5.13: Fear-o-Phobia

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 13 of the fifth season of 9-1-1, titled “Fear-o-Phobia”.

Athena investigates a robbery at a gas station that takes an unexpected turn when the would-be victim turns the tables on her assailant. The 118 race to rescue a novice diver in a shark cage. Eddie reaches his breaking point.

Content warnings for episode 5.13:

bleeding from the eyes and ears and nose, claustrophobia, depression, child at threat, flashbacks to war, panic attacks, PTSD, severe decompression sickness, spiders, depictions of therapy, threat of gun violence, threat of self immolation, threat of suicide via jumping, spider webs.

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Our intro music is “Tensions” by Northern Points.

Episode Transcript

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

Ellen: 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 Ellen.

Alice: I’m Alice

Bex: and I’m Bex.

Ellen: And we are back in season five. Um, apologies couple of weeks. We, you know, sometimes life just kicks us all up the butt and we can’t make a time to get together and do this, but we’re back.

Alice: Well, Bex went to a K-pop concert, I went to G-Flip and then like a puppy happened. So

Ellen: a puppy. Yay! A puppy!.

Alice: A puppy happened. We have a new Wee woo Show family member.

Ellen: Yay. So if you hear like, yip yip in the background, it, it might be Hudson.

Alice: Yeah. It’s not always Autumn this time anymore. Um, [00:01:00] autumn has a new younger brother named Hudson.

Ellen: Yay! And he’s so fluffy.

Alice: I’ve him for just over a week, so,

Bex: and yes, he is named for who you think he’s named for.

Alice: I dunno what you’re talking about. Hudson’s such a common name. That’s, you know,

Bex: Uhhuh

Alice: come from anywhere.

Bex: Uhhuh.

Ellen: All right. Well thank you for sticking with us and coming back and listening to, um, our episodes after a break.

Thank you to everyone who’s been commenting on our posts and. Uh, sharing our social media stuff. We love you. Thank you. Um, before we get stuck into episode 13, um, Alice, do you wanna remind us what happened last time we spoke about 9-1-1?

Alice: Yeah. So like three months ago, um, last time on 9-1-1, we followed Chimney and Maddie to Boston where they finally reunited.

Ellen: Yay. They’re back.

Bex: Yay.

Alice: They’re back. It feels whole again.

Ellen: Yes.

Bex: Uh, this week we are going to discuss episode [00:02:00] 13 of season five. And it literally just clicked that the episode called “Fear-O-Phobia” is the 13th episode.

Ellen: Oh, of course it is. Oh, didn’t even think of that.

Bex: No, neither did I, until I’m staring at the notes.

Ellen: didn’t air on a Friday the 13th or anything, did it?

Bex: No, it aired Monday, April 11th, but

Alice: Oh, you said on Monday. That’s so strange.

Bex: It, um, it would’ve been absolutely perfect if it had aired Friday the 13th, but No, it, but it is at least the 13th episode. Um, yes. So an episode called “Fear-O-Phobia”. It is of course about everybody facing their fears or fearful things.

The official promo that was, uh, released says that in this episode, Athena investigates a robbery at a gas station that takes an unexpected turn when the would-be victim turns the tables on her assailant. Oh, we’re getting a full summary this week. [00:03:00] Uh, meanwhile, Bobby and the 1 26, what the fuck is up with the 1 26?

It’s the 118. It’s just 118 plus Lucy. She’s now with the 118. Um, sorry, I’m gonna start that sentence again. Meanwhile, Bobby and the 118 race to rescue a novice diver who panics while in a shark cage and a house sitter terrified of spiders. I don’t agree with that last part though. Then Eddie reaches his breaking point, Chim returns to the 118, Maddie shares some news with Buck, who realizes he has to come clean with Taylor. And we don’t need to do the rest of this episode. ’cause the, the summary is just, that’s gone through.

Ellen: Yeah, that’s everything.

Alice: Yeah, that’s it. That’s the episode. Uh, goodnight. See you next time guys. Um, glad our episode back was a whole, ugh, six minutes.

Bex: Was it worth, was it worth waiting two weeks for? I don’t know.

Alice: Um, wait for the bloopers where we discussed [00:04:00] Yellowjackets for longer than we discussed the episode.

Ellen: It, they, they listed all the things in the wrong order though, because Eddie reaches his breaking point at the end of the episode, but Chimney returns to the 118 at the beginning. And, and Maddie sharing some news with Buck is also the beginning.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Anyway,

Bex: well, okay, so that’s the other thing that’s wrong with the summary. It gets key plot points incorrect, and it also gets the order wrong. Um, the,

Ellen: We’re just picky today.

Bex: Oh, I’m, I am, my soapbox is parked and ready. Um,

Ellen: oh, oh, dear.

Alice: Okay, disclaimer. Um, we watched this episode two weeks ago?

Ellen: Two weeks ago.

Bex: No, two longer. It has to be

Alice: longer. Longer.

Bex: I, no, two weeks ago. Watch this episode. No, I watched this episode on the plane home from Ateez.

Alice: Wasn’t that two weeks ago?

Bex: That was, Nope. Oh yes. Okay. Sixth and seventh. So, all right. Damn. That was only two [00:05:00] weeks ago?

Alice: That was two weeks ago.

Ellen: It’s been a long, it’s been a long couple of weeks.

Bex: It’s a long couple of weeks.

Alice: Yeah. So we watched this episode two weeks ago. We did plan to rewatch it. We did not rewatch it. Um, this episode is going to be,

Bex: Who planned to rewatch it? I was gonna go off, off my notes ’cause

Alice: Oh, me and Ellen absolutely, but you write notes so you remember things a bit better.

Ellen: That’s okay. We’ll remember it.

Bex: We, we will, um.

Alice: If we start talking about the Pitt instead, just ignore us. Um, because

Bex: well, perhaps discussing the triggers will trigger your memory of what happens in this episode, because in this episode, if you have not already watched it and you need, uh, a little bit of an idea whether you actually do wanna watch this episode or not, uh, you could experience, well, no, you, you yourself are not gonna experience bleeding from the eyes and ears and nose, but there will be a depiction of somebody bleeding from the eyes and ears and nose, claustrophobia, depression.

Uh, so my [00:06:00] so far favorite trigger of this season, which is dolphins, um, flashbacks to, flashbacks to

Ellen: that’s so weird.

Bex: Moment of child at threat, uh, flashbacks to war, panic attacks, PTSD, uh, severe decompression sickness, see above re-bleeding from the eyes and ears and nose. Um, spiders, specifically tarantulas, uh, depictions of therapy, threat of gun violence, threat of self immolation, threat of suicide via jumping and spider webs.

Alice: I, um, I did ask Nikki who does our triggers, why dolphin was a trigger, and she’s like, “I have no idea. I have no memory of this. Maybe someone asked me to add it.” And I’m like, sure, why not? Um, so yeah, dolphin,

Ellen: I mean, there’s no shark like

Bex: I think,

Ellen: no shark warning.

Bex: I think from me, from memory when we watched.

When we were discussing “Boston” and at the end of “Boston” we were going through this episode and [00:07:00] I did sort of go, why dolphin? Why not shark? But I think it’s because there is no actual depictions of sharks shark there.

Ellen: There isn’t a shark?

Alice: Yeah, it’s a dolphin.

Bex: It’s a dolphin.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: But yes, just in case you know, you are, uh, highly reactive to dolphins. Please be aware there is a dolphin that will be shown on screen at some point.

Ellen: Right. I’m sure there’s someone out there.

Bex: Not first up though. Uh, first up we are going to reunite, um, the Buckley siblings and Chim and his best friend,

Alice: the paramedics.

Bex: Yeah, let’s go with that. The Buckley siblings and the paramedics.

And it’s one of those really, uh, fun scenes where we’re both the Buckley siblings and the paramedics, um, are having the same conversation. So we’re cutting back and forth between the two sort of locations and getting to get the full picture.

Alice: I love when they do this well [00:08:00] and they do it well a lot. Like it is one of their strengths when they do it properly it’s quite good. Um,

Bex: yes.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: But yeah, it’s so cute. Like Buck is so excited to see Maddie.

Ellen: Yeah, it, this was a, this scene, whole scene is actually a bit of emotional whiplash because I was so excited that they were back and that Buck was excited to see Maddie and Hen was so excited to see Chim. And then we get you know, the revelations,

Alice: the bombshell. Yeah.

Ellen: This, yeah.

Bex: Yes. Because while, um, Hen has gone to Chim’s apartment, uh, and Maddie has gone to Buck’s apartment, uh, Maddie is not going to be returning to Chim’s apartment because they broke up.

Ellen: Yeah. I was like, no. Um, I mean, if I didn’t already know what was happening later in the series,

Alice: literally I watched,

Ellen: I would’ve been so sad.

Alice: I watched this episode the day after their wedding episode aired, and I was like, if I hadn’t known it, I would be so mad right now. [00:09:00]

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: But yeah, they broke up. It’s very sad. Um, Maddie says they realized somewhere around St. Louis that it was over. And well, Buck asks, you know, “After everything you’ve been through?” Chim says, all those other times they were apart.

It always felt like it was outside forces. You know, ex-husbands, paramedics, uh, pandemics. Sorry, paramedics. Lemme try it again. All those other times we were apart, it always felt like it was outside forces. Ex-husbands para pandemics. I almost fucking said it again. “Feels like the call’s coming from inside the house,”

Bex: or as Maddie puts it, simply they grew apart or they grew in different directions while they were apart.

Ellen: Aww.

Alice: Buck immediately jumps to Maddie’s defense and is like, “it, it sounds like he’s punishing you for being sick.” And Maddie’s like, “No, no, no, no, no. It’s a mutual decision together. This is what’s best. There’s no punishing. [00:10:00] Don’t be mad at Chim.” Where Buck says he does still owe him a punch in the face.

Um, meanwhile, Chim and Hen, Chim’s like, “Yeah, I already apologized to Buck. Everything’s fine. It’s fine. I’m so ready to get back with the team.”

Ellen: Yeah. And Hen’s like, “ah, things are a little different from when you left.”

Alice: I love this as well. So when Maddie goes, “Eddie quit?” Chim goes, “Bobby replaced me?” And then “You asked Taylor to move in with you?”

Ellen: And “Buck made out with the new firefighter?”

Alice: Buck made out with the new firefighter. Oh, Hen is just like Chimney here is the team,

Ellen: apparently Buck. Which apparently Buck told Maddie about. ’cause she’s like, wow. Like,

Alice: yeah.

Ellen: Uh,

Alice: so yeah, simultaneously, Maddie, I mean, Hen is spilling the tea and Chim is loving it, but also Buck’s just like “I fucked up.”

Bex: and Chim’s response to all of this was, “wow, you guys just [00:11:00] totally fell apart without me.”

Alice: Yeah,

Ellen: But it’s true. They did.

Bex: It’s true.

Ellen: They absolutely did. Oh,

Bex: so we go to the title card.

Ellen: We better go and actually have an emergency. We,

Bex: yes. Let’s have an emergency.

Ellen: It was so lovely to see them back again.

Alice: It’s such a dumb emergency, but sure.

Bex: Yeah. So, um, we have, I don’t even know if we find this guy’s name. No. He never gets a name. Basically. Uh, we have a dude who has signed up for a shark cage encounter those, those things where you go down in a cage and you swim with sharks except they’re outside the cage and you’re inside the cage for your safety and theirs.

Alice: Um, it’s like, like he, the diving cage sort of thing.

Bex: He doesn’t look entirely convinced about the whole situation. Um.

Ellen: Nope.

Bex: He’s like nit nitpicking through the terms and conditions and the disclaimers and, um, [00:12:00] but when the, the tour guide says, look, you don’t have to do this. It kind of shames him into, well actually yes I do. And he signs the paperwork. So they get him on the boat, they get him in a scuba tank.

Ellen: Well, I like how first he goes, um, “I thought I was safer in the cage than free diving.” And the guy’s like “You are.” And he goes, “Well, is there anything safer than the cage?” And the dude’s like, “Land?”

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: This is the, this is the cage. This is safe. Just get in. So anyway, they get him in then they chuck some meat into the water to attract the sharks.

Bex: Yep, yep. That’s, um, that’s, that’s wonderful. Yeah. Um, so we get a little bit of training on how to use, um, the, the get out of jail, the, the emergency button. So the, the diver is going to have a emergency button that if he presses it, it’ll inflate his vest and it will bring [00:13:00] him up to the surface.

Um, but it’s only for use in emergency and it’s only for use sort of within the cage. ’cause the cage is going to be not that far under the water, maybe only 20 feet.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So it’s very important to note.

Ellen: Yeah. And he also says, “Under no circumstances should you ever leave the cage. Okay? You got that? Never leave the cage. Okay? Okay? Thumbs up?” He’s like, yeah, fine, let’s do it.

Bex: So, uh, so he got the, our, our poor, um, our poor diver goes into the cage with, uh, his like buddy diver and the cage gets lowered into the water and we get the point of view from the diver. And he’s not having a great time. His vision is obscured by the, the goggles.

He can hear like the, the hiss of the oxygen in his [00:14:00] ears. We can hear his heart thumping. Um, he is very, very scared. And then in the distance, he sees the shape coming towards him through the water.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: And he freaks the fuck out. Um, we as the audience can see that it’s just a friendly dolphin who’s come to see what the stupid humans are doing now.

Alice: It, it’s literally just a dolphin.

Bex: In no way does it look anything like a shark. It’s a dolphin. Um, but either the diver doesn’t know that or he just sees something moving very fast through the water towards him. And he is already like a peak anxiety and he flips the fuck out. Um, he tries to get out of the cage and in doing so, manages to unhook the cage from the cable that is hot.

That is, um, basically it’s hanging from in the water. And so the [00:15:00] cage plummets to the bottom of the, the sea floor.

Ellen: Yes. Which is really, really bad for a, for panicking people, b for the dive experience in general.

Alice: Yeah. Like they,

Ellen: they can’t be that deep.

