that enough?”
Bex: Has he been talking to Carla?
Alice: Oh,
Bex: but no, he has very, he has firsthand experience of what it’s like to be the person that’s someone sticks it out with. And it’s not fun.
Alice: Poor Buck.
Ellen: Yeah. “If you don’t wanna hurt Ana, you owe it to her. To be honest, honest.” And Eddie’s just “whatever,” like
Alice: Yeah, it just too hard.
Ellen: It’s a lot. I’m not gonna,
Alice: it feels like a lot man. And just like lies back down and Buck’s like, okay,
Bex: Buck’s like, “Well, it’s not like we’re going home anytime soon. You got plenty of time to think about it.”
Alice: Oh, it’s [00:59:00] so funny.
Ellen: Eddie’s like the king of like just sticking things out I think.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Uh, so while these two are having their heart to heart, um, Chim is at another part of the station on the phone with Maddie’s voicemail, uh, leaving her a message just saying that he was calling to say hey and that he loves her. Um, and Hen is totally not eavesdropping, but she kind of is eavesdropping.
Alice: She’s absolutely eavesdropping. Yeah.
Bex: Um, and she’s like, “Hey, you know, is everything okay?” And Chim’s like, “uh, you know, I’m, I’m just worried about Maddie. ’cause you know, I’ve been here for days and Maddie’s at home alone in the apartment with the baby and no power.”
And Hen’s like, “It’s Maddie. She’ll be fine.” Chim literally looks around to make sure nobody else is eavesdropping and goes, “Yeah, but Maddie’s not Maddie right now.”
She’s got, he lays it out, so she’s got postpartum depression and [01:00:00] it’s kind of been a rollercoaster. Right. Um, and no one else knows. And like I know that there’s literally a line of dialogue where, um, Chim says that no one else knows, because having other people knowing would just make it worse. So, because she already feels like a failure because she’s struggling.
What they made a big deal about letting the Lees back into Chim’s life and specifically opening up to the Lees as family. Where the fuck are Lees in this?
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: What did they take Albert and go, okay, our job now is done. He’s all good.
Alice: Yeah. Like, we’ll look after this one.
Bex: And now he’s fine. And
Maybe they forgot about the Lees.
I 100% believe that they either forgot about the Lees or they went, you know what, we just, we don’t wanna get anybody else in for this episode. We can’t afford to have the actors, the actors aren’t available. It’s just, it’s yet another, it’s a story
Ellen: they need to make Maddie struggle on her own. [01:01:00]
Bex: Oh, they 100% want to make Maddie struggle like a hundred percent.
But it’s just like they’ve, they’ve built these storylines and they’ve built these characters and then they just forget about them and it frustrates me.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Mm-hmm. Yeah. And then how Hen tell tells him off for hovering and it, it’s like,
Bex: oh.
Ellen: It’s like he’s, he’s just trying to check in with her and make sure she’s okay. Like,
Alice: yeah,
Ellen: I dunno if it’s hovering.
Bex: This is, this is so much shades of Hen telling Karen just to get over it after the last round of IV f fails, like you’ve grieved for enough, it’s time to like get back to normal. ’cause you know, I need to have a home cooked meal on my table when I walk in from work. I was like, sometimes they write Hen to be so insensitive.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um, of course Maddie’s
It did feel a
Ellen: little bit insensitive.
Bex: Um, Maddie is not fine. Um, because we cut to Maddie and [01:02:00] she’s playing with Jee in the bathtub. They have a beautiful bathroom by the way.
Ellen: They do, but she has. Unfortunately, she’s got far too much water in that bath for a baby.
Bex: Oh my God. Yes. Thank you.
Alice: Okay. I can’t comment on this because I have not had a baby, so I, I don’t know.
Bex: Oh, I’m, I’m not gonna go any any further ’cause I could probably go on a 20 minute rant about like bath safety.
They
Ellen: do, they do make a point at, at the hospital even to tell you about not putting much water in the bath.
Bex: Yeah, there
Ellen: you go.
Anyway,
Bex: this entire scene is, tell me you’ve never bathed a baby without telling me you’ve never bathed a baby. And I know it’s for the drama, but,
Ellen: but she’s got kids by, by now, so she knows.
Alice: But it’s hot. It’s hot, Bex. It’s hot.
Ellen: Yeah. But you don’t have to have much water to cool down in the bath.
