5.10: Wrapped in Red

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 10 of the fifth season of 9-1-1, titled “Wrapped in Red”.

The members of the 118 are called to a series of emergencies around Christmas Eve. Then, Eddie struggles with an emotional Christopher.

Content warnings for episode 5.10:

gore (compound fracture), tram versus a person, car hitting a building, cheating, childhood PTSD.

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Episode Transcript

Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1. What’s your emergency?

Bex: Welcome back to That Weewoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the A B C show, 9-1-1. I’m Bex.

Alice: I’m Alice.

Ellen: And I’m Ellen.

Bex: As always, big thank you to everyone who has listened to our past episodes, um, even bigger thank yous to those of you who have rated our podcasts on your podcatcher of choice that allows for a rating system.

It helps to get our little podcast out into more ears, even though that is a slightly terrifying thought. Um, massive bear hugs to everybody who has shared any of our social media posts promoting the podcast and big sloppy kisses for everybody who has left comments for us, whether that is on our website, thatweewooshow.com [00:01:00] or through Spotify or on any of our social media platforms.

Um, this week, as usual, um, Kiera confirmed that yes, I am indeed the one with the soapbox. Um, and that Ellen is the one who always tries to look on the bright side of the episodes.

Ellen: Yeah, I mean, it’s my pathological problem to always try and look on the bright side, so I don’t know.

Bex: Um, and Alice is, team dogs are better than kids and Taylor Kelly is better than everybody else.

Alice: Oh, I forgot to wear my new Taylor Kelly themed t-shirt tonight. That’s what I was gonna wear. I got a t-shirt that says “I support women’s rights and wrongs”.

Ellen: So good.

Alice: Absolutely my Taylor Kelly inspired fit.

Ellen: Love it. I think we all need one.

Bex: Uh, I [00:02:00] think we do. Um, we’ll also give a shout out to Pigeon who is now officially caught up, um, and is not binging our episodes. We do as always, appreciate your comments and we will get back to you on the last one. We promise. Uh, but before we get back to Pigeon, and before we dive into this week’s episode, which is simultaneously the mid-season hiatus season finale, the official middle of Season five and a Christmas episode.

Um, Alice, could you tell us what happened in the last episode we talked about?

Alice: Last week on 9-1-1 May caught Bobby and Athena doing some sexy role play. Hen met an old flame of her mothers, and Buck learned about Taylor’s past.

Ellen: All right, so this, this episode is episode 10 of season five. It is called “Wrapped in Red” and it aired even though this is the Christmas episode and [00:03:00] it is a mid-season finale, um, it only aired on the 6th of December. So. Sorry, people who were watching this live, you got a holiday episode at the beginning of December and then nothing for several weeks.

Alice: Yeah, very early Christmas celebration for,

Ellen: it feels like it’s, it hasn’t been a whole year since we talked about a Christmas themed episode. Right? I was gonna actually go back and look to see when the last one was, but I didn’t and I can’t be bothered to do it now. So, um,

Bex: um, the last Christmas episode,

Alice: I mean, we just just had Christmas, so that’s probably why we feel like it’s just been Christmas.

Bex: There was the, Michael has brain cancer family Christmas.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: that’s the last Christmas episode I can remember. So that was what season? Three?

Ellen: Three, like the end of season three?

Bex: So that was, that was the 10th episode and [00:04:00] winter finale of the third season. Maybe they didn’t have one for season four. Let’s have a quick squiz through the, Nope, nope, nope, nope, nope, nope.

Season four did not have a, a Christmas episode.

Ellen: Well, it was only a short season, wasn’t it? So

Bex: it was a very short season.

Ellen: They didn’t have space. Yeah.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Anyway, we’re back at Christmas, even though it is now like February, which is like, it felt weird watching a Christmas episode at this time of year, but also it’s still hot here, so it felt fine in, in that regard. It still felt a bit Christmasy. Um, sorry for you, Northern Hemisphereans.

So the official summary says the members of the 118 are called to a series of emergencies around Christmas Eve. Then Eddie struggles with an emotional Christopher. That’s [00:05:00] the entire thing.

Bex: Yeah, that’s, and the trigger is, that’s basically all that happens.

Ellen: Yeah. That’s all that happens. And the triggers are also quite mild, although there is a car accident. But, um, there are two accidents. There is a trolley like tram thing versus a person, and there’s also a car hitting a building. Um, and we also have triggers for cheating and childhood PTSD.

Bex: I can’t even remember the car hitting the building.

Ellen: It’s the guy with the Christmas tree on top of his car that runs into the building and the front of the building falls down.

Bex: That, that’s, we are counting that as a car accident?

Alice: I guess so.

Ellen: Well, I mean,

Alice: it is an accident with a car

Ellen: doesn’t, he didn’t mean to hit the building.

Bex: Okay.

Ellen: I mean, it, yeah. This, this, sorry. I hear this whole episode is, is very implausible. One thing after another. Yeah.

Bex: Oh my god. Like the trolley accident. I literally had to [00:06:00] ask you, did I miss something when I was watching? Because I do not see how what happened resulted in the injuries that it purportedly resulted in.

Alice: I don’t We’ll get to it.

Ellen: Yeah. But yeah, let’s get there.

Alice: There’s something about, um, like I think it’s the force and because you like get knocked around, but it’s like how apparently when you, like if you get hit by a car, your shoes come off.

Ellen: Oh,

Bex: what?

Alice: Yeah. So I’m assuming it’s the same sort of thing.

Ellen: Okay.

Bex: I’m assuming they just wanted to, to be more dramatic than it really was and didn’t actually have the time, money, or cares to set up a full accident.

But anyway, let’s, let’s set it up. So we’re gonna start at Santa’s Grotto where there are lights and decorations and a trolley car. And [00:07:00] Santa

Ellen: and Jingle Bells

Bex: and Jingle Bells.

Alice: Feels a lot like Christmas being 29 degrees out here today as well.

Ellen: Um, it felt a bit like the, um, when we were flashing back to that time when, um, Buck and Eddie took their son to get a photo with Santa.

Alice: Yeah. Yes. That was all I could think about honestly. I was like, they should have brought back the elf.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Um, maybe El

Ellen: except Buck and Eddie aren’t there at the moment,

Bex: maybe elves are sort of specific to location. So this was a different, different Santa, different location. So like there’s a conflict of interest. The elf can’t be there as well. I dunno. Um, what really pissed me off about this scene is that we, is that none of the characters get a name except for the asshole guy.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Oh, they do in the, um. I was looking up the C Okay, so the one of the mum who is, um, at the start, the first mum.

Bex: Yeah. But my rule is unless they get named in the episode, [00:08:00] I’m not

Ellen: No, no.

Bex: Put the names. So like

Ellen: they do on IMDB is what I mean.

Bex: Yeah, I know. The closed captions said, obviously when they were cast they would given, like their characters were given names, but they never used them in the episode.

Ellen: Okay.

Bex: And that pissed me off. And that’s most of the cha, most of the female characters in this episode don’t get names and it pissed me off.

Uh, so the blonde mother is waiting in line with, I’m assuming the nanny and blonde mother’s daughter, um, who get photos with Santa and she’s on the phone with her husband because he is not there. He is apparently flying somewhere.

Ellen: He’s a pilot.

Bex: She mentions, she mentions that he’s, she wasn’t sure if he was in the air. Um,

Alice: yeah, he’s probably about to take off, but she does get him for Christmas this year, so that’s exciting. Um, apparently she gets him every other Christmas ’cause he’s a pilot. [00:09:00]

Ellen: Yeah. Except that when they turn around and look at the line, the daughter points and at, at someone across the other end of the line and says, “Daddy!” and the mom’s like, no, “no, we are gonna see Santa Claus not daddy.” And she’s like, daddy’s over there like pointing. And um,

Alice: and Daddy’s with another family,

Ellen: Daddy is with another family. And it turns out that Artie, um, Arthur in this case, um, has an uh, yeah, second family.

Bex: Yeah, he’s not a pilot. He’s just swapping time between, uh, two families, both of which have kids. Um, and a pilot is a plausible explanation for why he’s constantly going backwards and forwards. I wonder what he does do for work and also who has the time.

Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know how people can do this sort of thing because how do you keep straight, like the two separate parts of your life? Like why would [00:10:00] you? Yeah. I don’t know.

Bex: It’s always the men though. Have you noticed that? Like women don’t try and have multiple, multiple families course because of what our brains would explode from the sheer mental load of trying to carry two different families.

Alice: Yeah, literally.

Bex: Absolutely. Um, Artie sees wife number one, wife number two, and decides to make a run for it. As run, Rudolph run starts to play. And this is where the implausible accident happens, where I literally, it just looks like he bumps into the trolley. Like the trolley is going at walking speed. It’s not like it’s, um, has a lot of momentum.

Ellen: Yeah. He, he kind of runs into it full tilt, but it’s not that fast. Like really, it doesn’t look like that much of a hard. Like it had hurt, but would it really break both his ankles, which is what happens.

Bex: Break his ankles too. Yeah, like compound fractures in both ankles.

Ellen: I dunno. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Yeah, someone calls 9-1-1 [00:11:00] and the 118 are dispatched naturally,

Alice: of course,

Ellen: Buck’s like, “Some kind of road rage incident?” it’s like, um, you see any,

Bex: some kind of rage

Ellen: cars around here? Trolley rage,

Alice: wife rage,

Ellen: definitely wife rage,

Bex: definitely wife rage. Um, Bobby tries to, um, get a handle on the situation. Sends everybody in their directions, gives them orders, uh, heads over to the two women who LAPD are literally holding back from each other and asks what happened.

And the women start giving him the rundown about the, the husband and the unknowingly being polygamists.

Alice: It’s so weird. They’re fighting so hard for this guy. Like clearly he’s not doing much in either family because he’s away half the time at another family. Is he really that much of a catch, like just fuck him off?

Ellen: [00:12:00] Well, you know, at this point I think they’re, they’re in shock, so they’re gonna have a yell about it.

