Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Alice, Bex and Ellen watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we break down and discuss the whole of Season 5.
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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 ABC show 9-1-1. I’m Ellen.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Bex: And I’m Bex.
Ellen: Welcome to the season five wrap-up episode. Hooray.
Bex: Woo!
Ellen: We made it all the way to the end.
Alice: Yay.
Ellen: First of all, we’ve gotta say, this is like Wee Woo After Dark because Alice has a cold and her voice is a bit croaky. But-
Alice: Oh, my voice is gone. It’s very, um-
Ellen: But sh- but she says she’s gonna croak her way through this, so, so bear with us. Um, so yeah. I mean, thank you everyone for listening to all of our season five episodes. We’ve got some feedback that people have sent us about, um, their thoughts [00:01:00] on season five, and we’re going to have a bit of a discussion about all the different things that happened in this season.
But first, do we have a wrap-up of the entire season?
Alice: Um, yeah. So last season on 9-1-1, if I can croak my way through this. Eddie didn’t panic, but did break up with Ana. Maddie suffered from postpartum depression and fled to Boston, which caused Chimney to follow. Buck kissed his new team member Lucy and then immediately asked his girlfriend Taylor Kelly to move in with him.
Athena’s son Harry was kidnapped by Jeffrey and distrusts his mother for a while, and then left the show, along with Michael and David. Eddie went to work at dispatch with May, which then burnt down. Maddie and Chimney came back home. Hen and Karen did some light detective work, and Bobby was also there. He was dad.
Ellen: He was dad.
Bex: I would just like to, in Eddie’s defense, him going to work to dispatch and dispatch burning down were not related.
Alice: [00:02:00] Well, are we sure about that?
Bex: There was no correlation between dispatch burning down and Eddie starting to work there.
Ellen: But potentially saved a bunch of people in dispatch by discovering the fire, so okay.
Alice: Did, had dispatch ever burnt down before Eddie Diaz started there? I didn’t think so. The evidence is damning.
Ellen: Not that we know of.
Alice: I need to make one of those charts that’s like times that the dispatch caught fire and times that, time Eddie worked there. And it’s just like a steep curve.
Bex: Yes. It’s a circle.
Alice: It’s a circle. Yeah. Um- And be like, well, apparently correlation does not equal causation, but the evidence is pretty damning.
Ellen: You could also argue that Claudette came back to work at dispatch and then it burnt down, so, uh.
Alice: And then she died, so whoops.
Ellen: Yeah, okay. That was a bit sad. Okay. Uh, how do we wanna start this? I think I say that every season wrap-up.
Bex: Maybe let’s start with character arcs because I’m pretty sure [00:03:00] that’s going to lead into sort of a discussion about the season as a whole based on-
Alice: That’s what I figured, yeah …
Bex: what we think was going on with each character this season, which when you sit down and actually look at each character’s arc, not a lot happened.
Ellen: No, I was thinking about the whole… Actually, I, I’m gonna start with the whole season, um- Yep, go for it … just to be random. Um, I was thinking about this earlier, like it feels like they, you know, as s- as TV shows go on, each season they have to s- like, as it keeps going, they have to try and come up with new stuff for the season, right? And the, I mean, in some shows like the story arc and the progression is, is natural.
But in this where things just happen and they have to deal with them, there isn’t an obvious like progression of the way that things should go. And so now they’ve r- now that we’ve got to season five it kind of feels a bit like they weren’t really sure, like maybe they weren’t ever intending to get this far, and they’re not really sure what to do [00:04:00] with everybody, so they just kind of-
Alice: I mean-
Ellen: Some stuff happened
Alice: it is a, um, it is a Ryan Murphy show. I’m pretty sure he plots out the first season and then just like throws shit at a wall and sees what sticks. I don’t think he ever has an idea past season one.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But then you have to- Like with- … realize that I don’t think, I think Ryan is there for maybe the first season, and then he hands it over. So season two, season three were Tim Minear-
Alice: Yeah
Bex: … was the one doing the writing. Season four it was Tim and Kristen. Season five, Kristen’s running the show.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: So I think any change-
Ellen: Yeah, okay
Bex: … that we, that we can see in season five can be attributed by the fact that there is a new showrunner, who theoretically should have kind of carried the show the way that Ryan had set it up and the way that Tim was writing it, but Kristen has her own style of doing things, her own way of doing things, what she likes and what she doesn’t like, and so that’s influenced the entire season, in my opinion.[00:05:00]
Everything is in my opinion about this. Because we’ve discussed in, like, previous episodes, Kristen loves the interpersonal drama. She has her favorite blorbos, and she likes doing drama shit with them. She’s not good at ensembles, and I don’t think she’s really interested in big emergencies, like the big dramatic emergencies.
She likes the little interpersonal dramas, and that’s what we got a lot of this season.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, we did get a lot of character stuff this time round, for good or bad.
Bex: I vote bad.
Ellen: So that’s interesting. So Tim, Tim, of course you did. Um, Tim Minear actually only wrote one episode in this season.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Um, and to be honest, I think Kristen only wrote two of them, right? Just looking through. Three, uh, of which one she was a co-attributor. Um-
Bex: But she is, like, she’s the boss, so she’s the one that walks in and goes, “Okay, this is the direction the season is gonna [00:06:00] take. This is the focus that we’re gonna take. These are the storylines that we’re going to, um, to prioritize,” and then the writers follow her lead.
Ellen: Yeah, okay. Yeah. Yeah, so I mean, talking about big, um, emergencies, we didn’t even have, like, a, like in past episodes we’ve had really big emergencies to start with, and this season’s opener was, like, this ransomware hacker thing, which only really lasted for one of the episodes, and-
Bex: I, I know we discussed it when we did the season opener. I don’t think the ransomware was meant to be the big emergency. I think that was the lead-up, and then the heatwave was meant to be the big emergency. Um-
Ellen: Yeah, and power-
Bex: Because when you look-
Ellen: Going out …
Bex: yeah, the power outage and the heatwave. But even then, it wasn’t, the focus wasn’t on so much the heatwave, but how the heatwave was affecting the 118 [00:07:00] specifically.
Ellen: Mm-hmm
Alice: Yeah
Ellen: And different people around the city. But yeah
Bex: I don’t think we even got that much. I can remember one, which was May and the, the stupid solar panels
Ellen: Yeah, and yeah, everything else was related to the 118, and that kind of all led into the Jeffrey thing, which I guess was the other early big storyline.
Bex: Yeah, so you had, you had the Jeffrey thing tied in because the, the ransomware, um, s- was somehow timed perfectly that it allowed Jeffrey to escape, so then Athena’s main storyline for, like, two and a half episodes was chasing Jeffrey through the city.
Alice: Oh, that’s right. The big emergency was Jeffrey
Bex: Pretty much. Yeah. Jeffrey plus the power outage
Alice: I think Jeffrey’s whole arc wouldn’t have bugged me so much if it was, like, a mid-season thing, but it was just weird as the opener [00:08:00] because we’re used to, we were used to a certain trend.
Bex: We were used to a big emergency that you saw the 118 responding to, whereas there wasn’t really a big e- there wasn’t the big emergency the 118 responding to, there was just a, an emergency that was happening to them, and they were reacting to it.
Alice: Yeah ‘
Bex: Cause there’s, you, you can’t fix- Do you know- You can’t fix a heat wave. There’s nothing-
Alice: No
Bex: … that they could do about it. They just had to survive it and make sure everyone else survived it
Ellen: Well, I mean, the, the same with the tsunami and all that kind of thing, and the earthquake. Um-
Bex: Well, they could res- they could rescue people and, you know, and they could-
Ellen: Yeah …
Bex: there was action that they could take, but there wasn’t really a lot of action that we saw. There, I mean, there probably was action that they could have been taking, but we didn’t see it so much. I will preface this by saying that I have not watched that episode since we watched it, and I really don’t wanna go back and watch it.
So my [00:09:00] memory is, like, we’re running on fumes as to what actually happened- Yeah … in those three episodes
Alice: I don’t even remember when we watched those episodes. This season got a lot better in the latter half. Like, I hardly remember the first half of this season. Like, I hardly remembered it before we watched it, and now that we’ve watched it and literally discussed every episode I still don’t remember it.
Bex: I’m still-
Alice: Um, like before we started recording, Bex mentioned something about “Brawl in Cell Block 9-1-1”, and I was like, Oh, was that this season? Like, it feels like a totally different season.
Bex: Mm-hmm. And I think that, as we discussed earlier, that’s partially because of the, the hiatus, like the mid-season hiatus splitting the season in two. So it almost feels like we’ve watched two seasons’ worth. Yeah. Even though for us it was back to back.
Ellen: We also had a, a, a hiatus early on in the season. Like, we started watching it in November, and then we had a bit of a break over the, you know, December, January. So-
Bex: Mm.
Ellen: Which was around “Brawl in Cell Block 9-1-1”. And then [00:10:00] we did our “Wee Woo Goes to the Cottage” episode- … which also broke things up a little bit. So we, we also had a bit of a
Bex: hiatus. Oh my God, yes. Yeah, but it feels like there’s a definite shift.
Ellen: We had a Heated Rivalry Mania.
Bex: Oh my God, yes.
Alice: Oh, what a good time.
Ellen: Which never really ended. Anyway, um,
Bex: yes. It has not, no. It comes and goes.
Alice: Oh, I just wanna go to the ice hockey again. Yeah, so I definitely enjoyed the second season, uh, the second half of the season.
Bex: Second half.
Alice: Also the second season, but the second half of the season more than the first half. Um, which was just, “Oh, Jeffrey. Remember Jeffrey? Hey, Jeffrey.” And I’m like, Yeah, okay. I don’t care, actually.
Bex: I feel like the second half of this season was more cohesive too, ’cause the first half of the season was literally just Jeffrey.
Alice: I do wanna gi- like, I do understand that they had to write Jennifer Love Hewitt out of the show, but, [00:11:00] like, they probably could’ve done it better.
Bex: Oh, there’s massive issues with the storyline that they gave Maddie to get Jennifer-
Alice: Oh, the storyline, for sure …
Bex: off the show for a couple of weeks.
Alice: But, like, it just- Yeah … it felt off without, um, without Maddie and Chimney. And it’s like, but like their
Ellen: Yeah, yeah
Alice: … Like, one, you didn’t have to write Chimney off. Um, you chose to do that.
Ellen: Well, do you wanna go into talking about the characters? And we can start with Chim and Maddie.
Bex: I’m, I’m sure we’ll keep, like, coming back to, as we’re sort of discussing the characters, we’ll keep coming back to the, the ser- like the season as a whole. Yeah. So let’s… There’s gonna be very little structure to this episode, and that’s fine.
Alice: There’s never any- That’s okay … structure to these episodes.
Ellen: Just a rambling chat.
Bex: I try a little bit.
Ellen: You do, bless you. Okay. Well- … are we gonna start with… It’s, it’s easy to start with Maddie and Chim, because they had possibly the most coherent actual story arc in this season of anybody.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I [00:12:00] think-
Ellen: Apart from maybe-
Bex: Oh yeah, I think-
Ellen: Eddie, but …
Bex: Maddie and Eddie are the two that I think had an actual s- character growth or a story arc-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: … during this season. Um, but Maddie definitely.
Ellen: Yeah, so she, she didn’t start the episode, uh, away, right? Did that ha- like the season, I mean. That happened in the first two episodes?
Bex: No, she left “Desperate Measures” or “Desperate Times?” no, “Desperate Measures”. M-
Ellen: yeah, “Desperate Measures”.
Bex: She leaves in “Desperate Measures”.
Ellen: Episode three.
Bex: So she’s there, she’s there through the ransomware. The postpartum depression gets worse during “Desperate Times” because Chim is at the firehouse full-time.
Ellen: That’s right.
Bex: She’s alone with Jee full-time, and that’s when the, the bathtub incident happens in “Desperate Measures”, and she decides that she’s unsafe, so she leaves.
So she’s there for the first three episodes, and then she’s- Mm-hmm … gone until “Boston”.
Ellen: Right. Yeah, and it did feel weird without her and Chim. Like, we got, um, [00:13:00] Lucy
Bex: But we didn’t get Lucy un- It was- No, we got Lucy as a replacement for Eddie.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: So we didn’t get Lucy until the second half of this season. We got Jonah to replace Chim.
Alice: We got, um-
Ellen: Oh, that’s right …
Alice: we got May in dispatch, which I liked. It was nice seeing more of May.
Bex: We got Claudette in dispatch to replace Maddie.
Alice: Yeah. Great. Um- That’s a replacement,
Bex: yeah …
Alice: but yeah, I liked seeing Maddie. I, I liked seeing May in, um, in dispatch because we got to see more of May. Like, it wasn’t just Athena’s kid. Like, it was actually May coming, like becoming a self-sufficient person.
Ellen: Yeah, she sort of became more of a main character too, ’cause previously she’d only pop up now and then-
Alice: Yeah …
Ellen: when the, the family storyline needed it. But, um, I don’t know if she’s, if the, if the kids are considered series regulars ever, but she kind of was in a lot of episodes this season, so.
