Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Ellen, Bex and Alice watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss the season six premiere, episode 1 of the sixth season of 9-1-1, titled “Let the Games Begin”.
When a blimp engine catches fire, the 118 rescue victims both inside and outside a packed stadium. Bobby and Athena discuss honeymoon plans. Maddie and Chimney watch a movie.
Content warnings for episode 6.01:
blimp crash, car accident, car versus house, cliffhanger ending, panicked people running/trampling each other.
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Episode Transcript
Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1. What’s your emergency?
Ellen: Welcome back to That Wee Woo 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 season six. Okay, so we have to start by saying I know this season isn’t everybody’s favorite season. Um, well I don’t know because I haven’t watched, I’ve only watched the first episode so far.
But we should probably start by saying that, uh, we are probably going to try and get through this ep- this season quite quickly. It does still have 18 episodes but we may double up some episodes or in an effort to still be kind of upbeat about the [00:01:00] whole thing and not to, not to let, um, Bex linger on the soapbox for too long maybe. Not to get too ranty about things.
Bex: But I like the view from my soapbox.
Ellen: Yeah, I know you do. Um, no-
Bex: It al- it’s also-
Alice: You’re finally tall for once
Bex: I have to say it doubles as my, like my Gillian Anderson, um, apple box.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yes, your Scully box. Um- But- I think-
Bex: Yeah, my Scully box. Yeah …
Ellen: it, like it would be good f- if we could keep the, you know, the energy high by, um, not dwelling too much on how much we hate what’s going on in the season.
And, um, maybe just hurry through some of the episodes that we don’t like that much. So, but anyway, we are, in this episode we are just gonna be talking about the first episode of season six. Do we wanna go into what happened last season? Do we usually do that in episode one? It’s been so long since we did a first…
Alice: We, we do. Yeah, yeah. I usually just go- We, are those people who skipped our, um- Our wrap-up episode …
Bex: season wrap-up.
Ellen: [00:02:00] Okay. Well, tell us what happened in season five then please.
Alice: All right. Last season on 9-1-1, 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 distrust 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 also missed this season so, yep.
Ellen: Oh, bless him. He was there.
Bex: He was there.
Ellen: We already covered this
Bex: Like we discussed, he was, he was just dad and boss.
Alice: Yeah, he, he was there.
Bex: And husband.
Alice: He just missed Buck kissing Lucy and, um, what’s-his-face killing people and…
Ellen: He was distracted.
Bex: By nothing ’cause he had no-
Ellen: Yeah, I [00:03:00] don’t think there was anything-
Bex: … storylines last season.
Ellen: …to be distracted by. He just wasn’t paying that much attention.
Bex: Um, in this episode we are going to discuss the season premiere of season six. Which is called “Let the Games Begin”, and the official promo that was released says, “When a blimp suffers mechanical failure and its engine catches fire, Athena and the 118 must rescue victims both inside and outside a packed sports stadium,” which makes the opening emergency seem like really exciting and really tense, and it’s really, really not. Um-
Alice: It’s not at all, yeah.
Bex: Bobby and Athena drop May off on her first day of college and discuss honeymoon plans, which I think we discussed at the end of the wrap-up that that is a storyline that got dropped. Never actually happens. Um, the honeymoon plans part does, but the dropping May off at college part doesn’t.
Um, while Maddie and Chimney go to couples therapy, which also didn’t [00:04:00] happen in this episode.
Alice: Not at all.
Bex: Wow.
Alice: What the hell happened to this episode?
Bex: What happened between when they were planning this episode and when they wrote the promo? That’s insane.
Ellen: Is that why they have such long, like, cut shots of the, the, the LA, like-
Bex: I think so
Ellen: skyline?
Alice: Probably, because they just cut out like half. Stuff.
Bex: They had to-
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: What did Maddie and Chimney do this-
Alice: They watched a movie. And had a one-night stand.
Ellen: That’s what they did this week. They had a cute little, you know, make-up session at the end.
Bex: And oh, I wonder if that’s why they had that whole Maddie emergency call that made no freaking sense. I wonder if that was filmed at the last minute to replace an entire storyline that they decided not to go with.
Alice: Maybe.
Bex: Good God. I thought this episode was bad before, and now I’m like, “What the hell happened?” Um, triggers for this [00:05:00] episode. There are apparently allegedly a few. Um, one of them is a blimp crash, and I honestly, unless you are, like, from the Heidelberg era, I don’t know that a blimp crash is really something that’s gonna trigger anybody.
Um, there is a car accident, car versus house. Yes, there was. Okay. Um, cliffhanger ending. Sure. Uh, panicked people running/trampling each other.
Alice: Yep, there were some things in this episode apparently.
Bex: I’m surprised that the medical device didn’t get, um, flagged as a trigger.