Bex: I know that. I know that in Australia we sort of stress water safety because like, sort of the number [01:03:00] one death for children in our country is by drowning. So like water, swimming and pools and like even any kind of. Standing body of water where you’re incredibly careful around it just, I don’t, yeah, it’s, yeah. This, this entire thing is once again, for the drama.
Ellen: Yeah. So she’s basically falling asleep while Jee is in the bath and Jee slips down.
Alice: Which I’m sure is totally safe, right?
Ellen: Like, well, I mean, she, I have done this not with it, well, while my child was in the bath, but just like sitting on the couch, just falling asleep.
Alice: Oh, a hundred percent.
Ellen: Yeah. But like, because you’re just so tired, but, um, but yeah,
Alice: I guess people fall asleep while driving too, so. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. If you’re exhausted enough.
Alice: Yeah. It’s just,
Ellen: anyway,
Alice: yeah,
Ellen: Jee slips down, so she’s under the water for just a moment. And, um, Maddie wakes up and realizes that she’s underwater and grabs her out [01:04:00] and has a panic.
Um, and then we, after the commercial, she’s at the hospital. And, um, doctor is checking Jee out and everything looks fine. So Maddie’s obviously just standing there freaking out. So this, this is like a weird kind of setup. So Jee is inside a, a, a glass wall room with a doctor.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: And she’s outside looking through a window. It’s like, why are you not in there with your child? Like
Bex: mm-hmm.
Ellen: Very weird kind of a setup. But anyway, the doctor, the other doctor assures her that, um, Jee’s all fine. And, and then she’s asking Maddie how she is, and she’s like, “I’m shaky. Thank you for everything.” And um, yeah, the doctor says, it’s probably not the last time, you know, the last terrifying experience you’ll have before she makes it to adulthood.
Bex: Gee, thanks Doc.
Ellen: And that. Yeah. And Maddie just looks [01:05:00] completely freaked out by this news. She’s like, oh my God, what? So yeah, that really helped. And I think that’s the last we hear from Maddie in this episode.
Bex: Uh, yes.
Ellen: So she’s still not coping all that well.
Bex: I also, I mean, I know that she’s,
Ellen: and she’s alone.
Bex: Yeah. They, they’ve really, they’ve really made a point to completely isolate her from everybody, um, just to, you know, really ramp up her, um, her declining mental health. Um, and I know that this scene is, is just a short one and it, it’s supposed to be for the drama and it’s highlighting how badly Maddie is doing.
But wouldn’t, like, in reality, wouldn’t a doctor be sort of looking at her going like, can we do like that quick, um, mental health assessment that all mothers have to do, just, you know, to make sure that you are actually okay because you don’t look okay and you are saying that your child has come in, um, in some kind of distress. Can we just, you know, check [01:06:00] things, please.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: I don’t know why I want this show to, you know, conform to reality so much, but I do sometimes
Alice: just occasionally.
Ellen: It would be nice. May, maybe it wouldn’t be quite as dramatic if they did, but yeah.
Bex: Uh, no, I, this
Alice: isn’t Grey’s Anatomy.
Bex: I was about to say The Pitt is incredibly realistic and yet still fucking dramatic as hell, so.
Ellen: Mm-hmm. So it can be done.
Bex: It can be done. Um, but no, not on this one. Um, in this one we’re gonna go back to Athena who is, um, sitting in front of one of Jeffrey’s victim’s houses, watching her bait through the wide open. Well lit, oh
Ellen: my God. This is,
Bex: um, windows. I’m
Ellen: like, why are you staking out her house? Anyway, she’s watching and talking to Bobby at the same time, time on the phone.
Bex: Yeah, cause Bobby [01:07:00] calls her and they’re sort of checking in with each other, you know, like, how is your day? And Bobby’s like, “well, you know, lions, tigers, blood spitting alpacas. How was yours?”
Alice: Lions, tigers, bears, oh my
Bex: no bears couldn’t get the bears.
Ellen: Alpacas had to do instead.
Bex: Yes. So, uh, she tells Bobby that she’s sitting outside a woman’s home waiting for Jeffrey Hudson to make a move, and yet she hasn’t warned the woman.