Bex: And as much as Bobby is a messy bitch, sometimes he just looks at them and goes, “I was asking about the accident.”

Ellen: He’s very patient with them, to be honest, even though he’s like rolling his eyes the entire time. So, and Buck and Eddie and Hen, I’m guessing is Hen around around? No,

Bex: no. Hen it’s Buck Eddie and Ravi, although Ravi is doing something with the trolley driver, which it’s no bearing on this scene, so I’m just, I’m just gonna ignore it. ’cause

Ellen: Yeah, the trolley driver just doesn’t wanna know. He’s like, “no, I’m not coming out. That’s it.”

Alice: It’s w Yeah. I don’t, I don’t understand why they had that, like Yeah, he was literally just in the trolley. Like, what, if anything, the cops should be interviewing him because he hit a person.

Ellen: Yeah. And they pull up the guy’s, um, Arthur’s pants leg, like his [00:13:00] leg of his jeans. And he’s got like. It’s a compound fracture. It’s bone sticking out. It’s so disgusting. But

Bex: it’s so implausible too, though, is just what bothers me the most.

Ellen: Yeah. And he, Bobby asked the two women if he has any underlying medical conditions and they’re just like, “Not that I know of, but I didn’t know about her either.” um, and yes, he does confirm that two rings, two phones, some, sometimes it can make your brain hurt. It’s like you’re a weird guy,

Bex: which Eddie takes as, “Are you confessing to having like medical issues right now? Is your, is your brain literally hurting?”

Ellen: is your brain hurting now? Yeah.

Bex: And Arthur is like, “I was sort of speaking metaphorically, but do you think I can get out of this if I say that my head is hurting? Like I could fake amnesia.”

Alice: Yeah, I could fake amnesia. Like what?

Bex: Bucks like “I think it would be better if they got amnesia and they forgot.”

Ellen: Yes. They’re not gonna forget. Oh [00:14:00] my God.

Bex: Anyway, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. They work out the order in which, um, Artie married them. Turns out that the blonde mom, who we sort of thought for, we focused on first in the episode, so therefore we probably thought was the primary.

Turns out she’s the secondary wife. Um, she’s the other woman and they take Arthur off to hospital. When Bobby asks if the women want to go with him, they both turn and walk away.

Ellen: Bobby’s just like, “happy holidays” and like, just rolls his eyes and he’s like, okay, this is a weird one, but all right.

Alice: Even Bobby doesn’t care about this storyline.

Bex: No. When you’ve lost Bobby’s interest, you know you’re in for a terrible episode.

Ellen: He was pretty funny at the start there.

Bex: Uh, but after the title card, we get a little bit more of a, a juicier [00:15:00] storyline to sink our teeth into because we’re going to the Diaz restaurant, uh, restaurant. Yes. Eddie’s, Eddie’s leaving the 118 and he’s opening a Mexican restaurant.

Sorry, Ellen. I know we were trying to, we were, we were trying to avoid spoilers, but I, I couldn’t

Alice: Where did restaurant come from?

Bex: I’m tired. I have not had my, my, my Mother drink energy. Um, yeah, this is gonna be really interesting. I apologize. Not in advance. I apologize. I apologize. Admit amidst, fuck.

Alice: Okay. Bex can’t speak. Um,

Ellen: okay. Alright.

Alice: Bex can’t speak. I have a heart condition. It’s all up to Ellen.

Ellen: Great. And I’m, I’ve had a few gins, so you know, it’s fine.

Bex: Excellent.

Alice: Great.

Bex: We’re at Eddie’s house and Christopher has gone nuts for Christmas.

Ellen: He’s very excited. Like, well, I don’t know if excited is he’s,

Bex: is he excited? He’s [00:16:00] very pedantic.

Ellen: He’s focused on getting all of Christmas perfect. So, and in this case, the Christmas tree, like it’s, it’s facing the wrong way. And Eddie’s just like, “Is there a right way?” And Chris’s intent that he should base the tree the right way. Um, and he’s got like five boxes of lights to put on it.

Bex: I did like that because they, they literally had Christopher pull one box, then a second box, then a third box, and Eddie’s just staring at this bag like it’s Mary Poppin’s bag. And they just keep coming.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. He wants a lot of lights on,

Alice: man. I bought Christmas lights the Christmas before last and I still haven’t put them up, so

Ellen: my,

Alice: Eddie’s doing better than me.

Ellen: My parents moved like from a large house into like a retirement village place and gave me a [00:17:00] huge box of lights, um, that they had for their house.

And I’m just like, thank you? And I haven’t, I, I think I’ve used one of the little like solar light boxes and the rest of them just sitting there like, oh, I don’t, I couldn’t be bothered to put them up. Maybe this year maybe

Bex: we’ll send Christopher around to your house. He’ll motivate you.

Ellen: He can tell me. He can tell me where to put ’em. Yeah.

Alice: I got, um, like curtain, like rainbow curtain lights. Oh. And I got them to go behind my bed, like as a bedhead. And yeah, I still haven’t put them up. I also have like a million photo frames that are just stacked up on my desk that also haven’t gone up.

Ellen: That’s okay. It hasn’t been too long since you moved. So you’ve still, you’ve still got plausible di deniability.

Alice: Sure. Yeah. It’s been over, over a year. But let’s, let’s go with, um,

Ellen: has it? Oh my god, really?

Alice: Yeah. Yep.

Ellen: Geez. Okay.

Alice: And I, but like my kitchen only just got made like just got finished two weekends ago. So

Ellen: you still got plausible deniability, right?

Alice: Yeah, exactly.

Ellen: Um, [00:18:00] anyway, uh, they put the tree, the star on top of the tree and it looks great. Eddie reckons they’re done. Uh, the tree looks beautiful, but Chris is not, you know, finished. He’s like, it needs tinsel, but, um, Eddie doesn’t even know if they have any tinsel, so he is like, uh, why don’t you just go to bed and we’ll finish it tomorrow?

Alice: Tinsel looks shit on a Christmas tree anyway, Chris,

Bex: but no, but he puts, Eddie does, I’m, I am sure that there is a bag somewhere there that is full of tinsel and we do see the end result when Eddie does end up putting the tinsel in the tree and it does look really nice. So, I mean, kudos to Chris for that.

The, the boy has an eye for Christmas tree decorating. Maybe Jennifer Love Hewitt can do like a crossover episode where Christopher becomes her, um, her assistant,

Alice: The popcorn garlands.

Bex: Yep.

Alice: Have either of you seen [00:19:00] them in Australia ever?

Bex: No, I don’t think we have them here.

Alice: Yeah. I’m like, what the fuck are they doing?

Bex: They’re stringing popcorn.

Alice: Yeah, it’s,

Ellen: yeah. No, I’ve never seen it before until a, a few like, must have might’ve even been this Christmas, like the last Christmas we just had, I saw it somewhere and I’m like, what is that?

Bex: But then again, I’ve never seen like actual cranberries. The only cranberries I’ve ever seen are juiced, dried or in some kind of jam. So

Alice: Yeah, true. Same. Um, but yeah, apparently it’s five popcorns to one cranberry, nothing else.

Ellen: Are they using like whole cran, like, you know

Alice: Yeah, they’re like whole cranberries,

Ellen: fresh cranberries.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Wow. Okay. I just assumed they were dry. They were the dried ones.

Bex: No, because you can see when

Ellen: Aren’t cranberries juicy like grapes? Like

Alice: I don’t even

Ellen: like a blueberry type thing?

Alice: What fresh cranberry would taste like,

Bex: like a, any

Ellen: Like cranberry juice?

Bex: Any other kind of cranberry?

Ellen: No, I’ve never, I’ve never seen cranberries that aren’t dried. [00:20:00] So

Alice: like a raisin doesn’t taste like a grape.

Bex: American listeners sound off popcorn and cranberry garlands. What, what are you doing? Why are you doing it? Where are you getting it from?

Alice: Do you eat them? Do you just put them on the tree and leave them? Are they just decoration? It seems like a waste of food.

Bex: Well, this blogger says yes, fresh cranberries.

Ellen: Okay.

Bex: I don’t even know where you would find them. Uh, no, you probably would not eat them because, um, the advice is you pop your popcorn days in advance so the popcorn can go stale, which makes it less brittle.

Alice: Oh yeah.

Ellen: Oh, okay. Fair enough.

Bex: Does seem like a waste of food though. Pretty, but a waste of food.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. I just typed in fresh cranberry Australia and it’s like, yeah, fresh cranberries are difficult to find in Australia. I’m like, yeah, thanks. I, yep.

Bex: Okay.

Ellen: Thank you. Worked that out. I think we knew that already. Um, me speaking about, uh, waste of food, um, [00:21:00] we are going to Bathena residence slash restaurant where, um, there is, uh, a lot of food.

Bex: She’s cooking enough food that she could open a restaurant though, so

Ellen: no, Bobby is cooking the food. Bobby is, has got turkey, ham. He’s got two turkeys. Two turkeys, ham, and a, a roast of some kind.

Bex: Yep. Well, what is a roast?

Ellen: Well, I

Alice: what?

Ellen: Roast?

Bex: Because he just says a

Ellen: lamb

Bex: or Athena says

Ellen: like pork. I dunno,

Bex: like a roast? Yeah,

Ellen: that’s, yeah,

Bex: a roast. What is in this instance a roast?

Alice: Could,

Bex: I’m just curious.

Alice: Ham and a roast. Yeah. Okay. I see what she means.

Bex: A roast what? A roast beef? A roast chicken? Um, I don’t think lamb is really a thing. So is it a a ham?

Alice: Yeah, because when we say roast, it’s usually lamb.

Bex: Yeah,

Ellen: yeah. Or pork. Sometimes roast pork.

Bex: But you know, I, I don’t know. I was just, I dunno, specify Athena, please tell [00:22:00] me what the roast is. Um, I don’t know why I was just fixated on that. Um, but yeah, so they’re cooking all of that food except

Alice: maybe the roast is the mac and cheese,

Bex: roasted mac and cheese.