Alice: Yeah, true. Look, to be fair, um, Nikki probably just fell asleep watching the episode and forgot.
Bex: Honestly, the medical device was one of the most interesting parts of the opening emergency because I was actually Googling, like, what it was, and the fact that the company was an actual company that makes that device.
Alice: Yeah. [00:06:00]
Bex: Well, there you go. And then I completely forgot about the rest of the ep- the rest of the emergency because I didn’t care about the rest of it.
Alice: I mean, it is America. I guess they advertise medical equipment all the time, so someone’s like, “Oh, I’m sick of my heart. I want this thing that I saw on 9-1-1.”
Ellen: Well, I don’t know if you can choose to have a mechanical heart, can-
Alice: Probably not
Ellen: … but it’s something you get.
Alice: But it is America.
Bex: They’re-
Ellen: If you need it …
Bex: they’re used for, um, transplant, people who are on a transplant list and won’t survive before the next transplant. So they, they use these mechanical hearts to keep them alive so that they can receive a transplant.
Alice: Jesus, this episode aired on the Queen’s birthday. I mean, not birthday, um, funeral. I didn’t realize the Queen had been dead this long.
Bex: Um, okay.
Alice: It’s just a weird trivia thing. It was literally like, “Oh, yeah. This aired at the same day as the Queen’s funeral.” I’m like, “Oh, okay. Th- yep.”
Ellen: Okay. When, when w- when did it air? September 19, 2022?
Alice: 2022, yeah.
Ellen: Oh, okay. So [00:07:00] this one was written by Andrew Myers, who we usually enjoy. Like, he usually writes great episodes, like “Ocean’s 9-1-1”. You know, he wrote, like, some exciting episodes in the past.
Bex: Here’s the thing. I think the character parts of this episode were done really well Like, the middle of the episode where it’s just character focused is really good and is well-written, and I think that is because of him, and we can attribute that to him.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: But I feel like this might be one of the … It’s, again, it’s kind of evidence t- or it, it might be adding evidence to the idea that it’s a writers’ room, multiple people write, and then somebody just gets their name put on the entire episode. So maybe he didn’t have anything to do with the opening emergency part, or maybe, um, like that wasn’t his idea, but he had to write it [00:08:00] regardless of whether he liked it or not.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, I think I said after I finished watching it that I didn’t hate it. Like, I thought, um, the char- yeah, you’re right, the character stuff was great. It was funny and- Mm. I don’t know. They, they pulled in a lot of old stuff, like stuff that we’d heard before. They name-dropped people like Shannon and you know, um-
Bex: I think I made, I made a joke in the, in the d- the group chat that somebody had binged the entire series before they came to write for Season 6. Like, Andrew sat down and watched the entire series, and so the entire, um-
Ellen: Yeah, so kept pulling in references-
Bex: All of the m- …
Ellen: to old stuff.
Bex: Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Either that or someone found the show bible that got packed away somewhere. But I’ve-
Alice: Yeah …
Bex: I’ve, I’m, I’m more tickled by the idea that a writer sort of sitting down and, like, binging the five seasons of the show and frantically writing notes.
Ellen: It’s like, “Oh, I’ve gotta mention that in the next one.”
Alice: Hen’s in med school? Yeah. What? Scribble, scribble.
Bex: Yeah, it’s like they [00:09:00] remembered that Hen was in med school.
Alice: I did actually-
Bex: They remembered
Alice: … plan to go and try and work out, um, like try and work out the last reference to Hen being in medical school was, but I couldn’t be bothered.
Ellen: I don’t feel like it was that- It was- … long ago, but they, it’s very far between in Season 5.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: But anyway, yeah, that stuff is, like the character stuff aside, the actual emergencies in this episode are pretty awful. Like, just not, not memorable at all.
Bex: No, which is kind of disappointing for a season opener
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Like, I know that, that traditionally the pattern is that the first episode we get, it’s sort of a minor emergencies. Um, it’s just sort of to remind, the bring the world back, remember e- who everybody is, set the scene for the next, for the rest of the season, and then the [00:10:00] big emergencies happen in episodes two and three.
Yeah. So, um, I’m not surprised that the big emergency in episode one, in this episode is not, like, the massive kind of all-hands-on-deck kind of emergency. But it ends up being, to borrow your phrase, such a nothingburger of an emergency.
Alice: Yeah. I wasn’t tense through any of it
Ellen: Like, it doesn’t, I don’t even need to be te- like, it just wasn’t captivating.
Bex: Well, nothing happened is the point. Like, the, the promo, what did the promo say? The promo made a big deal about the, um, the blimp, uh, catching fire and, uh, they’re, uh, having to rescue victims both inside and outside of a packed sports stadium. And then what happens? The blimp ends up sitting on top of a light- a lighting tower. It doesn’t even touch the stadium.