Um, she’s
Alice: like, yeah, I kind of feel bad. I guess
Bex: I do like that. Um, even as Bobby’s trying to reassure her. She’s like, “you know what? I, that man stood up in court the other day and called me a rogue cop. And here I am acting like a rogue cop.” And yet she still continues to act like a rogue cop.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Yeah. And then Bobby gets all, like, he says there’s a good chance he never even shows. Athena’s like, “Is it bad that I hope he does?” And Bobby’s like, “I hope that for you too.” And, and she’s like, “Did you just [01:08:00] say you hoped I come face to face with a dangerous, escaped fugitive tonight?” And he’s like, hell yeah. Like,
Alice: yep, sure did.
Bex: And Athena’s like, that’s the sweetest thing you’ve ever said to me, honey.
Ellen: Yeah. I hope you murder the guy. Like, yeah. What?
Alice: Wow. Okay.
Bex: Um, at this point, um, Captain Maynard shows up. She’s joining Athena on the stakeout. So Athena hangs up the phone. And she’s like, you, “what are, what are you doing here? Um, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a captain on a stakeout.” Um, I have to say that I misread the, uh, the caption on this next scene because Elaine says “That’s why I left my bars at the station.”
Um, at first I thought she said, “well, that’s why, why I left my bra at the station.” I’m like,
Alice: what?
Bex: Like, I know the idea is that she’s like off rec, she’s off duty and she’s in [01:09:00] casual clothes and like, you’re so casual that you just like,
Ellen: well, no one attends a stake out wearing a bra. Like obviously, gotta be casual, gotta be comfortable. You’re gonna be sitting there all night.
Bex: Well see that, that’s also, that makes sense to me that if you’re gonna be sitting there all night, you don’t wanna be doing it in a bra.
Ellen: You may as well just be done with the bra. Oh my God. But the other thing is that, uh, Athena was not expecting her and so she just like taps on the window and gets in.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: And I’m like, were you about to turn around and shoot her? Like who’s just tapping on your window and letting himself into your car?
Bex: Yes. She’s, um, very blase for someone on a stakeout didn’t even like
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um, but, uh, Elaine has a reason for, um, for joining Athena. She’s kicking her off to stake out, um, because Lou is awake and he’s asking for Athena again. So Athena has to go to the hospital. [01:10:00]
Ellen: So Athena makes it out of the car and to the hospital somehow, um, without alerting the lady whose house she’s staking out or so we assume.
Um, so Lou is looking a little better than the last time we saw him, but he still can’t talk. And, but he’s still got his little paper and pen so he can write messages. So it’s a very like strange, like one-sided conversation. You hear one side of the conversation and then you have to read the other side as he writes it on the pad.
Bex: Yes. So Athena walks into the hospital room and says, “I heard you were looking for me.” Um, and Lou starts crying. He’s so sweet. And, and Athena is like, “it’s, it’s good to see you too.” Like Lou squirrels on his little pad, um, just the word lawyer. And then he is like, “yep, we found a gunshot wound. Probably.” See they stay [01:11:00] here two days, but if he’s been in the hospital for five, that means that it’s been five, or like, let’s say five days since five or six days since Lila slit his throat.
So is, wouldn’t Jeffrey have shot her that same night? Or has he been
Ellen: Apparently not. He kept her around for a few days and then,
Bex: and then
Ellen: she pissed him off and he shot her.
Bex: Not, not, oh yeah. It’s just, it’s. Just one of those little things that, once again, nobody’s paying attention to the bigger picture in this episode.
So Lou writes “in on it,” Athena’s like, “yep, got there. Took me a little while, but I got there.” Lou then writes “Hudson,” Athena’s like, “he’s in the wind again.” Lou asks “any leads?” Athena’s like, “ah, we’ve got some hunches. Maynard thinks he’s long gone by now, but I’m not so sure.” Lou’s response is victims and Athena’s like, “yep, I think that’s our best chance of [01:12:00] catching him. We have surveillance units posted at all the victims’ houses and they’re waiting for him.”
And Lou’s getting really upset at this point. Um, he very agitated, writes “your house” on the piece of paper and Athena’s not quite picking up what he’s putting down. She’s like, “What? Why my house? What about it?” Um. And he is so done with having to write everything on paper that he’s trying to talk.
Ellen: Mm.
Bex: And Athena’s trying to calm him down. It’s like, “no, no, Lou, it’s okay, save this strength, don’t say anything.” He very, it’s obviously a struggle, but he manages to say, “you are victim too.” And then it’s like, oh fuck.
Ellen: Oh fuck. I forgot that I was also, she spent so long trying to convince herself that she wasn’t one of the victims.
Bex: She forgot that she was.