Alice: It was supposed to be quite shallow, but now it’s gone real deep really quickly.

Bex: Yes. Which would normally, it probably wouldn’t be that bad because the, um, the, our panicking diver has his buddy diver with him, except when his buddy diver tries to get him to calm down he punches his buddy diver, um, knocks,

Alice: he punches him in the, right in the face. What the fuck?

Bex: Um, and so while his, while the buddy diver is desperately trying to get his oxygen back, um, our in intrepid, uh, diver swims to the top of the cage, gets out, and then immediately presses his get out of jail free button, which whooshes [00:16:00] him up to the surface.

Um, except that’s not what you want to do when you went that far down.

Ellen: No, no, absolutely not.

Bex: Uh, because then, because you, well, we see what happens, um, to our poor dude. He, um, he is the, the poor victim that’s going to have the blood flowing from his eyes and ears and nose. Um, because he’s,

Ellen: it’s actually interesting. Like they, they tell, they depict it and they tell people that it’s, you know, um, oh, I don’t remember what they actually call it. Decompression sickness or whatever.

Bex: Decompression sickness.

Ellen: But they don’t explain what that means at all. Like they just, which, which normally they would, I mean, I mean, I, I’m guessing that we all know decompression sickness actually is, but, but no one, no one explains what that is.

Like if you’ve never been diving before, there’s a good chance you don’t understand what’s actually happening here. [00:17:00]

Bex: Maybe they’re,

Ellen: maybe there’s enough of it around.

Bex: Yeah. Um, maybe they’re banking on it being so prevalent in, uh, pop culture that everybody understands that are, maybe they don’t understand the science behind it, but they do know that you don’t come up super fast.

Um, otherwise it’s going to be bad, uh, which it is. So the tour guide calls 9-1-1, um, very helpfully tells the operator that he came up way too fast, which is, you know, a great transition from the, uh, the diver coming back up to the surface and moving into the 118 arriving, but not at all helpful as a 9-1-1 call.

Ellen: Whoa, you okay?

Bex: Hudson?

Alice: He just fell into, um,

Bex: I think we lost Alice.

Alice: No, he just fell into a box and like, and while he was trying to get [00:18:00] up, he was just like flailing and kicking it.

Ellen: Ah, puppies,

Alice: are you okay? It was fine. It was literally just like a light sort of thing, but he was just like, what the fuck was that?

Ellen: So was I,

Bex: The 118 of course get dispatched.

Ellen: Oh yes.

Bex: And everything seems to be going okay. Um, Bobby orders, Buck and Lucy, um, who are immediately like, smooshed together, like Buck and Eddie. It’s now one word, Buck and Lucy, um, to tie, to help tie off the boat so that the 118 can get on board and help. Um, so both Buck and Lucy move to follow orders at the same time and then just recoil, like they’re like magnets.

Alice: Yeah. Buck just like, ah,

Ellen: so awkward.

Bex: And Lucy, Lucy and he’s like very politely. [00:19:00] Um, excuse me, I’m, I’m going to go this way. Lucy looks at him like he’s a crazy person,

Alice: which, yeah, he’s kind acting like a crazy person.

Bex: This is kind of Lucy’s episode to shine. ’cause she, uh, we find out that, um, she used to work in a dive shop so she immediately recognizes the decompression sickness.

Um, and can explain to Hen and Jonah why this poor guy’s eyes not only are bleeding, but are like protruding from his skull. Like his head has been squeezed

Ellen: yeah. Pretty gruesome.

Bex: Like a watermelon. Um, and she’s the one who comes up with a solution for the problem that is, that the medivac can’t get to the pier to pick up their guy in time to save him.

Um, they’re apparently in the middle of transporting a patient. They’ll be there in 15 minutes. Lucy says he’s not gonna survive in 15 minutes. [00:20:00] They need to get him into a, um, a hyperbaric chamber asap.

Alice: Fucking Jonah, though. So Lucy’s like, “he’ll be dead before he sees the inside of a chamber.” And Jonah goes, “oh, so what do we do? Tag him and go grab a smoothie.” Like what?

Ellen: It’s like that’s really unfeeling. A bit callous there, Jonah.

Bex: Yeah, I mean,

Alice: he supposed to go meet his kid.

Bex: The one, the 118 can be a little bit irreverent at times, but that’s probably, yeah, that’s too far.

Alice: That’s insane

Ellen: that. That’s pretty dark. Yeah. But, Lucy suggests that she could take him back down and bring him up properly and Bobby’s like, no, no, no, that’s way too risky. And then, um, they decide, he says It’s too risky. We need to get him in a chamber. And Lucy’s like, “We could build one faster than the ambulance is gonna take to get here.”

And then the lights go on above their heads.

Bex: It’s [00:21:00] apparently Lucy saw a diver do it once. Um, and the quite conveniently, the pier that the, um, the shark experience tour is operating out of is near fish markets, which have freezers. Which, you know, seal very, very well.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: Um, so they’re going to use a fish freezer as a hyperbaric chamber. They’re going to put our poor diver inside, uh, close the door, seal it, and then suck all of the oxygen out of the room and then slowly start to chain, uh, repressurize it. Um, and, and

Ellen: they put more oxygen in. They put more air into the room and like raise the pressure. Then

Bex: maybe it’s just ’cause Jonah goes in with him that it’s my wishful thinking that they suck all the oxygen out of the room.

Ellen: Yeah, no, that’s the other way around. As long as they do it gr gradually, like reduce it again gradually, then everyone should be fine. [00:22:00]

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: But yeah. Plenty of oxygen in there.

Bex: Yes. So Jonah goes into monitor. Um, he basically just hangs out there watching the, um, the pressure readings and reading off vitals to Bobby every 10, 15 minutes.

I don’t know the, the cutting, it’s obviously there is a time progression in this where they show Jonah and the diver going in and they, and then the pressure doing whatever the pressure’s gonna be doing and the guy getting better. But they don’t, they’re not especially good in this scene of showing how long they’ve been in there.

Like, it seems like only a couple of seconds between the first set of readings and the second set of readings. Yeah.

Ellen: Um, yeah, I’m not even sure how they go about helping someone that does have the bends. It’s like, do you just put their pressure back up and then they’re fine? Like, is there more, like, I feel like there should be more involved, [00:23:00] but anyway, they’re not in a hospital so they can’t do anything else really.

Bex: I can’t even be bothered looking up to see what the science is between, behind the bends and decompression sickness. So if you,

Ellen: I hope I never have to find out.

Bex: Well, no, I have to, scuba diving is not really on my bucket list with or without sharks.

Ellen: Oh.

Bex: And or dolphins.

Ellen: Scuba diving is the best. It is excellent. But

Alice: I can go snorkeling, but I don’t think I’m actually legally allowed to go scuba diving because of my asthma.

Ellen: Oh yeah. It’s um, it’s like a, it’s quite a claustrophobic feeling to be under, like, so far under the water breathing through a tube. But, um, yeah, I loved it a few times I did it. It was so good. I would go again, but I dunno if I could do it now.

I’m too old. I don’t swim too good. Um, the, they, they asked like, they sort of saying, oh, I dunno what made him, what, like, what made him freak out like that. Like there were no [00:24:00] sharks around. And then the patient guy actually wakes up and tells them that he has a phobia of sharks. So he’s trying to get Yes, this was rid of it by doing immersion therapy.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: Which yeah, sure.

Ellen: Clearly worked a treat like nearly killed yourself doing it.

Bex: I find it.

Ellen: And there weren’t even any sharks involved.

Bex: I find it fascinating, and I talk about this more at the episode, at the end of the episode, that this whole episode is about people facing their fears and it doesn’t work out for any of them.

Alice: But also why, like what does he do in life that he has to get over his fear of sharks? Like just don’t go in the water.

Ellen: Yeah,

Alice: like it’s, it’s

Ellen: don’t go to the aquarium.

Alice: Like, it’s not like, it’s like a fear of like, you know, humans or like birds or, you know, stuff that you encounter day to day. Like it’s sharks. I haven’t seen a shark like outside of the aquarium ever,

Bex: and like he just doesn’t need to go [00:25:00] to the beach. He just doesn’t need to go swimming. Stick to pools and indoor swimming areas.

Ellen: I don’t know. Have you seen Jaws? Like some pools that have sharks in them anyway

Alice: don’t, yes. Don’t go to the pool. Like nothing. There’s no life threatening thing. Maybe he’s a lifeguard and it’s just really like,

Bex: no, but why would you go into that line of work if you had a fear of, um,

Alice: this is what I’m saying. I don’t understand what, like, it’s just, it’s

Ellen: maybe he developed his fear of, of sharks while being a lifeguard,

Alice: while being a lifeguard.

Bex: It’s very, it’s very much, we just need people to have fears. And what are like the like uh, we surveyed, um, a hundred people on the street. Top answers on the board. What are you afraid of? Like what

Alice: survey says? Sharks!

Bex: Survey says sharks and spiders. So we’re gonna do storylines about people being scared of sharks and spiders.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Um, yeah.

Ellen: But apparently according to Hen, the only [00:26:00] thing that they say, the only thing to fear is crazy people. I don’t even know what that means.

Bex: And this

Alice: No, I would be scared of this weird,

Bex: this transition is so wild because it goes p the only thing to be afraid of is crazy people. And then we immediately transition to Eddie in therapy with Frank.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: And the juxtaposition between crazy people and then Eddie in therapy.

Ellen: What’re you saying, Hen?

Bex: What are you saying 9-1-1? What are, what are we saying about Eddie’s character? Eddie is crazy?

Alice: Eddie is scary,

Ellen: apparently.

Bex: But I mean, I’m guessing that Buck is supposed to be like the only thing to fear is fear itself would be the quote that he’s going for.

Yeah. Um, I, I don’t understand why Hen is being all snarky and changing that. Um. But yeah, so we, we leave the shark encounter and we go to Eddie [00:27:00] in therapy where Frank is asking him, what are you afraid of?

Ellen: Oh, Eddie doesn’t look well, does he? He’s got big dark circles under his eyes.

Bex: He is. So this is, we, we didn’t really get to see a lot of Eddie, uh, last week because he was not in Boston.

But the last time we saw him, um, he had realized that he fundamentally fucked up in leaving the 118 and going to dispatch because that was not what Christopher wanted at all. And he’s miserable. So he went back to the 118, he went back to Bobby to basically, uh, beg for his job back, and Bobby said, you are in no fit shape to be at the 118.

Go get your head squared away. And so this is like Eddie’s attempt.

Ellen: Yeah. We don’t like crazy people,

Alice: and Eddie was like, fuck you, Bobby. Remember how you killed all those people?

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Oh yeah. Nice.

Bex: Hurt people hurt people. So Eddie [00:28:00] absolutely lashed out and, um, hit Bobby exactly where he knew it would hurt him the most. Um, which funnily enough did not make Bobby change his mind and welcome Eddie back with open arms.

Ellen: Mm.

Alice: I can’t imagine why.

Ellen: Yeah. Um, but yeah, I, I did, I didn’t even remember that this was Frank that we’d seen him before. It’s been so long since we’ve seen him.

Alice: Yeah. I was like, obviously I, I know who Frank is, but I was like, has Eddie done? Like, have we seen Eddie do therapy or is this the first time? But we have before, haven’t we?

Bex: Yes. He’s met Frank before.

Alice: Yeah. And we’ve met Frank. Yeah,

Bex: we’ve met Frank before. Frank is like the, the only therapist for the 118 apparently. Unless you’re Buck and then you go and you get private therapy. It’s been a long time.

Ellen: It’s been ages like I, the last people, like, I don’t think Athena or her family went to Frank at all, but I don’t even remember who it would’ve been before.

Bex: I’m thinking that Frank is like the lad’s [00:29:00] therapist because he was seeing, um, Buck for a little while. He was seeing Eddie and he was seeing Hen. Um,

Ellen: Bobby did, he also had that little montage.

Bex: He was also seeing Maddie because he took Maddie to Big Bear. Um, so I don’t know how we work out that Maddie gets included in that.

Ellen: Yeah, okay. That was a long time ago,

Bex: but, uh, was a long time ago, but I think maybe that was the last time we saw Frank

Alice: possibly.

Bex: Um, but anyway, Eddie is trying to, trying to evade all of Frank’s questions because to the, his response to, so what are you afraid of? Um, Eddie’s like, “Well, you know, that’s a pretty open-end question. I mean, I don’t love going to the dentist,” and Frank’s like, “Yeah, I don’t think going to the dentist is why you blew up at Bobby.”

But then he refuses to say why he did blow up at Bobby.

Ellen: So therapy’s going well,[00:30:00]

Bex: so Frank,

Ellen: he doesn’t wanna be there.

Bex: He really does not wanna be there. And it’s, it’s funnily enough, even though he says he’s afraid of a dentist, um, getting answers out of him is like pulling teeth. Um,

Ellen: yeah.

Bex: So Frank sort of avoids talking about Eddie’s feelings and starts doing the small talk and like, “how’s Christopher? Um, you know, I know how much you worry about him. I’m glad to hear that he’s doing well.” Um, and Eddie’s like hackles start to raise? Like, “is it a bad thing that I worry about my son?” And Frank’s like, calm down. “No. No, it’s not. It’s just that you seem to worry about everybody else before you worry about yourself. Maybe you need to, uh, face your own pain rather than managing everybody else’s.”

Ellen: Yeah. And Eddie thinks that pain is nothing but weakness leaving the body.

Bex: To [00:31:00] be fair, he said that that was what, what his old drill sergeant used to say. But yes, you can tell that he’s internalized that, um, that pain is weakness.

So Frank tells him that Eddie can’t just, uh, stuff all of his feelings into a box because there’s no box in the world strong enough to hold all of them. At some point, the box is gonna blow open, um, it’s gonna take Eddie with it and anybody else that’s around Eddie as well. And Eddie’s like, “So what do I do? Do I just sit here and tell you about every bad thing that’s ever happened to me?” Um, which, yes, that’s exactly what Frank is there for.