Alice: I always forget- Yeah … about the blimp. Like, whenever we’re talking about opening emergencies, I’m always like, “Oh, yeah, [00:11:00] tsunami, earthquake,” like all that. And then I’m like-
Bex: Yeah, but again, that’s-
Alice: … “There was another one.” And everyone’s like, “The blimp.” And I’m like, “Oh, yeah.”
Bex: That’s, like, episode two, episode three. Like, season opener emergencies is the sports car ramming the firetruck. Yeah. That’s the kind of caliber of season opener emergencies, and then you build up to the tsunami, and then you build up-
Alice: And I-
Bex: … to the earthquake.
Alice: I don’t wanna, like, spoil season eight too much, but, like, season eight, they really hammered in, like, the opening emergency that they hammered in was just sort of like something that happened to lead to the actual opening emergency.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Which was fine because it was fun. Um, and it’s memorable, but yeah, I don’t know. They, the blimp was kind of boring.
Bex: I, but the thing is, I think the blimp could have been interesting if it had done what the promo said it was going to do, if it had actually crashed into the stadium and they did have to rescue people from a collapsed stadium instead of, “Oh, no, the blimp is just sitting on [00:12:00] top and we have to get the pilots out.”
And then there’s, like, no damage whatsoever done to the stadium. It’s just this medical emergency that really has nothing to do with the blimp going on-
Alice: Yeah
Bex: … concurrently.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, we can, we can sort of skip the, the meat of this anyway and just say that there’s a mother and daughter who are at this game, and they try- they introduce us to them, but they, we were saying earlier they kind of half-heartedly David Wallace them.
But they didn’t even do that. They just said-
Bex: No, they just went-
Ellen: “Okay, they’re here” …
Bex: “Here are your characters.” Yes.
Ellen: They’ve both got backpacks. That’s all we find out about them really, except that the mum’s worried about everything and the daughter’s like, “Okay, it’s gonna be fine.” And then all of a sudden this blimp arrives.
So and then they’re running, running away from the crash with all of the other people in the stadium. Um, hence the people, you know, stampeding kind of thing. [00:13:00]
Bex: But I think that was the other thing that really, when you look at, like, it’s all well and good for the promo to say the, you know, panicked people and for us to say there were people stampeding.
I understand that getting that many extras and filming, there are safety concerns. You kind of, it’s very difficult to actually film a stampede because of all of the OH&S requirements that would go into it. But when you watch the scene The concourse is so empty Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, it just looked like there’s only like 10 people in it
Bex: Like, I don’t understand why people are bumping into people. They’re almost-
Alice: Like, it- was their budget maybe slashed for this?
Bex: It’s COVID social distancing stampeding. Like, they’re all- Yeah … social distancing as they’re running. It just, it remo- it reduces the, um-
Ellen: They spent all their money on Panic! At the Disco music.
Bex: Yes. They really did, yes, because the episode opens with Panic! At the Disco “High Hopes”, ’cause, you know, it’s a blimp and it’s up high.
Um, we also had high hopes for this episode, and they were also, like, crashed into a sports stadium along with the [00:14:00] blimp. But yeah, just the, the, the tension was lost because there was no tension on screen from the, the, the panicked extras being squeezed like sardines as they’re trying to make their way for the emergency exits.
They’ve all got plenty of room. They could have walked in a calm and orderly fashion and still been fine.
Ellen: But they didn’t because the, the mother and daughter get separated, and then, the daughter falls down some stairs And then, oh, this is, this was the weirdest part. Like, this guy tries to help her up and then sees that she’s got a backpack that has something with wires in it, and he’s like, “Oh my God, it’s a bomb.” I’m like, “Oh.”
Bex: Well, yeah, he, he’s supposed to- It’s supposed to be like, “Oh my God, she’s got wires,” but when you look at them it’s quite clearly medical tubing.
Ellen: Yeah, it doesn’t- Yeah … even look like anything-
Alice: I guess he’s panicking, but it’s weird … like wires.
Bex: I,
Ellen: I don’t know. Anyway, um like so [00:15:00] as- they g- oh, how, where, what happens before Athena arrives?
Bex: Well, the, um, the, the blimp, the blimp people, one of the pilots calls 9-1-1 to let 9-1-1 know that they’re about to crash. So, like, air traffic control knows that they’re going to crash, but then they also have to call 9-1-1 to let Maddie know that they’re going to crash. So that’s how they end up getting LAPD and LAFD on site to evacuate the stadium from the blimp that’s just balanced precariously on a lightning, a lighting rig above the stadium.