But they [00:14:00] didn’t, like, going back to Maddie, um, obviously her, this storyline’s very important for, like shining a light on the issues with postpartum depression. But we did, when we, when we got to Bo- the Boston episode and talked about that, we did say how we, we, we weren’t real happy with the ease of how it was resolved
Bex: Yes
Ellen: Like, it was sad that she was away for so long, but it was, like, probably an important storyline too.
Alice: Yeah. As, as we-
Ellen: Like, ’cause this does happen …
Alice: covered. Yeah, as we definitely covered at the time, I hated that it was just like, “Oh, here’s some medication. You’re fixed now,” because that’s not- Yeah … like, this show’s not great about re- like, having the characters actually deal with their traumas.
Ellen: It did go on for a little bit longer, like when she got back to LA, but not, not in any kind of spotlighted way. Yeah. She just was still under-
Bex: Oh no, I don’t, I don’t think it was necessarily her, [00:15:00] um, the, the medical issues. There was still definitely, um… Like, her relationship with Chim took a little bit of a hit, and then they had to get back to sort of where they’d started. So they were starting over in the episode aptly titled “Starting Over”.
Um, Yeah … but we didn’t, we didn’t really… It was literally a magic pill.
Ellen: Yeah, so I guess may- maybe to start with, they handled it well, and then by the end they kind of-
Alice: Yeah …
Ellen: stopped handling it altogether
Alice: Like, I’m sure a lot of people wish that there was a magic little pill they could take that just cured them of everything.
Bex: But that would not have been convenient to getting Maddie back to LA, back into dispatch, back in a relationship with Chim. They needed it to be resolved quickly.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um.
Ellen: Yeah, sad that they had to take Chim out of the picture too for so long, ’cause, um, I mean, I guess the way they wrote the storylines while he was away meant that he had to be away, but did he really have to be away for all that time, you know?
Alice: Yeah, they [00:16:00] could have come up with a different storyline, but instead they chose to write them both out, and I definitely think the show suffered without both of them. Like, it literally could have just been like, “Oh yeah, Maddie’s really busy at work at the moment,” or like, “Maddie’s taking some time off from work. Lucky we have great health insurance.”
Ellen: They got rid of, um, Harry and kept mentioning him, and we never see him. Like-
Alice: Exactly, yeah
Ellen: … they could have just done the same thing with Maddie.
Bex: I think, though, in that instance that it was Marcanthonee chose to leave the show
Ellen: Yeah, but what I mean is they keep s- like, he was there in, like he was there in the story, but we didn’t actually see him at all.
So they could have had Jennifer Love Hewitt not on screen. Oh, they could have just- But s- she would’ve still been around. Anyway, it’s, um, they, they chose to take this other path, which is fine. It was just that we weren’t super happy with the way that it, that it r- was resolved in the end. Poor Chim having to go cross-country with a baby. Um-
Bex: Oh my [00:17:00] God.
Ellen: But he’s come through it mostly unscathed, apart from, like, really missing Maddie by the end of it. Even, even at the end of the, of the whole season. I assume they’re gonna get back together quite quickly in the, in the next season. I hope so.
Alice: That’ll be on Bex’s prediction.
Ellen: You know, you can add that to my-
Alice: I mean, Ellen’s predictions.
Ellen: Yeah … you can, you can add that to to my predictions.
Alice: Bex can add it to Ellen’s predictions was what I was trying to say.
Bex: Yes. So Ellen predicts they will get back together.
Ellen: Maybe it should be my, my hopes for next season. Because who can predict anything that is gonna happen on this show, honestly? Anything else about Chim and Maddie or shall we-
Bex: I think that’s about it. I f- I- Chim didn’t really get to do a lot this season, which was- No … kind of sad ’cause Kenneth is, he was pretty much just chasing after Maddie all season.
Alice: He is, he’s great when he cries. Um, we had a good time with that.
Ellen: Yeah. [00:18:00] He’s either being, like, heartbreakingly, like, just angsty or-
Alice: Walking around topless? Yeah it’s great …
Ellen: he’s the comic relief. You know. Occasionally gets to be a badass with saving people, but, you know, there wasn’t a whole lot-
Bex: Very occasionally
Ellen: … of that this season I don’t think.
Bex: No. No, but then there wasn’t, there wasn’t a lot of anybody being a, like, a real badass. A, a Bobby, I, I would say probably Bobby got the most sort of, and unfortunately Athena.
Um, and I, I don’t- Yeah … say unfortunately Athena because I don’t like it when Athena gets to be a badass. I think the big heroic, like, big damn hero moment was her, like, emptying 35 clips into Jeffrey.
Alice: And then telling him- True. Yeah … to save his life, yeah.
Bex: Yeah, which we’ve discussed probably ad nauseam how much we hated that moment. But that was-
Alice: And the whole storyline really.
Bex: I … Ugh, yes.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Which unfortunately was Athena’s storyline for this season.
Alice: Yeah. It [00:19:00] was literally- Like they- … cop revenge. And it’s like, yeah, that’s cool.
Bex: They front loaded Athena at the beginning of season five with the, the J- with Jeffrey’s trial, and then with the manhunt, and then with dealing with Harry and his trauma, and that’s pretty much all Athena got to do this season.
Ellen: Yep. Yeah, and then she just popped up for the, uh, few other scenes in the other episodes. She’d be there supporting, like, May or Bobby.
Bex: Yep. She would show up-
Ellen: Occasionally Michael
Bex: … to do her, like, contractually obligated screen time. Like even in- Yeah … the, the Boston episode they had, like, 30 seconds of Athena on screen just so Angela could say, “Yes, I was in that episode.”
Alice: Yep. Tick.
Bex: Um, but other than that she didn’t really do anything after they shipped Harry off with Michael.
Alice: No.
Bex: And David.
Ellen: She was just this, supporting everybody else for the rest of the season.
Bex: Which I guess- I think- … makes sense because the beginning of the season was so Athena heavy, they’re like, “Okay, we need to, like, shift [00:20:00] focus back to everybody else.”
Alice: Maybe she was filming a movie.
Bex: I don’t know. Maybe.
Ellen: I think Hen got a, like, even though Hen didn’t have … Like, we can talk about Hen later unless you wanna move on to Hen now. Um, she had a lot of-
Bex: No, we can do
Alice: Hen’s two storylines.
Ellen: Okay. Yeah yeah, no, she didn’t have any real major storylines, um, through the whole season, but she did have quite a lot of saving people. She did, she got-
Alice: And hunting things?
Ellen: … the hero moments, but they weren’t like heroic. She was just doing her job a lot because Chim wasn’t there, so she was the paramedic.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Apart from Jonah, who was- Yeah … not saving people. Or occasionally saving people.
Alice: Or hunting things.
Ellen: No, he was hunting things.
Bex: He was, he was-
Ellen: And then saving people
Bex: … saving people, but unfortunately he was the one putting them in danger in order to save them until- Yeah … you know, Claudette. Um-
Ellen: Yeah
Alice: Um, yeah, so Hen’s medical school thing [00:21:00] was mentioned, we think once this season. Um, which is when we were talking about “Brawl in Cell Block 9-1-1”.
Um, she mentions to the doctor in that that she is wanting to get into his line of work and is in medical school, and then nothing. Like, they totally forget about it. Um, ’cause there’s a whole thing about how busy she is previously, and then, like, nothing.
Ellen: We see her in the, uh, i- in the station house reading a few times, but I don’t, I didn’t notice whether they were actual-
Bex: But they’re not medical textbooks anymore. Like-
Ellen: No, I don’t think so. It’s just a book …
Bex: season four they specifically had her, yeah, s- they specifically had her reading textbooks or books about medical school. Now she’s just reading for pleasure. Like, when is … Uh, what, why does she have time to read for pleasure?
Ellen: When do students ever read for pleasure?
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: But kind of all of Hen’s pre-established storylines were disregarded. We didn’t see any more about fostering, um, this season, which is [00:22:00] probably a good thing considering what Karen got up to, um, around the fostering. Um-
Ellen: Yeah …
Bex: but it’s just like she-
Ellen: I think it was mentioned I don’t think- Yeah, I think it is mentioned. Or maybe we mentioned it. Yeah, I don’t know. I don’t remember if they mentioned it.
Bex: It might’ve been, like, an offhand reference, but we don’t see, like, the only kid we see in the house is Denny.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, and then they bring in, like, Toni has more of a story arc even though the, the, um, the show completely decided to retcon her and Hen’s relationship.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Oh, yeah.
Bex: So Hen was just kind of there this season. Like, she got a lot of air time, which was good. She got lots of little storylines. We got the, um, the, the “FOMO episode where she and Karen got to be amateur detectives, which was-
Alice: That was fun … fun. Yeah.
Bex: Um, so we got a lot of- Yeah … fun little [00:23:00] stuff, but we didn’t-
Alice: Like, was it stupid? Absolutely. Did we have a good time? Sure did.
Bex: Yes. Yes. But, like, her, her s- her character didn’t move forward at all this season. She was just there. I think a lot of characters, like, their sto- their characters didn’t, their stories didn’t move forward. They were just there this season.
Alice: Yeah It’s like they needed to find their feet and just took a while to
Ellen: But I mean, they’ve got so many characters to deal with. They can’t all move forward. That’s really- Although they do have like-
Bex: Can’t they? …
Ellen: you know, 18, 18 episodes, so they could have had one each-
Bex: Yeah …
Ellen: to move forward during
Bex: Like I’m not, I’m not talking kind of massive leaps in character, but at least if you were drawing, um, sort of a line where your characters start at the beginning of the season, at least s- shift them f- do something that shifts them a little bit.
Like poor Bobby. Bobby didn’t do anything this season. Bobby didn’t move anywhere. He almost relapsed. But he almost relapsed at the end of season four, so [00:24:00] that doesn’t count.
Alice: He almost relapses at the-
Ellen: It’s just cycling back to the-
Alice: Like, yeah, every couple episodes
Ellen: … where he was.
Bex: Yeah. He’s just there. He’s supportive husband, supportive father, supportive captain. I mean, we love him for it, he’s a very good supportive father.
Ellen: He’s worried, he worried about everybody.
Bex: He worried about everybody, but that’s not really pushing his story forward.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: No.
Bex: Who else? Same with, like, I think Buck actually went backwards. I don’t think they moved his story forward any more. I think they moved him backwards.
Ellen: Really? Even after he realized that he didn’t want to be together with Taylor? Doesn’t that count as growing?
Bex: No. Well,
Alice: I mean,
Bex: he made out with Lucy- No,
Alice: it’s ’cause he- … and then-
Bex: Yeah. So we had Mr. I would never cheat, like got incredibly offended when people thought he was cheating on Abby, um, who actually then does cheat on Taylor.
He then [00:25:00] traps her in his apartment, not literally, but also literally, and then-
Ellen: Mm-hmm
Bex: … like is an absolute bastard to her and is like, “Oh, I, I hooked up with you knowing these fundamental aspects of your personality, but I was hoping that I’d be able to, like, get over it.”
Alice: Yeah. “I was hoping I could deal with you.”
Bex: Yeah. I could learn to live with you. Um, I’m not going to.
Ellen: Turns out I can’t.
Bex: Turns out I can’t, so, um, I’m kicking you out of my apartment.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Yeah, when you put it like that, it does seem very callous. Which I don’t like to say because I do love Buck, but honestly- I love- He, he did a bad job this season …
Bex: I love Buck, but he did not…
The only good thing he did this season was he was a supportive partner to Eddie. Like, when Eddie absolutely lost his shit, Buck was an amazing father to Christopher and partner to Eddie. That was the good thing.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Oh, he’s a great boyfriend to Eddie, he’s just not a great boyfriend to Taylor.[00:26:00]
Ellen: I think, and potentially that’s like, was completely unintentional by the, by any of the writers or anything. It’s just the way it turned out.
Alice: Yeah. ‘Cause they don’t know how to write him as a boyfriend except when it’s with Eddie And then it’s not intentional. So when they try and write him as a boyfriend, they do a terrible job. And when they’re not even trying to write him as a boyfriend, he’s the most attentive partner ever.
Ellen: Yeah. Oh, dear. Uh, who else do we have apart from-
Alice: Um, speaking of Eddie.
Ellen: Yeah, okay, let’s go to Eddie. So Eddie did have some growing growth this, like it’s therapy, right? He had heaps of therapy.
Bex: His story, he had so much progression this season, um, when you sit and think about it, because he starts the season with a girlfriend. Um, he-
Alice: And finishes it single. Yep, good …
Bex: finishes single, but, like he starts with Ana. He has realizations that he doesn’t actually wanna be with Ana [00:27:00] after using her for free childcare through the emergency. Um, like he, he literally thinks he’s having a heart attack at the idea of, like being with a woman.
