Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Ellen, Bex, and Alice watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss episode 4 of the fifth season of 9-1-1, titled “Home and Away”.
The 118 arrives on the scene after a truck crashes into a high school homecoming parade. Athena and Michael try to help Harry in the aftermath of his kidnapping. Bobby gives Chimney advice regarding Maddie.
Content warnings for episode 5.04:
bullying, hazing, car accident (truck versus crowd), which causes mass injuries and fatalities, a child has to do CPR, children at threat, child endangerment, chlorine gas, gas leak, child death, home invasion, heart attack, patient death, postpartum depression, PTSD/childhood PTSD, reckless driving, threat of gun violence.
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Episode Transcript
Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1. What’s your emergency?
Bex: Welcome to That WeeWoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the A B C show, 9-1-1. I’m Bex.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Ellen: And I’m Ellen.
Bex: As we say every week, thank you to everyone who has listened to our episodes so far and who’s taken time out of what I’m sure is a very busy day to rate us on those platforms that allow you to rate podcasts, specifically Spotify and Apple.
And for those of you who have taken the time to send us comments or leave us comments about the episodes that you’ve listened to. Uh, this week we would like to give shout out to Kiera, who was having some kind of Vulcan mind meld with Ellen while [00:01:00] watching, uh, the first episode of Season five, where apparently both of them at the same time said that Buck got his recklessness from his father.
When we were discussing Bobby, like trying to base jump off the hospital roof with just a fire hose tied around his waist. Um, and we would also like
Ellen: so silly.
Bex: And we’d also like to say thank you to Ella for leaving us a comment on Spotify, which, uh, we got a bit of a chuckle out of. And I’m gonna read it so that you too can get a chuckle out of it, which says, “I liked these first episodes. Well, no, actually I don’t, lol, I hate,” uh, they go on to say that they hate the, uh, the Jeffrey storyline, but love all of the repressed closeted comphet Eddie content and the head canons they gave us, “oh the potential.”
Um, and they also think that season, season five is weirdly underrated. So we’ll come back to whether we think season, whether, [00:02:00] whether Ellen thinks Season five is underrated by the time we get to the end of it. ’cause I think Alice and I have our opinions on that.
Um, and they also mentioned that there perhaps was a heat wave when they were filming season five, hence why they wrote the season opener to season five to have a heat wave as a way to explain why the actors were all sweaty. I don’t know if anybody remembers what the weather was doing when they were filming the beginning of season five. Let us know. Do you agree with that theory?
Ellen: That’s a great theory.
Bex: All right, well, before we, uh, continue into the possibly underrated season five, um, Alice, could you remind us what happened in the last episode that we watched?
Alice: Yeah, so last week on 9-1-1, Jeffrey was killed after Athena shot him 29 times. Harry was rescued. Eddie broke up with Ana after she babysat his child for a week straight, [00:03:00] and Maddie abandoned Jee-Yun at the firehouse because she felt she was a danger to her.
Ellen: Aw, poor Maddie. All right, so this. Uh, last week ended on a sad note, and unfortunately it’s not gonna improve much in this episode.
This is, uh, season five. It’s called “Home and Away”. No, we are actually talking about 9-1-1 and not about Home and Away the Australian soap opera. Um,
Alice: oh, but what did Alf get up to this week?
Ellen: No, we’re not, we’re not going to the beach. Sorry. Um, this is from October 11th, 2021. I always think that we are catching up and then we read a date like that and I’m like, no, actually it’s still quite a way to go.
Alice: It’s fine. I just realized probably none of our American followers are gonna understand why we’re talking about Alf and the beach.
Bex: Be like, wait, the alien went to the beach? Although then, of course, I’m assuming that most of our listeners are old enough to [00:04:00] remember Alf.
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: yeah, that’s true. Alright. Let’s keep going with this actual episode, not Home and Away. Um, the other show. So in this episode summary, it says, the members of the 118 arrive on the scene after a truck crashes into a high school homecoming parade. Meanwhile, Athena and Michael try to help Harry in the aftermath of his kidnapping.
May is intimidated by a returning call center legend, and Bobby gives a devastated Chimney advice regarding Maddie.
Bex: Wait, did we see that?
Alice: I was gonna say, did Bobby give to give Chimney advice regarding Maddie? I think Buck, kind of
Ellen: Buck. Yeah, Buck gives him advice. Yeah. Maybe they’re changing around storylines again, like they did that in the, um, season two.
Bex: I mean, jumping ahead that we do get a, we do get a line in a future episode with Bobby regarding Chim, [00:05:00] but I don’t think we actually saw that scene in this episode. I wonder if they filmed it and then had to cut it for time and they just forgot to tell the person writing the summary.
Alice: Probably they do that a lot,
Ellen: or they write the summaries before the final cut of the episode is done. Maybe,
Bex: who knows? The summaries are always so bad. I’m always curious as to which way around it goes.
Ellen: Well, we have quite a goody basket of of triggers for this episode. We have bullying, hazing, a car accident, which is a truck versus a crowd, which causes mass injuries and fatalities. A child has to do CPR, children at threat, child endangerment, chlorine gas, gas leak. I don’t remember that.
Bex: Yeah, that was the truck. The truck that crashed into the parade had…
Ellen: oh, that’s right. Yeah, yeah,
Bex: yeah. It was such a non, it was such a [00:06:00] non-issue in the episode, but yeah, it did happen for like a hot minute.
Ellen: Yes. Um, child death, home invasion, heart attack, not Eddie, not panicking. Um, patient death, postpartum depression, PTSD slash childhood PTSD, reckless driving and the threat of gun violence.
Bex: Yeah,
Ellen: so it’s a barrel of laughs in this episode.
Alice: Fun times
Ellen: actually quite a, um, somber tone basically for the whole thing. I don’t know if there’s much lightheartedness in this episode at all, so, um, apologies if we hurry through some bits or whatever. It’s just, yeah, a lot of this is very heavy.
Alice: This episode’s really sad.
Ellen: Yeah, very heavy. Yeah, we kick right off with, um, with Chim watching Maddie’s message over and over again, and he just looks so sad,
Bex: but he’s, he is not [00:07:00] watching it over and over again because he’s watching it just to, to, um, to spend time with Maddie. He’s watching like a specific 10 seconds over and over again. Like he’s decoding the video to find hidden messages that Maddie has left in it.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: And while he’s doing that, um, fuck is at the door trying to talk to Chim and eventually just lets himself into the apartment because Chim is not answering the door.
Ellen: Yeah. You can hear him banging on the door and going, I know you’re in there. Poor Buck, he looks so worried.
Alice: Yeah. I don’t blame him.
Bex: Which makes sense as to why he’s so worried because, you know, he’s operating on sort of extra information right now that Chim doesn’t know. Yeah.
Alice: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Uh, so yeah, Chim’s gone full like conspiracy theory, um, with this trying to decode secret messages. [00:08:00] He’s, he shows Buck part of the video, um, because he’s convinced that when the part where Maddie says, I’m not in any danger and no one is making me do it, she looks like off camera and she’s shaking her head as she looks off camera. Which, which means to, that’s the opposite of what she’s saying, that someone is making her do this.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But then he looks at Buck and Buck’s looking at him like he’s crazy and he realizes how crazy he sounds. Doesn’t stop him from continuing the crazy
Alice: Oh, he gets even crazier,
Bex: including bringing up that maybe Doug was not really dead and has come back and kidnapped her.
Alice: Yeah. Buck’s like, no one wants to hurt Maddie and Chim’s like “Doug did.” And Buck’s like, “Well, Doug’s dead.” And Chim immediately goes, “Is he though? Did you see a body? Did anyone see a body?”
Bex: Everybody saw the body.
Ellen: He’s been, he’s been through so much trauma, this poor guy. Especially like last time this happened, like Maddie went missing, it was Doug and he did take her. Mm. But like, I’m not [00:09:00] surprised he’s like this really,
Bex: but Buck is trying Buck’s trying to talk him down. He’s like, you know, “You just have to give her time. She’s gonna come home.” And Chim was like, “How do you know that?” And Buck said, well, you know, because she told me, well, he doesn’t say that. He’s, he’s not supposed to tell Chim at this point, but he is like, “I know my sister.”
And, Chim said, “well, I, you know, I did too. And now this is the only thing that I’ve got left. The only thing she left me is this video message.” And then cue his daughter crying in the room. Buck’s like, “that’s not the only thing she left you.” Yeah. Aw. So, you know, you, you can’t, the, the message being, you can’t go for conspiracy cuckoo bananas over this video because you’ve gotta look after your daughter.
Ellen: Poor Chim.
Bex: Like I said, I hate that they keep giving Chim these traumatic storylines, but I do really enjoy watching Kenny act them, because he does such a [00:10:00] good job. Yes. Yep. Uh, speaking of parents and traumatic storylines, we’re at Grant Family therapy.
Alice: Yeah, literally family therapy. So Harry’s been in with the therapist, um, and then he’s now swapping places with Athena and Michael.
Ellen: Yeah. They, they like go, go in and start grilling the therapist, basically. Like, “Has he ta, has he said anything about what happened? Like, is he okay? How’s he doing?” And the therapist is sort of like, “Oh, we’re still working on that.” Um, and they work out that he hasn’t, they haven’t taken, um, Harry back to the house yet, uh, because he wanted to stay at Michael’s.
He’s, he’s been wanting to stay at Michael’s place and the therapist kind of encourages them to take him back home to make him feel like and keep everything as normal as possible so that he can feel safe there.
Bex: Yeah. The, the message was that if you allow him to stay away, you are [00:11:00] reinforcing his belief that the house is scary. I instead they need to change.
Ellen: Yeah. Which makes sense.
Bex: It does make sense, but they need to change the message. And the message is not that the house is scary, it’s that the man was scary, but the man is gone now and the house is safe. But, um, Athena does not seem at all on board with that idea.
She’s like, immediately cuts the therapist off and then cuts Michael off when, um, he says that they’ll, uh, they’ll do that. So I don’t think Harry’s the only one that thinks that the house is unsafe.
Ellen: Oh, no. Uh, and after we see what happens in the future, I think Athena is the one who should also be talking to the therapist about
Alice: Absolutely.
Bex: Athena. Athena so needs therapy.
Ellen: Yeah. And she ref, she like refused it before. Right? Like she was seeing somebody and then she, well I think, you know, stopped going or whatever. Yes. After the attack.
Bex: Yeah. Yeah. She was seeing Brooke Shields who was supposedly to [00:12:00]
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Bex: Preparing her to, preparing her to give evidence on the stand, but then it took another season for them to actually get to the court case. So, yeah. You know, make that make sense. But yeah, she saw Brooke Shields maybe twice and then never saw her again. Mm-hmm. That was a bit of a mistake.