Ellen: Oh, that actually sounds really good.

Alice: So you’re like crunchy on top. Um,

Ellen: anyway, now I’m hungry.

Alice: We’re not hungry. Yeah, we’re not hungry. This, um, episode. That’s fine.

Bex: No, so they’re cooking all this food and they’re not going to need as much because Bobby is still kind of working off last year’s guest numbers. But this year there’s not gonna be David. There’s not gonna be Michael. And to Athena’s horror, there is not going to be May either because she has chosen to work on Christmas Day.

Alice: Yeah, it’s, it’s only time and a half pay, which sucks because here it’s double time. If you work on a public holiday,

Ellen: sometimes more if it’s an important one like Christmas Day. Um, but the like Athena’s like upset that she’s gonna [00:23:00] miss out on her mac and cheese. So, but May says they, they can just save her a plate. And then Bobby’s got, um, he’s pulled one turkey out of a bag and he’s like, “I am roasting that one and I’m gonna deep fry this one.” So maybe it is a roast turkey.

Alice: No, because they specifically say turkey, ham,

Ellen: a deep fried turkey and a roast turkey.

Bex: Yes. And then a roast, they some other kind of food

And they

Alice: specify turkey. Yeah.

Bex: Plus a

Ellen: he gonna roast one Turkey and then deep fry,

Bex: deep fry the other one.

Ellen: Anyway, Harry is very excited about the deep frying prospect because he’s like, is it gonna explode?

Alice: Yeah, he wants it to explode,

Ellen: but, um,

Bex: I think it only explodes if you

Ellen: Bobby doesn’t think it’s gonna happen,

Bex: put it in frozen, which I’m assuming Bobby being at the, the chef that he is, would know not to put it in frozen.

Ellen: I’ve seen a lot of videos where people are deep frying stuff and it does explode,

Alice: he also probably doesn’t wanna light things on fire because while that is his [00:24:00] specialty, he um. It doesn’t,

Ellen: around this time of year they probably get, get called out to a lot of people who do that.

Bex: Oh my god. You can imagine

Ellen: who get third degree burns.

Alice: I was just interested because like obviously turkey’s a big part of Thanksgiving in America and we do turkey for Christmas. I didn’t realize that America also does turkey for Christmas. I assumed that like, you know, if you did a month ago you’re like, okay, I’m done with turkey. I’m not gonna make another one for Christmas when we just did one for Thanksgiving.

Bex: Okay. Americans, I’m pretty sure we’ve asked this question before, but, um, what do you eat for Christmas time? Well, once you’re finished making your popcorn and cranberry gars, assuming that’s what you make, um, what are you putting on your shopping list for Christmas day’s meal?

Alice: The fact that I’m just fixated on the food this episode really, um, says something about,

Bex: and did you know that in Australia we are mostly eating seafood?

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: We’re not. I don’t like seafood. Oh. I say that as if I didn’t. I just had fish for dinner.[00:25:00]

Bex: Okay, but you, you probably like me, you don’t like shellfish.

Alice: I’m just not huge on like, we do have prawns around Chris, but we don’t really have them for Christmas ’cause I don’t like them. So

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: The only time I really eat prawns is um, when I go to Queensland, funnily enough.

Ellen: Alright. We usually have like roast pork kind of dinner

Alice: mm-hmm.

Ellen: And extra stuff like prawn sometimes and salads and whatever.

Alice: Yep.

Ellen: Um,

Alice: we’ll do a roast pork and usually like the turkey breast that’s like pre-cooked,

Ellen: so I’m guessing that, um, Bobby is expecting at this point to have like Buck and Taylor and Eddie and Chris, and Hen and Karen and the like, you know, all of the

Alice: Yeah. The, the 118 including the background firefighters or

Ellen: except for Maddie and Chim

Bex: considering the way the episode rolls out um, yeah, I think you’re correct. He’s expecting family Christmas to be everybody’s families. [00:26:00]

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: But not May. ’cause she’s working and Athena is very upset about this, which, um, may sort of calls her slightly hypocritical for that. She, because this is not the first Christmas that a grant woman has had to work on Christmas Day,

Ellen: but, uh, Harry has not provided his Christmas list so no one knows what to buy him. And he has already told Athena what he wants, but she is refusing to give him cash. And he’s like,

Bex: my mom does that.

Ellen: I’ll also be accepting gift cards.

Bex: My mom will give me cash, but then she’ll make me pick something that I can unwrap as well, just so that I can have something to unwrap.

Alice: Yeah. Mom likes doing the unwrapped thing.

Bex: Um, so this little conversation is really interesting considering the end of the episode when Harry gives his gift. So is he just handing over straight [00:27:00] cash?

Ellen: Yeah, that’s good point.

Alice: Probably.

Ellen: I didn’t think of that. Yeah.

Alice: May absolutely wrapped cash for him. Yeah,

Bex: he’s just handed it over.

Ellen: Well, I mean, I, I may have mentioned this before when we did a Christmas episode, I don’t know, but whenever I used to get given cash as a present, um, my mom usually if she’d given it to me, would say, don’t use this. Buy, go and buy something with this, but don’t just buy books. I’m like, but I want,

Bex: oh no. I hate, hate

Ellen: to buy books.

Bex: I hate when people give you put, um, money and then dictate how you have to spend the money.

Ellen: Yeah. I’m like, but obviously you don’t know what it is I actually want, because this is what I use money to buy.

Whereas now when I’m giving my, my niece just had her birthday this weekend. I gave her money and I’m like, this is for your Kindle. You can buy whatever you want.

Bex: You can only spend this on books,

Ellen: spend this on books. But I don’t, yeah, she, [00:28:00] I used to buy her actual books, but now she’s got a Kindle. She’s like, oh, I don’t really want real books anymore. Like, okay, fine.

Bex: Um, Eddie is not half undressed unfortunately. Um,

Alice: I know. There’s no upsides to this episode at all,

Bex: but he is, the

Ellen: Carla is there, so, you know. That’s good.

Alice: Carla is there

Ellen: Happy to see Carla.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Would’ve been happy to see Eddie without his shirt off, but fine. Carla. Um, they are gazing at the finished Christmas tree, which looks amazing. Uh, but apparently everything is wrong.

Alice: Yep. Eddie sucks at Christmas.

Ellen: Chris is just not impressed. He’s not happy with it.

Bex: No, Chris at this point is still asleep. Um, and then suddenly he’s not asleep because we can hear him screaming off camera and Eddie immediately bolts to see what’s going on. Um, Chris is having, Chris is [00:29:00] apparently just woken up from a very bad dream, which if it’s that early in the morning and Chris is dreaming, that means his like sleep pattern is all fucked up. But okay.

Ellen: You don’t ever, um, um, D Dream just before you wake up in the morning? I do sometimes.

Alice: That’s when I usually dream.

Bex: So Christopher had a bad dream about Shannon. That’s all we get.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: We don’t get any specifics. Just it’s about Shannon probably don’t need

Alice: specifics.

Ellen: Poor Chris. He looks so, giving the feeling of total panic. Like he’s just woken up and he’s panicking.

Alice: Right?

Ellen: Okay, we’re going to the station house and the team are collecting presents for, you know, a donation drive. And Taylor Kelly Alice’s beloved is doing a cross to camera about, about the drive. “So if you like, if you wanna make a donation, you can drop off presents to any fire station [00:30:00] across Los Angeles. But I’ll be here at this particular one with my boyfriend.”

Bex: She’s been demoted from reporting live, from man being buried alive, going back to Christmas drives.

Alice: Yeah,

Ellen: yeah.

Alice: It’s a feel good story season.

Ellen: It’s a so new day.

Alice: Yeah, yeah.

Bex: And also, yes, Buck is there. So she probably jumped on the opportunity to spend some time with him, like they’re not really spending time because Buck is still at work and she is at work, but they’re in the same vicinity, which,

Alice: yeah, they’re in the same vicinity and neither of them know what to buy each other for Christmas.

Ellen: Yeah, that’s kind of the gist of this whole scene, right? Because

Alice: yeah, Buck wants to get her. What was it? A portable gen? Yeah. Buck wants to get her a portable generator. ’cause it’s useful in case of emergency and not something she’d buy for herself. And Hen’s like, yeah, you

Ellen: but I, I did like that he was asking Hen and Bobby about it and they’re both like, uh, no

Alice: Hen says it’s baby’s first Christmas in a serious relationship, which was really cute. Um,

Bex: I thought the, the path that I thought was really cute was [00:31:00] he asked his dad like, “What did you buy Athena for your first Christmas together?” And Bobby just looked at him deadpan and went “an engagement ring.” Buck’s like, no, no,

Alice: no. Not doing that. Nope. Not doing that. Nope. No. Um, but also Bobby, that’s such a lazy gift.

Do not get someone an engagement ring for Christmas or their birthday. It’s so lazy. There’s no thought. It’s like, oh fuck, I don’t know what to get them. I’ll just fucking get engaged. I don’t even care. Or it seems so lazy.

Bex: Engagement ring, get the engagement ring, propose to them, but then still buy them an actual present.

Alice: Yeah,

Bex: because it would be just absolute salt in the wound if all you bought them was an engagement ring and they said no.

Alice: Oh my God, right?

Ellen: Yeah. That’ll be the worst Christmas ever.

Bex: Um, so, yes. Portable generator. Not a good idea. Um, Bobby is sick of this conversation with Buck and decides to, uh, leave, exit stage left. He goes over to talk to Taylor, who [00:32:00] unfortunately also only wants to talk about Christmas presents.

Alice: I wondered if he was like fishing for, um, for information for Buck, and then Taylor’s just like, “Hey, I have a question.” And Bobby’s like, “yeah, of course. Like about your story? I thought, I thought that was all covered.”