Like CompHet sent him to a hospital with a suspected heart, heart attack. Um,
so then, um, so we, like we discovered that part about him. We then discover that, like heart problems run in the family because we go back to Texas for an episode and we do that whole thing with his f- um, father. Um, we learn- Which is weird but sure. Sure, but at least it progresses the Diaz family lore.
Alice: It does, like yeah.
Bex: Like we got lore-
Alice: That’s it …
Bex: we got lore drop even though it was a, a badly timed episode or ti- badly timed storyline within the episode. Um, we then get the realization that maybe his job is too dangerous if he wants to be there for his kid, so he steps away from 9-1-1, goes to dispatch, um, and then realizes he’s fucking miserable.
Therapy goes bad. [00:28:00] Um, he nearly destroys the house. Goes back, gets more therapy, and then comes back to the 118 a, like a better version of Eddie Diaz.
Ellen: But we don’t see that last part.
Alice: No.
Ellen: Like he just, he, he goes from like-
Bex: It’s implied
Ellen: … being a kind of messed up and like lashing out at everybody, and then suddenly he’s back in the station house with everybody else.
Alice: Like they really put Eddie through the things this season. Yeah. Like they make him go see his parents, which is, you know. Um, but they also kill off all his old coworkers.
Ellen: Oh, yeah.
Bex: Yes.
Alice: Like his entire old team is dead.
Ellen: They just pile the trauma on.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Yes, be- that’s because much like Kenny, um, Ryan cries good.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: He looks good crying.
Ellen: Yes, he’s very pretty. Yeah. [00:29:00]
Alice: Yep, all the trauma for that man
Ellen: Damn, we’re cruel. But it’s worth it. Um, It is worth it. So this means that, um, next season he’s gonna be, you know, well-rounded and healthy, right?
Alice: Sure, yeah. That’s- honestly, I don’t even remember Eddie- … the E in season six, so.
Bex: Um, I have a very specific memory of Eddie in season six.
Ellen: Oh. Does it involve not wearing a shirt or something?
Alice: Oh, actually, no. I do, yeah, I remember, yeah.
Bex: Yes. That’s, that’s-
Alice: Yes.
Bex: Ignore the spelling. Ignore the spelling, but yes.
Ellen: Oh no. Um- I think there was a spoiler thing.
Alice: Uh, yes. I do remember that.
Bex: That’s pretty much the only thing I remember of, of that season.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: For him.
Alice: Cool. Yeah, so yeah, [00:30:00] Eddie’s totally gonna be super well-rounded and fine next season.
Ellen: Yeah. Um- not at all traumatized, I’m sure.
Bex: I mean, he is fine as in, like, he’s fine, but mentally, emotionally, we’ll have to see.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I think there’s gray sweatpants involved at some point next season, which I’m very much looking forward to.
Ellen: Oh, dear.
Actually, one thing I did notice, uh, I just realized looking at the notes you’ve got here about Eddie’s character stuff, um, they did have this tension between him and Bobby when, you know, he had that fight with Bobby, and then that sort of never… Like, I think we talked about it at the time. They, they were just suddenly okay with each other again.
Like, that reconciliation, whatever, the apology happened off screen and we never, we never saw that. We never saw him- I don’t- … getting brought back into the fold, you know? Except for [00:31:00] that where he rescued people in the fire.
Bex: I think we talked about it in the episode where, um, like Bobby is babysitting Eddie when he’s sleeping on the couch that, um…
And like Eddie wakes up and, and Bobby is just there. I don’t think Bobby needed an apology. I’m, I’m sure that Ed- he was hurt by what Eddie said, but I also feel like he recognized that Eddie was just lashing out and he didn’t really mean what he said, because he knows that Eddie Diaz is a petty bitch and he fights dirty.
Um, so he’s probably like, “Yeah, okay, that, that stung, but Eddie was trying his best to hurt me. He didn’t actually really mean it. There’s no need for an apology.” So I don’t think there was ever a, like, “I’m sorry.” I think it was just, “One of my kids fucked up, but I’m just going to roll with it and support them.”
And, like, the best we’re probably gonna get is Eddie showing up [00:32:00] after the whole Jonah incident and going, “Jonah wasn’t your fault. You need to take cre- if you’re taking blame for Jonah, you need to take credit for me.”
Alice: Yeah. Mm-hmm. It still would’ve been nice for them to-
Bex: It would’ve been, but I, I don’t… It probably would’ve slowed things down- Yeah … storyline-wise.
Alice: As if, you know, nothing else was slowed down storyrise-wise this season. Yeah. Um, all right. So I think that’s all the main characters.
Ellen: Yep.
Alice: So onto the recurring st- r- the reg-
Bex: Yeah
Alice: … yep. Um, so yeah, we got a lot more May, which we mentioned, um, which was really good.
Um, she-
Ellen: Yeah, I kind of think we can count May as a main character nowadays, right?
Alice: Well, she’s not like part of the 118-
Ellen: For this season
Alice: … like she’s not, like she’s not a firefighter or Athena, so. But yeah, she, um, had to deal with Claudette being a cow until she died, so that was fine. [00:33:00] Um, and then had to decide whether she wanted to go to-
Ellen: I always feel so callous, like, talking about C- Claudette dying as if it’s like, “Oh, thank God she’s gone.” but, like, I mean, she was just-
Bex: But I would think-
Ellen: … a horrible character.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: She was … It was, it was sad, and she didn’t have to die.
Alice: It was just weird because we already got that sort of character with Maddie. It’s like, why did we need to do it again? Like, we had that one that just kept hanging up on people.
Bex: I th-
Ellen: Oh yeah, but that was just one episode …
Bex: there was, there was also a difference in that, um, that character who’s Gloria, um, that wasn’t really aimed at Maddie. It was just Gloria was a bad dispatcher, whereas Claudette, it was very specifically aimed at May, which was, as we discussed, that was the whole-
Alice: I mean, it was aimed at Maddie when she, like, when Maddie, like, dobbed her in and she… didn’t she threaten to, like, kill Maddie or something, then got in a car crash? [00:34:00]
Bex: Yeah, like, for 30 seconds- Yeah … she was-
Alice: But yeah, I don’t know. It was just weird. Like, how many bitches work in the call center? A lot, apparently.
Bex: I, like, as, as we discussed, but we’ve already had a bullying subplot for May.
Alice: Literally, all May does is get bullied.
Bex: And, and so-
Alice: Like …
Bex: like, she gradu- like, she graduates high school, she goes out into, and gets a big girl job, and then, like, the first thing that happens is she gets bullied again.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Just it’s not fair. Leave the poor kid alone. Like, I’m s- I’m so sure that if we actually did follow her to college, um, she would, like, join a sorority and then immediately get bullied by one of- Yeah her sorority sisters.
Ellen: Yeah, get hazed.
Alice: It’d be the fucking, the girl who bullied her and then apologized. She’d be like, “Oh, guess what? I’m back and ready to bully you more.” Mm.
Bex: Yeah, forget the whole point where we tried to reconcile in season five. I’m, I’m- Yeah … over that. I’m back to bullying you again.
Alice: Back to bullying you. Yeah.
Um, [00:35:00] yeah, so that was May. It was good to see more of her. I didn’t like the Claudette storyline, but, um, it was cool seeing her, like, stand up to Claudette and be like, “Get, get, like, get off your ass. Get out of this room.”
Bex: Yes. ‘ Cause I think it, it shows growth for May. Yes. So okay, so maybe May had the most growth this season because, like, the first time she got bullied she couldn’t cope with it, and she took pills.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: This time she got bullied, uh, but she kept going back to work. She kept trying to deal with it, and then she actually stood up to her bully at the end.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Not kind of in the way that you would hope, but she at least got to say her piece to her, even if it was in an effort to say s- save the woman’s life.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. And she did, like, get her through it. Yeah. Even if it didn’t turn out, like, work out in the end, but-
Alice: Well, May got …
Bex: that wasn’t her fault … that wasn’t her fault. That wasn’t May’s fault. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: No, nobody expected Jonah.
Alice: Nobody expected Jonah.
Bex: Like [00:36:00] The Spanish Inquisition and Jonah, nobody can ever see them coming.
Ellen: Uh, okay, onto Michael. So we, Michael was in a lot. We worked out Michael’s in almost every episode in the early part of the season until the fire at the hospital, and he and David went off to Haiti and never came back. So …
Alice: All these p- these characters getting f- like, having fires at their place of work. Jesus. Yeah.
Ellen: Um, yeah,
Alice: don’t-
Ellen: I mean, it is a firefighter show.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah, so the moral of that story is if you are lucky enough to become a series regular on a show and the network asks you to get a very reasonable, uh, medical procedure-
Alice: Legally mandated …
Bex: get the damn proc- get the damn procedure.
Stay on the show.
Alice: Yeah. Um, I still love that they put him in a big storyline about the [00:37:00] COVID vaccines as well.
Bex: I know, I know. You could just imagine them chuckling about it as they’re like, “No, it’s part of the storyline, we need you to do it.”
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: So petty. Love it.
Bex: So petty, and I am so happy that they got a resolution to the case just in time for us to discuss it on the podcast.
Alice: Yes.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Um, yeah, so Michael has departed. Um, his actor was fired. Um, he gets yeeted to Haiti, and he never comes back. He, I think he does … I think they do move him somewhere else after Haiti. I don’t remember where that is, because they do sort of like me- he is mentioned again. Um, but I don’t remember-
Bex: No, no worry about- …
Alice: where he is. It’s, like, Florida or something. Yeah, we also have Taylor Kelly, who features in this season more than-
Bex: Yay, Taylor …
Alice: she has previously. She wa- she started in season two, yeah?
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: I thought it was [00:38:00] season one.
Alice: Yeah. No, ’cause Abby was season one.
Bex: No, because it was, um, helicopter related.
Ellen: Oh yeah, she hooks up with… Yeah. Okay.
Bex: Eddie was in it, so that’s season two
Alice: Um, but it’s like the first or second epis- like, it’s early season two
Bex: Yes. Yes, because-
Alice: Oh, it was, was it “Dosed?” …
Bex: Buck wants… And I think it’s earlier than that because Buck is torn because he wants to date Taylor. No, he do- he doesn’t wanna just hook up with Taylor because he’s not a hook-up man anymore, he’s a relationship man.
Alice: Yeah, no, it’s “Dosed” And so it’s- It’s the first episode. So, um, season two, episode six.
Bex: Yep.
Alice: Um, so yeah, so she’s been in there since season two. She’s been in there for quite a while now. Yeah, so they start a relationship last season.
Bex: Yeah. The, literally the last episode of last season.
Alice: And yeah, we, we learn, like, a fair bit about her this [00:39:00] season, and then she gets written off. Um-
Bex: Yeah …
Alice: so yeah, her father killed her mother?
Bex: Allegedly.
Alice: Maybe. Well, he was convicted of it.
Bex: Yes, but Taylor’s still not in convinced.
Alice: But yes, Taylor’s still not convinced.
Bex: S- yes, so that’s why she becomes a reporter because she is-
Alice: She needs to know the truth!
Bex: … desperate to… She needs to know. The, she can’t get the truth in her own life, so she’s going to uncover everybody else’s truths.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Mm, that’s right.
Alice: Um, and then yeah, Buck as we discussed, kissed Lucy and so asked Taylor to move in with him.
Ellen: Yeah, I do feel like they kind of, they, they did Taylor really dirty in this season, like-
Bex: Oh, they did her so dirty …
Ellen: like she, she was, you know, getting on with her career, moving up in the world, and in every stage someone was trying to drag her down again. Usually Buck. Um, like not always on purpose.
Bex: Exactly, yes.
Alice: Mostly Buck.
Ellen: Mostly. Sometimes on purpose, sometimes [00:40:00] not. But
Alice: yeah, so their relationship was very-
Bex: Love is, lo- it’s almost like a kiss of death on this show to become a love interest for one of the 118, ’cause you just, you don’t survive. It’s not quite like Sam Winchester level of not surviving but you d- you don’t, the show will do you dirty
Ellen: and you don’t actually get killed off.
Bex: You don’t actually get killed off.
Ellen: Except Shannon.
Alice: Well, yeah.
Ellen: She was an exi-
Alice: Oh …
Ellen: she was an exis- um, justice for Shannon! She was like a, an existing love interest, I guess
Alice: Okay, so hang on, the 118 can break up with you, but if you break up with the, the 118, it’s, it’s over.
Bex: Oh, yes, because she asked for the divorce, didn’t she?
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Oh, no.
Bex: So that’s why they literally killed her.
Alice: Eddie wanted to try again, and she was like, “Nah.”
Ellen: This is a terrible realization to have. They didn’t kill off, um-
Alice: Look, I’d say Ho- like, yes, but- …
Ellen: Eva. They didn’t kill Eva …
Alice: it’s probably best … she was- Um-
Bex: No, because Hen broke up with her
Alice: yeah, Hen broke up with her, so that’s fine.