Ellen: Yes. So much trauma.
Bex: Okay. God Dispatch. I hate, yeah, I hate dispatch in this episode.
Alice: Same.
Bex: Okay. So Josh, Linda and may have, uh, have gone to get coffee and Josh is gushing that the prodigal daughter has returned.
Um. They walk onto dispatch floor. May thinks that he means that Maddie has come back and there is a crowd around a station. So she pushes through expecting to see Maddie, except it’s not Maddie. It’s uh, an older only in that she’s older than May, uh, black woman [00:13:00] who is single handedly running LAPD, possibly Swat and giving CPR advice to a young child.
Ellen: Yeah, she’s doing the entire thing.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: And everyone is standing around watching her do it.
Bex: Okay.
Alice: Apparently there are no other phone calls happening.
Bex: So not only there no other phone calls, but can they all hear? So you know
Alice: how Yeah. Apparently,
Bex: you know how we keep complain, we keep questioning, you know, may or, um, Maddie will take a really important call and all of a sudden Sue beelines across, or Josh beelines across the, um, the floor because they’ve heard something?
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So has Claudette put this entire thing on speaker so that everyone can hear how amazing she’s doing?
Ellen: Probably.
Alice: Clearly. Yeah.
Bex: Or are they just standing around listening to her side of the and only us the audience can hear what is actually going on in the call.
Ellen: I don’t know. The whole scene is really, like, feels bad. It just feels like, ugh. [00:14:00] I don’t know. Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. So, um, May is getting a little bit starstruck with this amazing woman who’s doing, you know, such a brilliant job on this call. Um, and the call ends. Everybody is safe. Everybody has been saved, bad guys have been caught. The good guys have lived.
Um, and May goes over to, um, basically suck up a little bit, try and get some face time with this, this legendary woman that she’s just met,
Ellen: whose name is Claudette Collins, she sounds like a, like a Marvel character.
Alice: She does actually,
Bex: She makes a, a comment like she’s, she’s trying to make, she’s trying to make nice with Claudette. She’s like, “Wow. They, um, they put you right to work. They didn’t even give you time to put on your uniform.” Um, and Jo, oh my god, I hate Josh [00:15:00] in this episode ’cause he’s so far up Claudette’s ass that he could be peering out of her mouth, like wearing her as a onesie. Um,
Alice: literally.
Ellen: Ewww. But yes, and he, he laughs he laugh. They laugh at her. It was like, oh,
Bex: like, oh, Claudette doesn’t wear the polo. And she’s like, um, “you know, seriously, I couldn’t look this corny and do what I do.” And sort of May looks down at the polo that she’s wearing. She’s like, oh. So that’s strike number one. Strike number two is then Linda pipes up.
Which honestly girl, you should have kept your mouth shut ’cause you’ve just put another target on your head. Um, ’cause Claudette looks over and goes, “Linda, you know, I had 10 bucks that you’d wash out in six months.”
Ellen: Ouch.
Alice: Yeah. Lovely.
Bex: Yeah, she’s just, oh, [00:16:00] Uhhuh, she’s such a bitch. And, and the thing that I hate is that she’s such a bitch and yet Josh is just going along with it.
Ellen: Yeah. Everyone seems to love her.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Well, they all think she’s like a strong personality or whatever. They’re not at all put off by the fact that she’s like just being really horrible to everybody. Uh, and then she, when May introduces herself, Josh says that, oh, Claudette assumes that she’s an intern and, um, she just takes the coffee out of her hand and, steals it basically,
Alice: she’s like, May tries to introduce herself and she’s like, “Oh, everyone seems really excited to have you here. May Grant.” And Claudette’s like, “You may grant me what? Your, that coffee?” And just takes May’s coffee.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: And May’s like, oh no, that’s my name, but yep. Okay. You can, yep.
Bex: Yep. And when, um, and when Josh corrects Claudette and says that May is not an intern, she’s actually a [00:17:00] dispatcher, Claudette’s like, “Oh, so we’re hiring fetuses now?”
Like, oh. So she takes her coffee, she heads into the break room with Josh, trailing behind her leaving May absolutely stunned. And she sort of, she says she’s absolutely stunned. And Linda goes, “Well, you know, at least she didn’t steal your lunch money.” And May’s, like, “Why do I feel like that’s next?” Like classic bully move.
Ellen: Ugh,
Bex: I hate Claudette. I see. I, okay. I’m really glad that everybody has had the same reaction to Claudette. ’cause I wasn’t sure whether it was just like, um, you know, that, that sense of justice where someone is just so evil and so bad that you can’t stand them.
Alice: No, I think she’s supposed to be hated. Like, I don’t think they have gave her any redeeming qualities.
Bex: I know, but I have such issues with that kind of characteristics. I hate people and characters that are just unredeemably evil. I’m good with morally gray characters. I’m good with, you know, um, evil but there’s some sort of something behind them. But [00:18:00] just a straight out villain, I cannot handle them. So,
Ellen: yeah. And even if they, if they, even if they had made her like kind of mean and everything and other people acknowledged that she was kind of mean, that would’ve might’ve been okay. But because the rest of the just doesn’t love her and they think she’s amazing, that’s just really, dunno about that.
Alice: Yeah. Right. Like, can they not see that she’s a terrible, uh, just it does my head in. That’s a, I think that’s, that’s very much a trait for like us autistics too. Like they’ll be like,
Bex: yes, yes.
Alice: Oh my God. Like that person’s awful. And people are like, no, they’re so good. And then they do something and people are like, oh my God, they’re awful. It’s like, I told you that. Why weren’t you listening to me?
Bex: I think that’s the issue I have because especially because Josh seems to think that the sun shines out of her ass. And Josh has always been portrayed as the good guy and as like Maddie’s gay bestie who gives the best advice and he’s always on the right side.
And for him to be on Claudette’s side here, he’s quite clearly on the wrong [00:19:00] side. But because it’s Josh, you’re like, well, maybe, maybe we’re missing something? But no, I think Josh has just like hitched himself to her wagon in the, the hopes to, you know, accelerate his own career or,
Ellen: well, maybe, maybe he was, he was young and new when she was around before and he thought she was great then. And now he’s just,
Bex: well, yeah, because they said, they said later on that they came up through training together. So I can imagine that, you know, the young black woman and the young gay guy kind, kind of, you know, joined forces as the minorities in the training group or something. And when he realized how good she was, um, I don’t know. I just don’t like her. I really just don’t like her and I don’t like that Josh likes her.
Ellen: Well, she’s not going anywhere in a hurry. Um, for now, uh, we, we need to go and have some more trauma.
Bex: Okay.
Ellen: Unfortunately.
Bex: From, from mean girls in dispatch, we’re going to mean [00:20:00] girls in high school, although AKA, the cheerleaders, although I don’t think these two are mean girls. These two seem very sweet.
Alice: They do.
Ellen: Yeah. So we’re going to, you know, David Wallace some people, so that we like them, uh, so that we know them a little bit.
Alice: I’m sure nothing bad will happen to these, these people. It’s fine.
Ellen: It’s like, oh, we are learning all about these kids and like what they’re doing. And the teacher who gets bullied by his students and like, um, so they’ve got Cassie and Makayla are gonna ride together in the parade and they’re really excited.
They’re gonna have lunch with their families together afterwards and blah blah.
Bex: Well, they’re gonna have lunch with Makayla’s parents because Cassie’s parents once again, have not been able to make it to the homecoming parade. Which to be fair, the girls aren’t performing a routine. They’re just riding in the back of a convertible.
Alice: Yeah. Um, apparently both of them have a big open house today, so they clearly work [00:21:00] together as real estate agents and both of them need to be at the open house.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Alice: I guess it’s LA so it’s probably an expensive house.
Ellen: Okay. Explain to me what homecoming is again, I, I’ve forgotten.
Bex: No idea.
Alice: Sports?
Bex: You, you are asking the wrong people.
Ellen: Okay. Alright, keep talking. I’m gonna look it up in the background.
Alice: Unfortunately, the most I know about sports is what I’ve learned from Heated Rivalry this week. And they are not teenagers. They are out of, well they are, they’re out of high school. So,
Ellen: and they’re not having a parade. They’re doing other things.
Alice: I mean, they may have had a parade. I wasn’t paying attention to ’em anyway.
Bex: No. If it follows the books, no parades. Um, but the, the idea with, um, the specific of this, uh, scene is that the two girls are very, very close and the families are very, very close. And Makayla and Makayla’s parents are treating Cassie as if she [00:22:00] were their own daughter, which is important for later on.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um, so while the girls are getting their photo taken in the back of their convertible, we move on to victim number, potential victim number two, which is, uh, Mr. Foster, the science teacher who is getting bullied by the football players. ’cause you know, football players
Ellen: Yeah. They’re mean, and he doesn’t know what to do about it, so, okay.
Bex: He just sort of snarkily tells them that they’re peaking, like they’re peaking in high school. This is the best it’s gonna be for them. Um. Mm-hmm. One of the, um, one of the players throws the football at Mr. Foster and then another player goes over and, uh, asks for the football back. And that, that’s, that’s it. That’s the entire interaction.
Alice: Yep. That’s it. [00:23:00]
Ellen: Um, yeah.
Bex: So the, the parade like takes off. With the, um, the football players standing on floats with cheerleaders. You’ve got Makayla and Cassie riding in the back of, uh, a convertible, waving at the very, very big crowd for a high school homecoming parade.
Considering this is Los Angeles and not, you know, I would expect this in Friday Night Lights. I mm-hmm. Like small town Texas. I wouldn’t expect this for California, but then I have no idea what homecoming is or what my expectations should be. So if this is normal, um, please let me know.
Ellen: Well, this, I was just looking up Wikipedia, the source of all knowledge and, um, it says that high schools or colleges, um, welcome back, former members of the community and around a central event such as a dance or a game of football or another [00:24:00] sport.
Um, and often they’ll, it’ll be like after a football team or a sports team has been away playing somewhere else, and then they come home and play a game. So that’s the homecoming part. Um, so the parade, I don’t need, like, it, I, it’s, it’s a kind of thing that if you’ve never had this as a tradition, it just is incomprehensible to us.
Like, I have no idea why they would have a parade because of this, but Okay. Still someone in America who can explain like why this is so important to have a parade. We, we’d love to know. Do tell.