And she’s like, “no, no. Like, do you think Buck would like either of these sweaters?” And Bobby’s like, for fuck’s sake. Like, at least they’re both useless.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Bobby’s just generally done with everybody this whole episode. He’s just got that overwhelming feeling of like, oh my God, is it the holidays yet? Can we have some leave?

Bex: He’s, he’s the Grinch,

Ellen: he’s just done with this.

Bex: He’s the Grinch this year.

Alice: He is the grinch this year,

Ellen: I feel you, feel you Bobby. Uh, Josh takes 9-1-1 call next and a woman says “Hello, I think there’s a fire.” And she tells him her address and he’s like asking all the important questions like, “Are you able to get out of the house? So there are any other [00:33:00] people there?” But this elderly lady is, whose name is Phyllis, is just sitting in her chair. Um, there’s nothing going on. She just wanted to,

Alice: she’s very calm.

Ellen: Call to talk to somebody.

Bex: Yeah. Josh, um, Josh. It looks like he recognizes the address when he’s typing it into CAD and he pulls it up and it turns out that she has called every single Christmas for the past like eight years.

Ellen: We haven’t seen this lady before, have we?

Bex: No, we haven’t, but Josh has.

Ellen: I wondering if we’ve seen her. Okay.

Bex: No. Although I think that would be kind of fun if like every Christmas episode this woman popped up in some way, shape, or form.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Tim, you can use that for your next series. I bequeath you that idea. So Alice, when you’re watching Nashville, just when, make note when the Christmas episode comes up. ’cause I’m not gonna watch,

Alice: I haven’t watched Nashville in ages so far [00:34:00] behind. Apparently they just finished wrapping filming though, so,

Bex: okay. Um, so yes, but Phyllis does not actually have an emergency. She’s just very lonely. Um, and she knows that 9-1-1 is always going to answer her phone call. Um, and sometimes she actually gets visits from firefighters if she gets Linda.

Alice: Yeah, I look, to be fair, um, I would also be calling 9-1-1 just to get visits from firefighters at Christmas

Ellen: and she said

Alice: that was a lonely old lady,

Ellen: firefighters. They’re always so nice.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: But yeah, uh, Josh basically tells her that, um, you, you really don’t need to call 9-1-1 if you just wanna talk to someone, there are other, other numbers you can call to help you out, but Phyllis is like, “oh, I’m sorry you’re very busy. I’ll call back later,” and just hangs up on him.

Okay. Back at the station. So we’re jumping around a lot in this episode and it’s just little sort of character scenes all the time. There’s no, there’s not a lot of like emergency going on at [00:35:00] all actually in this episode as, I mean, it’s a Christmas episode, so whatever.

But, um, Buck and Eddie are talking about Chris and how, you know, he is had a nightmare about Shannon and Eddie’s worried about him, but, um, everything has to be perfect. this year, he is waking up screaming and Buck thinks it’s probably, you know, the Christmas is triggering his trauma. And Eddie just think, thinks that he’s not doing it right. So that’s pretty much it, but that’s it.

Alice: That’s it.

Ellen: Oh yeah, we’re going back to the hospital unfortunately, and when this came, when this came on and these two women were still arguing, I’m like, oh my God, we’re going back to these two really?

Bex: For no, for no reason. I see no purpose in this.

Alice: As I said that he’s, he’s clearly not that great. Like he’s clearly not really helping out with the children enough that he’s like, he’s not there half the time.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: So like, why are you fighting over him?

Bex: He’s not [00:36:00] even that good looking.

Alice: No,

Ellen: I think possibly terrible their pride is, is, has taken a hit so that, you know.

Bex: It just reminded me of this, this Bones episode where, um, these women discovered that they were all like married, all had kids to the same man. Um, so they banded together and killed him. And I think that that would much more interesting.

Alice: That’s a much more interesting, I would believe that

Ellen: Well, they’ve already shown to be violent in this scene. Like

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Apparently one of them has actually hit a security guard.

Alice: Yeah. One of them punched a security guard, which was so rude. Like what did he do?

Bex: But she was in her defense, she wasn’t aiming for the security guard he got in the way.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: And that is literally a line of dialogue. Um, I mean, I, this,

Ellen: I’m guessing that she was aiming for the other woman, which is probably even worse. But anyway,

Bex: I, I think maybe this is just like Athena’s, [00:37:00] like contractual 15 minutes. ’cause she sort of swans in, um, dispenses some words of wisdom, which is that these two women have, like, their kids are siblings, so they’re gonna be sort of stuck with each other for like, the rest of their lives,

Alice: which they absolutely don’t have to be, but sure.

Bex: So they need to, you know, put their own feelings aside for the sake of their kids

Alice: more popping in and, oh, blood’s important. Real siblings.

Bex: Yeah. No. The Arthur, I’m guessing that they must be like outside his hospital room where this brawl is taking place because he gets wheeled up. Kudos to the, um, the nurse slash intern slash medical professional who’s pushing his wheelchair, who absolutely does not put the wheelchair in reverse when Arthur starts saying like, go back, go back, go back, go back, um, continues just to wheel him into the fray.

And both of the women say “We want a divorce.” [00:38:00] I mean, not to like, not to go well, um, actually only one of you can get a divorce because one of you is not legally married. But I will let, I’m sure of, I’m sure that a lawyer will be able to sort it out for them.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. And Arthur probably needs to get a lawyer anyway because bigamy is a crime and you can’t be married to two people at once. So

Bex: is Bigamy a crime in Los Angeles, California?

Ellen: Well, Athena says it’s a crime in all 50 states, so I guess yes,

Bex: there’s more than 50 states though.

Ellen: Is there?

Alice: She says all 50 states. I’m pretty sure there’s only 50 states.

Bex: Uh, California. Yes, it is a criminal offense.

Alice: Yeah. There you go.

Bex: Okay. Um,

Alice: also, how many states in America? Nope. Not Australia. God dammit. Yeah, 50. Bex can’t count.

Bex: Bex’s geography is very, very bad. [00:39:00]

Ellen: That’s okay, anyway. It’s still a crime even a few years later after this. So they’re gonna fight the real enemy, which is their soon to be former husband.

Bex: Patriarchy?

Ellen: Yeah, the patriarchy

Alice: key chain on the ground.

Ellen: Meanwhile,

Alice: we’re always skipping

Ellen: in this I, okay, I said there weren’t many emergencies in this episode, but this was another emergency, which I completely forgot about, even though I only watched this episode a few hours ago.

Bex: Because the emergency is like 30 seconds out of the 15 minutes that we get of this. And I’m not exaggerating.

Ellen: This is such a long scene.

Bex: It’s such a long setup for such little payoff.

Ellen: Yeah. So this woman is, she’s at work and she’s got a crush on one of her coworkers and she spends like probably 10 minutes of the, I don’t, I don’t, I didn’t time it this time.

Bex: I didn’t time it either, but it felt inordinately long.

Ellen: It was a long time. And she’s, she’s like trying to psych herself up to give him this [00:40:00] Christmas present and she talks to him a little bit, but all that, and she’s really awkward. And then eventually as he’s about to leave for the holidays, he, she sort of grabs him near the elevator and tries to give it to him.

In the meantime, there’s this, there’s a guy there fixing the elevator and for some reason he hasn’t blocked it off and it, the doors are opening randomly and she falls down the elevator shaft because even though the doors are open, there’s no elevator there.

Bex: Yes. ’cause apparently she, her, her Chris, her Christmas present to this guy who she had a crush on was tickets to some kind of concert. Um,

Alice: it was, the Philharmonic

Bex: the, the Philharmonic. Um, because she had been paying attention slash stalking him. Um, and realized that he went to a lot of these concerts and thought it’d be quite cute if they could go together. He absolutely flips the fuck out. Um, and she gets [00:41:00] all like, oh my God, this is a terrible idea.

I’m just going to run away and hide on top of an elevator car. Um. And so they, they have to, to call 9-1-1 with the singularly unhelpful. There is a woman trapped on an elevator and the dispatcher does not hear him properly and says, okay, cool. How long has she been in there? And he is like, no, no, no, you didn’t hear me.

She’s on top of the elevator, not in the elevator. And she’s not even that hurt. I mean, she didn’t fall that far. She’s got a couple of bumps and bruises.

Ellen: Well, she was out cold for a while, I think.

Bex: I don’t know. The only good thing about this is that we get to see Buck in a harness again. ’cause he gets to ab sail down to do something with ropes and, I don’t know.

Alice: Even that didn’t save this scene.

Bex: I stopped paying attention,

Alice: yeah.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Well, he, he kind of plays like a, a wingman to each of them then and, and matchmaker, um, facilitating their conversation about this present that they like. [00:42:00] Then we, we find out the reason why she brought that and why he freaked out.

Bex: I guess he’s trying to use their experience to guide what he should buy Taylor for Christmas. Um,

Ellen: yeah. And at the same time having conversation with Hen about what he’s gonna buy Taylor for Christmas.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Even though they’re in the middle of an emergency.

Bex: The most, the most interesting about this scene was Bobby doing his whole, you know, OH&S um, fire safety and just going absolutely off on the elevator, dude, like you and I are gonna sit down and have a talk about proper safety precautions.

Alice: Yeah, he’s gonna get a lecture.

Ellen: He’s scary when he’s like that. Oh. And we also get Buck telling Hen that they’re gonna bail on Bobby Athena’s place for Christmas Day because he doesn’t feel very merry this year. Um, because he’s missing… and Hen says that “he’s missing the rest of your family.”

Alice: He missing Maddie which is fair.

Bex: Can, can I just mention at this point how criminal it is that they don’t even [00:43:00] mention Chimney and or Maddie.

Alice: Yeah. They just said, miss it. I miss the rest of my family. Like, it’s not like, oh, I miss Chimney and Maddie. Like, this is Jee’s first Christmas. It’s really sad. Yes.

Bex: It’s Jee’s first Christmas and they couldn’t even bother to mention any of their names. It’s just generic “family”.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: And like I realized that they probably couldn’t, um, like shit was happening when they were filming this episode.