Ellen: Oh. Right[00:41:00]
Bex: Look, we’ll just keep track of it over the next couple of seasons, like when love interests come in, if they come in. We’ll see like who ends the relationship and therefore, like where that person ends up.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Mm-hmm. It’ll be interesting to, to track. So at the moment the theory is if you break up with them, you die. If they break up with you, you’re fine. So
Alice: um, yeah, so Taylor and her couch end the season by moving out, um, because-
Ellen: Yes
Alice: … Taylor reports on Jonah’s murdering before the department are ready for it to come out. Like, she does wait till he’s arrested, and is ju- just happens to be the first reporter on scene.
Um, but yeah, she promised Buck that she wouldn’t, and then she was just like, “Well, too bad. It’s my job.”
Bex: I don’t even think it was that she was first reporter on scene. It’s that, like she’s on scene and she already has his mugshot, or like his- Yeah … [00:42:00] department photo
Alice: His department photo
Bex: And she already has his name and she already has everything about him, whereas everybody-
Ellen: And she was ready
Bex: else was first on scene. She was ready to go. Yeah. She had … Back when she had-
Alice: Oh, she had the story
Bex: … file information. Like,
Alice: yeah. Yeah. She had the Google Doc locked and loaded.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Um, so yeah, Buck’s like, “Yeah, we’ll be okay, but not together. Bye.” Um, so yes, her and her couch have moved out. Um, Ravi, we did see a bit of him. Not a heap, but we did learn that he was- Yeah … in hospitals a lot
Ellen: He was in, in and out of the, of several episodes, like briefly I feel like. He wasn’t in an- any major kind of things happening, but he was always there.
Bex: No. He was there.
Alice: Wasn’t he even in the-
Bex: He was there.
Alice: Was he in the dispatch fire?
Bex: Nope.
Alice: Oh my God, they didn’t even let him in that. Um, but yeah, we found out that he was in and out of hospital a lot as a kid ’cause he had cancer.
Ellen: Yeah, they don’t pay him enough [00:43:00] to ask questions about shit that people get up to, which is wise I think in this place.
Bex: Yeah, pretty much.
Alice: And then, yeah, we get the two newbies. Um, so we get Lucy, who joins and immediately makes out with Buck while drunk, or while Buck is drunk, or both of them are drunk.
And then, yeah, how awkward, because then she ends up working with them. Um, I still love when Bobby is like, “You two kissed?”
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Oh, it’s great.
Ellen: He sounds so upset about it too. Like what do you mean?
Alice: Well, I mean, the gossip, no one told him.
Bex: Like, shout out. Like, on the one hand, like, he’s probably upset that he missed the gossip or, you know, he didn’t f- he didn’t find out about it because, you know, the man loves a gossip. Um-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: but, you know, the head space that he was in at that stage, he’d missed all this shit that was going down with Jonah. Um, and he [00:44:00] thought he had everyone else in the 118 on lock, and then he discovers that, you know, no, Buck and Lucy had something going on, and he’d completely missed that too. So that just sent him spiraling even further.
But yeah-
Alice: Mm …
Bex: um, the, the whiplash of like-
Alice: I mean, I don’t know how we missed it. They were so awkward together,
Bex: but sure. They were so awkward after that, like, that first call that they had. Um-
Alice: Like, Buck, who can literally, like, flirt with a guy getting a tapeworm pulled out of his ass- … was awkward to a woman, and Bobby was just like, “Oh, yes, this seems fine.”
Ellen: Yeah, that was a funny episode. Uh, both the tapeworm and the one where they were flirting over the… Um, sorry, awkwardly-
Alice: Awkward over the fish, yeah
Ellen: … avoiding each other at the fish market thing.
Bex: Well, it wasn’t … Lucy wasn’t avoiding him. No. She had … Because she, she was just like, “Okay, dude. You know, we kissed in a bar. That’s fine.” She didn’t realize that he had a girlfriend.
Alice: No.
Bex: So Buck was the one who was spiraling and was avoiding her because there was a couple of times he would be like, “Oh, yes. Sorry, Fire- Firefighter [00:45:00] Donato,” and she’s going like, “Dude, what the fuck?”
Alice: Yeah. Yeah.
Bex: I liked Lucy. I … They did her-
Alice: I liked Lucy
Bex: she, she had such potential, and then the show just didn’t know what to do with her.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. I think they were with too many … They’ve got too many characters, um, to, you know, have fully fledged backstories for, so we just never got anything for Lucy.
Bex: I don’t, I don’t need a fully fledged backstory. Like, we got … And I think we got enough sort of in the snippets to sort of paint a picture of who Lucy Donato is. I just wish they’d done shit with her.
Alice: Yeah. We weren’t asking for “Lucy Begins”. We were just …
Bex: Yeah, like, we … She comes in, and she’s set up as this, you know, badass Buck 1.0 female version. She comes in. She does the speed rescue. Um, she catches the woman falling out of the window, and we get, through Lucy, to see what it’s [00:46:00] like to kind of be in the 118 but not be part of the A-Team. So, you know, what is it like if you have to work with these people-
Alice: Yeah. She wasn’t invited to family dinner, but she was there.
Bex: Yeah. Like, you see them having family dinner, but you’re sitting on the other side of the loft. And then they slowly start to sort of welcome her into the 118. Um-
Ellen: Mm-hmm
Bex: … I just … Yeah. I, I just, I really wish that they had worked out a way, worked out something to do with her to sort of keep her, To be, rather than just sort of having those two big episodes and then she’s just there.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. Does she hang around for the next season?
Alice: Oh no, she’s, like she-
Bex: I’m not gonna say …
Alice: I’m pretty sure sh- okay.
Bex: Honestly ’cause I can’t remember exactly what happens with her story arc and like when shit happens, so, um.
Ellen: Okay. Well, I mean, at the end she was there with the team.
Bex: She’s part of the big, like Avengers Assemble [00:47:00] march at the end of the episode.
Ellen: Yeah,
Bex: yeah.
Alice: Oh, she is? Yeah.
Bex: But honestly-
Ellen: So they haven’t transferred her out yet … we need Eddie back.
Bex: Like Eddie’s back, so her days are numbered.
Ellen: Yeah, I got that impression. Poor Lucy. Yeah, she kind of also got the raw deal in this, um, season. Right, did we go through all of the characters?
Alice: Um, lucky last is Jonah.
Bex: We probably do have to mention Jonah ’cause he was in quite a few episodes.
Alice: “Monday”.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Um, so yeah, called Jo- uh, called Monday because they go through, um, replacements, like temps so quickly, and he’s just the temp for Monday. And then he sort of sticks around, and just when Hen’s starting to think that he’s okay, he ends up transferred and then they find out that he
Bex: Well, he ends up transferred because Chim comes back
Alice: Yeah
Bex: But then because he only, he only ends up going to like the 133, and the 133 is like their sister [00:48:00] house because everybody goes to the 133.
Like Kevin was at the 133, Albert’s at the 133. Um, they always, th- their houses must be pretty close ’cause they always seem to be on calls together. So we don’t get rid of him unfortunately. Um
Ellen: Yeah, it was funny watching through his stuff for the first time because at first it felt like Hen was just being kind of mean to him because she didn’t want to…
She was missing Chim, so she didn’t want to bring anybody else in, in his place. And, and all Jonah wanted was for Hen to like him. But obviously once you find out by the end, like what he’s actually doing, uh, it’s a different story.
Bex: See, I thought that that, they did that really well because yeah-
Ellen: Yeah, no I-
Bex: they got the, the, the Hen-
Ellen: I, I had no idea …
Bex: yeah, like Hen, it’s easy to write Hen’s distrust of him off [00:49:00] as she only wants Chimney. She doesn’t want any other partner. Um- Yeah … but there’s also the, you know, there’s something, there’s some gut reaction to him that she can’t explain, but he just rubs her the wrong way, and then you realize what it is because he’s got like this sociopathic tendency, his need to be a hero, and he will do need for glory almost.
And then they fumbled it because then they decided at some point halfway through hero complex, no, he’s not trying to be a hero, he’s trying to be God. And all of us are sitting there going, “Where the fuck did the God stuff come from?” Yeah. ‘Cause that’s not the storyline you were setting up.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And then they go, “Well, you know, rather than just having him be a, like a serial killer paramedic, we need him to go like full psycho and kidnap Hen and Chim and torture them.”
Uh, it, there, there’s no way that that storyline’s gonna end in any way other than s- one or both of them dying, but we’re just gonna do it because it’s [00:50:00] drama.
Alice: Yeah, it was weird.
Bex: It was, it was such a interesting storyline, and then they just went for the drama for drama’s sake and ruined it.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, it got overdramatic.
Alice: Like this show is nothing but not overdramatic, so.
Bex: But then there’s these little glimpses of like, gold. I know, that’s the problem And then you, you go, and then you go digging for gold, and then you discover it’s fool’s gold, and you’re going, “But this is useless.”
Alice: Um, anyway, yeah, so he was arrested. Bobby felt bad because he didn’t s- like, he thought that he should’ve known that Jonah was a murderer.
Bex: Which then led to the, this, the relapse storyline or suspected relapse storyline.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Which, as I said, made sense in this context. It would make sense that the stress of what happened with Jonah and what happened with Hen and with Chim would send Bobby spiraling and probably reaching for the drink.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: It j- it just got cheapened because [00:51:00] they did a similar thing last season.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: For me anyway
Ellen: Yeah, we spoke about that last week. But yeah, it’s a shame that that’s the way they went with it. No, it’s not a shame because yes, it did make sense this time, but it was a shame that we’d already been there kind of thing and in a, in a less, um, believable way previously.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: So I ho- I hope Jonah never comes back. We d- didn’t we decide that he was never m- actually making it to jail, he was gonna be disappeared along the way? But, um- Yeah … hopefully there’s no-
Bex: Yes, I think we decided that Athena was going to do something and he was never actually gonna make it to jail.
Ellen: Yeah.
Um, the, my, my hope for the next season is that we don’t get like a Jeffrey style, um, you know, resurgence of Jonah in the next season. ‘Cause I don’t really wanna see him again. Uh,
Bex: I can neither confirm nor deny. [00:52:00] You know, I mean, you know this show, they love to bring back their people.
Ellen: They do, and he was a convincing character up until the, his halfway through his final episode, so.
Bex: Yes. So what did Ellen think was gonna happen this season?
Ellen: Oh, God. Well, I predicted that this prediction segment was terrible. That’s- … that’s not changed.
Bex: Um, you predicted that, um, that Maddie was gonna be fine because there was, you know, post-natal depression, but she’s getting help for that. Um, I don’t think it-
Ellen: Well, that was a big mistake.
Alice: I’m just laughing at Ellen saying, “I don’t know what’s gonna happen with Ana. I guess I know they break up at some point, ’cause you already told me there was a breakup scene where he keeps getting her name wrong.” We still don’t know what her name is. Sorry, Ana. You had to leave because no one [00:53:00] knew what your name was.
Ellen: Well, I got this one right. Buck and, uh, B- Bobby and Athena will continue to do Bobby and Athena things.
Alice: Yep. They sure did.
Ellen: Turns out that was right.
Bex: Um, I do like this, this little part, which was, um, if Buck and Taylor are together at the beginning of the season, Eddie is not gonna be approving of that and there’s gonna be tension with Taylor. I don’t think Eddie and Taylor had a scene together this season.
Alice: I don’t think Eddie remembered that Taylor existed this season.
Ellen: That, that treasures, that treasure episode- Oh, no, no … was like the one episode where they actually did something together, and that was last season, right?
Bex: Oh, no, no, no. No. Yeah. Sorry. I do tell a lie. Buck and Taylor went over to Eddie’s for dinner when Eddie was dispatch, because Eddie, ’cause there was that whole thing where Taylor, um, ate before-
Ellen: Oh, yeah
Bex: … they went to dinner because Buck had told her that Eddie was a terrible cook, except that-
Alice: Oh my God, that’s right. That’s right.
Bex: And they had that whole discussion of like, “I’m not a terrible cook. I just never had time to cook, and now I have plenty of time to [00:54:00] cook and I’m getting better.” So okay, they had one, they had one scene together all season, and-
Alice: Oh, it was kinda tension-y, yeah …
Bex: there, there wasn’t … But it wasn’t tension with-
Ellen: It wasn’t tension, it was just embarrassing …
Bex: Taylor, it was tension with-
Alice: No …
Bex: with Buck and-
Alice: Buck and Eddie …
Bex: because Buck was, it was the Buck and Eddie tension.
Alice: Um, you also hoped that Hen continued with med school, and they continued with the fostering. Um, yep, sure. Allegedly that’s what they’re doing. I guess
Ellen: they, they dropped that. They kind of dropped that.
Bex: And Chris will continue to be adorable, which you nailed that one.
Alice: You sure did.
Ellen: Mm-hmm. Although we didn’t see Chris heaps in this season.
Bex: Well, we had the whole Christmas-
Alice: No, he, he went all the way to Texas and didn’t even get seen.
Bex: No, no, no. We ha- we had him being, like, the, the Christmas, um, the Christmas Nazi, where, you know, the Christmas tree had to have the perfect ratio of cranberries and popcorn on the strands, and the tree had to be perfect.