Alice: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Yep. So then we quickly returned to Athena residence where Michael and David are starting to regret the open house [01:13:00] policy that they had for the neighbors because they invited the neighbors in and now the neighbors aren’t leaving.
Ellen: Nope. He’s like, I should have let Harry charge them by the hour.
Bex: So while they’re grumbling in the kitchen and, um, drinking alcohol,
Ellen: drinking booze. Yeah.
Bex: Which I’m hoping somebody brought in because I would assume that the Grant Nash would be a dry residence considering Bobby’s a recovering alcoholic. Um,
Ellen: well they had, they had a whiskey at their breakfast the other day.
Bex: That’s a very good point,
Ellen: obviously Athena has a, has a bit now and then
Bex: Damn, Athena, I suppose. She’s always, she, she’s always got wine, doesn’t she?
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: she does always have wine, you’re right
Bex: huh? Well, even though it doesn’t seem fair to Bobby, but anyway.
Alice: Oh yeah, true. Poor Bobby.
Bex: So, um,
Ellen: I always think that every time I see her with a glass [01:14:00] of wine, I’m like, this, it’s a bit mean,
Bex: not very sympathetic to him.
Ellen: Maybe Bobby doesn’t care. He just
Bex: maybe, but still. Um, yeah, but that’s besides the point. What is, the point is that while David and Michael are grumbling in the kitchen, um, Harry is playing Jenga out on the patio with his new best friend, Jeffrey Hudson.
Ellen: Yes. Who hoped he’d hoped he would, he was going to be able to see his mom, but she has to work till the emergency’s over, so, and I’m like, oh no, he’s gonna do something to Harry.
Bex: Yeah. So we cut to commercial on that dramatic dun dun dun.
Ellen: Um,
Bex: when we come back, Athena is in full panic mode. She’s calling Bobby. Um, she says to Bobby that like, “I’m on my way home. I’m still 10 minutes out. Can you get there before I get there?” And Bobby’s like, um. In [01:15:00] the back of his mind. He is probably think it’s like a booty call.
He’s like, oh. I mean, I can, I can try, but, you know, aren’t there people at the house, aren’t we, you know, it’s probably not the best place for us.
Ellen: Yeah. Michael and David are there
Bex: for a clandestine rendezvous. And Athena’s like, “no, no, no, no. I’m, I’m not calling, this isn’t a, like an, um, what you doing kind of phone call.” um,
Alice: this is a you up?
Bex: Yeah. “This is not a you up phone call. Uh, Jeffrey Hudson’s on the loose. I forgot that I’m one of his victims. Um, and I can’t get ahold of David and Michael.” Um, Bobby’s like, “Fuck. Chim, you’re in charge.” And Chim’s like, “What? I’m awake. I’m awake. What?”
Ellen: My wife’s calling, I’ve got somewhere to be.
Bex: No, not like that, Chim. Uh, jumps into the brand new captain’s truck. Uh, ’cause the last one got blown up by the sniper. Um. And he’s on his [01:16:00] way. Uh, Captain Maynard is also on her way, and she’s called in for backup and she’s trying to convince Athena not to go in alone. And Athena’s like, fuck that.
Ellen: Hmm. Yeah, she’s got like a really long driveway. And I was watching her kind of drive up to the house and I’m like, is that she turned off the street and kind of drove down further than I would’ve expected to get to the house.
Bex: I thought it was kind of like a little cul-de-sac sort of thing. And her house is sort of at the bottom of the cul-de-sac.
Ellen: Okay. It might be, yeah, I don’t know. It’s hard to tell in the dark, but, um,
Bex: because I seem to remember from the episode with the, the end of season two with the, the mad bomber. Yeah. That’s what I always assumed. It was just a little cul-de-sac. So yeah, Athena comes screeching down the street, um, squeals to a stop in front of her house. Um, the house [01:17:00] is dark and the front door is open. It’s also empty.
Ellen: Um, she creeps through the house and she can’t find anybody. It’s, it’s very tense. We’re not sure who’s gonna jump out. But then she hears something outside, so she goes to the back door and Michael comes in and he’s like, “It’s me. It’s me.”
Thing is like, “what the hell? I almost shot you.”
Alice: He’s like, “yeah, I noticed.”
Ellen: Yeah. Um, and David comes in and is like, whoa, what is going on here? Um, but yeah, Athena’s like, “I thought you had people here. You were having a party at my house without me. Like, where are they?”