And I realized that because of said shit happening, they probably didn’t have time to bring Kenny on to do like a couple of scenes of, you know, him having Christmas in Boston and they definitely couldn’t have Maddie because she’s still technically on leave. Um, not Maddie, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s on leave. Um, but just name drop. Come on.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: throw us a

Ellen: bone.

That would’ve been nice. Like,

Bex: I got so mad at this episode that I’ve now got notes in a Google doc for like Chimney and Jee-Yun’s first Christmas. ’cause I [00:44:00] desperately wanted, I desperately want some sort of recognition of their first Christmas.

Ellen: Please, please write that. Yeah, that would be great.

Bex: They’re hanging out with Eli. They’re having a great time.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Aw. All right. Um, back at the Diaz household,

Bex: they’re not having a good time.

Ellen: Is this like later or is Eddie not on shift at the moment?

Bex: I don’t think he’s on shift.

Ellen: He wasn’t there. Yeah, that’s, no,

Bex: he was take,

Ellen: I thought they always went on shift together.

Bex: I’m gonna say that like I’m head canoning that. Either he specifically requested Christmas off this year because he was technically working Christmas the last time we saw Christmas. Or he went to Bobby and went, look, Christopher isn’t doing so good. I think I need to like not work Christmas this year. And Bobby’s gone.

Yeah, fine. Find someone to cover your shift for you. Um, so he is staying at home with Chris. [00:45:00] Probably would’ve been better if he was at work after what happens next. Yeah, because Christopher is making a gingerbread house, um, and he’s doing a very good job. It looks very good. He’s putting all the lollies all over the front of it. Um, and then Eddie destroys it.

Ellen: Yeah, he accidentally drops a hot chocolate on it.

Alice: Like he, he doesn’t, he doesn’t mean to, but yeah.

Bex: Yeah. Eddie was trying to do the nice thing and bring hot chocolate. Um, but ended up. Tripping. Like, thank God he is not going into the restaurant business. ’cause he is a terrible waiter.

Alice: He’s a terrible waiter.

Bex: He drops the hot chocolate all over

Alice: and he ruins an entire house,

Bex: the gingerbread house. And then, uh, Christopher being, you know, of the age that he is, is like it’s ruined and sideswipes it and sends it off the coffee table onto the floor and breaks it apart. Um, and [00:46:00] literally starts crying like he’s freaking out.

And Eddie’s full panic stations like, you know, um, what is going on? And Chris is like, “I just wanted everything to be perfect.” And Eddie’s like, well, we’ll build, like, he’s almost going into like Dursley territory here. Like “We, we’ll, I’ll get you another gingerbread house, a bigger gingerbread house, and we’ll be even bigger and more presents and more stockings and we’ll make next year absolutely perfect.”

And Chris was like, “You could be dead next year.”

Alice: Yep.

Ellen: Ouch. Yeah.

Bex: Yeah. And suddenly we’ve got, get

get that kid

Ellen: back in therapy.

Bex: Suddenly we have the root of the issue.

Ellen: Poor Chris, he’s been through so much.

Bex: Poor kid has been through so much. I, um, and we get, after we get to, we go to commercial on that, that’s the, the break for commercial.

And when we come back, Carla is interrogating, not interrogating, [00:47:00] but she’s just asking Eddie, like, so what did you say to that? And Eddie’s like, well, I, I promised him that I wasn’t going anywhere except I, you know, television has taught me to never promise anything because as soon as you promise something, something goes wrong,

uh, it turns out he did not tell Carla about getting kidnapped by, uh, Mark Pellegrino. And she’s absolutely horrified to discover that that happened.

Ellen: But she, she knows that, you know, that it, his job is very dangerous, but it, it’s important to him, not just the people he saves, but to him personally. And Eddie’s not sure that it’s more important than, than Chris feeling okay about it.

Bex: Um, and in the wake of this revelation, Eddie has also canceled on Christmas. So now it’s literally just gonna be Bobby, Athena and Harry [00:48:00] eating two turkeys, a ham, a roast, a mac and cheese.

Alice: Oh God.

Ellen: Yeah. Because Hen and Karen aren’t coming either.

Bex: Yep.

Ellen: Um, so literally just gonna be there. They’ve got buckets of food and just the three of them.

Alice: Yeah, like none of the rest of the 118 were invited. So.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: I wonder if Ravi,

Alice: yeah. Ravi didn’t even get an invite,

Ellen: Didn’t they have a big thing at the, at the station? Or was that two years ago?

Bex: That was the last Christmas that we saw, which was season three, which was, they were all working on Christmas.

Um,

Ellen: yeah. Okay.

Bex: And Athena was writing a desk for the 50th reason. I can’t remember what she did that time. Um, so she decided to come and cook, cook Christmas dinner. Actually, I think Buck, um, roped her into cooking Christmas dinner for them. And then they brought all the, um, foster kids in [00:49:00] as well. Um,

Ellen: yeah, that’s right.

Bex: So it was like the massive Christmas.

Alice: Why was she on desk duty that time?

Bex: Season three? Um, oh

Alice: no.

Bex: What did she do?

Alice: She, what did she do

Ellen: that wasn’t Jeffrey, was it? Or was that No, that was during season four. Um.

Alice: Oh, it’s like on the tip of my tongue. I remember her. Was it the guy who um, killed her fiance? When they were like, don’t do it and she was like,

Ellen: yeah.

Bex: Yes, yes, yes, yes.

Ellen: And she brought him in anyway.

Bex: Yeah, it’s like four episodes before. But yeah, that would be what it would be.

Alice: Yeah. Cool. It was like coming back to, and I’m like, I remember them telling her not to do it and she was like, I’m gonna do it anyway. And they were like, yeah, okay. But like you’re gonna get in trouble. And she’s like, it’s worth it. And I’m like, what the fuck was it? But yeah, it was the guy that killed her fiance.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Okay. So Phyllis,

Bex: maybe they

Ellen: is calling again,

Bex: maybe they should invite Phyllis to their house for Christmas. Maybe she’d stop calling.

Ellen: [00:50:00] I thought this was what was gonna happen because after they said like, you, me and Harry and all this food. And I’m like, they’re gonna rope in some other randoms, aren’t they? Like, this is definitely gonna happen.

Bex: Yes, they do.

Ellen: And so they do. The next thing you know Phyllis is calling. Um, and, but I don’t know if Phyllis is actually at the dinner thing at the end anyway. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Um,

Bex: no, no, she’s not because she

Ellen: No, no. She’s got her family. That’s right. Yes. She’s Okay. So I’m getting ahead of myself. She calls and Linda has Linda answers, and she pulls up the address and finds out that this is the, the lady who always calls her Christmas, um, and tells her basically to go away. And she, she’s like, because

Bex: then you,

Ellen: I’m gonna

Bex: have to find

Ellen: out now.

Bex: Then you find out why she’s so salty, because

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: because when May comes in and, um, she’s marveling at the Christmas that Sue is setting up, and Linda [00:51:00] also comes in and goes, oh, like lonely ladies calling again. And then we find out that the last time Linda took a call from Lonely Lady, um, she dispatched two firehouses plus police, and the gas company evacuated a five block radius around Christmas for nothing.

Alice: Yep. Which absolutely would’ve been the right call had there been an actual gas leak.

Bex: Absolutely. Sue 100% backs her up. Linda’s just like she, she said 33 first responders got called to Phyllis’s house because Linda didn’t realize that it was just some lonely old lady wanting to someone to talk to.

Ellen: Yeah.

And may explaining all of this to May is the vehicle by which we learn about what happened with Lonely Lady. Um, but May’s like, “is it some kind of holiday prank?” And they’re like, no, no, she just doesn’t have any family. So she’s lonely, so she wants to call someone to talk to. And they’re all, they’re all just dismissing her, [00:52:00] like they’re all a bit unfeeling.

I’m like, well, you could, you know, get her some help. Like.

Bex: No,

Ellen: I don’t know.

Bex: That’s not their job. She’s not calling asking for that kind of help.

Ellen: I know, but if she keeps calling them

Bex: 100%. If she had called when Maddie was on duty, Maddie 100% would’ve like gone over and invited her over for Christmas dinner and, and got her like X, Y, z.

Alice: Maddie would’ve decorated her house.

Bex: But this is not Maddie. This is like the, the actual dispatchers who, you know, don’t break rules left, right, and center. Abby may also have brought the woman over for Christmas, but

Ellen: like, no, I don’t mean like personally actually gone and helped her. I mean like give her the number of a, you know, outreach center

Alice: they were try. Josh was trying.

Bex: Josh tried,

Alice: yeah.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Josh did say something about like social services and, and outreach programs and she’s like, oh look at the time I gotta go. Um, so, but even better, um, they send Athena. [00:53:00]

Ellen: Yeah. Sue decides they need stronger deterrent to stop her from calling 9-1-1. Athena shows up in her aviators and like, just looking so badass. Yeah. Phyllis is just like, uh, oh. They sent the police this time.

Bex: And it turns out, uh, Phyllis was a bit of a bitch to her daughter and now her daughter no longer talks to her and mm-hmm. Phyllis is too proud to apologize.

Alice: Yeah. Apparently on her daughter’s wedding day, Phyllis said that she hated her husband and it was never gonna last. They’ve been married for 12 years and have two kids.

Bex: Yes.

Alice: Good job, Phyllis.

Bex: Suck on that, Phyllis.

Alice: So Phyllis was a bit of a cow. Um,

Bex: 100% support the daughter going no contact with Phyllis because of that.

Alice: Yeah, right.

Bex: Except this is like Kristen Riedel, so we can’t have, you know, blood families going no contact with each [00:54:00] other.

So there has to be a happier ending. Um,

Ellen: well, it is 12 years later and she’s, you know, elderly now, so we can’t have her sitting alone at Christmas time.