Alice: The [00:55:00] Christmas … Well, it is his day.
Bex: Because he was trying to deal with Shannon’s death around the time of Christmas, and Eddie had just been kidnapped, and there was a whole thing, and that’s what, um, spurred Eddie to move to dispatch because Chris was freaking out over a gingerbread house that he smashed. And Eddie went, “Well, the, the absolute perfect reaction to that is quit my job.”
Alice: Yeah. Not talk to my child, just quit my job.
Ellen: Oh, that’s right.
Bex: Or, you know, send my child to more therapy. It’s like, “I’m gonna quit my job,” and then Chris is going, “Why the fuck did you quit your job?”
Ellen: Yeah. I didn’t realize that-
Bex: “I didn’t want you to quit your job”
Ellen: that, um, yeah, I didn’t realize that Eddie went to dispatch so late in the season because- Yeah … that was, like, episode 10.
Bex: Yeah, it was the second-
Ellen: Yeah, okay …
Bex: yeah, it was the second half of the season. He did, like, they, they did Christmas, and the very last thing they did before they went on hiatus was Eddie saying, ” I’m leaving the 118.”
Ellen: Yeah, that’s right. And then
Bex: it was, like- And they were
Ellen: in that weird- …
Bex: Christmas- …
Ellen: outside Christmas party …
Bex: three-month break.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Three-month break, and everyone’s going, “Oh my God, what’s happening with Eddie? Is Ryan [00:56:00] leaving the show?” Um-
Ellen: Yeah, that’s cruel.
Alice: Yeah, Chris being like, “I didn’t ask you to, to quit your job. I’ve been talking to Grandpa, and we’re both really embarrassed to say that you handle Twitter rather than fight fires,” but, you know.
Um, all right. Let’s get into bests, best and worst. Just pull the Band-Aid off.
Bex: Okay.
Alice: Um, best episode, I think we’re all already in agreeance here. Like, I don’t even think we need to discuss it, but I think the best episode was “May Day”.
Bex: It’s M- it’s “May Day”. Yes.
Alice: It’s “May Day”. Like it, it’s, it’s, like that, it’s, it’s just what it is.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, “May Day” was e- exciting, like excellent tension and, you know-
Alice: We had a great time with “May Day”, yeah …
Ellen: from every side. Every, every part of it was, um, tense and kind of good. Whereas every other episode we looked at in the list, it’s like, okay, this one had good moments like, [00:57:00] um, like I’m scrolling through trying to find one that I liked now.
Like I, I thought that the, um, “Brawl in Cell Block 9-1-1” was a great idea. Like it, it worked like in- When I watched it I enjoyed it, apart from one character.
Bex: Lucifer?
Ellen: Um, yeah. But, but there were just parts of it that then fell down that we didn’t like, like the ending for example, where we didn’t understand why he…
Like did he want to actually be known for doing this, or did he just want to die so they could take his heart? And, uh, anyway. The whole, like the- That, let’s not go into that again … yeah. But yeah. Yes. I just, the beginning part of that was exciting.
Bex: There was just the ending. Yeah, so many episodes where there were parts of the episode that were good.
Like, um, “Fear-O-Phobia”. Yeah. There were part, like the whole second part with Eddie was really good. The spiders and all of the other mini-emergencies at the beginning of the episode, terrible. Hated it. Um-
Ellen: [00:58:00] Yeah …
Bex: so I, like I liked that part of that episode and there are so many episodes that you can say, that I can say that like, I like this scene, I like this storyline.
But “May Day” is the only one. And like we ripped it to shreds when we watched it. There were so many stupid things that happened, but it’s one of the few episodes this season that start to finish I can enjoy and that I will go back and re-watch. Um, I just- Yeah … might have to switch my brains off at certain points. Um,
Alice: Um, okay. If, so obviously we’re all, it’s unanimous that “May Day” is the best episode. Yeah. If we took “May Day” out of the equation, do you have- … an, a second favorite? We don’t even have to say best. We don’t even have to say second best, just what episode did you like aside from “May Day”?
Ellen: Well, I, I was gonna say “Boston”, but I don’t actually like- Bos- … watching that because it’s so sad.
Bex: See-
Alice: Boston’s my favorite too.
Ellen: But it is-
Bex: I think-
Ellen: It’s a great episode …
Bex: if you’re going for-
Ellen: It’s well done
Bex: [00:59:00] well-written, well-acted, good storyline episodes that work from start to finish, then it has to be “Boston”. But that’s not a 9-1-1 episode.
Alice: No, I was just so happy- Because- … to see Chimney and Maddie again.
Bex: Bec- Because-
Alice: And I love the bit where they’re, like, circling each other, and we’re like, Oh my God- Yes … we know they’re in the same place, but they don’t know that they’re in the same place.
Bex: And they keep crossing paths, but they don’t realize they’re crossing paths. It’s-
Alice: Yes …
Bex: it’s, it’s like it’s, it’s a filler episode. It’s, it’s the 2020’s equivalent of a clip show, where they’ve given the rest of the cast the day off, so they- Yeah … can just do, um, these two characters.
Alice: And yet it’s so good. Um,
Bex: it is good, but it’s, like, 9-1-1 for me is the ensemble. It’s the-
Alice: Yes
Bex: … the 118 responding to emergencies and having their own personal shit in the background. That’s not what “Boston” is really. So it’s a good episode, but because it doesn’t fit the theme of the show overall, it, it can’t be my favorite episode this season. That’s why it has [01:00:00] to be “May Day”.
Alice: Oh, okay. What’s… Yeah, yeah. Mm. But if we took “May Day” out…
Bex: Then it would have to be “Boston”.
Because I can’t- Goodness me … I can’t think of another epi-
Alice: As, as we’re unanimous that “May Day”‘s 100, “May Day”‘s the best episode of the season. But yes, is there- Yes … one, like, second, it has to be “Boston”.
Ellen: Uh. Yeah. I quite liked, um, this, the Speed emergency. Like, the- That was funny … episode 11, the “Outside Looking In” episode was great up until the part where they finished that Speed emergency. Everything after that was terrible. Because it’s like, it’s Lu- it’s Lucy and Buck.
Bex: But see, again, again, it’s one of those episodes, like, I loved the Speed emergency, I loved the introduction of Lucy, and then the rest of the episode fell down.
Alice: So- I love, I still, I, I know we said this in the episode, but I love the Speed Eme- Emergency because they poke fun of it. They’re not trying- Yeah … to be serious. They’re literally like, “Ha ha, we’ve seen that movie too.”
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: And that’s why it [01:01:00] works, because if they were just like, “Oh, we’re doing the thing from Speed,” it was like, yeah, yep.
Bex: And taking themselves incredibly seriously.
Alice: Yep. But yeah, the fact that they camp it up, I’m like, “Yes, excellent, good.”
Bex: But even within itself it’s still just, like, it’s a good emergency for this show.
Alice: It is. Because you’ve got the-
Bex: Yeah,
Alice: it’s perfect for this show. Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. Yeah. They’ve got the tension.
Ellen: It’s exciting.
Bex: You’ve got the- Yeah. It’s a good introduction for Lucy. Um-
Ellen: It’s a daring rescue.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: The stake- the stakes are high. Like, you know, they- Stakes
Alice: are high.
Bex: Yes …
Ellen: if they get it wrong, it’s all gonna go exploding.
Bex: But then the rest of the episode doesn’t live up to the Speed emergency, so, like, unfortunately I can’t say that I like the “Outside Looking In” as a favorite.
If I were re-watching season five, I’d probably watch that part and then skip to the next episode
Alice: I mean, that’s the one with Eddie, like, getting ready for his new job too, isn’t it? It’s not a terrible episode, but yeah. It’s probably third good.
Bex: Third good? [01:02:00]
Alice: Third good.
Ellen: It’s, it’s in third place?
Alice: Yeah. Third place. Um, all right, worst episode. Oh.
Bex: “Desperate Measures”. Has to be.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: that’s the one with Jeffrey?
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: That’s the, that’s the final part of the, the season opener- Yeah … and it’s the one that it’s just Jeffrey has taken Harry, and they’re trying to find him, and they go to the, um- And Athena shoots him
Ellen: 18 times.
Bex: Yeah. It’s, it’s all Athena hunting for Jeffrey, pretty much, that entire episode. And they’re-
Alice: It’s all cop stuff, and we just, we don’t get, we’re very publicly-
Bex: It’s all cop stuff
Alice: … yeah, we’re very publicly on, like I, I don’t care about the cop stuff. If I, when I want to watch cop stuff, I watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine.
Which I just started watching again because they moved it off Netflix to Stan finally, and I’m like, “Yes, excellent,” so I’ve started watching it again. Um, and yeah, ’cause those characters are fleshed out and, like … So when I want copaganda, I watch Brooklyn [01:03:00] Nine-Nine.
Ellen: Yeah, but at least it’s supposed to be funny.
Alice: When I w- Yeah, exactly. Yeah, like I understand that 9-1-1 is about the first responders, but I just don’t care about the cop stuff.
Bex: Especially when, I think it’s the culmination of, it was almost like they were doing a Criminal Minds episode, trying to do Criminal Minds with Jeffrey. Yeah. And you know, he’s, he’s getting his, the, like, the woman, his patsy that he was using, and then he kills her, and then he kills Lou, and then Lou’s, like, half dead, half alive and can’t talk-
Alice: Lou’s not dead, yeah
Bex: and, yeah. If I wanted to watch Criminal Minds, I would watch Criminal Minds.
Alice: Literally.
Bex: Like- I watch 9-1-1 for the, the first responders responding to emergencies.
Alice: I like camp, but camp can be done so wrong, and then it tries to take itself, like the show tries to take itself seriously. It’s like, “Can you not?”
Um, I just reached down to pat Hudson and didn’t realize he was yawning, and so just got [01:04:00] like my hand in his mouth and was like, “Why are you so wet?”
Bex: There are so many episodes this season that, like as we said, there’s like a good part and then there’s crappy parts. But I think for me, “Desperate Measures” is the one episode where the entire episode is crappy parts. Yeah. And there is no redeeming part in that episode for me. Like, like,
Alice: oh my God, what, like she shoots him like 12 times and then is like, “Make sure he doesn’t die.” it’s like, well, maybe you shouldn’t have shot him 12 times, Athena. If you wanted him to survive, don’t shoot him in the face 1,300 times. But at least,
Bex: at least “Desperate Times” we get like the callback to the animals in the zoo, and the, the using the llamas as-
Alice: The zoo stuff was fun. That was, yeah. It was good
Bex: um, as velociraptors was kind of funny. So th- there’s- Yeah … parts of that episode. I just, I can’t see that in “Desperate Measures”.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: I was gonna say “Ghost Stories” because, just because it’s overwhelmingly- Ooh … meh. Like nothing interesting happens in that [01:05:00] episode at all. We’ve got like Harry struggling with, you know, go- he goes to the place where Jeffrey took him before.
Alice: Yeah, and like falls through the floor or whatever.
Ellen: Yeah. And then we’ve got like, we’ve got Eva coming back, and Karen like going to see her and stuff. I’m just like, “What?”
Bex: The Taylor and Lou Ransone part was kind of funny though, where they’re both trying to solve-
Alice: That was, yeah. Yeah. That’s true.
Bex: They were trying-
Ellen: Maybe that was the one redeeming feature of this whole episode.
Bex: But yeah, otherwise, yes, “Ghost Stories” again, bad, but at least I can point to, oh, but like Taylor and Lou coming at the, coming at the problem from two different angles, getting two different answers, yet both being right, is still kind of funny.
Um, even if it was very much we’ve cut an entire storyline and we need to just make shit up to fill time.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: It was at least entertaining filler. Um.
Ellen: All right. What are we up to [01:06:00] here?
Bex: Favorite characters for Season 5.
Alice: Taylor Kelly.
Bex: Gee, there’s a surprise. Although it is actually a surprise because it’s normally Maddie and/or Chim are your favorites, so.
Alice: Oh, I was going like favorite character besides the 118.
Bex: Ah, okay. Well-
Alice: Um, Maddie also wasn’t in it enough.
Bex: True. True. Okay.
Alice: Um, Buck, you know, we support women’s rights and wrongs. I do not support men’s rights and wrongs. Um, so yeah, probably Taylor Kelly.
Bex: All right.
Ellen: All right.
Alice: Also Chimney- That’s allowed … ’cause like he, he did great. Um, even if he did slam Jee’s hand in the door.
Bex: And punch Buck.
Ellen: That’s right.
Alice: Well, look, this season, I think we all wanted to punch Buck a little bit.
Bex: Buck had it coming. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. Taylor probably like high-fived him on the way out.
Bex: Uh, Ellen, who was your favorite character? You can say one of the 118. [01:07:00]
Ellen: Okay. Uh, well, no, I was gonna s- I was actually gonna say Eddie this time. Because I’m, I’m gonna steal your, um, dude for a second and say He had, um, he, he had great sto- like, character development this season. Um, he looked amazing while he did it.