Ellen: That’s what a therapist is for.

Bex: That’s what a therapist is for. Uh, Frank recognizes that that’s not gonna happen though. Um, and suggests that perhaps Eddie instead could do some talk therapy with people who already know and understand.

So I think part of the, the trouble is that Eddie would have to explain [00:32:00] everything and explain the context. Um. Set the scene before he could talk about how he felt and his reactions to everything that’s happened. Whereas if he talks to somebody who has already been through all of that, say one of the members of his unit, they could skip all of that and they could just talk about their feelings and how they’re, how they’re, um, how they’re reacting and how they’re coping. Um

Ellen: mm-hmm.

Bex: Which is why I think Eddie really needs to be in like therapy through the VA, not specifically talking to Frank. He needs to be talking with other veteran, other veterans and to other veterans who understand what he’s going through.

Alice: Agreed.

Ellen: I mean, that’s kind of what Frank’s suggesting he do, right? Yes. Like, not therapy as such, but like talking to other people who understand.

Bex: Yeah. But I, like Frank is suggesting it sort of very specifically talking to the other members of the unit, but I think that outside of talking [00:33:00] to other members of the unit, Eddie needs to be in their, like they’re talking to other veterans, so not just talking to Frank, he needs to be going to the VA and doing therapy through them.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So that, ’cause I think Frank is good at general therapy and sort of helping with the firefighting shit, but I don’t know that he’s necessarily well equipped to handle post-traumatic stress coming from combat.

Ellen: Poor Eddie.

Bex: But anyway, so he, so he leaves Eddie with that idea, reach out to the members of your unit. Um, well, specifically he says talk, um, talk to someone who understands exactly what he went through with that first trauma. Um, as we see later in the episode, that first trauma is specifically the, the helicopter crash that we saw in “Eddie Begins”.

Ellen: Um, okay, so from Eddie is trauma to Buck

Bex: Buck’s [00:34:00] trauma?

Ellen: Buck’s trauma, although he is not quite there yet. Um, Taylor has moved in, um, she’s unpacking at his apartment and, but she like, looks in a box and says, “oh, that’s definitely not kitchen stuff.” And so, I don’t know, Buck says what we’re all thinking and he is like, “I didn’t realize you had this much stuff.”

Like there’s boxes everywhere.

Bex: And then Taylor’s response is, yes, “Well, we’ll have to cull as we unpack.” And I’m like, ma’am, no. That’s not how you move. You cull before you pack. Like what is the point of filling a box full of stuff to move to another house just to get rid of, just leave it at the first place. Don’t,

Ellen: unless you’re in a really big hurry. And they weren’t really in a big hurry, I don’t think.

Bex: Or perhaps if you don’t know what you need, but I mean, you know that you’re moving into an established house. So you don’t need to pack all of your kitchen stuff unless you’re particularly attached to it.

’cause [00:35:00] Buck’s gonna have knives and forks and cups and bowls and things like that. But the big issue,

Ellen: she does say we probably have two of everything. Maybe she paid someone to pack her house up for her.

Bex: Maybe. I do love that service. We, um, military families used to get, bring movers in and they would pack for you. And it was amazing. I loved it. I miss that.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Um, um, it’s not so much the, the boxes of shit that’s the problem is that Taylor’s also brought all of her furniture, including her couch.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: And Buck’s loft is not equipped to handle two couches. And when he asks, “well, what are we gonna do with two couches?”

Taylor’s just nonchalantly, “oh, we’ll just have to get rid of one,” but not the one that they just carried in. Buck is gonna have to give up his couch. Um, and I’m gonna put a little bit [00:36:00] of a pin in this episode because this is where, um, have you heard of Couch Theory for 9-1-1?

Ellen: Yeah. I have, I have no idea what it is. I

Bex: I’m not gonna explain it.

Ellen: I shied from it because I felt like spoiler, it was spoiler territory.

Bex: It’s, it’s massive spoiler territory. But this is where Couch Theory starts.

Ellen: Okay. Okay. So she makes him get rid of his couch.

Bex: She makes him get rid of his couch. And Buck is like, okay, I, I guess I’ll figure out maybe someone at the firehouse needs a new couch.

Um, and Taylor very strangely says “Maybe the new firefighter needs one.” And I’m,

Ellen: yeah. Did she move house recently as well?,

Bex: she, she moved. She moved firehouse.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: But I don’t know that she moved actual house. ’cause I don’t know how far apart the 118 and the 1 26 are, I’m pretty sure they must be close if both of them got called to that speed emergency. Um, so I don’t feel like Lucy [00:37:00] really needs to pack up and move her physical house as well.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: Um, but it’s, it’s just a really, really awkward segue to talking about Lucy and we get to see Buck lose his ever-loving mind as he tries not to talk about Lucy in front of Taylor.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. He’s like really trying to. I don’t know. He can’t even speak about it. He’s like, oh, I, I don’t, I wouldn’t know. Like we, we don’t, we haven’t really anything.

Bex: It’s, it’s really interesting, um, doing the notes and I can always immediately tell which lines of dialogue ’cause they’re not usually attributed in the transcripts. Um, but I can always tell which lines of dialogue are Buck’s because he stops and starts and STAs and stutters this scene.

Mm-hmm. There’s so many ellipses. ’cause he’s just tripping over his words. Can’t finish a full sentence. Um,

Ellen: bless him.

Bex: Worse than usual. Uh, but yeah, he’s like, “oh, the, [00:38:00] the new firefighter Lucy? I, I wouldn’t know. You know, I, we, we haven’t really interacted. She’s a little, um, she’s a, she’s a little bold. Yeah. Yeah. She’s a little bold.”

Ellen: Taylor’s just like

Bex: looking at him.

Ellen: Okay, dude. She doesn’t know what’s going on.

Bex: What exactly does that mean, Buck? Um, but she’s distracted by the fact that in, she hasn’t so much been unpacking her boxes to unpack, but she’s been looking for her keys, which, uh, she packed into a box.

Alice: Yeah. Why would you pack your keys into a box, but sure.

Bex: Uh, the, there’s so much in this. I mean, there’s so much in this episode, which is we just need you to get to this end point. We’re not actually going to care how we get there. Um, this scene especially, there’s so much of that, like, we just need you to find your keys, um, so that you can leave the [00:39:00] apartment so you can return said keys and so that Buck and Maddie can have a moment to talk about you behind your back.

Alice: And we just really need to like, really need to push home that like, you don’t have a house anymore.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Mm-hmm. They’re having a smooches and then Maddie uh, comes in.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: She’s like, is this a bad time?

Bex: Uh, not really. Probably like saved by the bell. Um, so while the Buckley siblings are catching up yet again, making up for lost time, um, Chim has returned to work.

Um, he’s at the station house where he gets an enthusiastic welcome from Ravi.

Alice: Ravi’s the only one he knows

Bex: Because Ravi’s the only one he recognizes anymore. ’cause like Bobby’s changed everything so much. Mm-hmm. Um, and it seems to be slightly calculated timing to [00:40:00] return because wouldn’t, you know, he’s returned, he’s shown up just in time for lunch.

Um, and Bobby’s cooking theoretically. Um, because there wasn’t actually a lot of cooking involved. Because it’s sushi.

Alice: There was no cooking involved.

Bex: Yeah. There we cut to, um, from Chim’s excitement over having Bobby’s cooking after all of these months to a plate of beautifully presented nori rolls. Uh, because apparently when the 118 commandeered the freezer at the fish market, they became responsible for all of the fish in said freezer.

Alice: Yeah. They took it all.

Bex: I, I don’t know,

Alice: did they have to buy it? Did they just get it?

Bex: That, that was my question. Like did they just, you know, we’ll dispose of this for you and by dispose of it mean we’ll eat it or we are going to buy out the freezer so that you don’t lose any money from us taking this over.

Alice: I imagine doing that expense report and the city’s just like, why the fuck did you buy a whole market full of [00:41:00] fish?

Bex: Why is there $2,000 worth of salmon being expensed?

Ellen: Like if the guy, if the guy they saved was like a fisherman who worked for the fish market, then maybe they’d give it to them for nothing.

But no, he’s just a guy

Alice: No, it’s not the freezer.

Ellen: So that’s funny.

Bex: So yes, the, the, the kitchen of the 118 is full of fish and Bobby is just trying to get everyone to eat as much fish as possible to the point where Chim turns up his nose at the salmon and Bobby’s like, oh, do you want me, um, I’ll cook you something. Just pick a fish and I’ll cook it for you.

Alice: Yeah. Do you like, “how do you feel about tilapia?” And Hen’s like, “How does anyone feel about tilapia?”

Bex: He has salmon, he has snapper, he has flounder. Um, and then he decides that he’s going to sear some salmon with a little ginger, with a little lemon and a little garlic. And I would like some seared salmon.

Ellen: That sounds really good. [00:42:00] Can we all come over for that one?

Bex: Yes.

Alice: Love me some salmon.

Bex: I think Bobby’s just showing his love and his, and his, um, happiness at seeing Chim again with food.

Ellen: Oh, yeah. Then Ravi breaks everyone’s heart again by saying, “I’m glad you’re back. You seem better. I’m glad you guys worked it out.” And Chim’s like, chim’s like, yeah, yeah. We totally did.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Didn’t, didn’t work anything out. And then, uh, we cut to Maddie having her conversation with Buck and we found out exactly kind of how badly they did not work it out in that Maddie has returned, which is what everyone wanted, but she doesn’t have a place to live and she doesn’t have a job and she has no money.

And Buck starts to feel a little bit guilty because he said, you know, if, um, if I’d known you were coming back, I wouldn’t have panic asked Taylor to move in with me.

Alice: Yeah. And Maddie’s like, what was, where was I gonna sleep? Like what? [00:43:00]

Bex: But then he has to, he has to explain to Maddie why he asked Taylor to move in with him and his, which was “I did a dumb thing and I didn’t know how to tell Taylor about the dumb thing. So instead I asked her to move in with me, which is a even dumber thing.”

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Um, and we tie it all up with the theme of the episode in that, um, Buck, who unlike Eddie, has continued to go to therapy, um, and is starting to sort of figure his shit out. Even though he does dumb stuff like this. He’s at least a little bit self-aware to realize that he did the dumb, the dumber thing in asking Taylor to move in with him because he’s scared of being left. Everyone always leaves him. Um, so he was trying to prevent Taylor from leaving him just like everybody else did.

Ellen: Oh.

Bex: Which, when, when, when you put it that way, [00:44:00] it’s like, you know, your heart breaks a little bit for Buck.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: But on the other hand, it’s such a stupid thing to do.

Alice: He’s so stupid.

Ellen: Ugh.

Alice: Poor little clingy Buck.

Ellen: Well, he did sort of have a little panic like he was trying to tell her, and then he blurted out the other thing instead,

Bex: the fear overrode the, um, honesty. Yeah. Um,

Ellen: bless him.

Bex: But then Maddie being the perceptive big sister that she is, goes, “wait, you said that you did a dumb thing. Like you said that asking Taylor to move in was the dumber thing. What was the dumb thing that precipitated you asking her to move in?”

Alice: Oh, so Buck must not have told Maddie?

Bex: No, no. I think,

Alice: well, Hen told Chim,

Bex: Hen told Chim that Buck kissed Lucy. All Buck told Maddie was, I asked Taylor to move in with me.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So now he’s sort of confessing, um, his sins, but we don’t get to see that conversation. [00:45:00] Um, we gonna go back to say,

Ellen: which is sad because I feel like Maddie could have either like, reacted like Hen and just laughed at her. I don’t know how Maddie would’ve reacted, but we don’t get to find out, I don’t think.

Bex: No, we don’t get to find out. Um, we get a, a quick little scene when we return back to the, the 118 before we go back to Chim, where the new kids on the block, Jonah and Lucy are kind of eyeing Chim off because he’s immediately, um, formed this little clique with Hen and Bobby. They’re off, uh, sitting together at the kitchen table at the, the dining table, um, eating the seared salmon that Bobby has cooked just for Chim.

Um, and Jonah, um. Sort of comes over to Lucy and they’re sort of watching these two and they go, “So that’s the infamous Chimney. What do you think?” Jonah’s like [00:46:00] “that I should probably start packing.” Because he was only ever meant to be a replacement for Chim and now Chim is back.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: His days are numbered.

Ellen: And even Hen says to him something to that effect. Like, I’m not gonna get close to you. Like, Chim is my bestie and you are an usurper.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: That’s cool. You’re Monday.

Alice: Yeah,

Ellen: exactly.

Alice: Literally Monday. Meanwhile, Joan’s like, what about you? And Lucy just goes, I thought he’d be taller

Bex: because her replacement hasn’t returned yet.

Her reaction when she meets Eddie is gonna be interesting. But she’s like, her place is secure at the moment. ’cause she’s not a paramedic, she’s just a firefighter. She’s cool.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So Chim is not enjoying his seared salmon, which is a complete shame. He is on his phone again. Um, like ever since he’s walked into the firehouse, he’s been constantly checking his phone.[00:47:00]

Um, and Bobby clocks it and asks him, “why are you constantly checking a phone? Is everything okay?” Um, and Chim’s like, “yeah, yeah, everything’s okay. It’s just that today’s the first day that Maddie’s alone with Jee in over six months and.” Hen brings it back to the theme of the episode and says, “and you are scared.”

Although what Chim is scared of, I’m not entirely sure.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Is he scared for Maddie? Is he scared for Jee? I don’t think they go into detail. It’s just like this amorphous fear of his ex baby mama and his daughter being alone together.

Alice: I guess when he’s been sole, like primary custo, well, sole custodian of Jee for so long, it’s hard. Relinquishing control to someone.

Ellen: Yeah. Maybe,

Bex: maybe. [00:48:00] I just wish they’d been a little bit more specific. Like, is it specifically because someone else is looking after Jee or is it specifically because it’s Maddie looking after?

Alice: Yeah. Does he not trust Maddie?