Bex: You were about to eat my steaks. What was going on
Alice: my steaks!
Ellen: But apparently the generator went out, so the power went out and everyone left
Bex: and apparently the power went out…
Ellen: but David has fixed the power. Yeah.
Bex: Yeah, because someone unplugged it. Although David’s [01:18:00] like, oh, they must have kicked it out by accident. Like, uh, really?
Alice: Sure it was an accident. Totally. I’m sure it’s fine.
Bex: At this point, Bobby and Elaine have arrived. Um, they come running inside asking everything’s okay, and Athena’s like, it’s fine. Jeffrey’s not here. Um, but at this point Athena’s kind of done a headcount and realized that Harry is not there. Michael’s like,
Alice: no, he was just here. It’s fine.
Bex: Yeah. There’s his phone and he’s like, you know, typical preteen, he never goes anywhere without his phone.
Ellen: He wouldn’t have gone anywhere without his phone.
Bex: So then Athena goes and picks up his phone and Can we just talk about the fact that his wallpaper is a picture of him and Athena?
Ellen: Yeah. There’s no way..
Alice: Of course it’s because like he doesn’t have any other, like, you’d think that, that you would’ve used one of the, um, you know, when May graduated or had prom or whatever and they took like the big family photos with everyone in it.
Yeah. But no, it’s just him and it like he, how old is this kid at this point? Like as if it would be him and his [01:19:00] mom.
Bex: That’s what I’m saying. Like I’ve got, my kids have personal phones. Um, my eldest has not bothered to put anything on. It’s just like the standard.
Ellen: Yeah. I don’t think
Bex: background that it comes with
Ellen: my eldest has.
Bex: Um, my youngest, it cycles through whatever, um, anime he’s watching. So he’s currently got a My Hero Academia backdrop on his phone.
Alice: Yeah, that’s what I would expect.
He
Bex: constantly, constantly changing it. So Yeah, they would not be caught dead with a photo of me on their phone as their wallpaper.
Alice: Wow. What, what shitty kids.
Bex: To be fair, my wallpaper isn’t them either.
Alice: Yeah, no. Well, I mean, my, my wallpaper is, is Autumn, so
Ellen: no, hang on My lock screen. My lock screen is them. My, my, uh, wallpaper is like a Doctor Who thing, and it has been, it has been for like 10 years.
Alice: Wow. My lock screen is Autumn and my wallpaper is [01:20:00] Phoenix.
Ellen: Oh.
Bex: So yeah, so they picked, they realized that Harry’s phone is there and then there’s like a “Harry’s phone is there, but where is Harry?”
And then for the last, like, couple seconds of the episode, we cut seemingly incongruently to a, a checkpoint where cars are being let in and out of a certain area. Um, a car rolls up, police goes over and says, “um, this is residents only. You’re either gonna have to turn around and show some ID.”
So the driver shows some ID. Um, unfortunately the driver is Jeffrey Hudson and the ID he shows is an LAPD detectives badge.
Alice: Yeah, I’m assuming it’s Lou’s.
Bex: I think it’s Lou’s,
Alice: yeah. Um,
Ellen: I don’t know where, how the police have got enough people to be having roadblocks around the place, but anyway. Yeah.
Bex: I wanna know how this cop let, like convicted serial rapist through. Like, do you not recognize his face considering at this, at this point they’ve realized that this guy is on the lam. [01:21:00] Wouldn’t they have had like an APB out on him? Like, please keep a look out for this guy?
Ellen: Yeah, he just shows the badge and he is like, okay. Sorry.
Bex: So yeah, police is like, I’m so sorry, detective, you know, go straight on through.
And Jeffrey’s like, yeah, you better let me through. Um, and as the car pulls through the checkpoint, the camera kind of lingers on the rear of the car and then zooms through the metal into the boot where Harry is tied up and gagged with duct tape.
Alice: It’s, it’s pretty cool effect, I gotta to say. Yeah. Where it like zooms in and like just straight through the car.
Bex: Yeah. And that’s the end of the episode.
Ellen: Yes. Another cliffhanger. Uh,
Bex: another cliffhanger.
Ellen: I wanted to go on and watch the next episode, but I didn’t have time, so I’m still on a cliffhanger.
Bex: Still on the cliffhanger. Yeah.
Ellen: I’ll hang on to it until next week.
Bex: Just keep,
Ellen: I’ll get the full,
Bex: keep holding on
Ellen: the full effect, you know?