And-
Alice: Yeah, but his suit jacket didn’t fit, Ellen
Bex: Except for the fucking suit jacket. I mean, there was one-
Ellen: Except for that …
Bex: one s- one scene. Two scenes? Mm. One scene.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Two scenes.
Ellen: And-
Bex: But, yeah …
Ellen: the rest of the time he was wearing, like, the, um, dispatch outfit, which did look very good. And um-
Bex: No, no, he didn’t wear the dispatch. He was wearing his, um, uh, LAFD uniform.
Ellen: Yeah, the LAFD. Yeah, but it’s not his usual thing, so yeah.
Alice: It’s not the turnouts.
Bex: Yep.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: His dispatch outfit.
Bex: It’s, it’s not, not turnouts. Although it would’ve been fun if they’d put him in the, the dispatch shirt. [01:08:00]
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But-
Ellen: Yeah …
Bex: anyway.
Ellen: The only down- the only sort of thing that I didn’t really like about it was that, um, the way he, like, got back from the first emergency and then immediately broke up with Ana, who’d just been looking after his kid for, like several days. That was the point when we all wanted to slap Eddie. But um-
Bex: No, it, it was-
Ellen: After that- Yeah … after that it was uphill from there.
Bex: But I think we kind of all saw it coming. Like, Eddie Diaz is a, a menace to women, should not be allowed anywhere near women. Um-
Alice: Mm-hmm. No. Or walls.
Ellen: You can’t let him near a wall. He’ll just run straight into it.
Bex: Punch holes in it.
Ellen: He just g- he did actually punch a hole in the, in the glass wall in the, you know, with the fire extinguisher.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Yes. Very dramatic. But that was to get Terry [01:09:00] out, so, you know, there was-
Ellen: Yeah, he kicked some ass in that episode … he had m- It was great …
Bex: He did.
Ellen: How about you, Bex? Are you sticking with your usual E- Eddie?
Bex: It’s-
Ellen: Or changing it up?
Bex: I’m, I’m gonna change it up this season. Because like it would be- Ooh … Eddie because I love, I love me, I love me Eddie Diaz. Um, but this season I’m gonna say Lucy Donato. I know she’s like a minor character.
Alice: Oh, fair.
Bex: Oh. But like Arielle is gorgeous.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: She’s age appropriate. She’s … Um, like the, the character of Lucy was such a cool character and it, it, it’s not her fault that the writers had no idea what to do with her. She had such potential. Um, the little bits we got of, from her were amazing. I would have loved for them to actually done something with her character.
But what little that we got, and I know we were all making fun of her [01:10:00] toward the end of the season, like, “Oh, it’s the 118 and Lucy.” Um, but I really did- Poor Lucy, yeah. I really did like Lucy’s character. I wish that they had done more with her. I would have liked to have seen them do more with her. Um, so she gets my…
I was very excited when we got to s- we got to the S- Lucy’s, we got to the Lucy episodes, so she gets my favorite for season five.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Cute.
Bex: Eddie’s very close second.
Ellen: Yeah, sorry Buck, you’re being knocked off your pedestal this, uh- Actually, I don’t know if any, any of us usually pick Buck- I don’t think he’s- Or if we, we normally pick like Chim or Like Eddie.
Bex: I think, I don’t think I’ve picked Buck once.
Alice: Mine’s always Buck and Jim, and Maddie. Okay. But this, like, Maddie wasn’t in it enough. Still love Maddie. Um-
Bex: Right … Taylor Kelly.
Alice: And like she’s, she, like Taylor’s not coming back so she needs her moment, okay?
Ellen: [01:11:00] Okay.
Bex: Oh, absolutely.
Alice: We’ll let, we’ll definitely let you have Taylor.
Bex: I don’t, I don’t think anybody could have listened to our episodes about season five and questioned why you were saying Taylor. I think that’s a very obvious choice for you for this season. But yes, least favorite, um-
Ellen: Least favorite characters and why is it Claudette?
Alice: Huh.
Bex: Literally.
Alice: Yes.
Bex: Literally.
Literally.
Alice: That’s about it.
Ellen: I mean- Yeah … I’ll give Jonah an honorable mention, but he was like, uh, made out to be-
Bex: But see, I-
Ellen: … the baddie, like ticks me-
Bex: I liked Jonah’s storyline. Like, he was, he was set up to be a bit of, he was set up to be annoying, he was set up to be a foil for Hen, and then they had the, his actual storyline where he became a bad guy, but I liked that. Claudette was just a cunt from the start.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. And we, we never, we [01:12:00] never got anything beside that from her.
Alice: Like, oh no, she had trauma. So did fucking everyone else. Like, why is, why are you special, bitch?
Bex: And the, like the trauma didn’t explain or, it, the only thing the trauma did was explain her reaction when the office was on fire.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: It didn’t explain why she was harassing May. And I know that, like-
Ellen: Yeah, and then they humanized her right at the end where they were saying, “Oh, she had like a, a family and you know, she was a normal person.” It’s like yeah, but she was still a bitch. So.
Bex: And I think that was, like partially that was because we were seeing her through May’s perspective. Like, we were-
Ellen: Yeah …
Bex: we felt we didn’t like Claudette because May didn’t like Claudette. They just did far too good a job. Yeah. Because everybody f- And the actress did such a good job that we all fucking hated her.
Ellen: Yeah. Yes, apologies to, to the actress. Uh-
Bex: [01:13:00] Yes …
Ellen: you did a great job-
Alice: Oh, she did a fantastic job
Ellen: at getting us to hate you
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Like I felt like I was getting bullied just watching her.
Alice: Yeah. All
Bex: right. So we’re u- we’re unanimous that we all hated Claudette this season. Excellent. Yeah. Um- Yeah,
Ellen: I’m just trying to think of who el- Like Jeffrey, hon- honestly, but he was, he was such a cartoon baddie that, um-
Alice: Blegh.
Bex: But see the-
Ellen: Ugh …
Bex: yeah.
Ellen: I, I hated Claudette worse.
Bex: Yes And I don’t, like I don’t think I really hated Jeffrey himself. I just hated the storyline that he was associated with and the way that it kept dragging on and on. He was just kind of there. Um-
Ellen: Mm. He just kept coming back … whereas- No, I didn’t, I didn’t like him at all, but-
Bex: But we were h- Yeah we all had very emotional reactions to Claudette. Yeah.
Ellen: That yes.
Bex: Yeah. [01:14:00] Okay. And wrapping up the best and worsts of Season 5, um, did anybody have a favorite emergency or rescue or call that happened this season? Oh, I forgot
Ellen: about this. Um-
Alice: Speed.
Bex: It kind of has to … I, yeah, the speed one-
Alice: Yeah …
Bex: is, is prob- is a pretty good one.
Alice: Like speed followed by, um, the whole of like the “May Day” stuff, like Bobby going in to save his kid.
Ellen: Yeah, the fire. Yes. The dispatch fire in total was pretty, pretty good. Like that, like that whole … Obviously we’ve already decided it’s our favorite episode, but um, that whole emergency was really well put together.
Bex: Yeah. I’m just doing a quick scan-
Ellen: I don’t think there’s any-
Bex: to see if-
Ellen: Yeah, me too, but I, the, noth- … A lot of the other ones were just like, mm.
Bex: They’re like little ones that were based on the theme of the episode, and they’re like [01:15:00] nothing really to, to kind of write home about.
Ellen: Oh, I was reading through the, the episodes and I was like, I got up to this bit where it says, “A meth lab in a retirement home explodes due to a faulty chandelier.” I’m like- Ugh … that is the most 9-1-1 sentence I have ever read in my life.
Alice: Yeah. Pretty much.
Ellen: So random.
Bex: Yes. I mean, it doesn’t really count as an emergency, but watching all of the animals being, sort of walking around, uh, Hollywood Boulevard was kinda cool.
Ellen: Yeah, that was cool. The llamas were pretty fun.
Bex: They, I mean-
Ellen: Or alpacas, whatever they were …
Bex: nobody, the, nobody does anything with the elephant, but it, it’s still, it’s a fun emergency just to … Especially as they’re, the 118 are walking through and, like, “Welcome to the Jungle” is playing, and all of these animals are in somewhere that they really shouldn’t be there.
Even though there’s- Yeah … no way possible that they could have walked from the zoo to Hollywood Boulevard. [01:16:00] But that’s fine. Visually it was cool. It’s, it’s a cool-
Ellen: Yeah, don’t need to ask questions about that
Bex: … it’s a cool v- it’s a cool visual for season five. But yeah, I think it has to be the speed emergency and-
Ellen: Yeah, the speed emergency was, like, the most dramatic and kind of high stakes in the whole season really. Even, even outside of the Jeffrey stuff. Which was quite high stakes because Harry was, like, kidnapped and tied up and whatever. But-
Bex: But then it was, it was high s-
Ellen: It just went on and on, and it was …
Bex: But it wasn’t … Like, nobody was doing anything. They were just trying to find him. There was no, like, rappelling off a ladder that’s moving at, you know, 55 miles an hour into the back of a truck, and then getting people up, and Buck having to jump and almost missing the ladder, and Lucy having to, like, haul him up by his underwear.
That kind of stuff that’s- Yeah. … that’s very different st- [01:17:00] very different.
Ellen: Yeah. Yes, very, very dramatic.
Bex: Uh, so from there, um- I don’t know if we can do this next segment. Uh, last season we brought, I brought in a segment of, like, the best and worst of the 9-1-1 calls from the season. Um, so I went through and had a look, like pulled all of the 9-1-1 calls from the various transcripts. Um-
Alice: Jesus …
Bex: there’s not that many of them, and they’re not that interesting. ‘Cause I think the reason that I did it for Season 4 was Season 4 seemed to be particularly bad for using the 9-1-1 calls as a transition point. Yeah. Yeah. So they were usually punny or some kind of joke. Um-
Ellen: I thought they did that in this season too, but yeah, looking through these, they’re, they’re not.
Bex: There’s-
Ellen: Like, I quite like the, um, “It’s my birthday and I think I just saw a dead guy.” Yeah. That’s quite, that’s quite cute.
Bex: But again, that’s like the second half of the season. [01:18:00] They started doing the, um, the f- the punny 9-1-1 calls. But they’re sort of very few and far between. So I pulled them all, so have a look through, see if there are any sort of stands out as being especially heinous.
Um, some of them are just, like, actual, like, 9-1-1 calls.
Alice: Yeah, a lot of them are just- Yeah … 9-1-1 calls
Ellen: Except Phyllis who’s like, “Hello, I think there’s a fire.”
Alice: Tch.
Bex: But again, like it’s not just a one-liner, it’s a full, like you couldn’t just pull- Yeah, it’s not … the one-liner. It was a full conversation.
Alice: Um, there was the Christmas one with the women fighting over the dude, and we’re still not sure why he, they were fighting over him.
Bex: Oh, the, “My husband was just hit by a trolley. He’s not your husband, he’s mine. You’re a liar. You’re a tramp.” Yeah.
Alice: Yeah, that’s it.
Ellen: Yeah, no, I think, I think the birthday one is [01:19:00] the only one. Oh, apart from like, “We have a Piper down. I repeat, a Piper is down.” Um, which makes-
Bex: That one’s kind of funny
Ellen: … no sense unless you know what the Yeah what’s actually going on. But, um- Yeah.
Bex: I, I think just for, um, the sheer delivery, I do like Ruth’s 9-1-1 call. Where, where she’s like her-
Ellen: Oh, yeah
Bex: … ’cause she’s so over it. And she’s like, “This is Ruth at the Gas N Sip.” And dispatch is like, “Oh, hi Ruth. You getting robbed again?” She’s like- … “It’s just my afternoon.”
I will always have a fond spot for Ruth and her 9-1-1 calls. Yeah. But yeah, I think-
Alice: Love the Gas N Sip.
Bex: Uh, yeah, I th- I think the birthday one is probably the, the best of the worst.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: There are some sort of interesting ones. Like the, the one from Brawl on Cell Block 9-1-1 is interesting, which is, like it’s a different [01:20:00] phone that rings, and there’s all the code words, and Josh has to like recite code words back. Oh, yeah. Um, so that’s like interesting. But again, it’s sort of interest- it’s a 9-1-1 call as part of the story.
It’s not a, a transition or a pun or a joke or something. You’re just like, “Dude, you can’t open a 9-1-1 call by saying, ‘I just saw a dead guy.’”
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: And it’s your birthday.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Okay, so f- continuing sort of- bests and worsts. Um, let’s tr- uh, it’s not really a transition, but I’m gonna make it a transition. Um, we’re gonna transition over to Fuck, Marry, Kill. Um, and then we can also use this as a segue into our listener feedback, which we brought up earlier in the episode but never actually got into.
Um, so I have my suggested Fuck, Marry, Kill for Season Five, but friend of the podcast Pigeon has also [01:21:00] provided some alternative Fuck, Marry, Kills. Um- So let’s start with my more serious Fuck, Marry, Kill, and then we’ll do rapid fire Pigeon’s Fuck, Marry, Kills. Okay. So for, to remind everybody the rules for my, my very serious Fuck, Marry, Kills is it has to be a character from Season Five who is new to the season, so they can’t have appeared before.