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. It doesn’t feel like it would be correct that he’s worried about Maddie specifically, like doing something with Jee or, you know, I, it feels like, yeah, that he’s trusting her again.

But yeah, I don’t know. It’s a weird thing to say. They just needed him, him to be afraid of somethings.

Bex: They, they needed him to be afraid and they didn’t actually care what he was afraid of, just that he was afraid. Um, the same with this next scene, which is our, um, our spider emergency because this guy,

Ellen: oh, this one’s so stupid as well.

Bex: Like the summary said, oh, you know, a house sitter who’s terrified of spiders. This guy’s not terrified of spiders. I don’t think he,

Alice: he’s not, he thinks it’s kind of weird, but like

Bex: he is a little bit freaked out by the giant spiders and the amount that he has to like the whole brushing of them to clean them.

And like, [00:49:00] they’re almost hand feeding them, but he’s not scared of them. It’s just, again, it’s like the, you know, top a hundred answers survey says, what are people most afraid of? Spiders. So if we’re gonna do an episode about fear, we need to do spiders. Um,

Ellen: yeah, I feel like maybe if he was a actually arachnophobic, he would not have taken the job no matter how much the guy was willing to pay him,

Alice: or, um, I do. Okay. So before we get too far ahead, I really did actually, like the misdirect is kind of funny in the, in this scene. Um, well,

Ellen: because he thinks it’s gonna be dogs.

Alice: Yeah. Because he thinks it’s gonna be dogs. Yeah. So like, the way that he talks about them, so like the, um, the pet sitter comes over, like he’s from an app.

He apparently has five star reviews and the client has had a hard time getting anyone to take the job. And the pet sitter, who’s Perry, Perry goes, that’s weird. Like,

Bex: yes,

Alice: it’s a beautiful house. You’re paying a lot. [00:50:00] Um, and I don’t know if. The owner of the house just hasn’t, like, didn’t actually disclose anything or was just like, oh yeah, I have like several pets. Um, because Perry’s just like, “oh, where are the little cuties? I don’t see them running around.”

Bex: I’m 100% that he’s been incredibly ambiguous in his listing. And he’s like, made it appear. Made it seem like you that Perry is coming to look after dogs, but he is never like come out Right and said, you are looking after dogs.

It’s an assumption that Perry has made. Yeah. And Oren is not at all going to disabuse him of that assumption for fear that Perry is not gonna stay.

Alice: Perry asks like, “oh, like, I don’t see any, any running around.” And Oren goes, “no, no. They’re in their cages. I know it sounds old fashioned, but I’m not a fan of free roaming.”

The Perry’s like, “you’re smart. Crate training’s important for reinforcing good behavior.” Crate training is important. Big advocate for crate training. My puppy is currently asleep in his crate, [00:51:00] however, not all the time. Um, they should have time out of their crate unless they’re spiders. Um, so Perry asks, “how much playtime are your pets used to?”

And Oren’s like, “oh, they get plenty of recreation. I used to let them out more often but they kept running away.”

Bex: Oh, red flag.

Alice: Um, yeah, train, train them. What are you doing Oren? Um, so, Oren shows Perry to the guest room. And apparently it used to be the kennel, but with all the downtime during the pandemic, he went all out and made each one of the ba his babies, their very own state of the art, climate controlled environment.

So like was the one room just like a big terra terrarium that had all spiders in it?

Bex: I don’t know, but it, he does actually say kennel.

Alice: That’s also not great because tarantulas will, he does say kennel. Yeah. Um, spiders will fight. Like that’s why you gotta keep them apart. Um, Perry [00:52:00] even says here, like, lucky pups, and then they walk into another room and Perry’s looking down at the ground for the puppies, and then he sees

Ellen: there’s no puppies,

Alice: the terrariums, and he’s like, oh shit, these aren’t dogs.

Bex: No, they’re,

Alice: and he’s like, haha dogs. Ha no. Um, no,

Bex: no. The room is full of glass cages. Each cage has its own like giant tarantula in them. Yeah. Um, and like I think if they’d actually had Perry b Arachni phobic and actually like, start freaking the fuck out, but choose the money because Oren says like, I will pay you $50 an hour, which ends up being,

Alice: yeah. So he’s literally getting 8400 for the week,

Bex: for a week. And so Perry’s gone, am I going to like. For $8,400 a week, I can suck it up and I can handle my arachnophobia. I [00:53:00] think that would’ve been more interesting because he’d like, there’s this little bit of a, uh, okay. And then immediately goes for the money.

Alice: Just, yeah. Oren’s like, I “haven’t had a vacation in six years. I’ll just throw money at you” and Perry’s like, “yeah, okay,”

Bex: yeah. Cool. I’ll take the money. Um,

Ellen: sure. Bye-bye. Have a great trip.

Alice: Um, but yeah, there’s no fear at all. He’s just like, okay, this is gonna be really fucking weird. But then we get, “I can tell that we are gonna be friends”.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: And Perry is just embracing this, like he’s feeding the spiders, he’s writing down notes.

Bex: We I mean, to be fair, there’s a little to start with there’s the, the first time he has to feed the tarantula, he freaks out a little bit ’cause he has to take the maggot on a pair of like really long tweezers and gently place it in the cage.

And he kind of just like drops it and then slams the cage door shut as quickly as he can. Um, but then as the the days pass, he gets more comfortable to the point where like he’s actually [00:54:00] literally playing with the tarantulas. Um,

Alice: yeah. And brushing them with the little brush

Bex: and the, the whole thing is, um, tracked by, and I forgot to look it up. Um, what is the app in the 9-1-1 Universe that terrified Eddie and it runs their coffee machine? Um,

Alice: oh my God. Now I’m blanking.

Ellen: It’s someone’s name.

Bex: The spiders are. Yeah, the spiders are run… Hildy, ,Hildy.

Alice: Hildy

Ellen: Hildy

Bex: these, the spiders are like, they, he tracks the spiders through like a Hildy, um, portal.

Alice: Yeah. He’s like making his notes, making sure that they’re all like, the humidity is right on all of them.

Bex: There’s alarms that go off to let him know when it’s time to feed them. Um, which is important because, um, it’s how Oren realizes something has gone wrong later on.

Alice: Yeah. So Perry is going to bed. I don’t know how long it’s been. I, but he’s gonna bed. He’s on the phone to someone. [00:55:00] He’s like, “yeah, it’s not so bad. Um, I think I’m actually starting to like the little demons, but I’ll call you tomorrow.” And then when he turns the light out and starts going to sleep, a tarantula runs across the bed covers.

Ellen: Ugh. No, thank you.

Alice: And that’s where we get the commercial break.

Bex: But see, we never see, like, are we just as supposed to assume that they’re escape artists and one of them managed to get out of its cage on its own?

Alice: Yeah. I have no idea.

Bex: Because we never see, we never see Perry leave a door open.

Alice: No, I have no idea how they got out. Like,

Bex: and that was the whole point of Oren…

Alice: Oh. Does he say later that one of them was vanished? Hang on. I’m trying to remember.

Bex: No. ’cause they, um, there was never any discussion of them escaping out of their cages. Just that no, they would run away when he let them out of their cages. Um, but yeah, I just, I couldn’t understand how the tarantula got out because Perry, we didn’t see him.

Alice: No, it doesn’t make much sense.

Ellen: No.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: But the spider is out.

Ellen: We should, [00:56:00] probably, should say at this point that, um, yes, we do have a lot of spiders in Australia and, um, no, we don’t all like them. Some people do, I guess, but I’m aware that they live in my house because I’m sure they do. Um, thankfully I do not see them ever, like hardly ever see spiders around here.

Alice: I have huntsmans a lot. Um, as long as they stay in their part of the house and I stay in my part of the house. I don’t care.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah, you live outside the city, but you know, even in the city there’s plenty of Huntsman around.

Alice: I am. I, I put my electric blanket in the washing machine today and when I got it out and like shook it out to put it over the line, there was a dead Huntsman in there and I was like, oh no, I was So You must have been like in there when I put it in the wash and now

Ellen: you can put your electric blanket in the wash.

Alice: Yeah, it’s on like gentle cycle.

Ellen: Okay. I didn’t know you could do that with electric blankets.

Alice: I mean, it depends on which,

Ellen: I guess that makes sense, I don’t have any,

Alice: but yes, it’s not plugged in.

Ellen: No, [00:57:00] no. But

Alice: yes. Like, do you even sell electric blankets in Queensland? It doesn’t get cold enough to

Ellen: look. I, I love, like if I stay at a place that has an electric blanket, I love using electric when it’s cold, it’s so like, it’s so nice to get into an already warm bed.

But I do not have any in my house. Oh, we have one that, um, it’s like a, a rug that you put over your knees kind of thing when you’re sitting in front of the tv.

Alice: Oh, the heated throw? Yeah.

Ellen: Like a little one. Yeah. But not, not on the beds. Um, anyway, it’s a bit of a foreign concept for, for a me as a Queenslander, but no, spiders.

Alice: Yeah, I’m at work tomorrow.

Ellen: They’re definitely around,

Alice: but it’s gonna be 27, so I had to wash it today so that it’ll like get nice and toasty tomorrow. Um,

Ellen: right. Um, no, what I was gonna say was the, the reminder that this spider is just running over his bed is just such a nightmare thing, like, no thank you. I don’t wanna think about, Ugh, no.

Alice: I have a friend who, um, who had pet tarantulas. They’re really finicky to keep, [00:58:00] but yeah, she just had baby one ones.

Ellen: Do you have to brush them?

Alice: She had, she didn’t brush them. She had, um, had baby ones and like had to, you have to feed them a certain amount of time. But like, we went through a heat wave and her house didn’t have aircon and it was like a five day heat wave and she lost all her spiders except I think one.

Ellen: Oh.

Alice: Um, and so like I, because I had stick insects at the time that I got from her, like she bred the stick insects and I got ’em from her. And

Ellen: don’t they come from like the jungles of South America? Like aren’t they

Alice: stick insect?

Ellen: No, tarantulas.

Alice: I’m pretty sure we have tarantulas here.

Ellen: I I don’t think they’re native to, I don’t think we have any native tarantulas.

Bex: We do have, um, we do have tarantulas. I think tarantula is just like a sub Yeah. Species.

Alice: Yeah, we do. It’s, yeah. ’cause bird eating spiders are tarantulas.

Ellen: Oh, okay. Well they’re, they’re in like far north Queensland. I don’t

Alice: Yeah, north Queensland has everything nasty. Just don’t go to Yeah.

Ellen: I don’t wanna search for tarantulas in [00:59:00] Australia.

Bex: Um, don’t, you don’t wanna know.

Alice: Yes. She had one of the pink, she had one of the pink-toed tarantulas, which are the really like fancy expensive ones. Um, and they’re from Venezuela.

Ellen: Ugh. Why did I google that? Blah. No, I don’t wanna know. There you go.

Bex: Apparently the one that is most often kept as a pet in Australia comes from north Queensland. So you do have tarantulas up your way.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: we don’t have tarantula down here. It’s too cold for them here.

Alice: It’s way too cold.

Ellen: Just saying, North Queensland is a long way from here. Okay.

Alice: It’s, yeah, it’s a long way.

Ellen: So we’re like in the middle of Australia, north Queensland is the top bit and you’re on the bottom bit. So,

Alice: and then Bex isn’t really even in Australia, um,

Ellen: she’s off the other, off the edge.

Alice: Off the edge. Um, yeah. But yeah, we had a heat wave and I had stick insects that were from like, so I had a stick insect that was spread by her. And then my stick insect had babies. And [01:00:00] so I had the babies of that stick insect. Um, and I had three of them and during the heat wave they died because it was just so hot.

Like I couldn’t keep it, like couldn’t keep them at the ideal temperature. And so they died and I was really upset and I messaged her and I was just like, oh, like I’m really sad, rah rah. And she’s like, yeah, like it’s, it’s fine. It just happens. I lost all my tarantulas and I’m like, oh my fucking God. Like that was hundreds of dollars.

Ellen: Wow. Yeah.

Alice: And she lost them all. ’cause it was, um, hot for like 10 days straight. Like I’m talking like 40 degrees for 10 days straight.

Ellen: Those poor little spiders,

Bex: which kind of

Ellen: Anyway, I still don’t want any in my bed.

Bex: So it kind of thi hearing that story, it kind of makes you understand why Oren ends up calling 9-1-1, um, because he hasn’t heard

Alice: Yeah, they’re, they’re expensive. Like

Bex: he hasn’t heard from Perry in two days. Um, and apparently from these stories that you really need to baby these spiders in order to keep them alive.

Alice: Yeah. Um, I don’t know how they survive in the wild, [01:01:00] honestly, but,

Bex: well, they probably like don’t survive as long as they do in captivity,

Alice: it’s also ’cause they’re underground, so they just go, like, they can go further underground if it’s hot and they can go up to the surface if it’s

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: But if they’re trapped in a cage they can’t get away from the heat.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Yes.

Alice: Um, anyway. Yes. So Oren calls 9-1-1.

Bex: Yes, because he’s been, he’s been watching the Hildy app and realized that like the alarms are going off and Perry hasn’t checked in. Um, and his spiders desperately need to be fed. Um, yeah, he hasn’t, he

Alice: gets, the Perry hasn’t answered the phone in two days. Like it’s,

Bex: he gets May and May is like, “Sir, this is not a reason to call 9-1-1. Maybe you can call a pet sitter.” And he’s like, “I did call the pet sitter. He’s not answering.” And May’s like, “oh, there’s an actual human who’s at risk?” Oren’s like

Alice: Oren’s like, “Does that make a difference?” Yeah. Like he doesn’t care. He’s just like, oh, if someone will go out and check my spiders,

Bex: so May dispatches [01:02:00] LAPD for a welfare check. Um, and they find Perry,

Alice: they find a lot of webs.

Bex: They, they find what they think is Perry

Ellen: This is so weird.

Bex: They can’t actually tell because the, um, the entire bed that Perry was asleep in is just covered in web.