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Proud of you. Yeah.[01:22:00]
Ellen: I dunno what to say. We’ve already given this episode heaps.
Alice: I really liked the Buck and Eddie stuff.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: The Buck and Eddie stuff was good. Um,
Alice: like I love the fact that Eddie panicked around Ana and then literally the next scene that they’re in, he’s just like, “Buck takes Chris to the zoo all the time,” and he is basically swirling his hair and…
Ridiculous. The zoo. I was like, fuck yeah. I love this scene. That was about it. And the, when Eddie was on the cot mattress,
Ellen: the alpacas were quite funny.
Alice: The alpacas were great. And when Eddie was on the cot mattress and Buck’s just like, “You don’t panic.”
Bex: I want, I wonder where the alpacas came in, like the, the negotiations.
Like did the writers come in and say, we want this animal and like insurance and animal handlers and logistics just eventually knocked it down and knocked it down and knocked it down until finally someone said, right. What [01:23:00] about alpacas?
Alice: Or if it was always supposed to be alpacas?
Bex: Or if it was always intentionally alpacas
Ellen: or the writers were like, okay, so what animal are we likely to be able to get?
Bex: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ellen: So we can write them into this scene and just put a bit of blood on their face.
Bex: Can we get this? No. Okay. Uh, what about this? No. Mm. Okay. Uh, what about that?
Ellen: What, what about a tiger? No, no, no.
Bex: We can get a tiger, tiger, but we can’t actually have it in the scene with people.
Ellen: What about a really angry like badger?
Alice: They had a tiger in like season one? Two?
Bex: Yeah, but they didn’t have any people in the scene with it. It was in like the enclosure on its own. And I think the couple of times that they had people near it, it was very clearly CGI.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I don’t think they can risk having the tiger with an actor in a scene.
Ellen: Anyway, it was funny.
Alice: It was great. I’ve, I know someone who, um, breeds and shows alpacas [01:24:00] too. So very amusing.
Ellen: They’re the greenest animal.
Alice: They are the greenest animal.
Bex: They’re the greenest animal?
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: How were they green?
Ellen: That’s what, um,
Alice: it’s Supernatural. “French Mistake”?.
Ellen: Gen Padalecki says in that episode,
Alice: Jesus, have you even Supernatural,
Ellen: have you ever watched, watched the show?
Bex: That’s like, well, with those brothers, right?
Ellen: It’s the one where they go to the real world. The real world and,
Bex: no, no, the like the show. The show. That’s the one with the, the brothers, right?
Ellen: Oh, the show? Yeah, yeah.
Alice: Or the gay angel.
Ellen: Yeah. It’s been a while since any of us have watched any of it, I guess. But yeah,
Bex: so I was thinking about this episode and this kind of opening emergency for season five. ’cause it, it doesn’t seem to like, make sense. So when you think back to, um, like season two, season three, season four, they’ve, they had established this pattern where you had like the first [01:25:00] episode sort of introduced the emergency and then the next couple of episodes were the big emergency.
And so when we got to the end of episode one, um, I was kind of saying, so what’s the emergency that they’re gonna cover in episode two and episode three? Is it like the, the ransomware? Is that what the big emergency for the season is? Is it Jeffrey being loose? Is that the emergency? Um, and then we get episode two and it’s like, oh fuck the ransomware. It’s now heat wave and a power outage.
And the entire, the,
Ellen: the ransomware is still going on, but. The emergencies are caused by,
Bex: No, it was like after the ransomware. The ransomware has happened and they’re still dealing with the effects of it, but now it’s the power outage. But I don’t think it matters. ’cause I, my theory for this season is whoever was in charge, and like I know who was in charge, um, has gone, you know what, the last couple of seasons we’ve done season opener [01:26:00] where it’s this big, flashy, dramatic emergency and that’s all it is for those first couple of episodes.
It’s just our guys responding to the emergency and dealing with the little disasters that pop up. Let’s go back to the characters. Let’s have the emergency just be something that’s happening in the background and it’s, the focus is gonna be on the characters and how they’re doing and how they’re reacting and how the emergency is impacting them.
And I feel like that’s why these, we don’t have that big overarching emergency for these episodes. It’s so tightly focused on Eddie not panicking, and on Athena and the Jeffrey storyline and on Maddie and her postpartum depression. And the emergency in the background is just incidental to further the character storyline rather than the characters further in the emergency storyline
Ellen: you might be right there
Bex: And for me, I don’t like it. [01:27:00] Don’t like it. I, I don’t like, I don’t like it. I like having the big flashy three episode, Tim, three episodes to open up a season.