Alice: Yes, please explain. Like, we’re five,
Ellen: um, so they are just gonna ride in the back of, they have little floats and stuff for some of the groups like Yeah. The football team. And
Bex: I do like this fake out that we get, um, because we see the parade start. We see the marching band marching. We see the floats in the cars heading down uh, main [00:25:00] street, I guess. I don’t know. Um, and intercut with that, we have, um, scenes of this little old lady who definitely should not be driving. Um, yeah. Getting into her, like she’s so little she can barely see over the steering wheel.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Uh, she’s sitting like right up against the wheel, peering over the top. She’s like the definition of your definition of your Sunday driver.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: And so we get scenes of her getting into her car and then pulling out of the driveway and like going over the curb because she’s not able to see where the driveway ends. And you just assume that, oh shit, this lady is gonna end up crashing into the parade.
Ellen: I thought that was what was gonna happen. I was like, yeah, no, she’s gonna kill someone.
Bex: It’s a great fake out, but because it’s not the little old lady that, um, the causes the accident. Um, [00:26:00] it’s the impatient jackass in the truck behind her who gets stuck behind her, um, and gets incredibly frustrated and he can’t overtake her because she’s weaving, um, side to side on the road.
And, uh, when he finally manages to get around her, he skids around her into a side street, goes full barrel down the side street. Um, he sees that the side street is closed because it’s like a T intersection and the T part of the intersection is the main street where the parade is going. Um, and oh my god, wouldn’t you believe it? But his breaks suddenly fail.
Alice: Yeah. This is so weird. Like it, yeah.
Bex: But instead of, you know,
Ellen: it’s bad timing,
Bex: cranking the hand break. Or, you know, swerving,
Alice: anything that makes sense.
Ellen: Yeah, like crashing into a tree. That’d be fine.
Bex: Well, I know that it was like a residential street and there were houses either side, but surely crashing into a house would’ve been [00:27:00] preferable to just allowing your truck to go full speed through the barricade, through the, um, the stadium seating, the bleachers that had been set up, which don’t seem to slow the truck down.
If anything, going through all those obstacles seems to cause it to gain speed. And then the trucks sort of swerves into the main road and follows the parade down the street, hits a float, goes flying through the air, and then lands right on top of the car that Cassie and Makayla were riding in.
Alice: ’cause of course it does,
Bex: because of course it’s so much for the drama.
Ellen: It’s, it’s extremely dramatic.
Bex: I real like, I really enjoyed the fake out where you think it’s the little old lady, but it’s not. But then after that I’m just like, oh no. Okay. Yeah, I don’t, I’m not, I don’t like it anymore.
Ellen: Yeah. So we don’t get to see the immediate aftermath because we have to see, um, the dispatch center getting a bunch of different calls about this.[00:28:00]
It’s, it’s not, it doesn’t go for very long. It’s mostly just it, Claudette taking charge of everything. She does ask for, like, you know, get the traffic police on the radio, you know, all these groups of fire people are gonna go as well. So the 118 roll up,
Bex: but then my issue is that there’s, that she’s like barking orders.
Josh, who I guess is the supervisor and therefore kind of in charge on the floor, comes out to,
Ellen: he’s the soup today.
Bex: Yeah, he’s, he’s soup.
Ellen: He’s soup today.
Bex: He comes out to like, take over and she just immediately brushes him aside and just continues barking orders. Yeah. I’m like, ma’am, I know that you two came up together through like training, but I’m pretty sure there’s a hierarchy on that floor. And Josh is your superior in this instance.
Ellen: Anyway, finally we get some 118 action
Bex: finally. Yeah. ’cause it doesn’t matter how good Claudette [00:29:00] is, you only, she has to dispatch the 118. That’s like part of her contract.
Ellen: Yeah. ’cause Maddie’s not there to dispatch them.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. So they, they sort of, this is an interesting scene actually because it’s, I don’t think it’s all one camera shot, but it’s a very long scene because they’re running from like one group of people to another.
Basically, like, I think we follow, we follow Buck and Ravi for a bit, and then we, we go with Eddie and Hen for a little bit as well.
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Um, they’re, they’re checking people and finding some people who’ve already died and they’re marking them and they’re moving on kind of thing. And they’re helping some other people onto, into the ambulances.
But, um, they find Hen and Eddie find, um, one of the girls who was in the car, um, one of the cheerleaders lying in the gutter kind of thing, like, she’s dead. And, but then they, they run over and they find the [00:30:00] other one. Uh, and she’s, okay, well, she’s not okay. She’s in a bad way, but she’s alive. Hen asks her what her name is and she’s sort of pretty out of it.
She just says, “Makayla Makayla.” And so Hen’s, assuming this is her name, that says, “Okay, Makayla, we are gonna take care of you.” So they get her in the ambulance and take her away. And there’s a lot of other people who are in a lot of distress. Uh, we find the teacher that was getting bullied by these students earlier who is now trapped underneath the bleachers.
Bex: But interestingly, it’s one of the football players who comes to his rescue. Like it’s the, the kid that, um, didn’t throw the football at him, but went over to him to ask for the football back. He’s the one that, um, calls for the 118, specifically for Buck and Ravi to come and help. ’cause he’s found Mr. Foster.
Ellen: Yeah. This takes a while to get him [00:31:00] out. ’cause they think he’s got a spinal injury.
Bex: Yeah. So he’s, he’s all trapped.
Ellen: They actually have to cut the metal.
Bex: Yeah, he’s, he’s tangled up in there real good as Buck said. And so while Buck, Ravi and Bobby are handling Mr. Foster, then we’ve got the rest of the 118 and the 1 33 dealing with everybody else.
Um, Makayla’s parents run onto the, the street screaming for Makayla and they bump, they run up to Hen and Eddie. And they’re like, “Makayla, we’re looking for our daughter Makayla.” And Hen’s like, “oh, Makayla, uh, she’s on her way to hospital.”
Alice: Yeah, she was injured, but she’s stable and on the way to the hospital.
Bex: And so Makayla’s dad asks, “What about her friend Cassie? She was with our daughter,” and Eddie stupidly should not have said anything, but he said, “oh, we found another [00:32:00] cheerleader. Uh, but she’s dead.”
Alice: I mean, he’s not quite that blunt. He says he’s not, she didn’t make it, but, but yeah,
Bex: like he, like there, it’s, there was another girl. She didn’t make it. Yeah. So I mean, bye. They obviously take that as they found Cassie and Cassie was dead. Yeah. But he shouldn’t have said anything really, I don’t think. No. Like the amount of drama that was caused by these two this episode is just outstanding.
Alice: Oh yeah.
Ellen: Well, I don’t like, maybe you shouldn’t have said anything, but it’s um, or maybe you should have said, I don’t know. You know, we don’t know. Yes. Um, but yeah, it was a really unfor, like an adventure in misadventure I think this whole episode with the stuff that just went wrong, left, right, and center. But anyway, um, they go off to the hospital in pursuit of the ambulance.
Bex: So [00:33:00] while those two are putting their, while Hen and Eddie are putting their feet in their mouths, um, Chimney is not on the scene because he’s at home looking up.
Alice: Yeah. Chim’s apparently been given time off.
Bex: Yeah. He couldn’t have been given time off, like during the emergency? Like he, anyway, so yeah, he’s at home paying bills and opening mail, um, listening to his brother, um, bitch over FaceTime about the perils of being a probie.
Alice: Oh, it’s so funny. He is like, Albert’s like “All I do is roll hoses. I make coffee, I clean. This isn’t being a firefighter, it’s being a maid.” And normally Chim would be like, yep, you know what I had to do. But instead he’s like, not paying attention and he’s like, “Yeah, I could use a maid.” And Albert’s like, “What’s so interesting about your mail?” And Chim’s like, “Seeing how you’ve never actually lived in a place where your name’s on the lease, this is called a bill. You pay them. This one keeps the lights [00:34:00] on and this one makes sure your niece doesn’t freeze at night.”
Ellen: He’s so snarky.
Bex: Well, what I find really interesting is that is like the parallels between, um, like Kevin and Chim and then Albert, Albert and Chim because um, remember when in “Chimney Begins”, Kevin got to go on all the amazing calls while Chim was cleaning and cooking and making coffee and now Chim
Alice: and rolling hoses and
Bex: yeah. And now he’s got, you know, Albert saying, all I have, all I get to do is the crappy proby stuff. And it would’ve been like the perfect opportunity for Chim to like come full circle, but he’s too distracted, um, yep. By his mail to, to really, you know, pick up on that storyline.
And speaking of the Lees, thank God for this writer of this episode, um, because Albert, Albert tells Chim that he forgives him for being snarky. Um, because he knows that Chim [00:35:00] isn’t irritated with him. He’s just like irritated and tired and overwhelmed. And perhaps it’s time that Chim went back to work and let other people help like, you know, the Lees.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yay. Someone remembered,
Bex: somebody remembered the Lees. But Chim says he can’t go back to work because his head would not be in the right place. He’d just be distracted and it’d probably be a danger to himself and others, which is fair enough.
Ellen: And Albert’s sort of reassuring him. He is like, “Oh, Maddie just needs some time. I’m sure she’ll be back when she’s ready.” And but, and Chim’s like, hackles are up. Then he is like, “hang on a minute. Did Buck put you up to this?
Alice: Put you up to this,
Ellen: because this sounds really familiar.” And Albert’s like, “oh, maybe. He might’ve mentioned that you could use some bucking up.”
Bex: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Ellen: Chim’s like, I’ve already been bucked up.
Alice: I’ve been bucked [00:36:00] up. I don’t need anymore. Um, but then, yeah, while he’s sorting his mail, he comes across a letter from his health insurance saying that they paid for Jee-Yun’s ER visit. And Albert’s like, “Jee-Yun went to ER?” And Chim’s like, “yeah, this is the first I’m hearing about it.” Um, but it was the day before Madie left.
Bex: Dun, dun, dun.
Alice: So pieces are starting to fall into place.
Ellen: Oh dear.
Bex: Speaking of pieces falling, um, the 118 are trying to stop pieces from falling because there’s, we see them working to shore up the bleachers to make sure that it doesn’t fall any further and, you know, completely sever, uh, Mr. Foster’s spine.
Ellen: Ouch.
Bex: It’s quite a cute scene because, um, while Buck and Ravi and the rest of the crew are working, Bobby’s just on Mr. Foster, just, you know, keeping him calm, keeping him awake, making sure he’s okay, and he’s, he tells Mr. Foster that [00:37:00] the, uh, the football player whose name is Tino, um, is still like, lurking around.
He hasn’t left. And Mr. Foster’s really surprised about this, um, because he didn’t think that Tino liked him. Um, because he almost got Tino kicked off the football team for flunking science. And so we get this like cute little moment where Tino’s like, “well, yeah, you nearly get me kicked off the team, but you also got me to bring my grades up. Um, you were pushing me for my own sake. You know, I’m not gonna be able to play football forever. I’m gonna need science at some point. So, um, you know, I I really respect you, dude.”