Ellen: I I, it’s like someone who, whoever was writing this just went like full, like they just watched a lot of the rings or something and they were like, I know what would be really cool

Bex: Shelob

Ellen: is if we just wrap him up in webs. Right. And I, I just don’t feel like this would happen.

Bex: Well, doesn’t Hen say later that tarantulas, um,

Ellen: they make webs to store their prey

Bex: to store their, that’s, yeah. So they, they wrapped him up so they,

Ellen: But would they do that to an entire human? Like, I don’t know. Uh, it’s, I don’t, either way. It’s pretty funny.

Bex: Look, I don’t think that anybody did a lot of res, I mean, 9-1-1, very rarely [01:03:00] do any research it appears for their episodes, but I think this one, like very, very much they went, oh, spiders will be cool.

Um, did like a, a quick… read the first Google result that came back and, and we ran with it. Um, so LAPD uh, go back to May and basically say “We, we need backups, we need emergency, we need everybody.” And so the 118 get dispatched and I think Bobby is more scared of the spiders than Perry was.

Alice: Yeah. Bobby has to face his fear more than anyone else.

Yeah.

Bex: Because, um,

Ellen: yeah, it’s like, uh, you guys got this and then he books it

Alice: literally just turns around and leaves. He’s gone.

Bex: Bobby’s gone. He, he has like the, the heat detector and they managed to see, they managed to find a heat signature under the webs. Um, and Hen starts cutting the web open to get to Perry [01:04:00] and spiders just start rushing out of the

Alice: lots of spiders.

Bex: So it’s not in the web,

Alice: it’s not just the ones got out, it’s several. Like what?

Bex: Well, I wondered, did that one get out and then have babies? Like what’s the

Ellen: Yeah, I thought that was what was happening.

Bex: Like how fast, how fast do tarantulas reproduce?

Alice: Yeah. I don’t, um, a while. They’ve gotta lay eggs. It’s not two days.

Bex: But yeah. Interest, like in, in more evidence of the people who wrote this episode really did not do any research. Um, Bobby has Lucy standing by with the CO2 extinguisher to knock out whatever “cold-blooded creatures” might have spun the webs that have wrapped up Perry, um, aren’t cold-blooded creatures reptiles? Like,

Alice: uh, no spiders. Spiders are coldblooded.

Bex: Spiders are coldblooded?

Alice: All insects are cold-blooded.

Bex: Do they even,

Alice: oh wait, spiders aren’t insects.

Bex: No, they’re arachnids. They’re a completely different, [01:05:00] because the whole idea of coldblooded creatures is that they can’t regulate their own body temperature.

So they need to go bask in the sun in order to, like, you don’t see spiders basking in the sun in order to,

Alice: no. So apparently they’re cold-blooded, but they don’t seek out the warmth.

Bex: It’s just there’s so much not correct. Incorrect about this. Like I said, someone’s just gone. Spiders are scary. Let’s just have spiders. Not actually,

Alice: so spiders are cold-blooded. They’re not attracted to warmth. They don’t get uncomfortable when it’s cold. They just become less active and eventually dormant.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Okay, so maybe, all right. So knockout, they’ll, they’ll get cold and they’ll stop running. Yeah.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Okay. So maybe Bobby does know of what he speaks before he runs like a little girl. That was, that was bad. That was mis, that was terrible. I shouldn’t say that. But he, he runs very, very fast.

Ellen: He runs like a, a scared little person. Uh,

Bex: yes. [01:06:00] Although when Lucy sort of watches, like, it’s almost like that sort of Scooby Doo where, um, he runs and then like the smoke outline of his form is still in the room and slowly disspates.

Um, and Lucy’s sort of staring at this smoke, um, outline left next to the bed and says like, “did Cap just run away?” And Hen’s like, “no. It was more like a fast walk.” Like he totally ran, but she’s got his back. She’s not gonna let,

Alice: it’s just like the snakes, it’s the callback to the snakes in the pilot episode where Bobby was just like, “you guys got this, right?” And just left.

Ellen: Oh, yeah, I forgot about them.

Bex: But funnily enough, he’s like, so he’s bad with snakes. He’s bad with spiders, but he’s great with cocks. So, okay. Learning, we’re learning more about Robert Nash here. Uh, okay. So they get Perry [01:07:00] out, um,

Alice: um, oh yeah, by the way. Yeah. Per Perry’s okay. They get, um, they like get his face out. Um, Jonah says that he didn’t think tarantulas were that poisonous. They’re not. They’re actually venomous. Um,

Bex: yeah, I mean they probably not,

Alice: I don’t think he ate any of them.

Bex: Yeah, exactly.

Alice: Um, but Hen’s like, “This many bites adds up. They’re also known to make webs to store their prey. And I think our guy was next on the menu.”

Bex: Yes. Um,

Ellen: Ew.

Bex: So Jonah says

Alice: no, he does. Yeah. So Bobby says, ’cause Bobby called dispatch.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: And dispatch said homeowner explicitly forbade them from entering the home till he got back on vacation. But he is happy we found some of his miss missing pets.

So yes, some of the spiders were missing, like were loose and he just didn’t bother to do anything about it.

Bex: Or is he, or is that in that, um, Vargas and LAPD,

Ellen: they escaped their cages and they were missing,

Bex: walked around the house and went, there’s, there are no [01:08:00] spiders in the cages. And then when they’ve cut the web open, the spiders have come rushing out.

They’ve gone, that’s where your spiders went. He’s gone, “oh, cool. You found them. Great.”

Alice: Yeah,

Bex: like. Like I said, this scene makes is, anyway,

Ellen: it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Alice: Hen’s giving Bobby shit and was just like, “Oh, is that what you were doing out here talking to dispatch? Nothing to do with the little undiagnosed arachnophobia?” and Bobby’s like, sh, sh busy. Yeah, it’s fine.

Bex: And what, while they’re, while Hen is giving Bobby shit, um, they’ve got Perry on a, um, a gurney and Jonah is wheeling, is walking with him, wheeling him out of the house. And just as he walks past Bobby and Hen uh, the heart rate monitor that they have on, uh, Perry flatlines and Jonah is immediately like “he’s coding!” Um, gets the defibrillator defibrillator out, um, and brings Perry back to life.

And Hen’s like, what the fuck [01:09:00] just happened? He was fine a minute ago and he’s fine now. But that was really weird. And to bring it back with the theme of the episode, um, Bob’s like, are you sure Perry’s okay now? He’s like, Jonah’s like, yeah, he just gave us a scare.

Alice: Mm mm

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, I don’t think any, like “Fear-o-phobia” is not mentioned once, but there’s plenty of scary things going on, I guess. That’s mentioned a few times.

Bex: It’s such a stupid title. Like Fear of Phobia. Fear of Fear, but no one’s.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: It’s not, it’s not fear of fear. It’s fear of everything else.

Ellen: Everything. A fear of just random weird stuff. And like sharks

Bex: dolphin,

Ellen: which is also quite random. Yeah.

Bex: Maybe they could’ve given the dolphin some of the fish that they’re now [01:10:00] stashing in everybody’s freezers.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Including Chimney’s freezer. ’cause apparently Bobby sent him home with like a freezer with enough fish to fill their, fill his tiny freezer completely.

Ellen: Albert is so confused. Like he, he says, why would Bob, why did Bobby give you so much fish? And Chim’s like, well, they’ve been eating nothing but fish all week. I’m like, how much fish did they take from this place?

Alice: The whole freezer full.

Bex: The entire freezer,

Ellen: apparently,

Bex: like it was,

Alice: yeah.

Bex: I mean, that freezer was a walk-in freezer. It was big enough to fit a gurney in, so there must have been a shit ton of fish. So yes, everybody got, um, goodie bags at the end of their shift to take fish home with them. Um, but it’s, it’s hilarious that, um, Albert and Chim pack the freezer full of fish and then they ended up eating ice cream for dinner.

Because they cannot fit the tubs of ice cream in the freezer.

Alice: Yeah. They can’t fit the tubs of ice cream.

Bex: So rather than cooking the fish and making room for the [01:11:00] ice cream, they’re just like, ah, no, we’ll just eat the ice cream. It’s fine.

Alice: Fair.

Ellen: Why not? And he does say, “how would you feel about ice cream for dinner?” And I’m like, yes, let’s all eat ice cream for dinner.

Bex: Ice cream for dinner.

Ellen: I’m like, I’m sure I know a fic about that. But then I remember that was “Ice Cream Before Dinner”? Is that right? Or is it ice cream for dinner?

Alice: Um, ice ice cream before dinner.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Bex: Close enough. Close enough.

Ellen: Close enough.

Alice: But yes, I felt the same thing.

Bex: Um, while the Han brothers are discussing ice cream and fish and dinner, um, Chim is continually checking, not his phone this time, but over his shoulder at the, the little hallway that leads to the bedrooms and the bathrooms.

Um, because Maddie is in there with Jee and they’ve been in there for a really long time and he, he maybe should, he should go check on them. Should he go check on them? He, he should go [01:12:00] check on them. Um, Albert says he should not go check on them. Chim says, yes, I’m gonna go check on them.

Alice: Mm-hmm. Should definitely go check on them,

Bex: because, you know, he’s, he’s got this whole fear of, you know, the mother of his child being with his child or I, yes.

Ellen: Yeah. For some reason.

Bex: But before he can go and check, uh, Maddie emerges and says that, um, she has been changed, she has been fed and she’s now asleep. Chim’s like, “Great. Did you give her a bath?” And so the only person who has anything legitimate to fear around here is Maddie. ’cause she now has a fear of baths when it comes to Jee.

She’s like, uh,

Alice: I was gonna say, well, Jee at least I think Maddie’s still, um, bathing.

Bex: Yeah, but of bathing Jee she’s got a fear of bathing Jee. She’s like, “oh no. She, she, she didn’t get dirty enough. I, we skipped the bath tonight.” Like, okay. And then immediately Maddie leaves the apartment.

Alice: Yeah. She says she has an apartment to [01:13:00] see tonight. I don’t know what real estate agent is showing houses after a toddler’s bedtime, but sure.

Bex: To be fair, toddlers go to bed very, very early. And perhaps if it’s, if it’s LA and you’re working around people’s shifts and work, then yeah, an agent might be willing to do viewings out of hours. But I’m pretty sure it was just an excuse to get out of there as fast as she could so she didn’t have to explain why she didn’t give Jee a bath.

Alice: She just doesn’t like ice cream. Okay? It’s fine.

Bex: But it was mint chocolate chip. Which sounds disgusting.

Ellen: I, I, I love mint chocolate chip.

Bex: I know you, you love mint and I’m not surprised that, um, that you like mint chocolate chip. I remember the Christmas episode.

Ellen: We’ve been over this,

Bex: the mint, the mint hot chocolate or whatever the fuck it was that everyone said.

Ellen: Oh, that peppermint thing. Yeah, that was Oh, the, yeah, that was different.

Alice: The mint [01:14:00] latte.

Ellen: Peppermint mocha,

Alice: peppermint, peppermint mocha. That’s it.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: Um,

Ellen: that’s a little different to Mint chocolate chip though, but it’s still delicious.

Bex: It’s, it’s the same family.

Alice: It’s like the olive theory in How I Met Your Mother, one of you has to like mint and one of you doesn’t. And that’s like basis of a strong relationship,

Ellen: right.

Alice: Even podcasting relationships.

Ellen: Apparently so,

Bex: yes. Um, for clarity’s sake, I don’t like olives either.

Ellen: Oh. Oh my gosh.

Alice: I love olives.

Bex: Oh, there we

Alice: go. I’m the type of person that like, I’ll, I’ll order Subway and like the veggies. I’ll be like extra olives and then they’ll put extra and I’ll be like, no, no. Like more olives. Like, just so many olives.

Bex: Okay.

Ellen: I think as a person of Greek ancestry, I would be excommunicated if I didn’t like olives.

Bex: The only time I can, um, tolerate an olive is if it’s in a martini. [01:15:00]

Ellen: Oh, okay. Fair enough.

Alice: Is that just ’cause you’re too drunk to notice them?

Bex: Pretty much, yeah. Yes.

Ellen: Pickled in gin.

Bex: It needs to be pickled in vermouth and gin or vodka. Yes.

Ellen: Well, she, she decides she doesn’t want any ice cream and Nope. Out there. ’cause the bath is just a bit too far

Alice: breaking my heart.

Ellen: Uh, and other people are about to have their heart broken by Buck this time.

Bex: Yeah. Maddie is, um, Maddie is unwilling to face her fear, but it looks like Buck is trying to face his, um, because while Taylor is getting ready to sit down and have dinner, she’s looking for chopsticks because they’re having Chinese, um, Buck immediately just blurts out that he kissed someone.

Alice: Yeah. It’s not, not, um,

Bex: it’s not smooth,

Alice: not super tactful. [01:16:00] Not, um, not smooth at all.

Bex: No. He tells Taylor that he kissed another woman. I mean, she kissed him, but he kissed her back and then he realized what a mistake he was making. So he stopped. Um, and he’s sorry, he’s really sorry, but he was drunk and stupid and it didn’t mean a thing and he’s really sorry

Alice: When?

Bex: Yeah. All Taylor can ask is “when?” And Buck’s like “when, what?” I. Apparently Taylor’s as

Alice: When were you drunk and stupid?

Ellen: What do you think Buck? What a silly question to ask? When what?

Bex: Although I do love, it’s not, it’s not like when did you kiss or when did she kiss you? It’s like, when were you drunk and stupid.

Alice: Yeah. When were you drunk and stupid?

Bex: Um, and Buck’s like, “yeah. You remember that that day that I had the big save on the freeway. Um, we went out to celebrate and I got drunk and stupid.” And Taylor’s like “the day that you asked me to move in with you the day before,”

Alice: the day before

Bex: “the day you asked me to move in with you. Um, you were [01:17:00] drunk and stupid and you kissed someone and then you asked me to move in with you. Was that why you asked me to move in with you?”