Bex: We can if she’s still a cow.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: I guess. I mean, you made your bed. Go lie in it. Poor thing. So Athena basically convinces her to call her daughter.

Bex: Yep. She’s just, she’s just like the little fairy flitting from scene to scene. Dispensing pearls of wisdom. Yeah. Nuggets of knowledge and tinsel, Eddie’s got all the tinsel.

Ellen: Um, speaking of tinsel, there’s more Christmas decorations going up at some this other house.

Bex: Oh my God. Okay.

Ellen: Um, they’re waiting for the dad to get home before they do any of it, because he’s bringing the Christmas tree and he drives in with the Christmas tree and runs into the front of the house. Because he’s having an argument [00:55:00] on the phone with his wife and the house goes down.

Bex: I, I’ve really got the sense that this man has never backed into this driveway before.

Ellen: Yeah. Like such, don’t even know

Bex: a bad job of it.

Ellen: I don’t even know why he’s backing all the way and that the, the Christmas tree is huge and it’s on the roof. Like, wouldn’t, he’s not gonna be able to get to park it a little way out so you can actually get the tree off it. Like

Bex: Yes, it would,

Ellen: the whole thing is just really ridiculous.

Bex: It’s also ridiculous that a, a wing mirror, like the side mirror is banging into a pole at the slow speed that the car was going at was enough to make the entire front of the apartment building collapse.

Ellen: Well, I think they said after that I, I’m not trying to defend this stupid emergency, but um, I think Bobby said something about how after the earthquake it hadn’t been made safe properly or something like it had destabilised and it hadn’t fixed it up. So anyway.

Bex: A wing mirror and like the, it’s not even the apartment, it was the [00:56:00] carport. Like he hit the support on the front of the carport

Alice: Wasn’t it under the apartment though?

Bex: I just,

Ellen: it’s like underneath the front of the apartment. Yeah. And the, the whole front wall just disappears.

Bex: It’s about as implausible as someone running into the front of a trolley and like compound fracture breaking both of their ankles.

Mm-hmm. Once again, we’re at the, we don’t actually care how we get to the end result. We just wanna get to this end result and we’re just going to like fudge our way to the end, uh, because we don’t care how the building fell down, we just want Buck and Ravi to literally wrap this entire building in red tape.

Ellen: Yes.

Bex: I mean, after they get, they they get called, they get the dad out. It’s all

Ellen: Yeah, everyone gets out. Yeah. The dad gets, they get the dad outta the car. ’cause he’s crushed underneath the, the house

Bex: styrofoam. Yes.

Ellen: In the car. Yes.

Alice: Um, there’s a son and he’s worried that his dad’s dead [00:57:00] and Eddie’s like, oh shit.

Bex: Yes. Oh my God. I’ve never seen a child panicking over their father possibly being dead. I wonder if this has any implications for my personal life.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Um, and then Bobby is still on

Ellen: after they evacuate all of the other people who live in this apartment complex, then they wrap the entire place in red tape.

Bex: Yeah. ’cause Bobby’s still on his oh and s building safety kick and, uh, decides that on Christmas Eve he is going to red tape the entire building. Nobody can go back inside. And so he tells. Uh, Buck and Robbie to like wrap it up and so they literally wrap it in red tape.

Ellen: Yeah, it, it looks like a present.

Bex: It really does. Um,

Ellen: and they all mournfully drive away with the lights and sirens on.

Bex: With the lights and sirens on! Why are the lights and sirens on?

Ellen: Why are the [00:58:00] sirens on? We’re in a hurry to get away from here.

Alice: We just, we need to leave. Goodbye.

Ellen: But as they’re driving away. They look back like, Bobby just looks so sad. He is like looking at these people who he’s turfed out of their house at on Christmas Eve, and he’s like, oh, I’m so sorry. I’m like, okay, okay. I see where this is going.

Bex: Um,

Ellen: they telegraphed it a mile off.

Bex: I apparently did not see where, um, where this episode was uh, headed though, because. All the way through this episode. I’m going, why is this episode called “Wrapped in Red?” Like, I wonder why. Is it just because they use that Kelly Clarkson song? Is that why? And Oh, a couple of the presents have got like red ribbons on them?

Is that because like all the presents are wrapped in red? Did not tweak about the fricking building being wrapped in red tape.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: yeah.

Ellen: Everything.

Bex: Not until you pointed it out.

Ellen: Everything is wrapped in red. Anything that was wrapped in anything is red. This

Bex: didn’t, no, [00:59:00] didn’t tweak.

Alice: It’s, it’s just like the Rolling Stones song. Instead of being painted black, it’s wrapped in red.

Ellen: Well, we literally had a song called “Wrapped in Red”, right?

Bex: Yeah. Um, so apparently I, you know, I’m always bitching that this show like caters to the lowest common denominator. I’m like below the lowest common denominator in this episode because I didn’t even get that.

Ellen: Uh, just one time. Alright, so Christmas day, uh, May turns up to work. And the whole place has been just covered in lights and tinsel basically.

Bex: Yep. So, rated Christopher’s stash and has gone all out, um, even filling stockings for all of the dispatchers and hanging them on their, um, their desks on their stations.

Ellen: Aw. It’s kind of cute.

Bex: That is kind of cute.

Ellen: We never went quite so crazy in a workplace just saying.

Bex: I have a feeling that [01:00:00] like Sue going overboard is because she realizes that these people are like taking time away from their families on Christmas day. Yeah. So she’s trying to give them a Christmas that they would’ve not had.

Ellen: And we, and, and they do like people who have to work Christmas day, like first responders and whatever do, do this. ’cause I, we were in a hospital, uh, like my son broke his leg last year. No, the year, the, the Christmas before the one we just had. And that whole pediatric ward was just covered in Christmas. It was like, it was a very, very decorated.

Bex: Yeah,

Ellen: because I mean, kids who are in hospital at Christmas time,

Bex: yeah.

Ellen: That’s quite sad for them. So thankfully we were out of there before then, but, oh, all that, that scene is just May walking in. That’s it.

Bex: Yes. Yeah, it’s literally just, oh my God, it’s Christmas. Oh. Um, so it’s,

Alice: I’m pretty sure I sneezed and missed it. Like

Bex: it’s just, I think it’s a like a marker, like it’s Christmas day, it is now Christmas day because May is at [01:01:00] work and Christmas has thrown up on the dispatch floor. Um

Ellen: mm-hmm.

Bex: So then we, we go to the hotel where the family who were, the entire reason that their building fell down is stayed in a hotel overnight.

Um, and they’re kind of doing the whole Amy March, Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents kind of scene. Um, and there is a knock on the door and it’s Bobby. Um, and he wants them to come outside because he felt so badly about ruining their Christmas. Um, and also didn’t want any of the food that he was gonna cook to go to waste.

So he brought Christmas to them and I’m assuming that everybody in that hotel or everybody in that apartment building is now all staying at the same hotel.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: So they’re all having Christmas together in the parking lot.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Including the 118. ’cause apparently none of them have gone to do their own [01:02:00] Christmas things. They’ve just come here instead.

Bex: I’m pretty sure Bobby’s gone, we ruined their Christmas. We need to fix it. And I’m like, Hmm, Bobby, you ruined their Christmas. Everyone else was just there, but okay, fine.

Alice: Yeah, blame Bobby.

Ellen: Well, I’m pretty sure it was the guy backing his car into the building that ruined everyone’s Christmas. But you know,

Bex: anyway, so they’re having Christmas in the parking lot of the hotel. There’s food, there’s a tree, there’s presents. They’re all having a great time. Uh, Phyllis sent dispatches a, uh, a gift basket of, uh, like an edible gift basket. Not like an edible, edible gift basket, but like food stuffs. Yeah. And, um, despite

Ellen: that would’ve made this episode a lot more enjoyable actually. It been like,

Alice: yeah, I might have actually paid attention to it.

Bex: Um, and even though we’ve seen, we’ve already seen that you should not eat food products that have been given to [01:03:00] you by the general public, Sue has decided to put the gift basket on the table with the rest of the Christmas food. Um,

Ellen: yeah.

Bex: But

Alice: yeah, I don’t know if I’d trust anything that Lonely Lady… anyway. Yeah,

Bex: no. Um, but she’s apparently having a lovely Christmas. Um, why is she sending it to dispatch? Why didn’t she send it to Athena? Because Athena was the one that really kicked her in the butt.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Um, she doesn’t know Athena’s number. She knows what

Bex: it’s 9-1-1.

Alice: Center is Jesus Christ.

Ellen: Maybe she also sent one to the police

Bex: who are promptly threw it in the bin.

Alice: Yeah, the police throw everything out. Yeah, exactly. Yeah.

Bex: Because they know better than to eat the stuff that people bring in from them. Um, but yes, Phyllis broke the, uh, the no contact with her daughter. The daughter is apparently, uh, willing to visit. So she’s brought the, the, you know, the, the husband that definitely wouldn’t last and the, the two kids that shouldn’t have existed over for Christmas.

Alice: And they [01:04:00] have the same smile.

Ellen: Oh no, that’s the other,

Bex: no, the same smile as the, the, the, the, oh, we

Alice: haven’t gotten to that yet.

Bex: The polygamous,

Ellen: the two moms.

Alice: There are so many children in this. I don’t fucking know,

Bex: but we can cover that. So

Alice: yes, there were no dogs and not enough Taylor.

Bex: So, so Phyllis is having Christmas with her family, the two polygamist, um, what women are hanging out with their kids. Um, and one of them comments that the kids have got the same smile, which yeah, they’ve got the same dad. Of course they’re gonna have the same smile, like genetically that’s gonna happen. Um,

Ellen: mm-hmm. So do we think these two women are now gonna shack up?

Bex: They’re gonna hook up. Yeah. Yeah,

Ellen: totally.

Bex: Totally. Who needs men? They’ve got, they’ve got the kids, they’ve got each other. They’re good. They’ve got the nanny, they’re fine.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Um,

Ellen: so the two Marco and Melia, who are the two, uh, workers, the coworkers, um,

Bex: we don’t [01:05:00] need to know.