Alice: Yeah. Clearly everyone who stops playing football goes to science.
Ellen: The, the thing that I, it was cute, but like, I’m like, no teenage boys talks like this.
Bex: No, no. It’s completely unrealistic.
Ellen: But anyway. Yeah, no, it is cute.
Bex: Sweet. But unrealistic. Yeah. Um, [00:38:00] so while they’re having this touching, you know, teacher student moment, um, Ravi is surveying the scene and notices that the van that we know is the one that caused the accident. Um, now has clouds of white smoke billowing out of it.
And he draws Bobby’s attention to it and Bobby’s like, uh, do we know what was in that van? Um, so they go over to said van and open the, the doors at the back and discover that it was carrying, um, barrels of chlorine, which are now on fire.
Ellen: Great. Uh, and I assume that Bobby has radioed this back to dispatch because now dispatch knows about it. They start calling people,
Bex: why are they calling people?
Ellen: I was like, can’t they put alerts out on,
Bex: isn’t that [00:39:00] with the emergency broadcast text?
Alice: Yes. They just had the emergency B text. Yeah, they just had this on the last couple episodes.
Bex: Yeah, we saw it in the last one where they were getting emergency texts like it was their greatest hits ’cause it was like wrong.
But they do have the capability of hitting everybody’s phone simultaneously with an emergency. Do you know how long it would take to call every single person in LA? And that’s not even like the good thing about the emergency broadcast system is that it hits everybody’s phones within that cell tower radius. Yeah.
So even if your phone isn’t registered, you will get, like if you’re a tourist or if you’re from out of town, you will get the emergency message on your phone simply because you’re within that area. You wouldn’t get that message if they were calling you.
Ellen: Yeah. And if you really wanted to get people in the area out as quickly as possible, then calling each individual person is definitely not the fastest way.
Bex: Right?
Ellen: But anyway, they do start calling
Bex: Even if every single dispatch. I mean, I know the, I know why they did this because they wanted to have Claudette and May [00:40:00] go head to head, but it’s just so stupid.
Ellen: Uh, all of the firefighters at the Homecoming Parade, um, put all their protective gear on. They stop saving people for the moment and save themselves for a moment. They put on their own mask before they help other people.
Bex: Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do? Put on your own mask first?
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Even if you’re a firefighter, um, they, they also grab a mask for the teacher. Yes. So that’s nice
Bex: because they can’t evacuate him ’cause he’s still trapped. So they give him some oxygen, which is great. So then we get the, like, the whole reason for this scene, which is May very blandly reciting the script to somebody that she’s called. Um, but instead of hanging up, when she gets down the best script, she stops because the person is asking her questions. So being, you know, the kind and considerate person that she is, she tries to answer the questions.[00:41:00]
Um. Which Claudette does not like. And she immediately
Man,
Alice: Claudette would hate May. I mean, hate Maddie.
Bex: Oh my god. I would actually love to see Maddie and Claudette go head to head. That would be hilarious.
Ellen: Oh, wait, wait a minute. They never meet? Oh, that’s a shame.
Alice: Anyway, um,
Bex: so Claude Echo storming over to May’s, um, station hijacks the call and, um, hangs up on the woman.
Ellen: Yeah, I feel like you shouldn’t be able to do that. That’s so rude.
Bex: It’s so rude. Like, ugh.
Ellen: She tells her off. She tells May off for, um, giving a time
Bex: and see the thing is she’s correct.
Ellen: Never guess a time, but.
Bex: Rationally, logically, she’s correct. You never guess a time or the facts to people, because then that’s gonna set expectations, which will probably [00:42:00] fail.
But it’s just the way she does it, the way she immediately takes over May’s call. Um, it’s, it’s, it’s just building more bricks in the, I hate Claudette building that’s constructing in my mind right now. Like we’re up to, we’re, it’s a skyscraper right now. That’s how big it is.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: And see the, the thing that’s also really stupid is that we cut back to the parade and they’ve already contained the fire. So all of that drama for nothing.
Ellen: Yeah. The only reason they did that was to have Claudette Yes. Be mean to May.
Alice: Be a cow. Yeah.
Bex: Which I’m sure they could have found like another more rational, more reasonable, more realistic way to do it than this storyline.
Ellen: Hmm.
Bex: So they, they contain the fire, the, the chlorine gas situation is resolved and they get Mr. Foster out of the bleachers.
Ellen: Yeah. And they, they strap him to one of the benches rather [00:43:00] than having an actual gurney.
Bex: I think they just like cut him free on the bench that he is and then just lift the entire thing out.
Ellen: I mean, if he’s got a spinal injury, it’s probably a good thing. Right?
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: You’re not supposed to move him around.
Bex: So it’s like that chick that had the meteor go through her that, um, and like fused her to the couch. So they just took the couch or
Alice: yeah, they just took the couch with them. Like, this is a hospital problem
Bex: or the, the woman that got like, um, nail gun to the door, so they just strapped it to the door.
Ellen: Oh, they strap it to the roof
Bex: the entire door. Yeah. Yeah. So it’s not unprecedented for them to, you know, take furniture with them with a victim.
Alice: That’s it. Yeah. They’re like, this is too hard. We’re making the hospital deal with this. Yeah. Sucks to be the surgeons.
Bex: Yep.
Ellen: Well, to be fair, they’ve had a lot of other patients, so maybe they’re running out.
How many ambulances do they have? They’re gonna have to strap this guy to the top of the fire truck to get him to the hospital as well. I don’t know. He’s gonna be all right. Alright, a bit more, um, childhood trauma now. [00:44:00]
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Uh, where Harry just does not want to engage with his parents at all. They’re trying to get him to talk, but he’s just like, yeah, whatever.
Bex: He’s like full grumpy teenager, like one word answers, shoulder shrugs. Then eventually like, can I go to my room?
Ellen: Yeah. Apparently Michael has a roof garden on his, in his building, which is kind of cool. That that’s kind cool. Um, and Harry helped plant the tomatoes that they’re eating for lunch, which is very cool.
I mean, maybe I’m showing my age now, but I’m like, I want a veggie garden real bad so I can eat my, my own grown vegetables. But the bad thing is that I have like a black thumb and I will kill anything that I plant in the ground.
Alice: I mean, if you want something that’s easy to not kill, um, just plant mint because your entire yard Oh, mint.
Ellen: Yeah, mint goes crazy. Yeah, I know, I do know that. Yeah. You have to contain it in a pot, otherwise,
Bex: yes, mint never goes [00:45:00] in the ground. It just goes in a pot.
Ellen: Also, pumpkins, pumpkins will go grow all over the backyard. I have done that before. I got one pumpkin out of it and I had like an entire yard worth of plant.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Anyway, Michael and Athena are worried about Harry naturally and you know, we’ve be through plenty. We’ll figure this someone out too. Okay. Whatever. That’s the end of that scene.
Bex: Yeah. It’s just reinforcing like Athena’s sort of very much pushing the, we survived. We’ll get over it. We’ll just push on and every, just pretend that everything is okay and everything will be okay.
Um, whereas I think Michael is a little bit more. No, I think, I think we need to, you know, actually put some work in here and, you know, address the trauma. I know the show doesn’t like to address trauma. The show is very much Athena, but, um, Michael is like, no. Well we actually need to, to do that and, you know, do [00:46:00] therapy.
Ellen: Oh, they really need to do therapy.
Alice: They all need to do therapy.
Bex: Including Chim, who is, uh, losing his mind right now to the point where he is stalking the, um, the pediatrician who saw Jee-Yun.
Ellen: Oh my God, this scene. Oh, he does such a great job at the scene
Alice: though. Yes, he does, but it’s so weird.
Bex: Oh, it’s so weird
Alice: because first off, he went and asked like who his daughter saw, and the front desk told him that it was Dr. Green and told him who she was. So he’s chasing her down while she’s in civvies, like she’s clearly trying to go home.
Ellen: This poor woman,
Alice: but yeah, so he’s like, “yeah, like I got this letter. Um, this is Jee-Yun, who I think you know already, I’m her father.” And she’s like, “yeah, cool. What can I do for you?” And he is like, “Oh, I received this form in the mail from my health insurance.”
And she’s like, “Yeah, if you have any billing [00:47:00] questions…” and she’s, and he is like, “No, no, no. It’s not a billing question, but it says right here that my daughter was brought in for an ER visit and that you treated her.” And Dr. Green’s like, “Yep. How is she?” And Chim’s like The, the baby’s fine, I guess, but her mother’s not,” and Dr. Green tries to deflect,
Bex: which is exactly what she should do because Chim says, “I need to know what happened to Jee-Yun.” And Dr. Green says, “I think you should speak to Jee-Yun’s mother,” which just opens the floodgates for Chim. And he goes on this massive monologue,
Alice: Literally, Chim just trauma dumps on this poor doctor. And he just looks so heartbreaking that I’m like, oh, Chim.
Bex: And then, you know, so we’ve already had the, um, like maybe the front desk or someone in the hospital fuck up by pointing Chim in Dr. Green’s direction. Um, and then Dr. Green fucks up by actually telling Chim what happened.
Alice: I mean, I guess it’s not a HIPAA violation because
Bex: it’s not a HIPAA violation because he is her [00:48:00] biological father, but she doesn’t know if there was anything on the file on Jee-Yun’s file that said that there was like an order or a protective order or something.
Alice: Yeah, right.
Bex: In effect preventing the biological father from having that information. ’cause you can do that. You can go, look, I’m, something is going on. I’m blocking the father from having any kind of knowledge about my kid’s medical attention.
And she doesn’t know that without looking at the file. So she shouldn’t be divulging this information without checking.
Alice: And she also doesn’t actually know that this guy, like he could have just kidnapped a baby, gone through the mail and been like, yeah, I’m Asian, the kid’s Asian. That’s totally fine.
Bex: She’s looking at the, looking at the, like the Asian dad and the Asian kindergarten. Oh yeah. They’re related. Like what? Yeah. Also, considering this is what, eight days maybe more. Do you think that she would actually remember Joon? Like how many kids did they see in the hospital?
Alice: Maybe, maybe, I don’t [00:49:00] know. I’m not… like some customers. I remember some customers I don’t. So
Bex: like repeat customers. I’m sure you remember, but would you remember like a one-off from a week ago?
Alice: I mean, they did take her into a weird room. So, um, I, I just need to say as well, I love, so Chim’s like trauma dump.
Bex: Oh, the giraffe?
Alice: Rant. The giraffe! Yes!