And you can say what you want about Taylor Kelly, but she’s not dumb.

Alice: Oh, I love Taylor. Just in case people listening, hadn’t noticed. Um, love Taylor. Big fan of Taylor. Taylor, number one fan. Pigeon and I are basically Taylor’s fan club at this point. Um, yes.

Anyway. Yeah. So B says not entirely, and Taylor’s like, “not entirely. Oh, great.” Um, and she gets up and starts leaving. And Buck’s like, “okay, where are you going?”

Bex: Which, which was the whole point, Buck didn’t wanna tell her because he didn’t want her to leave. And so, yeah. Can you like, poor, like first tiny Smidgy second, I’m just gonna go poor Buck, because he has faced his fear and his f his greatest fear is happening right in front of him.

He’s truthful with Taylor and Taylor is leaving him. Um, but when he says like, [01:18:00] where are you going? Taylor’s like, “I, I don’t know.” He’s, “are you gonna come back?” And she’s like,

Alice: and oh my God. She’s like, “Of course. I don’t have anywhere else to go. You made sure of that.” And then she just leaves and Oh my God, I,

Bex: and now at which point I stopped feeling sorry for Buck

Alice: weeks. Yeah. Um, I, again, it was two weeks ago that we watched this episode. This scene has been like in my head since then that I don’t have anywhere else to go. It’s like, oh fuck. Yep,

Bex: yep,

Alice: yep.

Ellen: Good one Buck.

Bex: But like I said, people are facing their fears and it doesn’t go well for them.

Alice: Not at all.

Bex: So we go to commercial,

Ellen: I think, I don’t think it’s gone well for anybody so far. Right?

Bex: I think like, spoiler alert, I think the only person it actually goes well for is Maddie, everyone else.

Ellen: Oh yeah.

Bex: It’s, it’s an absolute shit show. Um,

Alice: but that’s okay. ’cause Maddie’s the important one. [01:19:00]

Bex: Yes. We appreciate that Maddie is back and we are glad that she’s get, we are glad that she’s getting some wins after, you know, last week’s episode and the last several months.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: So we’re gonna go to commercial and when we come back we are at the Gas and Sip.

Alice: Yeah. For some reason we’re in the Supernatural universe,

Ellen: Gas and Sip cinematic universe!

Bex: Um, and, and it is, it’s Ruth’s Gas and Sip, which I, um, I think I said last episode that, um, Eli is like one of the characters that I’m, I would be happy for them to continue to bring back.

I also quite like Ruth. Yeah, that’s great. I’m quite happy that they keep bringing Ruth back and her, her little Gas and Sip, um, that keeps getting robbed. ’cause she’s just great.

Ellen: Oh, I don’t remember her at all. What we’ve seen her before?

Alice: She was in the first time Gas and Sip was mentioned.

Bex: We, we had an entire episode where, and we, the,

Ellen: it’s the same Gas and Sip?

Bex: [01:20:00] yes,

Alice: it’s the same Gas and Sip.

Ellen: Okay. No, I remembered we had a Gas and Sip before, but I didn’t remember it was the same one.

Bex: No, it’s the same one. It’s like, apparently there is only one Gas and Sip in Los Angeles and it’s manned by Ruth. Um,

Ellen: okay.

Bex: But anyway, to start off with, we are starting out by the, the petrol bowsers where, uh, Pauline is filling up her car and a mugger approaches her.

And tells her to give him her purse and pulls a gun on her in order to motivate her to hand over her purse. Um, and she just says no.

Ellen: Yeah, she’s not interested at all. She’s like, I’m,

Bex: he’s like, “Lady, do you not see? I’m like, I swear I will shoot you. Do you not see the gun that I’m holding at you?” And she’s like, “Yeah, how can I not see it when you’re waving it around like that? Um, but if you want the purse, you’ve gotta come get it ’cause I’m not giving it to you.” [01:21:00]

Um, and he’s, he is completely confused by this. He’s like, I don’t know how to handle a situation where the person I’m trying to mug is not afraid of me. Um, and says to her like, “Do you have some kind of death wish?” And Pauline says, “Hey, let’s find out.”

And he lunges at her and she is raise him with petrol. Yeah. Great. That’s, that’s a cool, that’s a good way to distract him. At which point you then run, or you like head inside or try to call the police, right? No. Pauline then turns the pump on herself, douses herself in petrol, pulls out a cigarette lighter and holds it like a weapon out in front of her,

threatening to spark the lighter and send both the mugger and herself up in flames. And she says, you want me to be scared? I’m not scared. [01:22:00] Ruth sees all this on her security camera and is like, oh shit.

Alice: Ruth’s scared. Ruth’s like, I’m definitely scared. Hi, I’m scared.

Bex: Ruth grabs a fire extinguisher and races out, um, to try and stop Pauline from blowing herself up and everybody with her,

Ellen: she’s like, please, we don’t, I don’t want my Gas and Sip to blow up today.

Bex: She’s like, you know, “please don’t take me and this entire block with you to prove a point that you are not scared of this guy.” Um, and then I think that gets through to Pauline ’cause she’s like, yeah, okay, that’s fair enough. And she lowers the lighter. Um, and the robber fucking idiot goes, ha, cool. I’m gonna take this opportunity to grab your purse. Um,

Alice: fucking dumb ass

Bex: forgetting that Pauline still has like the petrol pump in her hand. So she clocks him in the face with it, knocks him out, and then apologizes to Ruth gets in her car and drives off. Um, the robber [01:23:00] does the, the typical thing when he, a woman reacts in a way that a man doesn’t understand and calls her a crazy bitch. And so Ruth turns the extinguisher on him.

And then we get um, her 9-1-1 call, which is, she just sounds so done with the world. She’s like, “yeah, this is Ruth at San Fernando on Vineland.” And the 9-1-1 dispatcher is like, “Hey Ruth, you getting robbed again?” And it’s like, “no, just of my afternoon.”

Ellen: Oh, bless her.

Alice: Poor Ruth.

Bex: Should I, I think I swear they need to give her like a punch card and like every 10th um, nine one walk call, she gets something free from the city.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: But she and Athena on like first name basis at this point. ’cause um, Athena rolls up to find that the 1 47 had been dispatched and they’re handling the situation by, um, [01:24:00] hosing off the robber. Like they’ve stripped him of his clothes, he’s there and he is like tighty whiteys being hosed down with the hose from the truck.

Ellen: Yeah. And it sounds really cold ’cause he is like yelping.

Bex: Yes.

Alice: And it’s also very high pressure too, so like

Bex: yeah, it’s, it’s not gonna be pleasant. But you know, he did try to rob someone, so

Alice: Yeah. He deserves it.

Bex: I I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him.

Ellen: No.

Bex: Um, so Athena and Ruth review the security fletch to ensure that this robber who was claiming that he was just trying to ask for directions when the crazy bitch turned the hose on him.

Um. Security footage tells a different story. Um, but she notices, Athena notices that Pauline said something to Ruth and said, “what did she say to you?” And she said, “she apologized to me.”

Ellen: Yeah. The wheels are turning in Athena’s head with this. She’s [01:25:00] like, oh, I wonder what that’s about.

Bex: Think they use, yeah, I’m guessing they use like license plate, um, the security footage to find the license plate, which they then run so they get her name and they get her address. ’cause Athena pulls up, um, out the front of Pauline’s house. Um, Pauline is not there, but her sister Leticia is, and she immediately knows that something she’s like immediately running outta the house to meet Athena before Athena has barely got off the footpath.

Um, ’cause she knows that something’s going wrong. ’cause Pauline came back home, reeking of petrol, took a shower, and then left again. And she’s been acting weird for weeks.

Ellen: Hmm.

Bex: She’s apparently been irritable, easy to set off. Um, and as an example of that, she said that she snapped at a guy who was through a, uh, 15 items or less checkout at the, at the supermarket who went through [01:26:00] with, he had way more, way more than 15 items. Way more than one. I do love this. It’s like the guy who went had way more than 15 items.

He probably had 15 bottles of wine alone, and Athena just goes, “yeah, he counts those as one. I know the creature.”

Alice: Yeah. The fact that Athena knows him.

Bex: I dunno if Athena knows him or she just knows that the kind of person that goes, you like 15 bottles of wine counts as one item. So that’s like wine times one, even though it’s 15.

Um, but she says that then, um, Pauline grabbed one of the bottles of wines or grabbed the bottles of wine and smashed them at his feet. And like got in his face about it.

Alice: Yeah. Like the guy was big. He was getting in her face and she didn’t even blink. Um, also her voice has got raspy and hoarse.

Ellen: Yeah. They’re gonna do a bit of field diagnosing, I think, [01:27:00] although they don’t really know what’s wrong with her until much later. But, but there is a 9-1-1 call, uh, which May picks up again. And there there’s a, there’s someone who’s gonna jump,

Bex: they get mult, they get multiple calls about a jumper at the recycling center. ’cause Linda gets a call, Josh gets a call, uh, May gets calls. Everyone’s getting calls about this jumper. Um, except

Ellen: I don’t know how many people are at the recycling center, but apparently all of the people who there called 9-1-1,

Bex: I’m gonna assume that because she’s up so high, like there might be people sort of driving past and they can see her up on top of the silo, um, and they’re calling in.

But just, yeah, just don’t think too hard about it. Don’t pull the thread, it’s gonna unravel on you. Um, but interestingly, Josh picks up the phone and the caller says, “I’m at the recycling center at Saddler.” And Josh is [01:28:00] immediately dismissive like, “yes, we know about the jumper, we’ve got it handled. You know, you don’t need to call.”

She’s like, “no, no, no. You don’t understand. I am the jumper.”

Alice: I am the jumper.

Bex: And then we cut to Pauline standing at the top of the recycling center and the camera pulls out to show exactly sort of like how high up she is and how precarious her perch is. It’s a cool shot.

Ellen: Yeah. Apparently they, they send a bunch of people, like Josh is sort of radio radioing everyone, uh, to say that the subject refuses to engage with personnel on scene.

So I’m not really sure why there’s so many people heading there. But the 118 is on the way. They can’t get an airbag underneath where the, where she is because there’s too much, too much stuff, like on the ground level. So Bobby’s like, we’re gonna have to get her down the hard way, but doesn’t explain what that hard way actually is. [01:29:00] He just sends Buck and Ravi off to sort that out.

Alice: Buck, go do the maneuver.

Ellen: Yeah. Well, unfortunately she’s on top of the thing, so they can’t really do the maneuver too much.

Bex: I’m no, I’m much, I’m calling it Maneuver esque. What he ends up doing

Alice: it is maneuver-esque.

Bex: Maneuver esque. Yeah. So Josh continues to talk to Pauline because she’s not, um, she, apparently she, she’s not willing to talk to Athena. She’s not willing to talk to Bobby or anybody on the ground, but she’s still willing to talk to Josh. Where we find out that Pauline’s problem is that she has no fear. She’s not afraid.

’cause Josh is like trying to talk her down. Like, “I know you’re afraid.” And she’s like, “no, I’m not afraid at all.” And that’s not a good thing. You think it would be a good thing because who would wanna feel afraid? And Pauline says, “but you don’t understand how empty you feel when the fear is gone.” [01:30:00] Um,

Alice: yeah, I can’t relate. I, I’m scared of everything all the time.

Bex: So while this is happening, Channel Eight News are of course on the scene reporting live. Um, it must be a very slow social media day because Eddie is watching Channel Eight News in his little office. Um, and I completely forgot that he was like the, the social media liaison. Um,

Alice: yeah, I thought he was still at

Bex: for dispatch.

Alice: They’re like, look, Eddie’s still at work too, guys.

Bex: Uh, so he’s watching the news. He’s watching this whole thing go down. Um, and Linda comes in to remind him to do his job. Like you need to let people know not to go near the recycling center, that we’re closing the roads down around, um, that area.

Mm-hmm. And I don’t understand that “you remember the lady from the Gas and Sip who almost set herself on fire?” Is what she says to Eddie. And like that happened 10 minutes ago. When did Eddie find out about that? Um, [01:31:00] but the important thing is that Linda tells him that she is lost the ability to be afraid.

And something about that inspires Eddie to pick up the walkie talkie that is now apparently on his desk. Um, and tune into channel two so that he can hear Josh and Pauline and everything that’s happening on the scene.

Ellen: Yeah. Who let Eddie ha have a walkie talkie after?

Bex: Why does he need a walkie talkie?

Ellen: The last time he got involved?

Bex: Exactly. That’s the other thing. So like Josh has already smacked him down for, you know, stepping in and taking over a call. So why are they giving him access to the, um, the phone lines?

Alice: I just assume he’s got it so that he can listen and tweet the things that he should be tweeting, not so that he can talk.

Bex: Ah,

Ellen: he, he doesn’t he get that information from the dispatch?

Bex: He needs support.

Alice: Dispatch are busy.

Bex: Yeah. But he needs someone to oversee him. He can’t just start tweeting willy-nilly. It needs to be through official [01:32:00] channels. Um, but like, again, don’t pull the thread, don’t think about it. It’s there so that he can listen to Pauline and he can, um, take inspiration from, from her words and her situation.

Mm-hmm. Um, so Josh is trying to talk to her. Her Buck and Ravi are climbing up the stairs. ’cause apparently the hard way is they’re literally going to pull her off the edge, um, whenever they get up there. It’s taking them a while.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s a little while. It takes longer than Buck climbing all the way up the top of that building.

Bex: Insert that meme of the guy climbing the ladder for five minutes.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. The crane. That’s what I was, I’m like, what? You know that thing that lifts the things?

Bex: That thing. Yeah, that thing,

Alice: of course, the thing that lifts the things

Ellen: crane. That’s it.

Bex: Um, but it gives us, while they’re still climbing, [01:33:00] um, it gives us time to go down to Hen and Athena, um, so that Hen can diagnose. Like it’s not even just looking at Pauline, it’s looking at her through a set of binoculars. She’s able to diagnose her.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: She’s just real good. Okay?