Alice: Just three. We don’t need a fourth
Bex: three, three episodes, open up the season, have a big flashy disaster, and then we get back into our character development. I want that big flashy emergency, and then I want my episode by episode monster of the week with a character development sprinkled all the way through it. I don’t want a three episode character arc, especially when it’s about a character that I could actually care less about. So that’s my theory about what’s going on in season five.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, it does feel that way. Yeah. They are focusing a lot more on the characters, but also it, it’s like, I’d quite like them to wrap this shit up. Mm-hmm. Like the ransomware thing is a bit of a lame duck of an emergency.
Alice: Yeah. It’s kind of [01:28:00] boring compared to a tsunami. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. And like, yeah, I don’t know,
Alice: what was the last time? A mud. Yeah. The mudslide was pretty crap as well.
Ellen: I mean, that’s, earthquakes happen all the time in LA, right? So I guess that makes sense that they had two of them. No, I, I liked the character bits in this like that everyone sort of had a moment with at least one other person.
Bex: I do like the, to
Ellen: discuss how they were getting on with it.
Bex: I do like the character bits. I just, I want there to be those small moments within an overarching story, not have the characters be the overarching story, not for the first three episodes.
Ellen: Well, uh, we, I assume this is all gonna get wrapped up next time if you are talking about three episodes. So what does the summary say for next week then?
Bex: Uh, next time we have, um, “Desperate Measures”. This was [01:29:00] desperate times.
Ellen: Oh, we had desperate times.
Bex: Desperate Measures.
Ellen: Yeah. Okay. Yeah. See what they did there.
Bex: Mm-hmm. I’ll give them kudos that nobody actually said desperate times in the episode. Especially since we, you know,
Ellen: that’s true.
Bex: We all died of alcohol poisoning after episode panic.
Um, so, so summary for desperate measures says, as the citywide blackout continues to cause mayhem in Los Angeles, whether that’s caused by the heat wave or the ransom attack is up to you. Um, Athena races to save her family from a tragedy. Meanwhile, Eddie must make a difficult choice about his future, and Maddie makes a life changing decision.
Ellen: Oh,
Bex: our trigger warnings are abuse of power, child at threat, child abandonment, claustrophobia, specifically being sealed behind a wall. Uh, our favorite generic tag of cops, um, flashback to assault, gun violence, uh, police shooting, [01:30:00] postpartum depression, threat of gun violence, which I assume should be up with police shooting, um, and vigilantism.
Ellen: Wow. Okay,
Alice: cool.
Ellen: Sounds like fun.
Alice: It sounds like a barrel of laughs.
Bex: Oh, it’s gonna be a great time.
Alice: I love when the, there’s gun violence, threat of gun violence and police involved shooting.
Bex: I can never remember whether that’s like three tags for one incident or three separate incidents.
Alice: Yeah. I don’t know.
Ellen: All right. Um, do you wanna say anything else about this episode?
Bex: I, I do. I did, I did enjoy clipboard Buck.
Alice: Clipboard Buck’s great.
Ellen: Oh yes.
Bex: Clipboard Buck is always fun. I quite enjoy Clipboard Buck. I think he should be given a clipboard more often.
Ellen: He enjoys organizing things.
Alice: I’m not sure if this says something about you, but, um,[01:31:00]
Ellen: alright, well, um, please do let us know what you thought about this episode. Like maybe you love this episode and we have just. You’ve disagreed with everything we’ve said, like, okay, you can tell us about that in a, in a friendly way. You can leave us a comment on this episode’s post on thatweewooshow.com or directly in Spotify or YouTube, uh, or on social media and, thatweewooshow.com has all the ways that you can subscribe to find out when new episodes are posted.
Bex: Please feel free to slide into our dms and just leave unhinged voice memos.
Ellen: I’d love to hear, um, if anyone’s read any of the fics that we talked about last week too. By the way, let let us know if we recommended something good to you and what you thought of it.
Alice: Oh, I’ve only got into Leading with the Left so far, and it, it is a good time. I absolutely recommend it.
Ellen: Thank you all for listening this week, and [01:32:00] we will talk to you next time about Season five, episode three, “Desperate Measures”. 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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