She’s got post-partum, I couldn’t go home, I couldn’t call, the power was out, the phone lines were down, there was a giraffe on Hollywood Boulevard!
And she’s just like, um, yep. So, uh, the Ms. Buckley was bathing your daughter and Jee-Yun slipped under the water. Please just leave me alone.
Ellen: She says, please, please stop telling me everything that’s happened to you in the last week.
Anyway, she, she says, but good luck to you. And then scurries away, um,
Bex: [00:50:00] making a mental note
Alice: runs the fuck away
Bex: to check with security to see what the fuck was going on in that hospital.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah. And, um, Chim recovers pretty quickly and just sort of like, oh, thank you. Bye.
Alice: Yeah. Oh, speaking of, um, doctors, like talking about patients, it was really funny.
So I went and saw a new GP yesterday and she happens to be my mom’s gp. Uh, and it’s so funny because we have obviously the same surname. Mom and I look quite alike. Um, and the doctor could not say anything until I brought up my mom and she was like, oh, thank God. It was just so funny because like we were going through like the, the patient history stuff and then like.
Was like going through my dad’s side of the family and then started on mom’s and she’s just like, you are Linda’s daughter. And I’m like, yes. She’s like, oh, thank God.
Ellen: I thought it was going crazy. Just like
Alice: but yeah, like she’s just like, yeah, I’ve been been dealing with your mom for like five years now, but didn’t wanna make [00:51:00] assumptions.
Bex: Been dealing with your mother for five years. Poor doctor.
Ellen: Does your mom chase her down in the car park and demand to know what happened?
Bex: Like you saw my daughter? What did you talk about?
Alice: What did you talk about? Oh, she’s like, um, a blood test. Oh, okay.
Bex: Oh God.
Ellen: All right, we’re going back to dispatch. Unfortunately,
Bex: we are going back to dispatch and Josh is making me wanna strangle him.
Ellen: Yep. May’s generally worried about this, um, about the way that Claudette is behaving towards her. So she tells Josh about it.
Alice: Yeah. She’s acting like an asshole.
Bex: She goes to her trusted adult and her trusted adult pretty much says that it’s all in her head.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. Although I do like that it’s,
Alice: she’s like, ever since she’s got here, she’s had it in for me.
Bex: But Josh is like,
Alice: and Josh, like, ever since she got here, you mean this morning?
Bex: But Yeah. Then we get the, the [00:52:00] explanation that, um, whatever is happening, whatever May thinks is happening with Claudette, it’s not personal because Claudette just has a big personality.
Ellen: Mm.
Bex: Yep.
Ellen: Unfortunately, it’s not really an excuse for being shitty.
Bex: No, no, it’s not. And he suggests that May try talking to Claudette May’s like, “I don’t, I don’t wanna talk to her. I don’t think that’s a good idea.” And Josh says, “well, I could talk to her like on your behalf.” And May is like, “no, no. ’cause then it’ll just look like I’m running to the boss and that’ll make things worse.” And Josh will go, “uh, yeah, because it’ll make it for sure worse if Claudette realizes she has a boss.” Like Josh, you are not helping,
Alice: which, yikes,
Bex: you are her boss. Yeah. In this situation.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But he says, you know, it’s just a misunderstanding. I’m sure the two of you can work it out. Like, no, it’s not. But I do kind of [00:53:00] wonder if Claudette is, I’m not, I’m, no, I’m getting really into this storyline considering how much I hate it and how little airtime it gets in this episode. But I do kind of wonder if Claudette is acting differently around Josh than she does around other people.
Alice: I totally, yeah. And like Josh is like a little bit of an asshole. Like he’s got that sassiness to him?
Bex: He does, but it’s usually deployed for good.
Alice: He just thinks that Claudette’s the same. Uh, exactly. Yeah. So I think he just thinks that Claudette’s the same sort of way. Um, but like, yeah. Oh, it’d make it worse if Claudette heard she had a boss. It’s like, uh, what?
Bex: Okay, so now the shit’s really gonna hit the fan because, um,
Ellen: oh yeah.
Bex: We are gonna return to the hospital.
Ellen: We’re gonna follow, hang on, we gotta follow Eddie back to where Hen is first. Yes. So he’s, and I just gotta say that Eddie’s got the most nice looking hair in this episode. He looks great. I was like, wow. What’d you do to your hair, man? [00:54:00] It looks good.
Bex: It’s good hair.
Ellen: Anyway.
Bex: Very good hair. So yeah, he’s wandering through. It’s a, it’s a nice sort of, um, it’s a nice shot because we are following Eddie through the hospital and we see it through the, um, emergency department. So we’re sort of seeing the chaos of the emergency department of all the people there from the homecoming parade.
And he ends up back at the front, front desk where Hen is, I’m guessing, doing paperwork to hand over the patient that they’ve just brought in. And Makayla’s parents show up as well. They’ve found the, found the hospital, um, they found their quote unquote daughter and now they’ve come back to find, Hen to thank her for saving their daughter’s life.
And at that moment, Cassie’s parents arrive.
Ellen: Yeah, they, it’s, it’s kind of a weird scene because they, they come up and thank Hen. And Eddie’s standing there and, and he’s like, oh, it wasn’t just [00:55:00] me and like, kind of indicating towards Eddie, but the, the mum had just grabs her in a, in a hug. Like just totally ignore s Eddie.
Bex: Yeah. Eddie’s like, oh, what my chopped liver? Okay.
Ellen: He’s like, okay, fine.
Bex: Which kind of works. That’s cute. Which works out because then you’ve got Hen becomes attached to the Tanner’s, which is Makayla’s parents, which then leaves Eddie free to sort of become attached to the Shaws, which are Cassie’s parents.
So when the Shaws come in, um, we see how close they are because they’re immediately, the Tanners immediately are hugging the Shaws and, um, consoling them in their grief. And so Hen stays with the Tanners while Eddie. I don’t know what I mean. I know why it’s Eddie. It has to be Eddie. ’cause this, you know, it’s 9-1-1.
It’s a show about the 118. So it has to be Eddie. ’cause you know, main characters, um, Eddie decides that he’s going to take them [00:56:00] to the morgue, take the Shaws to the morgue to show them their daughter who is still laid out on the autopsy table.
Alice: Yeah. It’s strange, but sure
Ellen: they need to, uh, identify her apparently
Bex: they do. But don’t they usually have like a viewing room that they put the bodies in so you don’t see them laid out in the middle of the morgue, on the autopsy table?
Ellen: I don’t think you have to find your own way to the morgue either. I think you probably, um, someone from the hospital will escort you to where
Bex: not a random paramedic.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah. But if that happened, we wouldn’t find out what happened. So Eddie has to go along to Yes. Yeah.
Bex: Yes. Because what happens is that the Shaws come in and the miscellaneous, medical person who’s lingering in the background doesn’t get to say anything, so they don’t get their SAG card for this scene.
Um, pulls the, the white sheet off the, um, [00:57:00] the body on the, uh, the slab revealing her face. And you see the, for a split second, the Shaws collapse with grief and then they stop and they like cock their heads and they wait. No, that’s not our daughter. And the other really interesting part is as they pull the sheep back, Eddie kind of bows his head respectfully to give the Shaws like the illusion of having some privacy.
And as soon as the Shaws say that’s not her, his head snaps up. He’s like, wait, what?
Alice: What?
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And the Shaws deliver the, the verdicts. Like, that’s not our daughter. That’s Makayla. And Eddie’s like, oh fuck, we fucked up.
Ellen: Yeah. Oh, it’s, yeah. It’s so heartbreaking.
Alice: Uh, this, this, this episode sucked even more the second time because I knew what was gonna happen.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. [00:58:00] I was watching this like before I needed to go and actually speak to some people, like in a meeting, and I was trying so hard not to engage with this. Oh no. Because I was like, oh, I can’t cry right now. Oh, it was so heartbreaking.
Bex: I can remember the first time I watched this episode, I don’t think I was paying attention in the sort of the, the David Wallace-ing of the two girls at the beginning. Um, so I kind of wasn’t paying attention to who was who. So this came as a big surprise to me. I’m like, what do you mean that’s Makayla?
Alice: Yeah,
Bex: so,
Ellen: well, it was like, Hen asked her what her name was and she said, Makayla. So it was like, but like that makes sense at the time.
Bex: The second, second, third, fourth time around, now that I’ve seen it, um, I recognize the faces. Like I’m watching her going, okay, they’re sitting in the car. That’s Makayla, that’s Cassie. And so when you get to that scene, I’m looking at these girls on the, on the pavement. I’m going, okay, Cassie’s the dead one over there. [00:59:00] This is no, no. Cassie’s the one over here. Makayla’s over there.
Alice: But the first time me and my face blindness, no fucking idea. I, I don’t even know who the guy trying to cut um, the teacher out was. Bobby? I dunno.
Bex: Um, and to make it even sad, this is a, the Makayla Cassie storyline, this is a ripped from the headlines storyline. This really happened.
Ellen: Oh no, really?
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Oh, that’s awful.
Bex: Yeah, it, um, it happened back in 2006. There was a, a van crash and two women, um, one woman died. Um, another woman survived. She had horrific injuries and they were misidentified on the scene. Um, but what was worse was it took them weeks to work out that they’d made a mistake.
So the, um, this poor family [01:00:00] was sitting in a hospital bed, um, beside this, this girl that they thought that was their daughter.
Um, and she had horrific facial injuries, so they couldn’t actually identify her properly. Um, and as the injury started to go down, they’re like, wait, she doesn’t really look like my daughter. Um, and she was not responding to her name, and she kept in, like she was saying, like, my name is like, so they thought that her name was Laura.
She’s like, no, my name’s Whitney. I’m Whitney. I’m Whitney. And eventually took dental rec, like, took dental X-rays and then compared them to her dental records and realized that, oh, this was not Laura. This actually was Whitney, which meant that Laura had died. Um, Whitney’s family had already done a funeral, like they had mourned her and buried her.
And then all of a sudden they’re being told, actually no, she’s been alive for weeks in a hospital bed. And Laura’s family have been, you know, holding out hope that their daughter was alive. And suddenly, no, actually she died weeks ago. [01:01:00]
Ellen: Fuck. That’s awful.
Bex: Yeah. So as awful as this episode is, at least it only takes them like an hour or so.
Ellen: Yeah. They don’t have weeks in an episode. Yeah. To go through all of that.
Bex: But they also, they don’t have, like, Cassie never learns that they have, there was a mix up. ’cause she’s unconscious through this entire thing, so nobody buries her and like nobody mourns her. She just like. She wakes up and her parents are there.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Well, so before that can be unraveled, we have to have this annoying scene with May and Claudette.