Bex: Apparently.

Ellen: Well, Athena says that she, she doused herself with gasoline. Maybe it, maybe that’s what is sort of causing the burn looking stuff on her skin and Hen’s like “No, it’s not even an allergic reaction. Um, but mood swings, her voice changed,” blah, blah blah. And um, the wheels are turning in Hen’s head about that,

Bex: but I don’t know how the wheels are turning.

Alice: Hen’s Med school stuff is finally coming to use. So remember how she was in med school?

Bex: No, but like, okay, so she, this disease, this diagnosis, it’s [01:34:00] a recessive rare genetic disorder. There’s only been like 400 reported cases since the 1920s. So like in a hundred years, 400 cases. How the fuck does Hen know about this case and know about it well enough?

Alice: ’cause she’s in med school,

Bex: that she can, that she can look at a person

Alice: through binoculars,

Bex: through binoculars, and through like secondhand symptoms not from Pauline herself, but through Pauline’s sister, through Athena. And she’s able to instantly diagnose. Um, anyway,

Ellen: she’s just really good. Okay?

Bex: Apparently. Then she’s wasted at the 118. She really does need to go to med school and finish med school. But she eventually gets on the radio. Um, Pauline eventually, uh, consents to talking to Hen and Hen tells her, um, that she thinks that Pauline [01:35:00] isn’t crazy.

That what’s going on in her head isn’t in her head. Um, it is in her brain that she has, she has a disease that is affecting her amygdala. The amygdala is kind of the fear center of the brain. It’s like your lizard brain, um, with the, which reacts to external, um, stimuli and tells the body how to react. And yes.

Um, the symptoms of this disease include a hoarse voice and scarring on the skin and like wounds that don’t heal

Alice: and not feeling fear.

Bex: And not feeling fear. My only issue with this diagnosis, or not so much this diagnosis, but the way that

Alice: your only issue?

Bex: With this particular, with this particular, um, plot line and with Pauline, is that, um, not having a sense of fear does [01:36:00] not make you reckless and aggressive.

Um, I had a, a little a Google before, um, about this particular, uh, like the lack of fear, um, and it makes people enter into situations that they really shouldn’t. Like, so a robber will come up to you and try to mug you, and you won’t recognize that you’re being mugged or that you’re in danger, or that you should be afraid of the gun or the knife or whatever it is that you’re, that they’re holding out to you.

It doesn’t make you pistol whip them with a petrol bowser and, and threaten to set them on fire. Like, that’s not a part of not being afraid. I don’t understand that aspect of it.

Ellen: Maybe she was just a, a naturally very aggressive person.

Bex: Apparently she was a bitch. And the fact that she’s, the only thing I can think is maybe there’s something else going on in her brain. And whatever has happened has hardened parts of her brain [01:37:00] and changed her personality. ’cause we’ve, but yes, so Hen is saying that it’s not in your head. It’s literally your brain. Um, and you can be fixed. Um, we can help you.

And Pauline is saying, “No, you can’t help me. It doesn’t matter if it’s my brain or my head. I’m broken.” And her last words are, “Maybe I will finally feel something on the way down.” And we get this dramatic shot where she stretches her arms out and drops her phone. And I swear we spend at least 30 seconds watching this phone just plummet to the ground. And

Alice: yeah.

Bex: And then we cut back up to Pauline and she’s got her arms outstretched and she closes her eyes and she leans off the edge of the silo, at which point Buck like maneuver esque.

Ellen: He pounces

Bex: launches himself at her, wraps his arms around her [01:38:00] waist, attaches the safety harness and pulls her back.

Ellen: It is quite dramatic.

Bex: Everybody on the ground starts clapping. Ravi, like grabbing her feet and hauling her over the railing so that she can’t, you know, wriggle free. Um, and we cut to Eddie sitting in his office listening to this whole thing.

Um, I do like that. And even, um, through the whole conversation with Hen and Pauline, where she’s sort of explaining her symptoms and she’s explaining how her feel, and specifically she’s saying that she feel like she, she doesn’t have fear, she doesn’t feel anything. She feels empty. Um, if she operates out of fear, like if that’s how she goes through life, is acting on fear, but that the fear goes away.

How she’s supposed to keep acting. We keep cutting back and forth between her and Eddie. So she’s talking about acting outta fear, operating outta fear, and then we’re watching Eddie listen to this and [01:39:00] resonate with it.

Ellen: Mm-hmm. He’s having an epiphany.

Bex: He is.

Ellen: And it’s unfortunately not gonna go in a great way for him, but

Bex: it’s,

Ellen: anyway,

Bex: he’s, it’s like, like everybody else in this episode, it’s not gonna go well for him. Um

Ellen: mm-hmm.

Bex: But before we find out what happens with Eddie, we’ve gotta go back to Maddie, um, because Albert has called her. Um, Chim is stuck downtown somewhere and Albert is on babysitting duty, but he has to go to work. So he’s called in Maddie, like, I need you to watch your daughter.

Alice: Yeah. Come be a parent.

Bex: Come parent your damn kid. Um, which Maddie is happy to do, especially considering Albert’s done all the hard work and put her down for a nap.

Ellen: Yeah. And Albert, a little bit of a, a bonding session with [01:40:00] Maddie and Albert where he’s saying that he, he doesn’t like, he had an idea of what he thought the job would be like, and it would be rewarding and everything, but, uh, he feels like he spends all day trapped inside of people’s worst nightmares, and he doesn’t know how to pack that away when he goes home.

Maddie says, she, she, she never does pack it away. She always carries it with her, but alongside all the other amazing things that she did. So she helped a lot of people and she tried to remember all those things.

Bex: And she says that Albert needs to find balance, um, between carrying all of the horrible things and all of the good things that the job entails.

And he says that he tells Maddie that she makes it sound so easy, confronting your fears and moving past them. Which is not really what Maddie was talking about, but we needed to bring this, [01:41:00] the, the scene back to fear. Um, so they’re just gonna wedge that sentence in there. Um, and Maddie’s gives him a high five as they leave, um, leaving Maddie to ponder the whole confronting your fears thing.

And she sort of turns and looks warily at the, the little corridor that leads down to the bathroom and we get a flashback of the, that, that day that she fell asleep while Jee was in the bath. And she, as she’s sort of, she even goes into the bathroom and she’s like staring down the empty bath as she remembers the last time she had Jee in the bath.

I think it’s time for Maddie to confront her fear and move past them, as Albert said. But she’s not the only Buckley sibling facing her fears because when we, um, come back from commercial, uh, we’re [01:42:00] back at the, the Buckley Kelly apartment and it is the Buckley Kelly apartment. ’cause poor old Taylor has nowhere else to go.

Ellen: Aw,

Alice: poor Taylor.

Ellen: She, yeah. Buck’s got home from work and Taylor is there. She only had one change of clothes in her car, so she had to come back.

Um, Buck tries to apologize. And she’s like, “I don’t care that you kiss some random girl in a bar. I, I don’t think I needed to know that. Like, I’m not even sure I needed to know that. But she, you asked me to move in with you, and then you told me about it.” Like she knew that Buck was afraid of people leaving him.

Alice: He, she even calls him out. She’s like, I know you’re afraid of people leaving you, but this is,

Bex: this is something else.

Alice: Yeah. Buck’s like, “You think I trapped you?” And Taylor’s like, “am I wrong?”

Bex: And give Buck his to, he’s like, [01:43:00] I don’t, “I’m not sure that if you’re wrong or not.” So like, dumb, dumb move. But there is like this kernel of self-awareness that he’s like aware that what he did was dumb. He sees the stupidity. He sees where he is done wrong.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: He’s not gonna learn from this lesson, but at least he sees that there is a lesson to be learned.

Alice: Um, so yeah. Buck says that he wants it to work and Taylor says, me too. No more lies and Buck’s like, yeah, I swear.

Bex: Except can we just, just go like, rewind a little bit where, um, Taylor says, I don’t care that you kissed a random girl in the bar, and Buck did not correct her and say, well actually it wasn’t a random girl in a bar. It was my new coworker.

Alice: Yeah. I,

Ellen: she still doesn’t know who was

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: You know that that coworker that I, I refused to talk to about, talk to you about earlier who I, you wanted me to give her my couch and I said she was too bold. Yeah. That one. That’s who [01:44:00] I kissed.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: Yeah. He doesn’t tell her that. Then we get a random Hen voiceover where, uh, she tells us that we are all afraid of something. Heights, snakes, small spaces. Um, but what if the thing you fear the most is fear itself?

Ellen: Yeah. This, the theme of this episode is a little dubious. Um,

Bex: yes. Phobo-phobia. The fear of being afraid, the terror that comes from imagining the pounding of your heart, the racing of your pulse, and the ensuing loss of control.

Yeah. I, it doesn’t really make sense.

Ellen: I don’t think that’s what’s happened at all. It feels like everyone’s been afraid of things, but they, they weren’t expecting the things to come. So,

Bex: and no one’s like afraid of the fear. There there are concrete things that they’re afraid of. It’s like somebody came up with a great idea for the episode title of like, fear of [01:45:00] phobia and fear of like, being afraid of fear and the episode being fear, and then they’re trying to jam the two of them together, um, and make them work and it’s not quite working.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: Um, so while Hen is talking, Chim comes home except the apartment is dark and it’s empty, and the only light is the crack of light around the bathroom door. And you get like this, this ominous, this tension. Like, oh my God. Chim’s gonna be confronting his fear as well. Which, what fear?

Ellen: Yeah. That’s never really clear, is it?

Bex: It’s, it’s not, it’s not Chim facing his fear. So he rushes to the bathroom and we find that Maddie has been the one to face her fear because she gave Jee a bath.

Alice: Yeah. And she’s having a great time.

Bex: And they are now, she’s now out of the bath and she’s still alive and she’s happy and they are [01:46:00] singing, um, Incy-wincy Spider, um, because then she can like pour water over Jee and make her laugh and they’re having a great time.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Um, I Eddie’s not having a great time though because we are then gonna go to the Diaz house where, for transition reasons only ’cause otherwise it makes absolutely no sense, um, Eddie’s Purple Star or his Medal of Honor is sitting on his bedside table, uh, which he absolutely would not have out under any normal circumstances.

Um, but no. Picks up the medal of honor, and we get a flashback to the, the helicopter crash that we saw in, um, or the helicopter ride that we saw in, um, “Eddie Begins”. And we need that because he’s going to take Frank’s advice and he’s gonna call one of the members of his unit, and he calls and need a mills, which was one of the, um, [01:47:00] the members of his unit on the helicopter that day.

And then we get this really inexplicable, like summing up line from Hen, which is, “How do you overcome your fear when what you’re really afraid of is you?” Which again makes no sense in any context.

Ellen: It doesn’t relate to what Eddie’s doing at all.

Bex: Eddie’s not afraid of himself.

Ellen: No.

Bex: And Eddie’s not afraid of being afraid.

Nobody in the show, nobody in this episode’s been afraid of themselves or been afraid. Um, Maddie’s probably been afraid of herself, but yeah, it might like you, I could agree that it applies to her, but it doesn’t apply to anybody else. Like, anyway, anyway, that’s, that’s not important. Not, I just mentioned that for weird voices.

I’ve like, I’ve, I can tick the box. Yes. We’ve covered the weird voiceover. Um, so Eddie calls Mills. The next thing we see is Chris in his room playing some kind of Call of Duty game. Um, but over the sounds of [01:48:00] gunfire and the battle that he’s playing, we hear thumping and glass breaking and Eddie screaming and Chris is like, what the fuck is going on?

And so he makes his way to his dad’s room as fast as he can. He’s knocking on his dad’s door and he can hear Eddie yelling and he can hear stuff breaking, but Eddie’s not answering and Eddie’s not opening the door.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So then we cut back to the, the Buckley Kelly apartment where Buck’s phone is ringing and he picks it up and he sees that it’s Chris and he gets his big grin on his face when he sees it, Chris is calling him.

Alice: That’s so cute,

Bex: and it’s so sweet. He’s so happy that Chris is calling and he’s like, “Hey Chris!”

Alice: He’s like, finally someone who’s not gonna hate me.

Bex: But then all Buck hears is Eddie losing his shit on the other end of the phone. And Chris panicking and calling for his dad. And when Chris finally [01:49:00] realizes that Buck’s picked up the phone, he is like, “Buck, there is something wrong with Dad.”

And Buck immediately like, drops the phone, grabs his keys and moves, doesn’t even hesitate, doesn’t ask any questions. He’s like, my kid needs me. Eddie needs me. I’m gone.

So races over checks to make sure that Chris is okay. Then tries to get Eddie to open the door. Eddie won’t open the door and the door is locked. Um, so he rams the door open with his shoulder, like he breaks down the door. I do kind of wish he’d kicked just because I’m worried about his like collarbone and like shoulder dislocation. Um, like

Ellen: ouch.

Bex: It’s much safer if he kicks the door in than if he rams up with his shoulder. But it’s much more, um, much more impressive to watch him like run into the door with his shoulder and come bursting [01:50:00] through. I would still argue that it would be pretty impressive just to watch him kick the door open.

Ellen: Yeah. But

Bex: anyway, I’m sorry. I’m just having mental images of that story that, of Jensen when he like kicked the shit outta the hotel door. ’cause the lock wouldn’t work.

Ellen: Oh,

Bex: yes. Anyway, he gets through the door and Eddie’s room has been destroyed. There are holes in the walls. The curtains are like, askew on the frame. The lamp is sideways. The mattress is not on the bed frame. But he can’t find Eddie and he has to be in there somewhere ’cause he, he can’t, like the door was locked.

He. Buck has had to break through the door to get in there and the windows are not open. So Eddie’s somewhere in the room and I think there’s that slight panic of like, he’s calling for Eddie, and Eddie is not answering. He is like, shit, what the fuck has Eddie done to himself?