This has to be their debut season, and they have to be, like, a recurring character. So it doesn’t really count if it’s just a one-off, one-off episode character. Um, so your- Mm-hmm … Fuck, Marry, Kill contenders for Season Five are Lucy Donato, Jonah Greenway, and Claudette Collins. Go.
Ellen: Oh, my God.
Alice: Okay. So while Ellen’s thinking, I have to kill Jonah because- Mm
I can’t kill a woman. Um, w- so kill Jonah. Fuck Claudette so that I only have to see her once. It’s [01:22:00] fine. Um, and she’d probably be okay with out of work, ’cause, like, she did have a husband and kids, so. Um, and then marry Lucy.
Bex: Interesting Uh, I’m, I was with you with Jonah. Have to kill Jonah, not because, like I’m perfectly okay with killing a woman. Um, I just- I don’t want anything to do with Jonah. Yeah. Like, it was a good storyline, but I, no thank you. Um-
Ellen: No, he’s-
Bex: But- …
Ellen: a bit of a psycho
Bex: Um, but I’m gonna switch the order. So I’m gonna fuck Lucy and marry Claudette. Um, mostly ’cause I think Claudette would make a good wife. I think she would run a very tight ship at home. Um, she’d have everything-
Alice: Yeah, I couldn’t deal with that.
Bex: I think as long as, as long as she doesn’t, like she’s not seeing the potential in you and wanting you to do better and sort of bullying you as a way of like supporting and mentoring you, [01:23:00] she’s probably okay in the home. Um, Lucy doesn’t wanna get married, so marrying her would just be a recipe for disaster.
She gives off very much she just wants casual, so I’m quite happy. Like, it’ll be, I’m not saying I’ll fuck her once. I’m quite happy to like continue fucking her. Like a long-term hookup. Yeah, I don’t think that’s the game.
Alice: I’m pretty sure it’s a one, one time thing. That’s it.
Bex: Okay, that’s fine. Like, fuck Lucy ’cause I think it’d be a great night. Um, and she doesn’t wanna get married, so like I, marry Claudette doesn’t mean I have to touch her. She just, we can just- … have a sexless marriage. She can run the house and run the kids, that’s fine. Um, and yeah, uh, Jonah’s, Jonah’s out of there.
Alice: No, I’d do the washing and Claudette’d be like, “Oh, isn’t it great that I did the washing?” and I’d be like, “You didn’t even do the washing. What are you talking about?”
Bex: I, I do, I do think that Claudette would be very much there is a, a very specific way of doing things, and you do it her way or you [01:24:00] don’t do it at all. And if you do attempt to try and do something, she would be like huffing and rolling her eyes behind you, going back and doing what you just did.
Alice: Yeah. Can’t deal with that.
Bex: But but I would rather that than like, I don’t know what she’d be like in bed, whereas I think Lucy would be amazing in bed, so.
Alice: Yeah. Nice. That’s why I’m pinning her down. She’s changing just for me. Um, she just doesn’t wanna marry a man, okay? It’s fine.
Bex: No, no. Like if the man is Jonah anyway, then I 100% agree with you.
Ellen: Well, I can change the order again. ‘Cause I, I’m just, I’ll just kill Claudette ’cause she, she sucks. Um, marry Lucy, and in a very meta- metaphorical sense, fuck Jonah.
Bex: Yes. Love it. Okay. Oh God. Um, no, no, no. I love it. [01:25:00] I love it. It’s great. Um, okay.
Ellen: We have a bunch of ones that, that Pigeon sent us. Thank you, Pigeon. We love you. Um, we’ve got-
Alice: We may not love you after this game, but…
Bex: So no ex- You don’t have to explain. No explanation, just first answer that out of your head, um, off the top of your head.
Uh, so we’ve done Jonah, Lucy, Claudette. That’s fine. So here we go. Eddie’s PTSD, Bobby’s addiction, Buck’s and Plaid chronic pain
Alice: Marry Buck’s implied chronic pain, ’cause I live with chronic pain anyway.
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Alice: Um, fuck Eddie, Eddie’s PTSD, ’cause he’s kind of hot while he’s destroying stuff. Um, but kill Bobby’s addiction. Because I literally wanna kill Bobby’s addiction.
Ellen: Fair.
Alice: Not Bobby, just his addiction.
Bex: Yeah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna have to agree with you on this one. Yep. That’s, that’s the only logical choice.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, [01:26:00] Ellen, do you want to … Anything different?
Ellen: No, that sounds good to me.
Bex: Are you unanimous?
Ellen: Yep.
Bex: Okay. Uh, battle of the love interests: Taylor Kelly, Lucy Donato, Lena Bosco.
Alice: Kill Lena. Sorry, Lena. Fuck Lucy, and marry Taylor Kelly in a move that shocked no one ever. Still waiting.
Ellen: Yes. It’s all … Yeah.
Alice: Um, for the- Oh … the DM.
Bex: Oh, see, I’m torn s- ’cause I think I ha- I think I was … I think I had Lena as my f- as my fuck last time, like, we did this. Um, in fact, I think I had all three of them as, like, my fuck when we’ve done it for the respective seasons. Yeah. Can I just fuck all of them?
Ellen: Look, they’re all very attractive people. Like- … how can you go wrong? I don’t think that’s how the game works though.
Alice: No, that’s the whole point.
Bex: Okay, uh-
Alice: Gotta make the [01:27:00] hard calls.
Bex: Fuck Lena. All right, fuck Lena, marry Taylor, kill Lucy.
Alice: Wow.
Ellen: Wow. Yeah. I thought Lucy was your favorite.
Bex: She was, but- I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s Sophie’s choice here, okay?
Ellen: All right, I’m going on to the next one. We’ve got Fire Marshal Buck- … Dispatch Eddie, and Road Trip Chimney. In which case I will marry Road Trip Chimney because he has gone to the ends of the earth to find me, I guess. Um, uh, fuck Dispatch Eddie and kill Fire Marshal Buck because honestly, that, who wants to deal with that?
Alice: Like that’s fair, but I th- ugh. I th- I think I’m gonna have to fuck Fire Marshal Buck, marry Road Trip Chimney, and put Dispatch Eddie out of his misery. [01:28:00]
Ellen: He was pretty miserable while he was in dispatch.
Bex: Oh, um, I am marrying Fire Marshal Buck, I’m fucking Dispatch Eddie, and I am killing Road Trip Chimney.
Alice: Poor Road Trip
Ellen: Chimney.
Alice: Oh, wow. Um, all right. Next is shirtless pics of Kenny, Oliver, and Ryan. Um, sorry Ryan, I’m killing you. Marrying Oliver, and I think Ol- yeah, marrying Ol-
Bex: Okay, can I, can… I know this, this, this is incredibly autistic of me. Can we get clarification over which Oliver? Are we talking about like season four when he’s still somewhat twinkish?
Alice: I don’t care, I’d do twink Oliver and yeah, I-
Bex: Or are we going like Brick Shithouse season eight Oliver?
Alice: I’d, I’d marry either. I’m good with either. Um, and yeah, fuck Kenny.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: I feel like I have to say fuck Kenny just because it’s [01:29:00] like morally bankrupt of me to have anything to do with the other two just from an age gap. Um, I don’t know
Oh, okay
Ellen: Yeah, this is getting-
Bex: Shirtless pics of fuck Kenny
Ellen: … too close to real person fiction
Bex: Marry Ryan, um, kill Buck. Yeah. Kill Oliver.
Alice: Wow.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Mm.
Alice: All right, Ellen.
Ellen: Um, I don’t have a relationship with any of these people shirtless, so I’m just gonna s-
Alice: Oh, do you need an example? Hang on. Let me, um …
Ellen: You send me examples if you like. Um, ’cause I don’t, ’cause I don’t go on social media just to look at 9-1-1 stuff, so the only reference we have of this is, like, what’s happened in the show, and it’s mostly Kenny who gets shirtless in the show. So, so anyway.
Bex: No, no, no, we’ve had, we’ve had the shirtless Eddie because they, you know, had the, the ch- the heart thingies, like hanging [01:30:00] on by a wing and a prayer. Um-
Ellen: That was-
Bex: And- …
Ellen: a long time ago, though …
Bex: and we’ve had, uh, shirtless Buck in his twink era. I don’t think we’ve had it since, mostly ’cause he keeps getting fucking tattoos, and they’re sick of trying to airbrush them. Um- So we’ve, we have on the show seen all three of them shirtless.
Ellen: Yeah. Okay.
Bex: But you can, you can pass. You don’t have to answer the question.
Ellen: It’s, yeah, I, yeah.
Bex: We can move on to some p-
Ellen: I’m t- I’m too ace-spec for this question. Um, the-
Bex: Oh, did you have to pick the mustache pic? Jesus Christ.
Alice: Yes.
Ellen: Oh.
Alice: I thought it was funny.
Ellen: I don’t know. I haven’t seen that.
Alice: Um, also for some reason “What a Man” is playing in my head.
Ellen: Wow.
Alice: It’s really weird.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, the mustache is really not a good look. Anyway, um, we’ve got, um, bagpipes, St. Patrick’s Day snakes, or the [01:31:00] shillelagh staff thing that the guy was carrying.
Bex: Is that, that’s the-
Ellen: I don’t know. This is a weird, this is a weird kind of comparison to have to make, but okay. Fuck bagpipes.
Alice: Uh. The shillelagh is the walk- walking stick, club thing.
Ellen: It’s like a s- yeah.
Bex: Okay. Okay. Um, killing, killing the bagpipes.
Alice: Same.
Bex: I don’t even care. I’m killing the bagpipes. Um, probably, ooh, do I wanna be permanently stuck with- I’m fucking the snakes
Alice: and marrying the-
Bex: Marrying the shillelagh?
Alice: Shillelagh.
Bex: Yeah. Okay. I feel like the snakes would be okay short-term. So yeah. Yeah. Fuck the snakes, marry the shillelagh, ’cause it’s a stick. You could probably handle that for years on end.
Ellen: I was gonna say d- just fuck the shillelagh and like-
Alice: You could, you could l-
Ellen: Marry the snakes.
Alice: But you could lean on the shillelagh. You could really lean on them.
Ellen: Yeah. Oh, God.
Bex: Okay.
Ellen: Thanks [01:32:00] for this, Pigeon. Um,
Bex: fan- F- fandom can make them better, make them hornier, make them sadder. I, um-
Alice: This is too easy. I’m killing make them sadder.
Bex: Nope.
Alice: Um, fucking make them hornier-
Bex: Ooh
Alice: … and marrying make them better.
Ellen: No. No, fuck making them better.
Bex: No. As in fuck making them better is the same way we’re fucking Jonah, like negatively?
Yeah. Yeah.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: Yeah,
Ellen: we don’t want that. Um,
Bex: No, we don’t wanna make him better. Um,
Ellen: I- Marry making them hornier. And kill making them
Alice: sad.
Bex: I just wanna make them hornier. I don’t wanna make them- I wanna make them hornier. I w- that’s, that’s my option. Make them hornier.
Ellen: That’s your choice.
Bex: Make them s- make them sadder, and then have them resolve their sadness by getting horny. They will be not, they will not be getting better.
Ellen: Excellent. Perfect. That’s, that’s the show. That’s it.
Alice: Um, and then last is Boston, Los [01:33:00] Angeles, and Oklahoma. Honestly, don’t know where Oklahoma is.
Bex: Why Oklahoma?
Alice: No idea. Don’t know where Oklahoma is. So I’ll kill Oklahoma.
Bex: Why did Oklaho- Pigeon
Ellen: Do you mean the musical?
Alice: Um, fuck Los Angeles ’cause it’s fast. And then marry Boston.
Bex: Honestly, that’s what’s going through my head is like “Oklahoma where the blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.”
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. It’s- Um, s-
Alice: Oh, Chandler was there for a bit …
Bex: Pigeon, why Oklahoma?
Alice: Maybe it’s because Chandler Bing was there. Even Chandler Bing didn’t like it in Oklahoma. So yeah. I have a f- Kill Oklahoma, don’t even know where it is. Fuck Los Angeles, marry Boston.
Bex: I have a feeling I haven’t paid close enough attention to Pigeon’s comments and that they’ve talked about Oklahoma. Um, but-
Alice: Potentially …
Bex: sorry, no
Ellen: I don’t think so, but-
Bex: Potentially. I’m so sorry, Pigeon. I don’t understand this one, so um-
Ellen: LA is the only city on that list that I’ve been to, so I’ll count that as a marry? I don’t know. I don’t understand either. Um …
Bex: Okay. I, [01:34:00] I hope that, I hope, Pigeon, that you enjoyed, um, our responses to your fuck, marry, kills. I’m s- I’m kind of sorry to everybody else who had no idea what the hell was going on then. Um, feel free to, if you’re listening to this episode and you have your own thoughts on either the, the actual official fuck, marry, kill for this season, which is Lucy, Jonah, a- or Claudette, um, send us your choices and ex- and defend your choice.