Bex: Ugh.
Ellen: So Claudette is, uh, looking like she’s about to go home. Um, ’cause she’s got, she’s heading for the elevator. Um, May just grabs her before she goes and she’s like, “oh, I’ve got to get home to feed my cat.”
And MA’s like trying to engage her. She’s like, “you have a cat?” And Claudette said, “no.” [01:02:00] It’s like, okay, bitch. Um, so yeah. And May’s like, “I feel like we got on the off on the wrong foot.” And Claudette is really not having any of it. She’s like, “what happened today was a learning opportunity.”
Alice: And bless little May. She’s like, “yeah, exactly. I’m so glad you say it that way. I mean, I’m a, I know you’re a lot more experienced than this, and I know I look young, but I’m also good at this,” and just like, keeps going and Claudia just goes, “Apology accepted.” And May’s like, “no, that’s not,” she’s like, I, “next time you don’t have to tell me how good you are. Just show me.” It’s like, oh, fuck off.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: At this point in the episode, I’ve gone, oh shit. Once again, May’s storyline is about being bullied by a mean girl.
Ellen: Oh, yeah.
Bex: Can this girl not get a break.
Ellen: All right. Well, we’re going back to the more trauma for this episode. Um, Eddie has to explain to Hen what [01:03:00] happened and, oh no, we don’t have.
Okay. It’s just that, that’s just,
Bex: it’s literally, literally just that
Ellen: literal Eddie telling Hen what happened.
Bex: It’s not, but we don’t even see that. It’s just like Hen’s like, oh, thank God for taking the Shaws. You know, how did it go? And Eddie’s like, “ah, that’s, um, that’s a, that’s a complicated question.”
Alice: That’s a complicated question.
Bex: “Where are the Tanners?” And Hen’s like, “oh, they’re in with their daughter,” and Eddie’s like, “yeah, no they’re not.” Yeah. And Hen’s like, “wait, what do you mean?” Um, but before we can watch that cluster, fuck. Um, we are going to go back to Athena, who has come home to the Athena House of Horrors.
Um, and it’s empty. And it’s quiet because Bobby is back at the station house doing paperwork, which means that they’re like, I don’t understand why Hen and Eddie are still at the hospital [01:04:00] at this point, but that’s fine. ’cause Bobby’s already back at the station. Um, and mm-hmm. He says he’s still at work, which means that like his shift was supposed to have ended, which means that Hen and Eddie are, are now on overtime? Anyway.
Um, so he’s doing paperwork, he’s gonna be home soon. Um, so Athena, um, starts to do all the things that you do when you get home from work. You know, you, you take off your shoes, take off your jacket, you take off your jewelry, and as she is taking off her jewelry, she puts,
Alice: hang on. You mean we don’t just wear high heels around the house for 30 minutes before running a bath?
Bex: See, I like these writers. They know that women get home, we take off our shoes, we take off our jewelry. We know who the Lees are.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: But specifically with Athena taking her jewelry off, she has to put her phone down so she can get all her rings off and she. It [01:05:00] ends up on the edge of the bedside table and falls down between the bed and the bedside table.
So she has to bend down to retrieve it. And when she’s down there, she sees that there is a framed photograph that’s fallen, so she retrieves that as well. Um, and it is a photo of, uh, her and Bobby and the kids from their wedding. But it’s smudged because we, the audience get a flashback to see that Jeffrey had rubbed his fingers all over the picture.
Um, I don’t think Athena knows that for certain, but that’s what happened. But, so either we, the audience is seeing it or she’s imagining it, and it triggers her into like a cleaning spiral because she starts. Cleaning the glass and then she’s like, Nope, I’ve gotta take everything out of my drawer. I don’t want [01:06:00] everything that Jeffrey could possibly have touched now needs to be cleaned.
Yeah. Thank God she never found out what did with her panties.
Ellen: Yeah. Well she, she washes everything. She takes all of her clothes out of her drawers and she’s basically in a manic kind of Oh yeah. Sneaking spiral. Yeah. Um, yeah. Poor Athena. And she’s still, she’s like washing up all of the cutler, like, you know, all of the things in the kitchen when I’m, when Bobby gets home,
Bex: I’m certain she’s cleaned like everything in the house, which kind of,
Ellen: yeah. I mean, I don’t know how long Bobby spent doing paperwork, but it looks like she’s at this for hours.
Bex: Yeah. Which kind of lends credence to the Athena no longer thinks this house is safe either. Theory, which is why she’s mm-hmm. Been quite hesitant to allow Harry to come back.
Alice: Mm-hmm. Even though she shot Jeffrey 56 times.
Bex: I love that. [01:07:00] Every time you talk about that, the number of bullets just goes up.
Alice: She hasn’t stopped shooting him. She’s still going,
Bex: Uh, okay. So Athena is aggressively cleaning. Um, meanwhile, by some miracle, the doctors have managed to expedite dental records from, um, somebody’s
Alice: the dental store? Yep.
Bex: Because I mean, for dental records you have to contact the dentist, right? And hope to hell that the person’s had x-rays in the last couple of years that you can use for comparison.
Alice: I don’t, I never understand how they’re like, oh yeah, dental record. Like who, who goes to the dentist? I don’t know. Like, I haven’t been to the dentist and had x-rays since I was a teenager. Okay. So we’re never gonna be, my teeth are totally different now.
Bex: We are never gonna be able to identify your body then, is what we’re saying. ’cause we don’t have dental records.
Alice: Please, please don’t murder me Bex,
Bex: please go and get, go to the dentist. Even if it’s like, so what brings you in here? Like, well, my best friend is thinking of murdering me, so I need [01:08:00] check. I need to get an x-ray.
Alice: I was really worried. I’m really worried that my podcast cohost is gonna murder me.
Bex: And so I need dental records so that, you know, once they’ve dismembered me, I can, you know, my body can be identified by dental records. Um,
Ellen: I think I end up getting one every couple of years at the moment.
Alice: Oh, look at money bags over here.
Ellen: No, it’s all covered by insurance.
Alice: Look at money bags. Affording insurance. Like I can’t afford dental insurance. I don’t. The fuck do you think this is?
Bex: I don’t think my insurance covers dental to that degree.
Ellen: Really? Okay.
Bex: So Ellen’s fine as soon, always be able to identify Ellen’s body.
Alice: Yeah, as soon as I went off my parents’ plan, I was like, well I guess that’s the end of my teeth.
Bex: But like the other thing is, if this is homecoming, then that’s what a Saturday? So what dentist is open on a Saturday, that they were able to contact them and get their, like their patient’s records? [01:09:00] I know it’s for the drama.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: It’s absolutely for the drama that they managed to get a hold of somebody’s dental records and they were able to confirm that the body in the morgue is Makayla, not Cassie.
Alice: Yeah. They only had to get Makayla’s dental records. Is was Makayla was the one whose parents were the real estate agents, right?
Bex: No, Cassie’s parents were the real estates agents. Makayla’s parents.
Alice: Oh, that’s right. Yeah.
Bex: But wouldn’t they have also needed, ’cause if they get Makayla’s records, um, like I’m hoping that they got Makayla’s records and compared it and not just, they got Cassie’s records and went, well, it’s not Cassie’s, so it has to be Makayla.
Yeah. Which means that they had to get two sets of dental records on a Saturday hoping that both girls had, you know, dental x-rays recently. And they hadn’t told, and they hadn’t told the Tanners yet. So, no. So they’ve done all this without alerting the Tanners or the Shaws.
Alice: Yeah. Well, the Shaws are not,
Ellen: finally, finally, someone kept some information [01:10:00] to themselves in this episode.
Alice: The Shaws already know that they’re, it’s not their daughter in the morgue because they’re like, no, that’s not our kid.
Bex: But they don’t know where their daughter is.
Alice: No.
Bex: So anyway, so the doctors come to Eddie,
Alice: it’s just awful.
Bex: And Hen to break the news to them first and he goes, yeah, I’m going to go in and break the news to the Tanners. And Hen goes, Hmm, actually I wanna do that.
Alice: Like, I’ll do that even though my shift ended 12 hours ago and I don’t actually work at this hospital, except that we kind of rescued a helicopter from the top of it recently. So I guess now I just live here.
Bex: But is it the same hospital?
Alice: I don’t think so,
Bex: because there are multiple hospitals in LA. I know they always seem to go to First Presbyterian, but I don’t think that this is first. Is this First Presbyterian?
Alice: Yes, this is First Presbyterian.
Bex: This is First Presbyterian was the one that we went to for the Emergency First Presbyterian.
Alice: I don’t know,
Bex: I don’t even, I don’t even care a little about,
Ellen: I’ve got no idea.
Alice: But basically, I don’t [01:11:00] remember what episode that was.
Bex: Hen is two, right? Hen is like, um, I fucked up. I need to, you know, rectify my mistake. So I am gonna go and break the news to the Tanners.
Alice: For some reason.
Ellen: Oh, this is so awful though.
Alice: It’s aw, it’s horrible. It’s so hard.
Ellen: Yeah. So she asks them, she goes to where they’re sitting there with the person who they think is their daughter, uh, who is all covered up in bandages, so can’t even see her face.
Alice: Mm.
Ellen: Uh, they follow Hen out of the room into the hallway where she breaks the news, um, about the terrible mistake. I mean, she does explain it quite well that the person she was saving was asking for Makayla. Like, she asked her her name and she said, Makayla. So, but, and then the dad was sort of works it out and was like, [01:12:00] are you telling us this girl in this, this room is not our daughter.
And so, and then they just all break down and poor Hen. Um, and poor them obviously. What a horrible situation.
Bex: Hmm. So they collapse in grief and, um. As they’re like sobbing, we see the Shaws have arrived to sit with their daughter. Um, and I work, they immediately, rather than rushing to their daughter’s side, they take a moment to go to the Tanners and hug them, um, in a nice sort of mirror of the, the previous type, the pre, the first time that they saw them.
’cause the first time they saw them, the Tanners were hugging the Shaws because they thought the Shaws had lost their daughter. And now the Shaws are hugging the Tanners because they know that the Tanners have lost theirs. And so Hen it’s hard, takes the Tanners again to the morgue where the body is [01:13:00] still lying on the autopsy table while the Shaw’s
Alice: poor Michaela is just like she’s had her teeth looked at, she’s had the, like a, the wrong parents.
Ellen: She’s not there anymore. She doesn’t mind.
Bex: But again, not the actual doctors or the medical staff. It’s, once again, it’s the paramedics doing it. Um, so, you know, he, Hen and Eddie are having a pretty traumatic evening. Um, Buck and Chim aren’t, aren’t doing so well either. Because Chim has, I don’t know what he done with what he’s done with the kid, um, but he’s at Buck’s apartment ’cause he thinks that he’s, he’s solved a mystery.