Ellen: They’re not going to the Philharmonic. They’re going out for Chinese and a movie

Alice: and Yep. Don’t care.

Ellen: They get to kiss. Even though, um, none of the gay couples get to kiss in the show and Bobby and Athena are watching as Harry is digging through the presents that are under the tree at this. Like, why did they bring their personal Christmas presents to this Christmas?

Alice: We don’t even take our personal Christmas presents to our family Christmas, like we do Christmas the night before so that we’re not lugging everything all the way to like someone’s house. Yeah. And then all the way back home again. Like

Ellen: that makes a lot of sense.

Bex: Yeah. I,

Ellen: but anyway, I don’t understand, uh, the present. Understand that May got for Harry is there under the tree apparently. Uh, he doesn’t wanna wait for May, but May said he could open it, so whatever.

Bex: Athena looks absolutely. Like why aren’t we sitting down as a family and opening presents?

Why are you just taking a present and running away to open it? Um, except he’s not running away to open it. He’s running away to give it to the [01:06:00] kid of the dad who knocked the building down, um, to give to him. Because like apparently Bobby didn’t even let anybody go in and like, get their Christmas presents out. He literally said, you shall not pass.

Alice: I mean, I guess they weren’t allowed to, but like

Ellen: corner of the building. I dunno.

Bex: Anyway, so Harry donates his Christmas present, which as we already discussed earlier in the episode, was probably just cash. So he is just given this kid a box full of cash. Merry Christmas kid.

Ellen: Yeah,

Alice: cash from May. That probably says happy, like happy Christmas bro.

Bex: Um, but it makes Athena, it warms Athena’s heart to see that her son is so selfless that he’s giving up his Christmas cash. For a child. It’s kind of nice. So while Harry is exchanging presents with unnamed children, ’cause like that kid does not get a name, um, Buck and Taylor [01:07:00] are somewhat exchanging presents in that Buck gives a present to Taylor, but Taylor’s left her present to him in the car, so we don’t actually see it.

Alice: Yeah, like did they just not wanna buy a sweater? So they were like, oh, it’s in the car. Like what? Like they could have just not had it in the car. It’s so weird.

Bex: Like surely they could have dragged something out of costumes.

Ellen: Yeah. Or like, you know, why am I bringing a personal Christmas present to a communal Christmas? Like she’s given it to him later, you know?

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Makes sense.

Bex: Um, but Buck cannot wait mostly because, you know, Fox got paid good money for Buck to hand over this present on camera. He hands over a, a red, a very red sort of velvety box. Um, and Taylor pulls out a bracelet, which has just been jammed inside the box in the tissue paper.

Like it’s not in a bag, it’s not in a jewelry box, it’s not even like a product box. It’s just shoved [01:08:00] in this gift box. Um, and

Ellen: it’s such a boy present.

Bex: It’s not a bracelet. Even though Taylor thinks it’s a bracelet, Buck very proudly tells her it’s not just any bracelet. This one has an emergency distress beacon in it. Um, so that he can track her 24 7.

Ellen: No, it’s not a tracking bracelet. It’s so that where if she gets in trouble, she can activate it at the time of her choosing and he will come and rescue her.

Bex: Okay. That’s the,

Alice: it was kind of cute.

Bex: Yeah, that was very sweet.

Ellen: It’s quite gallant.

Bex: Yeah, that part was very gallant, but it’s literally a, it’s a distress beacon. It’s called the InvisAware bracelet. It currently retails for 99 US dollars. Um, normal price is $149 and it’s this gaudy gold. It comes as a necklace, it comes as a bracelet. The pendant has a button at the [01:09:00] back where if you double click it, it will send emergency messages to your contacts, um, and will call 9-1-1 and send your location to anybody who you want your location to be sent to.

And it 100% is product placement. ’cause it was very, very big when this episode first came out.

Alice: There you go. Uh, did it make it to Australia? Probably not.

Bex: No. No.

Alice: Probably ’cause they kept calling 9-1-1 and they were like, we don’t know how to change the number. It’s too hard.

Ellen: I thought it, it automatically forwards it to triple zero if you call 9-1-1 here.

Alice: I don’t know. Do you wanna try it?

Ellen: I

Bex: think,

Ellen: no,

Bex: I think our phones like this now. So why would you need,

Ellen: you’ve got an emergency button on your phone. Yeah. But anyway, my grandmother’s had one of these for years because, um, she lives like, she’s in her nineties and she lives on her own. So she has a button that if she supposed to wear it all the time, but she doesn’t.

Bex: But is it a pretty gold [01:10:00] button like this one?

Ellen: No, it’s not this pretty gold. It’s just a button. And if she needs help she’ll press the button and someone will come over. Um, but yeah, this is, this is a lot prettier than that.

Alice: But yeah, the Life Alert things have been around for ages.

Bex: Uh, but yeah, so,

Alice: but this is a fancy one.

Bex: Buck has, you know, given her this, this wonderful gift of, I don’t know, safety and security and gallantry. And she’s like, I got you a sweater. And it’s like, it’s probably not even like mohair or cashmere or anything. It’s just like a, a cotton, cotton blend sweater that she picked up at the mall.

Alice: She went to, she went to Target and just like found one that looked his size and now he’s grown out of it as well because he is turned into a brick shit house. So,

Bex: but it wasn’t a brick shit house in this season. He was still

Alice: No, that’s what I mean. So now he will have grown out of it.

Bex: Yeah, but it doesn’t matter now. Um, then, uh, presents [01:11:00] have been given, Hen and Denny show up. Karen is on her way. She is got the car and apparently she’s packed the car so full of presents that, or specifically donations, but I’m gonna say presents, um, that Hen and Denny couldn’t fit in it. Which beggars the question of how they got there. If Karen’s got the car,

Alice: uh, they walked,

Ellen: They might have two cars?

Bex: And again,

Alice: they took the fire engine,

Bex: we get the, oh, we’re missing unnamed people.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: it’s just mention them.

Alice: Yeah. It’s weird that they’re just not saying like, oh, miss

Bex: Kenneth is gonna get paid whether you say his name or not, Jennifer is getting paid whether you say her name or not. So just say their fucking names.

Ellen: When are they coming back? I miss them. Actually, this episode made me miss them a lot because they were just, there was a hole where they should be, you know, like,

Alice: yeah. And they just kept tiptoeing around the hole and it’s like, okay.

Ellen: Yeah. [01:12:00] Without actually addressing the hole.

Bex: The hole.

Ellen: Say hole one more time.

Alice: I just I prefer to be the hole than the peg, okay?

Bex: Um, speaking of holes and pegs,

Alice: oh, sorry, Shane Hollander just, yeah. Anyway,

Bex: um,

Ellen: Shane Hollander possessed me,

Alice: possessed me for a moment there. I don’t know what happened.

Bex: Buck has noticed that Eddie is missing, um, and realizes that he’s over on the other side of the parking lot, having a very serious conversation with Bobby, which ends with like a massive, um, massive sort of dude, bro, father, son hug, which,

Ellen: yeah, and a handshake

Bex: just, it does not bode well. Hen doesn’t know what that is about and doesn’t like it. And she’s got good reason to be mistrustful because, um, Eddie then collects her and Buck and Ravi for some reason, except for the fact that they need to get Anirudh in a scene because he’s like on set anyway. And they’re [01:13:00] paying him, so they may as well use him. Um,

Ellen: no, he did get invited to Christmas,

Bex: no, he got dragged along to co to company Christmas. Like he didn’t get invited to Bobby’s house, but they’re like, this is a work Christmas thing now and you have to come to this one.

Ellen: Yeah. Poor Ravi,

Bex: poor Ravi. Um, so Eddie drags them over to off to the side and he said that, like, I’ve got some news.

I, um, and I don’t want to, I don’t want you to hear it from anybody else. Uh, I don’t know who he is gonna hear it from because the one person who’s really bad at keeping secrets to the nine at the 118 is not there. So like, could, um,

Alice: Chimney appears and goes, you’re leaving the 118?

Bex: Just spawns in from Boston. Um, so yes, Eddie says that, um, he, that things are not really okay with Christopher. He is really worried about me and the risks that I take at work. [01:14:00] Uh, so I’m going to mitigate those risks and I am leaving the 118.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: What?!

Bex: And that’s when the episode ends. And we are not gonna find out what happens for, well, we are gonna find out next week. Um, back in 2021, nobody found out until March of 2022.

Ellen: Oh my God. March?

Bex: March.

Alice: Literally three,

Bex: three months.

Alice: Yep.

Ellen: Three entire months.

Bex: Three entire months.

Alice: And I’m complaining about the hiatus, the hiatuses that keep happening, um, with season nine, although they’re just so many of them, I just, I don’t care anymore.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Wow. That’s a really mean cliff hanger to leave it on for such a long time.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Was there any like, hint of like, what might be coming? Well, you know how in, in hiatus in, in Supernatural, the cast were always giving stuff away. Like,

Alice: oh, that’s just because Misha can’t shut his mouth. [01:15:00] So.

Bex: Maybe, but,

Ellen: or Jared,

Bex: I, I mean I wasn’t watching this live and I didn’t really care to go back and sort of see what was going on in Tumblr at sort of December, 2021, January, 2022. Um, yeah, I’m sure it was a shit show though.

Ellen: Yeah. All right, well what is happening next week? We are not gonna wait for three months, so I hope not anyway,

Bex: uh, when we will attempt to be back next week. Um, no promises.

Alice: Maybe we’ll just go to the cottage again.

Bex: Can we go to the Canadian cottage and not the Bridgerton cottage? ’cause the Bridgerton cottage sucked.

Alice: Absolutely. Yeah. We we’re not going to the Bridgerton.

It was a very pretty house. But yeah. Anyway. Yeah.