Feel free to join in with the, um, with the other options as well. Yeah. I w- I would love to … And please, again, you don’t h- you don’t have to defend your choice of why you’re fucking the bagpipes and which way you’re fucking the bagpipes. Um, but if you are so inclined, we would love to hear your takes on these fuck, marry, kills.
Uh, meanwhile, we’re gonna move on. Um, I forgot to look at my list of background [01:35:00] firefighters who we met this season. I don’t know that we met anybody new.
Ellen: I feel like we did see a few new people early on maybe, but I don’t remember which episode it would have been.
Bex: Oh, God. Okay.
Ellen: So it doesn’t matter.
Bex: All right. I’m pulling up my list. Um, while I do that, we can discuss the vehicles that the, um, that got destroyed this season because once again-
Ellen: We only had one
Bex: … the 118 are irresponsible with their ladder trucks. Honestly, they should not be allowed to have ladder trucks. They, they are strictly an engine truck and rescue ambulances, and then they need to get the 133 to come with them if they need a ladder truck.
Alice: Like, why would you park it off a cliff like … Anyway.
Bex: Uh, okay. Did …
Ellen: Was it this-
Bex: Let’s see …
Ellen: was the one where the, um, the power lines fell on the truck, was that this season, or was that last?
Bex: No, that was “Jinx”. That was-
Ellen: Oh, yeah … season four. Okay, that was last season. [01:36:00]
Bex: Um, okay. I, I apologize to, um, to Julie because we met Julie this season.
Ellen: Oh, yeah, we did. She did get named.
Alice: Oh, we did do. Yeah.
Bex: We had the return of Boyd and Maxwell, so welcome back, fellas. And then we also had the introduction of Daniels, so.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Okay. We had a few new people.
Ellen: Yep. And they, they come and go too. Like, occasionally we see people in the background at the station house, but I don’t ever recognize any of them, so.
Bex: Oh, there’s always people, but yes, it’s- we very rarely, um, unless it’s background firefighter, but I haven’t, I haven’t spotted him since season four. Um, and then it, it’s very rarely that we actually get a close-up of their, the back of their turnouts so that we can see their [01:37:00] names.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: So But it’s always fun when I do Because inevitably Bobby will get their name wrong.
Ellen: Yeah, well, I was gonna say next season you, you need to write your story, right? So we find out what’s happening with the background people.
Bex: When we get there, yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: That brings us to, uh, other than you looking forward to the background firefighter fic as Alice and I desperately try to, uh, stop ourselves from, uh, killing ourselves ra- watching season six.
Um, or I should say we are distracting ourselves from how much we hate season six by writing the background firefighter fic. Um- Other than that, what else, what, what are your predictions? We do have your, um, predictions that you mentioned earlier in the episode, but is there anything else- Yeah … that you think is gonna happen in season six?
Have you, have [01:38:00] you seen any spoilers for season six? So is there anything coming up this season- No … that you know is gonna happen?
Ellen: No. Honestly, um, the only other things I know about what is going to happen in the se- in the series altogether is from, like, seven onwards. Like, uh-
Bex: Oh
Ellen: … and, and mo- and most of the stuff that, that I know about is, like, stuff from seasons, season eight or nine that have happened, like, recently. Um- Okay … so I don’t actually have any idea what’s coming in season six i- in terms of storylines.
Bex: Excellent.
Ellen: I know that Eddie will get another girlfriend at some point, but I don’t know h- if that is in the next season or if it’s in, you know, season seven.
And apart from that, I’m not expecting to enjoy any of the episodes because you guys keep saying how much you hate them.
Alice: Hey, look, at least now if you do enjoy them, you’ll be pleasantly surprised.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, that, that is kind of how it-
Alice: Yeah, it’s not like we’re like, “Yes, this, this season’s gonna be great,” and [01:39:00] then you watch it and you’re like, “What the fuck is wrong with them?”
Bex: I suppose, I suppose that’s true. We have lowered the bar so far-
Alice: So low …
Bex: that it can only-
Ellen: It can only be up from-
Bex: Go up from here …
Ellen: upwards from here? Yeah, like I was thinking that.
Alice: But, but guys, if, if you genuinely enjoy season six and it’s one of your favorite seasons, maybe just skip the podcast.
Ellen: No. No, don’t do that ’cause we’ll, we’ll be, like, um, hoping to hear from people as to what they actually did enjoy about episodes, I’m sure.
Bex: Yes, pl- please feel free to come in and, like, yeet me off my soapbox and climb up on it yourself and tell me how I am wrong with everything that I’m about-
Alice: Yeah, tell us why you like season six
Bex: … that I’m going to say about season six. There are, like, I think I’ve said this before, I probably have said this several times before. There are pa- it, like everything, there are parts of season six that I enjoy. There are some storylines that I enjoy. There are some ep- parts of [01:40:00] episodes that I enjoy. I just- Mm … have a feeling that it’s tipping more and more towards that’s the minority of the season.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: More so than season five
Ellen: How, how am I… I’m just checking. So we’ve got a whole 18 episodes in this season to-
Bex: Oh, God. Do we?
Ellen: to look forward to.
Bex: Okay.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: Aren’t you glad that we’re watching… I’m so, I, I, I feel bad, but I also am glad that we’re, this is not like a mid-’90s TV show with like 24 episodes per season.
Alice: I mean, maybe they would’ve let something good happen if they-
Bex: You think that if they’d had a full- Mm … a full, full season that they would’ve been able to write better shit?
Alice: Maybe.
Ellen: No, they would’ve just had more, um, shots of the trucks, like driving around LA.
Alice: Yeah, true.
Ellen: And like watching Buck climb a ladder for [01:41:00] like a full 20 seconds.
Alice: It’s, it’s just the, it’s just the Metal Gear Solid-
Ellen: Yeah
… thing again.
Bex: Oh, my God.
Ellen: Yep. Was that this season? I feel like that was this season.
Bex: No, that was last season ’cause that was- Oh, okay … the sniper episode. That was like “Suspicion”-
Ellen: It feels like it was just- … I think … the other day, but it was right at the end of the, of season four.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: So yeah, okay.
Bex: Yeah. Yeah, it was like everyone was getting shot and Buck’s, like Eddie’s shot, this person’s shot, and Buck’s like, “Well, it doesn’t, no one’s gonna care if I get shot, so I’ll climb this-
Ellen: Oh, that’s right …
Bex: endless ladder.”
Ellen: And that’s when Eddie was telling him he wasn’t d- you know, just disposable anymore.
Bex: Like, “You think that you’re expendable. You’re not expendable.” Yeah. “I’m gonna give you my kid.”
Alice: Yeah. “Here, have a child.” Yeah. “We’ll never talk about it again, but have a child.”
Ellen: And then they kissed. But also- Okay, no they didn’t. Speaking of making them kiss, um, are we gonna do another fan fiction episode to this season?
Bex: Well, I’ve already put out on Twitter and [01:42:00] on, um, Blue Sky asking for recommendations, so.
Ellen: Excellent. Okay. Uh- great …
Bex: we still have several from the last fan fic episode where I vetoed them because they had Jonah and Lucy in them. Um-
Ellen: Okay …
Bex: so those ones are now back on the table. Although, I think it would’ve been interesting perhaps to have had you read them and go like, “Wow, the fandom has really like taken this one OC and run with it.
Like, everybody’s got this one OC in their character, and he’s always the bad guy.”
Ellen: Right. Actually, that would’ve given it away, though. Like if I’d known-
Bex: Yes …
Ellen: that he was the bad guy-
Bex: Which is why- …
Ellen: before we met him. Yeah. Yeah, thank you for protecting me.
Bex: Which is why I vetoed all the fics-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: … with Jonah in them, ’cause I didn’t want you to just immediately meet Jonah and go, “Wait, all of the AUs have him as the bad guy. Why?”
Ellen: Yeah. No, that was good. Thank you.
Bex: So yeah, so there’s a couple more fics that I can, um, share with you now. But yeah, opening it up to [01:43:00] the, opening the floor again for more recommendations. Again No spoilers for Season 6 onwards in your fics. You can send through the recs, but I’m gonna go through and veto them before I give them to Ellen.
Just be aware. Yeah. I will read them and I will sit there going like, “Oh my God, we’ve gotta get through Season 6 so you can read this fic.” Um, but we
Ellen: won’t actually discuss it at this point. And, and we, we, we can say at this point, even though we are Buddie shippers, they don’t have to be Buddie fics. They can just be canon fics or whatever.
Bex: If you’ve got an amazing Chim/Maddie or, um, amazing Bathena fics, but I have a feeling that everyone who’s listening-
Alice: So when you said Chim, I thought you were about to ask for Chim/Bobby fics and I’m like, “Okay, sure.”
Bex: No. Jesus Christ. I’m sh- I’m sure they exist.
Alice: Oh, they do.
Bex: I, I just feel like the majority of our listeners are gonna be Buddie, are going to be reading mostly Buddie [01:44:00] fics, and that’s what we’re gonna get the most recommendations for.
But yeah, send us through anything as long as there’s no spoilers for Season 6 or later.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Please, yeah. So okay, we’re not really sure of the order yet as to when we’ll do the fan fiction episode. I don’t know if we wanna do that next or if we wanna start with Season 6 and then have a break partway in to, to talk about fanfic.
But, um, it might take me a couple of weeks to get through all these fics. Um, but what do we have to look forward to at the start of- … ep- of Season 6?
Alice: Not much.
Bex: Oh, that’s an interesting choice of words, but, the o- the summary that w- the promo summary that was sent out for the Season 6 premiere says, “When a blimp suffers mechanical failure and its engine catches fire, [01:45:00] Athena and the 118 must rescue victims both inside and outside a packed sports stadium. Bobby and Athena drop May off on her first day of college and discuss honeymoon plans,” that seems an interesting juxtaposition- “… while Maddie and Chim go to couples therapy.” And the episode is called “Let the Games Begin”.
Ellen: Okay. I can’t– When they were talked about going on honeymoon, like they had their cruise tickets already, I just assumed that was something-
Bex: Mm-hmm
Ellen: they were gonna do in the hiatus and w- they would come back and they’d been on that already. But I guess-
Bex: Oh, that would make sense, wouldn’t it? That, that would make perfect sense.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: But I guess it hasn’t happened that way.
Bex: No. Um, and the triggers for that episode, um-
Alice: Blimps. Bad TV It-
Bex: Oh, no, it literally says blimps. Like [01:46:00] the first one is- I mean, it specifically says blimp crash, but yes, blimps are the first thing, the first trigger for the episode. Um, car accident, car versus house. I’m assuming house gets off worse in that. And a cliffhanger ending, ’cause, you know, they’re triggering, which includes panicked people running and/or trampling each other.
Ellen: Okay.
Oh, and that’s the ending?
Bex: Of the episode.
Ellen: So it’s gonna go on- Yes … for the entire episode. Okay. Cool. So it is-
Bex: I think it’s, it does a thing where, like, the beginning, the first episode of the season sets up the massive emergency, and then-
Ellen: Yeah, and then it’s a two-parter or whatever …
Bex: episode two and three and four and five and six and God knows how many deal with the emergency. Um, so I mean, we can go yay, they’re actually having an actual emergency for season six season opener.
Ellen: Mm-hmm. I, that doesn’t sound like [01:47:00] you want to go yay though. I’ll, I’ll find out.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: You’ll find out.
Ellen: I’ll find out. Okay. Uh, if you’ve made it all the way through to this part of this episode, um, please let us know what you thought about Season Five if you haven’t already.
Not many people have. No, I’ll cut that out. Um
Bex: Nobody loved us this season.
Ellen: Ah. Well, we were pretty down on Season Five, so-
Alice: I was gonna say, we didn’t even love us this season.
Bex: No, that’s not fair. Kiera said that the, like, this, the podcast was the best part of Season Five.
Ellen: Thank you, Kiera.
Alice: Thanks, Kiera.
Ellen: Oh, God. Okay. We’ll see how, how far we get in Season Six before we just go, “Oh no, let’s fast-forward to Season Seven.”
No Um, yes, let us know what you thought about this season and, [01:48:00] like, the podcast in general. We’d love to hear from you. Uh, you can contact us in the usual ways on thatweewooshow.com or directly in Spotify or on YouTube or on social media as well. Thank you for listening this week, and we’ll talk to you next time about the start of Season 6. See you then.
Bex: Bye.
Alice: Bye.
Ellen: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world, too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you’re 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.[01:49:00]
[outtake]
Alice: Okay, hang on. Now I’m recording.
Ellen: Oh, shit. I- You mean we don’t have any of that talk that we just had about Outlander or anything?
Alice: We have none of the Outlander stuff. Yep.
Ellen: Okay.
Alice: No one will know how I do not remember anything about Outlander. It’s my little secret, except for the outtakes where this talk will be.
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