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: But thankfully he is there. [01:51:00] He um, it takes a second, but then Buck can hear him crying. And then he finds him like huddled at the end of his bed, um, like knees pulled up to his chest, like hugging this baseball bat. ’cause at some point he stopped punching shit and he just grabbed a baseball bat and went to town on the room. And he, and we know that he was punching shit because his knuckles were all bloodied.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: Um, and Buck is like, “what, what is going on?” And Eddie’s just sobbing. “They’re all dead. They’re all dead. They’re all dead. They’re all dead. They’re all dead.”

Ellen: Oh, poor Eddie. He’s such a pretty crier though.

Bex: I know.

Ellen: God damn him.

Bex: It’s, it’s a, it’s a horrible, it’s a horrible scene, but Ryan does it,

Ellen: it’s a horrible scene.

Bex: So well, and he just looks so pretty when he cries.

Ellen: Yeah. Oh, it’s heartbreaking. [01:52:00] But, um, Buck does manage to like, talk him out of the room. So he goes into the living room, he’s like, make sure that Chris is okay. Sorry, Buck makes sure that Chris is okay. And, um, yes, he comes back to kind of calm Eddie down again. But, uh, yeah, he explains what’s going on.

Bex: He explains that his like homework from therapy was to reach out, um, to the members of his unit. And so he did that. Um, but they’re all dead though. He pulled four people out of the helicopter that day. One of them died in active duty. One of them died in a car crash, one of them OD’ed and Mills, the one that we saw him try to call shot herself.

Ellen: Mm.

Bex: [01:53:00] And so Eddie is spiraling because I think everything that he went through, it was okay because he’d saved them. Didn’t matter what had happened to him, didn’t matter how he felt, he saved them, but he didn’t really save them ’cause they’re all dead

and like, it’s the guilt as well because he tells Buck that he kind of lost touch with them. He hadn’t talked to any of them since he moved to LA and in the intervening years. Life has happened. PTSD has happened. Um, but you can, I, I’m 100% sure that certain that the, the logic in Edmundo brain is if I had just kept in touch with them, if I had reached out before, if I had been there, I could have saved all of them. But I left them and now they’re all dead and it’s all my fault.

Ellen: He’s very broken.

Bex: He’s incredibly broken,

Ellen: he’s afraid.

Bex: And so Buck,

Ellen: that’s what he says.

Bex: Well, yeah. Yeah. He’s afraid. [01:54:00] Buck asks him, is that why you took a baseball bat to everything you own? Because everyone died and Buck and Eddie says, no, I, like, I could took a baseball bat to everything I own because I’m afraid at which, you know, that’s on theme for the episode. Cool. What are you afraid of Edmundo? “That I’m never gonna feel normal again.”

Ellen: Maybe that’s the only fear that actually makes any sense in this whole episode.

Bex: Yeah, maybe. Yeah. And that’s where we end, we end on Eddie losing his shit and trauma dumping on Buck.

Alice: I totally forgot that this was that episode.

Bex: Yes.

Alice: Because like, it seems like it’s gonna end and it’s just like, oh, Maddie and Jee, the That’s so cute. And then that happens. I’m like, oh, get that’s right.

Bex: And we get he’s voiceover. And the voiceover is usually like the ending montage, like that’s the end of the episode. Yeah. And they’re like, no, we’ve got one more trauma that we need to put you through first.

Ellen: Yeah. And then we left the two of them sobbing in the lounge room for two weeks now.

Bex: Well, at least nobody’s bleeding

Ellen: and it’s [01:55:00] gonna be another week before we let them move on.

Bex: But yeah.

Ellen: At least it wasn’t my fault this time.

Bex: And nobody’s bleeding out.

Ellen: That’s true.

Alice: Nobody’s bleeding out.

Bex: Nobody’s bleeding out. Um, but like, it’s, it’s a horrible, it’s a horrible scene even though Ryan does it so well and he looks so pretty crying. But it’s also, um, like the, the Buddie crumbs of it all, you know, the way back immediately drops everything when Chris calls, the way that he’s able to get through to Eddie, even when, even when his own son can’t get through to him. Um,

Ellen: yeah, it’s a great scene. Like I, I think like in a the way it’s made is a, is a really well put together scene. I like it.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: I like the way they did it. Gosh. Well, I hope he goes back and does some more therapy after this.

Alice: Frank’s like, uh, yeah. Remember how I told you to read? That was my bad, my bad. Oops. Shouldn’t have done that.

Bex: Well see.

Ellen: Yeah. Wasn’t expecting that [01:56:00] outcome.

Bex: This is why Eddie needs to be getting therapy through the VA because I’m, because they would have a better idea that, you know, shit happens once you come home and it’s not always gonna be as easy as, yeah, let’s just meet up for drinks.

Everybody’s gonna be going through the same shit, just slightly differently. Um, ’cause yeah, for a little bit I was going like, that was terrible advice. Frank and I actually, no, it wasn’t bad advice. He had no way of knowing that this was gonna be the response that Eddie was gonna have to that advice. Mm-hmm.

He had no way of knowing that the unit was all dead. He had no way of knowing that it was gonna affect Eddie that way. Um, but yes, having a look at this summary for next week, he does go back to therapy.

Alice: Yay.

Ellen: Oh good. Okay. What’s happening next week then?

Bex: Next week? Um, it is actually the 118 this week, not the 1 26, so I’m glad that they got their numbers straight.

Ellen: Okay, that’s good.

Bex: Um, the members of the, the members of the 118 race [01:57:00] into action when a woman falls over her penthouse balcony. Uh, meanwhile, Athena investigates when a bike rider is impaled on a stop sign. Really? That gets mentioned in the summary. That’s like such a non-starter storyline.

Alice: Sure. Yep.

Bex: Um, Eddie begins therapy for his PTSD and survivor’s guilt. Um, and Maddie fears the worst when Jee-Yun falls ill and next week,

Alice: no, not the baby!

Bex: Next week’s episode is called “Dumb Luck”. Um, as well as, um, therapy, which is a, a trigger that I’m sure, um, we are going to need because Eddie is gonna go back to therapy, continue therapy, start therapy. I don’t know. Um, we are therapy also going to have depiction of a car accident of car versus pedestrian.

Um, depictions of claustrophobia, dangerous driving, depression, discussion of childhood cancer. I’m [01:58:00] guessing that’s of Daniel reference. Uh, discussions of postpartum depression, falling from a great height, flashbacks to gun violence, flashbacks to drowning and PTSD.

Ellen: Mm. Sounds like another heavy one.

Bex: It’s kind of not though from memory.

Alice: I don’t remember it, honestly.

Bex: I remember the, um, the woman falling over the ba the balcony storyline. I remember that part of the story and I remember the Jee-Yun part of the story. I don’t remember what happens with Eddie or anybody else.

Ellen: Hmm. Trying to think about what I actually thought of, of this episode, but I watched it so long ago and even though now we’ve spoken about it, I’m just like, that was an episode. It happened.

Bex: I like, I think like the highlight of this episode is unfortunately Eddie’s breakdown.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: That’s, that’s the one sort of decent thing that comes out of this episode. The rest of it is sort of completely [01:59:00] hit and miss.

Ellen: Like I was so excited that, that Maddie and Chim were back and then having them actually broken up and not together at all in this, like even Chim isn’t that involved with the, um, the, the emergencies even like, it, it was a bit of a letdown on that front, I guess.

Bex: But like I,

Ellen: I’m sure there’ll be,

Bex: like I said, when, when we were discussing kind of in the Boston episode, um, and I sort of flagged that it’s not all sunshine and roses from the straightaway.

Like I know we made a big deal about the fact that Maddie is forced to get over her trauma super quick. Um, yeah, but they don’t bounce back immediately. So, you know, Chim can’t come back to the 118 straightaway ’cause he’s still got to parent his kid. Um, because Maddie doesn’t have anywhere to stay. Um, Maddie can’t go back to work because she quit and she’s gotta beg for her job back.

And I think it’s, it’s [02:00:00] super realistic that their, their relationship is kind of on the rocks after everything that they’ve been through. So,

Alice: yeah, definitely.

Bex: Yeah. So yeah, after not having Maddie for months, it is kind of sad that we are still just getting crumbs, but

Alice: that’s okay. Let her ease back into work.

Bex: Yeah, it’s,

Ellen: yeah, they’re back now and that’s good. It feels more hold again now that everyone’s back and um, even if they’re all at odds at the moment,

Bex: we just need to get Chim back to work and then we need to get Eddie back to the 118 and get rid of Lucy. And get rid of Jonah and then we’ll all big one big happy family again.

Ellen: Yeah, I’m, I’m a bit worried about what’s coming ’cause it’s not, it’s never that easy.

Uh, let us know what you thought of this episode. You can leave us a comment on thatweewooshow.com or in Spotify or on [02:01:00] YouTube as if, or send us a, a message on social media. However you’d like to get in touch with us. Um, let us know what you thought.

Alice: Send us a carrier pigeon. We’re pretty, um, pretty flexible

Bex: message in a bottle? Smoke signals?

Alice: That’s it. Smoke signals.

Ellen: It might take us a while to get back to you, but sure.

Alice: Hey, it takes us a while just to record an episode at the moment.

Ellen: Yeah, well hopefully that, we’ll, we’ll get back on that and get all the way through season five. We don’t have that many episodes to go. Am I making that up?

Bex: Like five? What is it? This an 18 episode season or a 20 episode season?

Alice: Surely it’s 18. Surely not 20.

Bex: Um, we have 18 episodes, so we’ve got five episodes to go.

Ellen: Wow.

Alice: No, we’re so close to the worst season ever.

Ellen: You’re making me so looking forward to season six. We’re gonna have to do something, change up [02:02:00] our, our format for season six, I think to

Bex: alcohol.

Ellen: Get through it.

Bex: Alcohol

Ellen: coping strategies,

Bex: every episode becomes a drinking game.

Ellen: Maybe. Send us your suggestions to how we will get through season six, but we we’re not quite there yet. Um,

Bex: look, here’s the thing

Alice: of Hudson,

Bex: here’s the thing. Episode season six is not good, but watching it concurrently with season nine, I am gonna love season six.

Ellen: Oh no. Thank you so much for listening to us ramble this week. Um, and we will see you next time. We’re gonna talk about episode 14 in season five, which is called “Dumb Luck”. 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 [02:03:00] 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.

[outtake]

Ellen: This is good. This week I was like, I missed you listening to your voices because I normally have you sharing my workday with me. Like when I’m editor editing and stuff. That’s, and I’m like, oh. So instead I was watching Firefly because, you know, they’re having a new, um, animated series coming out as when they find somewhere to actually make it. Um,

Bex: oh, is that what the, the big announcement was? It’s an animated series.

Alice: It’s an animated series, yeah. Yeah. But they don’t actually have anyone to do it with, so

Ellen: they’re trying to get everyone, they’re trying to build the buzz

Alice: basically the, the [02:04:00] cast want to do it

Ellen: so that someone, yeah, yeah.

Bex: Okay. I’m,

Ellen: I hope it does get picked up

Bex: slightly. I’m slightly more hopeful then, ’cause I didn’t actually want a reboot? If it’s a reboot.

Alice: Yeah. Like everyone’s animated serial.

Ellen: Well, apparently it’s, it’s, oh, from what I heard, like everyone was thinking like, okay, continuation or, that’ll be sad. They won’t have Wash there.

Bex: No Wash.

Ellen: But it’s not, it’s apparently, it’s like a, a mid quel. So it’s between where the series ends and like Serenity movie. I’m like, that’s really weird.

Bex: So that means we can get Alan Tudyk back so there will be Wash.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Yes.

Bex: As long as Joss Whedon’s not involved, I think

Alice: they’ve said he’s not

Bex: I’m happy.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Yeah. Okay, then cool. I’m,

Ellen: it was funny because then I remembered that as I was watching it, and Tim Minear’s name came up and I was like, oh, that’s right. He was in, involved in this. And then, um, one of the episodes is written by Ben Edlund, and I’m like, oh my God.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Just all, all of the shows are just written by five people.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: [02:05:00] Like the best episode was written by Ben Edlund.

Ellen: I don’t, it’s just so much of it is so great. Like I just, it’s been age since I watched it and I’m watching through going, oh, I forgot how great this dialogue is and everything. The actors are just so, they’ve got such great chemistry, all of them.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: It’s just brilliant, worst, worst show ever to get canceled.

Bex: But I think that’s why it’s so good, because it, it got killed off too early before Joss could run it to the ground.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. I guess so. But I mean, Buffy was great for a lot of seasons, so I don’t know.

I mean, I didn’t never finish watching the last season because it was just all so depressing. And I was just like, I don’t, I don’t wanna know how this ends because it’s sad. It’s making me sad.

Bex: It ended well, but yeah, the last season was weird.

Ellen: Anyway, I’m not finished watching Firefly yet, so that’s the rest of this week I’ll do that.

Alice: I finally started season two of [02:06:00] Yellowjackets today.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: How many seasons has that got?

Alice: Uh, there’s three and then the fourth is about to air.

Ellen: Okay.

Bex: Yes.

Alice: Um,

Bex: I don’t think I finished season two. I need to go back and double check.

Alice: I, um, watched the first season, like I finished the first season a couple weeks ago, or like a week and a bit ago, but then last week was when the girls, like the dogs went missing and I was like, I’m not watching Yellowjackets right now.

Um, and so now that they’re home and safe, I’m like, okay, I’ll start. And it was seriously, it was so cold today. Um, so I’m like sitting on the couch, oh no, bundle up.

Bex: No

Alice: up in a, um, bundled up in a blanket shivering, and they’re like trying to survive the winter. And I’m like, ah, yes, I relate to this. And then they’re like, it was 21 degrees mind you, you’re sitting like,

Bex: you’re sitting there in a blanket, shivering and poor Jackie is just out there by the fire. [02:07:00]

Alice: She was out there in the fire. It was season two. Um, and so yeah, I’m like, shivering in a blanket and I’m like, yes, I relate to this. And then they’re like, oh my God, we’re so hungry. And I’m like, yes, I haven’t had lunch. I also relate to this.