He knows why Maddie’s left now. Um, she left because Jee-Yun had an accident and Maddie blames herself. But, um, what’s interesting is that he, like, he burst into Buck’s apartment and he’s like, “Maddie took Jee-Yun [01:14:00] to the emergency room!” Um, and it takes him a little while to realize that Buck wasn’t surprised when Chim told him that.
Yeah. Um, you like, he, he didn’t even blink. Um. And the the cogs are, are are moving. They’re a little bit slow. ’cause you know, he’s tired and he is overwhelmed. But he realized, he’s like, “You knew that Jee-Yun had an accident. You knew that Maddie took her to the emergency room.” And Buck looks like a deer in headlights.
Ellen: Yeah. I don’t, I’m not really sure why Buck didn’t tell him about this. So why did he keep this in secret?
Bex: Because Maddie told him to.
Alice: Maddie told him to.
Ellen: Yeah, I don’t like it.
Alice: But the Buckley family is full of secrets. That’s what they do. Chimney is bad at secrets. The Buckley family never, like, they don’t speak except that Buck doesn’t shut up, but
Ellen: they don’t speak about their feelings.
Bex: Yeah. Maddie’s good at [01:15:00] secrets. Buck is learning to be good with secrets,
Alice: but yeah, basically Maddie. Maddie said nothing to Chim, just left him the video, but she has spoken to Buck
Bex: multiple times it sounds like. Sounds like she’s kept in Tuck with Butch
Alice: in tuck with Butch?
Bex: Did I say that?
Alice: Yes.
Bex: Yeah. I’m not surprised. She has kept in touch with Buck.
Alice: Um, so yeah, Chim asks where Maddie is and Buck goes “I don’t know, she wouldn’t tell me.” Chim goes “Eight days. You’ve waited eight days while you’ve seen the hell I’ve been going through. And you didn’t tell me?” Buck goes, “She said she was fine. She just needed to figure some stuff out and she was more worried about you. She asked me to check in on you and Jee-Yun and make sure you were okay,”
Bex: which explains the, the visit, the trip that Buck took to Chim’s apartment at the beginning of the episode.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: And [01:16:00] the, the constant bucking up that he kept trying to do. Um. Chim’s not okay though. He’s not using his words anymore though, to explain how not okay he is.
Um, and quite a, like a, a little bit of a, a synchronous moment. ’cause remember back in season one we mentioned that there was supposed to be a running joke that, um, Buck’s birthmark, or Oliver’s birthmark and Buck’s birthmark was, you know, people were constantly gonna be asking did he get punched in the face? Um,
Alice: he actually gets punched in the face!
Bex: Yeah. He actually gets punched in the face. And I did like, rewind that and make sure that, you know, Chim actually did hit him on that side of the face. And he does, he did.
Alice: He aims straight for the birthmark, I think.
Bex: Yep.
Alice: Um, so yeah, Chim punches Buck, says “I am not okay.” And then just leaves.
Bex: Chimney out. Um, Athena is also not okay, but she’s not punching anybody. [01:17:00] Thank God.
Alice: No, she’s just cleaning.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. So Bobby gets home, she’s still cleaning. Um, he’s like, “you okay? Like what happened?” And Athena’s like, “He was here in this house.” She’s freaking out, basically.
Bex: Yeah. Like Bobby’s repeating the therapist’s line without actually having been to the therapy. He’s still saying the same thing. Like, the, the house is safe.
Ellen: He can’t hurt us anymore.
Bex: Jeffrey is gone. He can’t hurt you anymore. The house is safe. And Athena’s like, um, “I’m supposed to bring Harry back to this house. I’m supposed to be telling him that this house is safe.” But she doesn’t feel like the house is safe. It doesn’t feel like home to her anymore. It’s been tainted with Jeffrey’s cooties,
Ellen: not anymore, because she’s been trying to scrub it all away.
Bex: So she collapses. Um, Bobby so reassures her. [01:18:00] So that’s,
Ellen: oh, this next scene is the one bright spot in this whole episode. Like in terms of lightheartedness.
Bex: Yeah, but it also doesn’t make sense because when Chim went over to see Buck, that was evening. ’cause it was around the same time that Athena was, you know, getting a cleaning psychosis on. And that was, you know, end of shift. Bobby was coming home. Yet this scene happens the next morning ’cause the sun is up. Um, and buddy, if you had, if you’ve only waited until now to put ice on your face, um, you’ve left it far too late.
Alice: So late. I mean, no, let’s be real. Buck got punched and he went straight to, or he, because Are they at Buck’s place?
Bex: Yes, they’re at Buck’s place.
Alice: So he got punched in the face and called Eddie straight away and Eddie came straight over.
Bex: But it’s morning. He got punched the night before. Because it was dark and now it’s sunny.[01:19:00]
Alice: It’s, it’s timey-wimey, it’s fine.
Ellen: He does also have a big bruise on his face, so yeah, it takes a while for that to come up, but,
Bex: but he’s only putting ice on it now also When, during the day is it? Because Eddie’s getting him a beer?
Ellen: Hey, when you, when you’re a shift worker, any time of day is beer o’clock.
Alice: It’s 5:00 PM somewhere.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Like breakfast beer? I don’t know.
Ellen: Apparently.
Bex: So, yeah. So yeah, it’s the next, it’s the next morning. Um, Buck is feeling sorry for himself, and he’s called Eddie, who’s come over to, um, to basically compliment Chim on his ability to punch and hit a specific spot.
Because all he says is, “Well, there’s nothing wrong with his aim.”
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Okay, first they have a little chat about how, um, Buck thought that he could help them both. Um, because Maddie told him not to [01:20:00] tell Chim what was going on. And, you know, he thought he could convince her to come home, but he fail.
He feels like he failed on both fronts. And then Eddie’s like, “You were always gonna fail.” It’s like, dude, what? Buck says, “Well that’s dark.” Uh, but then he’s like, “You think he’s gonna forgive me?” And Eddie’s like, “No. Okay. I’m kidding. I’m kidding. I’m kidding.”
Alice: Maybe then just ice goes on the eye, bud.
Ellen: So dude, you no help at all. You’re supposed to be making him feel better. Instead, you’re just like,
Bex: I mean, he does have some pearls of wisdom because he does tell Buck that, you know, he’s looking at Maddie like this is his big sister, the one who always knew what to do. Um, person who’s always looked up to the person who’s always cared for him.
But this is not his big sister anymore. This is Chim’s Maddie who’s very different from Buck’s, Maddie. [01:21:00]
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: And maybe Buck acting like this is his sister is not the correct response in this situation. Maybe he needs to let Chim do what Chim does because it’s Chim’s Maddie that’s in trouble, not Buck’s Maddie.
So he is really good at relationship advice, just not his own relationships.
Ellen: Yeah. And also he’s like really chipper for someone who just supposedly broke up with his girlfriend. So he’s loving the single life apparently.
Alice: E Eddie. Like honestly, if Buck was just like, “oh, how are you going without Ana?” Eddie would be like, “Ana?”
Bex: Ana Who?
Alice: “Oh, Anna. Yeah. No, she’s fine. Don’t care.”
Bex: Like you told me to broke up with her, so I did.
Ellen: Yeah. Maybe this is long enough after that all went down.
Alice: Yeah it is a while because
Bex: eight days, it’s eight days because,
Alice: oh, it’s eight days. Yeah,
Bex: because she broke up with her the same day that Jee-Yun got dropped at the, at the fire station.[01:22:00]
Alice: At the fire station.
Ellen: Oh Yeah.
Alice: So it’s been eight days and Eddie does not care.
Ellen: He’s over it.
Alice: Yeah, he’s done. He’s fine.
Ellen: Alright. It’s time for some more advice. Um, May has got the ice cream out, two tubs of ice cream. One for each of them. For her and Harry.
Bex: Yes. ’cause Harry has made his way over to her apartment.
Um
Ellen: Oh, that’s right. She lives.
Bex: She has her own apartment now.
Ellen: Oh, I forgot about that. Yes, yes.
Bex: Um, and when,
Alice: and it’s not within telescope view of it, her father.
Ellen: That sounds way more creepy. Actually. No, I was gonna say it sounds more creepy than it is, but No, he, he really does, does
Alice: It’s creepy
Ellen: spy on people through… yeah, it’s creepy.
Bex: He does
Ellen: anyway. They’re having a heart to heart.
Bex: They’re having a heart to heart. When, uh, May tells Harry, “Don’t tell dad about the amount of ice cream that I’m, amount of sugar that I’m giving you right now”, Harry’s like, “He’s [01:23:00] not gonna care because both of my parents are, both of our parents are bending over backwards since I got kidnapped by that crazy freak.”
And, uh, he’s, he does open up to May a little bit and I think he’s opened up to her more than he’s opened up to anybody. Um, and we discover why he’s been in such a mood, um, because he blames his parents for what happened to him. He blames Michael for not even noticing that Jeffrey walked off with him and he blames Athena because she was the reason that the guy was there in the first place, which I think is a pretty
Ellen: Yeah, it’s actually what happened.
Bex: I think that makes sense.
Ellen: Yeah. Poor Harry,
Bex: very much. Poor Harry.
Ellen: Um, but May tells him to be mad at them.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. He’s like, “I know I’m not supposed to be mad at them.” And May’s like, “No, be mad at them.”
Ellen: And then Harry basically tells May to be mad [01:24:00] at the, at the awful lady at work. I’m like, oh, I dunno if this is like mutual terrible advice day, but I’m not sure if this is great advice.
Bex: I don’t know that he was telling her to be, to be, you know to be mad at Claudette ’cause she’s, ’cause May’s advice is like, don’t bottle up your feelings. Don’t put on a happy face just to make other people happy. And he is like, “Sure, tell me how that’s working at work for you.” She’s like, shut up. Do as I say, not as I do.
Ellen: It’s a sweet bonding moment.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Do I do like the Grant siblings.
Alice: Yeah, me too.
Bex: Okay. Final scene of the episode. Um, we have Chim who’s going on a cross country mission to track down his baby mama. Um, so he is got Jee in the car. Um, he’s very cool. He is like, he loads rent and loads, um, Jee into her capsule, locks it [01:25:00] into the base and he’s like, “Cool. Do you need anything else? Game, device, pretzels, trashy magazine?” And Jee-Yun’s just looking at him like, dude, I’m a baby. All they need is my fingers. They will entertain me for hours.
Ellen: She’s just like, I don’t know what’s going on, but we’re doing it. Off we go.