Bex: Um, when we return Athena, Bobby, and the 118 quote, “speed” to the rescue to save a family whose pickup truck has been rigged with a pipe bomb, which will detonate if the vehicle slows under 55 miles an hour.

Ellen: Oh God. It’s [01:16:00] literally Speed.

Bex: It’s literally Speed.

Alice: Literally Speed.

Bex: Um,

Ellen: okay.

Bex: Meanwhile, Eddie has a rough transition into his new job. Buck makes an impulsive, oh, for fuck’s sake. We up to this now. Buck makes an impulsive relationship decision and Hen is reluctant to accept her new partner in Chimney’s absence.

Ellen: Oh, ’cause Eddie’s gone too. And now there’s a new person. Okay.

Bex: Yeah. Yeah. They were able to get away with he, with Eddie stepping up to fill out for Chim. But now Eddie’s not there. They desperately need a new paramedic in the A team. And can you just imagine the rest of like the rest of the 118 just sitting around going, why the fuck weren’t we called up? Like, why are we

Alice: literally, yeah.

Bex: Why are we importing a new, why is somebody else coming in? Why can’t one of us go up to the 118 or like go up to the A shift? Anyway. Um, triggers [01:17:00] include, um,

Alice: oh my God, I just remembered. Yeah. Okay. Nevermind me. I was

Bex: you with me?

Alice: Looking through my notes for next week’s episode. Yeah.

Bex: Yep.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Yep,

Alice: yep.

Bex: Um,

Alice: I knew Buck’s part. I couldn’t remember the first half and I was like, there was something about it and then I just looked at my thing and I’m like, yes. Okay. Yeah, I remember this, this was funny. I actually did laugh at next weeks.

Ellen: Oh no.

Bex: Okay. Um, triggers include gore with specifically a bone outside of the body. Why did, did we get that trigger for this week’s episode?

Alice: No, actually should probably mention it

Ellen: should retroactively add that in.

Bex: I don’t. Did we do tr Oh, we did triggers for this episode. Um, so next week we have gore. We have depictions of depression. Uh, funnily enough we have a family at threat of a car accident slash explosion.

Alice: No.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Ala the movie Speed situation. Um, and [01:18:00] then depictions and references to PTSD and self-isolation.

Alice: Autumn, no one cares.

Bex: Autumn has thoughts.

Ellen: Uh, I don’t really… like, this is, I think our shortest episode to date so far of recording.

Alice: Literally we haven’t even hit, like, I haven’t even hit two hours. And I started recording before you guys did.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Um, but like.

Bex: There wasn’t a lot to say

Ellen: not much happened, and a lot of scenes that we, um, that we glossed over because nothing much happened and we weren’t interested in what happened.

Alice: Seriously. Like I don’t even think the writers cared about what, like the, whatever the fuck the woman who fell out down the elevator shaft. I, I don’t care.

Ellen: Oh, that just went on

Alice: Zero fucks. Like, she just kept going. She’s like, I’m gonna give you this. No, I’m not gonna give. Oh my God, I’m gonna give you this. No,

Bex: I’m

Alice: not gonna give, oh my God, I’m gonna give it. No, I’m not gonna, like what?

Bex: Like in retrospect I think that that was literally written because [01:19:00] they needed to fill the episode.

Alice: I think so. Yeah.

Ellen: Well, I think if at first it was kind of cute, like she, okay, she’s gonna give him this thing. She’s a bit shy, but it just went on for so long. It, she had so many attempts that it, I was just really sick of it by the end of,

Alice: yeah.

Ellen: I was like, I’m, and then

Alice: she fell down an elevator shaft and we’ve had the fall down the elevator shaft like 12 times in the show already,

Bex: and it wasn’t even like a good fall down the elevator shaft. It was like fell a little bit down the elevator shaft. Like if you’re going to be

Ellen: knocked out for a bit,

Bex: if you’re going to David Wallace, these guys that hard, I want like a full David Wallace emergency to be linked to it. Yes. Not just a

Alice: literally they

Ellen: literal foot trapped in between the, you know, something.

Bex: Yeah. She needs to be pinned with something. She needs to be at death’s door.

She needs Marco to have like professed his undying love to her and made her promise that if she holds on and they’ll get through a yada, yada yada.

Ellen: Is this, is this fan fiction? This next one? Like I, it sounds like it.

Alice: Yeah. It sounds like Speed fan fiction.

Bex: It was fun. I remember it being fun.

Alice: I still remember. So last time I watched speed, I was in high school and

Ellen: mm-hmm.

Alice: We were, um, learning how to do flash animations, which was a great skill that has, you know, followed me.

Ellen: Yes.

Alice: All throughout my life. Um, but we were learning how to use do flash animations and so naturally, like I watched speed as a teenager for the first time while I was a teenager.

Like, I watched it as a kid a couple times, but then I was a teenager and the end where it like jumps over the bridge, I did a flash animation of it because it literally, like the way it jumps isn’t possible without a jump. [01:21:00]

Bex: Oh.

Alice: And so, like, I did a flash animation and it was basically like the bridge being like broken and the bus like drives, drives up to it stops and then like jumps over the thing and then keeps going.

And that was my flash animation for that um, weeks class, but I was like, literally, this is how it happened. Because it’s, and like then you see the behind the scenes and they’re like, building the ramp and all that sort of stuff. And I’m like, doesn’t that tell you that this isn’t possible? Like, I can, plausible deniability is one thing, but this is ridiculous.

Like, it went so high for a fucking bridge that like, didn’t do that. It was so weird. Like just get one of those bridges that like opens up so it like sails over instead bridge rather than just being a flat bridge that it like jumps over. It was weird. It was weird, man. Weird. Anyway, yeah, that’s my biggest memory of speed is making a flash animation of Speed.

And then flash animation became defunct and I was like, oh, well one, my, one skill.

Ellen: Yeah. It didn’t last long. I, I mean it taught, [01:22:00] I like, I did some flash animation too, and it was like, I guess it taught you how to do animation because you still had to make all the different frames. Right? But

Alice: like kind. But the program we used would fill in gaps as well, so we didn’t have to do all the frames. Like,

Ellen: I mean, now you just ask AI to do it for you and it

Alice: yeah,

Ellen: it creates it for you. But,

Alice: Jesus Christ. Um, for any kids listening, flash animation was, um, like cartoons on the internet, but they were very easy to make and then flash became defunct.

Ellen: Animated.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Banners and stuff. Yeah. Anyway,

Alice: we’ve talked, spoken more about flash animation than we have the whole episode.

Ellen: I, I, there were other Christmas episodes that I preferred before this one, I can’t remember which. Even the one, the one where they all had their big family dinner at the firehouse was better.

Alice: I think that’s, isn’t that the only Christmas episode we’ve had?

Ellen: No, there’s been, maybe I’m thinking of multiple [01:23:00] Halloween ones then. Has there only been one other Christmas one?

Alice: We had a lot Halloween ones. Yeah. I don’t remember any other ha um, Christmas ones.

Bex: Was Doug like, was Doug around when they had the family Christmas?

Alice: Oh, was Doug season two or three?

Bex: Because he was Christmas. Because

Alice: he was Christmas.

Bex: Same because Chimney met him at the Christmas farm tree that Oh,

Ellen: that went to the Christmas Tree Farm. That’s right.

Alice: Yeah. I think that was season two.

Bex: Okay.

Alice: So yeah, we have had multiple Christmas episodes

Bex: and there’s the one where Buck spoiled Christmas for all the kids with Santa.

Alice: Oh, that was last season. There you go. We did get a season four, I mean season three, Christmas,

Bex: uh, yeah. Season two

Ellen: “Merry Ex-mas”,

Bex: season two had “Merry Ex-mas”. That was when Shannon came back.

Alice: Mm-hmm.

Ellen: The man trapped in the present.

Bex: Then [01:24:00] season. Yeah. So they usually do a Christmas episode per season. It’s just season four because of COVID. COVID ruined Christmas.

Alice: COVID did ruin Christmas.

Ellen: “Christmas Spirit” was the one with, I think Doug was in that one. And there was, um, the, the lady who was blue.

Bex: Oh, that’s right.

Ellen: Was in that one blue Christmas

Bex: feelings of sadness are normal over holiday season.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: no, I’m literally blue!

Ellen: What a stupid episode that was. Okay. Um, anything else to say about this episode?

Bex: No. I’m glad we don’t have to watch it again.

Ellen: Alright. Onwards and upwards. We are just being a bit down on this episode. Okay.

Alice: Oh, I think we’re all a bit down.

Bex: Apparently

Alice: it’s been, it’s been a hard week

Bex: Apparently the, the less caffeine I have in my system, the more cynical I am. So next week I’ll ensure that I am like drowning in [01:25:00] Red Bull and Mother and any other energy drink I can get my hands on.

Ellen: It sounds like next week will be, next week’s episode will be more interesting anyway, so if we can make it to next, next weekend, we’ll be fine. Alright. Tell us what you thought about this episode.

Bex: Oh gosh.

Ellen: Tell us how much you loved this Christmas episode or hated it. Um, yeah, honestly, we’d love to hear your comments. It’s the highlight of our days and we share them around. And

Alice: honestly, at this point we like the comments more than the episodes.

Ellen: Um, and you can do that on our website thatweewooshow.com or on Spotify or YouTube or social media. Um, thank you so much for listening to us shit on this episode this week.

Bex: Oh my God, thank you. If you’ve made it this far. Thank you so much.

Ellen: Yeah, thank you. I’m sorry,

Alice: we’re so sorry.

Ellen: Sorry. Um, we’ll be, we’ll be more energetic

Alice: I need to log out

Ellen: next week.

Alice: I need to log out and watch this week’s episode of The Pitt and that’ll [01:26:00] make me feel better.

Ellen: Yes. Oh good. Alright, we’ll be back next week to discuss episode 11, which is called “Outside Looking In”. See you then.

Bex: Bye

Alice: bye.

Ellen: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you are not alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help. Just Google crisis support in your location to find out the number.

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