Bex: Why? Why am I in the car? Am I going back to the hospital? I don’t wanna go back to the hospital.
Alice: Yeah. Not again, please don’t yell at my doctor again.
Bex: So they’re gonna go find mommy. Um, but they have, he has to make one phone call first. So pulls out his phone, pulls up contact, dials, and then gets very confused when he can hear a ringtone directly behind him because he’s called Hen. Uh, but Hen is there.
Ellen: Yeah. Hen’s caught him before he leaves and apparently he was about to go and visit her, but she came to find him [01:26:00] first. So
Bex: Yes. And Chim asks if she’s here to, um, talk him out of going and Hen’s like, no, I’m here to see if you want a driving partner. And I’m like, you were already at the fire station for like a week, two weeks straight with the quote unquote emergencies from the season opener, leaving Karen at home with one, maybe multiple children.
’cause we don’t know where you are in your fostering situation right now. Um, you’ve come home for a week and now you wanna leave again.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Karen is a saint.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Karen does not deserve this treatment like a wife.
Ellen: No, but it is, it is very nice of her to offer to come along. Maybe she was offering in the with the thought that he would obviously say no. [01:27:00]
Alice: Yeah. Luckily Chim is also Hen um, Karen’s friend, so it’s just like, no, go the fuck home. What are you doing?
Bex: But like,
Alice: I don’t, I don’t want Karen to murder me,
Bex: but yes, it, she says like, what would your wife have to say about that? And Hen’s like after yesterday, I think she’d understand and it took me a minute to figure out what happened yesterday for Hen
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And I’m like, what? What… honey? I know that I abandoned you during the emergency so that I could be on call and you did a great job with the kids. Um, but I had a really crappy day at work, so now I wanna go on a cross country road trip with my colleague. Is that okay? Like Yes honey. That’s fine. I know that you had an absolute traumatic day, which was possibly of your own making, so of course you can abandon me and the kids again.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: For un again, undetermined amount of time. Yes. Go divorce papers may be waiting for you when you come back, but Sure. Go.
Ellen: I mean, Chim doesn’t even turn her down. He’s just like, okay, no, I’m going bye. Um, but no, [01:28:00] he knows, he’s, he’s got, uh, a bank withdrawal information from a bank in Oxnard. I don’t know where that is.
Bex: I dunno where that is. I dunno.
Alice: Uh, America.
Ellen: Yeah. But, um, he’s gonna go check that out first and,
Bex: oh, it’s in California. It’s just another part of California.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: It’s like northwest of Los Angeles.
Ellen: Okay. So she’s hasn’t got far at that point?
Bex: No. No.
Ellen: But I don’t know what he’s hoping to find there since it was just a bank withdrawal, but, okay.
Bex: He’s probably gonna go into the bank and go like, “This woman came in and withdrew this amount of money. What can you tell me? Did she happen to leave a breadcrumb that I can follow?”
And of course he’s gonna get there and feel like, no, she used the ATM and we don’t have a camera.
Alice: Yeah. They’re also not married, so he doesn’t have any,
Ellen: can’t request that information.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: [01:29:00] Anyway, he’s gonna be on the trail with their daughter, so good luck to him. Um, but Hen sort of breaks down a little bit and asks, “Are you sure you’re coming back?” and Chim’s like, “Not without her,”
Bex: not without my baby mama.
Ellen: They have a lovely big hug.
Alice: I don’t wanna be a single father. I had to do washing one day and it was too hard.
Bex: Yeah. So imagine how Maddie felt for like, for three months that you left her while you were in the, the station house.
Alice: Yeah. But Bex, she’s a woman. She just knows how to do it innately.
Bex: Are you sure you don’t have dental records? ’cause I’m gonna just, you’re gonna need them.
Alice: No, I’m sure Chim’s actually, like, he did live alone for a while, so I’m sure he knows how to find the washing machine.
Bex: I do love the, the callback to the rebar.
Alice: [01:30:00] Yeah. Like, Hen’s like, “Be safe.” And Chim’s like, “You know me.” And she’s like, “Yeah, I do. Hence the request, rebar skull.”
Ellen: The bar is quite low. But this episode was better written than the previous one.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: I thought it was like, it was sad. A lot of trauma in this episode and a low kind of tone, but, um, I liked it better in like, it, it worked better.
Bex: No, I think you’re right. That, so there was a lot of trauma, there was a lot of heavy stuff, but it was actually like addressed to some degree. Agree. Um,
Ellen: yeah.
Bex: Which I guess kind of makes sense because the actual emergency part is over and we’re in the aftermath where, you know, the dust is settled and we can actually, you know, take a breath and start to deal with the trauma that has arisen.
Ellen: Yeah. Maybe that what, that’s why it kind of worked, because the, the trauma, like the dealing of the trauma was [01:31:00] each of the characters doing their thing, but they all, you know, it was like a, a linear kind of progression from one thing to the other rather than just jumping around like we had in the past.
Alice: It also wasn’t just copaganda.
Bex: Yes. This wasn’t Athena, the cop. This was Athena, the mother and Athena, the woman reacting
Alice: Exactly. Yeah.
Bex: To the emergency.
Alice: Because I like Athena, the mother, I’m just sick of cops.
Bex: I just didn’t, I don’t like Claudette. I don’t like the Claudette storyline.
Alice: Such a shit storyline.
Ellen: All right. Tell me we’ve got something more lighthearted for next time.
Bex: Uh, not really.
Alice: Well, we can tell you that, but, um,
Bex: So next episode, the members of the 118 face an awkward rescue call when they arrive on the scene of a man who is overexerted himself exercising. The team must also save the life of a groundskeeper whose chainsaw cut into him and race to an explosion at a retirement community.[01:32:00]
Um, meanwhile, Athena has an extreme reaction to Harry’s new behavior. And then Hen and Eddie, as well as Buck and Ravi, have rocky starts to their new partnerships and May receives an emergency call from a suicidal teen while continuing her uneasy work relationship with Claudette.
Ellen: Oh my God, that was such,
Alice: I remember none of this episode
Ellen: a long summary.
Bex: I, I do. If we’re talking about like bright spots, um, Buck and Ravi in this episode in the next episode are a bright spot. They are hilarious.
Alice: Oh, I love Buck and Ravi together. I don’t remember this episode, but just in general. I love Buck and Ravi together.
Bex: Hang on. Um, triggers for, um, for next week, which is called, which episode title is “Peer Pressure”.
Um, we have body dysmorphia, because there’s Claudette we’ve got the bullying slash hazing. Uh, we have child [01:33:00] abuse, uh, depression, PTSD slash childhood PTSD, gore, um, a meth lab explosion. I don’t know why retirement home is a trigger, but sure. Um, self-isolation, suicide attempt. Um, therapy is apparently also a trigger.
Um, unintentional self-harm slash temporary disability in a bathroom. Seriously, we’re triggering that? Okay. And weight loss slash fitness talk.
Ellen: Wow.
Bex: It’s a doozy.
Ellen: I feel like each episode is getting, like, is escalating the, it’s
Bex: the trauma?
Ellen: The triggers that we have.
Bex: The triggers, yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. It’s almost like what are we gonna have next?
Bex: Beenado. Killer bees.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: No, surely not. That seems way too unrealistic for 9-1-1.
Ellen: I’m, I’m weirdly looking forward to that, but that’s a long way off.
Bex: [01:34:00] That’s very long way off.
Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know what else to say about this episode. Anything else?
Alice: It was really sad. Didn’t get better after the second time. It was just as sad. Just even sadder possibly.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, you already knew what was coming,
Bex: coming once, once, you know what was happening. Yeah. It’s, it’s no longer, you’re no longer getting struck with the, like, the realization. You’re sitting there watching the car crash, knowing what’s coming and you’re waiting for everyone else to catch up to your knowledge.
That’s just as heart, just as heartbreaking. But I think it was better than the first three episodes. Like we survived the first three episodes and we’re now back to like the normal, well that’s it. Nine one episodes and it was actually a good one. And it was like, oh my God, now we’re, we’re back to normal. Like, the season will get better now.
Alice: Like we all watched this a week ago and the fact that we didn’t wanna rewatch it had nothing to do with the quality of the episode. It had to do with how sad the episode was and none of us wanted to relive it [01:35:00] again.
Bex: Oh yeah. I was, I’m pretty sure I said I, I hate the emergency in this one ’cause it’s so fucking sad.
And I hate Claudette just ’cause she bugs the shit outta me. That’s the only reason I didn’t wanna watch these episodes. Oh my God. It’s annoying. It was nothing about the quality of the writing or the quality of the acting or the storylines itself.
Ellen: Who wrote this episode? I didn’t notice at the start.
Bex: Uh, this was written by, I’ve got it in my notes. Um, this was written by Bob Goodman, who is a co-executive producer who previously had writing credits on “Breaking Point”, which did not make me trust him ’cause I hated that fucking episode. But he also wrote “Treasure Hunt”, which I thought was fun. Oh, so he kind of redeemed himself.
Ellen: Okay. Yeah. Well, I did, I I, I quite enjoyed the, um, I don’t know if I wanna say the writing though. Like, I liked the structure of this one. I thought it worked really well,
Bex: except when they did stupid things like trying to call every single residence in like Los Angeles [01:36:00] about a chlorine gas leak. Yeah.
Ellen: And some of the dialogue, but. We, once again, we are looking too hard. We’re staring into the void and it’s staring back.
Alice: Yeah. Don’t stop pulling the string. Yeah.
Bex: Leave, leave the curtain where it is. Stop trying to look behind it. Mm-hmm.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: All right. Well, tell us what you thought of this episode, please.
Uh, how many? Yeah, we
Alice: Were you shocked by the, because there were two twists in that emergency really. ’cause there’s the old lady twist.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Alice: And then the obviously the, um,
Ellen: that was more of a misdirection type thing.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: But yeah. Effective. Yeah. So I’m even sadder about , after hearing that it was a real story.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: That’s awful. Anyway. Yes, send us your tears.
Alice: Also, if you’ve watched Heated Rivalry, just randomly throwing [01:37:00] that in, I’m sure, I’m sure Bex and Ellen will have watched it by the time this episode comes out. So
Ellen: Maybe. There’s only a couple episodes out so far, right?
Alice: Yeah, there’s only two.
Ellen: Alright, so leave us a comment on this episode’s post, uh, on thatweewooshow.com or in Spotify or on YouTube.
Uh, you can let us know on social media, all of those things. Uh, thank you for listening this week. Uh, we’ll talk to you next week about episode five, which is called “Peer Pressure”. 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 [01:38:00] thatweewooshow.com.
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