Ellen: Yeah, and the 118-
Bex: So Athena goes in for-
Ellen: Athena and the 118 are the only emergency services that we see. Like, you’d think that they would send everybody that was available, but, um-
Bex: I think we see, like, about four, like, three other LAPD officers. But we see them in one scene, then that’s it. We don’t, they, they do jack shit.
Ellen: Yeah. Yep. Yes. And yeah, I think- It feels like a [00:16:00] very l- light kind of response, you know? Like we hard- there’s hardly anybody around. Anyway, there’s not that many people in the stadium either apparently, so it’s fine. So the 118 pull up and they- Yep … Bobby’s like, “Okay, you get the, you guys get the light tower. Um, Eddie, you get up the ladder.”
Like, he’s telling what everyone what to do, but there is no one else around. Like, there are no other emergency services there And I’m like, are th- are they gonna just deal with this whole incident? Like –
Bex: Yes …
Ellen: th- they don’t need anybody else. It’s the 118, what are you talking about?
Bex: Well, they also don’t need anybody else because it’s such a nothing burger of an emergency. One unit can very easily deal with … And like, even as they say it-
Ellen: As it turns out, they can deal with it Yeah.
Bex: They can deal with it by themselves. Um, I did find it really interesting when they did this scene that they took precious time from this episode to do all of these establishing shots of reminding us who each of the characters are.
Like, to the point where [00:17:00] they’d … It almost seemed really awkward- That’s true … that the camera would pan down across everyone’s turnouts. So like, “Oh, yes, this is Han. Remember? This is Han. And o- over here, this is, um, this is Nash. Just remember that.” Mm. “Did you remember that? Did you forget? Okay, we’re gonna remind you.” like-
Ellen: I didn’t notice that …
Bex: why are we doing this?
Ellen: How long’s it been since the finale of season five? Like-
Bex: I don’t know. It just seems-
Ellen: That was like May or something, right?
Bex: It, it was such a d- it was such a choice, though. Like, somebody- Mm … on the, somebody on set said, “We’re going to film and I need you to focus on their turnouts.” And then they get to the editing room and someone’s going, “Yes, we need those shots.”
Ellen: Just in case you were joining this show at the season six mark.
Alice: I mean, yeah, like, yeah, like it’s season six. I have just decided to
Bex: But the weird thing is that they only do it for Chim and Bobby. Like, it’s not across the board. It’s just- Yeah … these two. [00:18:00] So did they do it for- Okay … all of them and they go, Oh, okay, actually no, we, we’re running out of time. We’re just gonna do those two?
Ellen: Who knows?
Alice: Who knows and
Bex: who knows.
Ellen: Okay. So Athena is getting inside, um, you’ve written, “Girl, what did they do to your hair?”
Bex: Literally. It’s so bad.
Ellen: She
Bex: did-
Ellen: It’s a, it’s a bad, like, I think it’s a bad style just in this scene because later she has it out and it looks fine. Like-
Bex: So for anyone who hasn’t seen this episode recently, um, in this particular episode, um, Angela has sort of just above the shoulder sort of a bob style just above the shoulder.
It looks really good on her. I’m wondering whether somebody was trying to comply. I had a, a random thought to look it up and then didn’t, ’cause I didn’t actually care that much, um- … whether someone in wardrobe was trying to comply with LAPD [00:19:00] uniform regs, and that maybe there’s something about hair of a certain length needs to be, like, have something done with it.
But the style-
Ellen: Oh
Bex: … that they’ve chosen, they’ve given her a severe middle part and then kind of swooped it down over… Do you ever, did you remember that movie, it’s, which is gonna sound really bad, it’s like 20, 30 years ago, like The Piano and they-
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah … they had this really severe, like, middle part hair pulled back low-
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: … low hairstyle. It looked awful. That’s what they’ve given Angela in this.
Ellen: Yeah. It’s a bad-
Bex: And I unders-
Ellen: It’s a bad look …
Bex: I understand tr- if they’re trying to comply with LAFD uniform regs, but surely there was a better option than the severe middle part. Look, this woman is beautiful. This woman could wear a garbage bag and make it look chic. That, nobody can pull off that hairstyle, not even Miss Angela Bassett. You know, it’s,
Ellen: it’s kind- it’s really baffling because I’m [00:20:00] sure later I was looking at her going, “What? It looks fine now.” Yes. Like, what, what did they do at the beginning here?
Bex: It’s just- Anyway … it’s so slick and so severe, and it’s just, it’s not a good look on anybody. Um, and unfortunately that’s all I could focus on when I first saw her when she came on screen.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Well, bless, bless her, she’s running through the stadium against the flow of panicking people yelling-
Bex: Like all three of them …
Ellen: “Remain calm. There has been an accident.”
Bex: Yeah, that’s the, the equivalent of someone who’s having a panic attack just telling them to breathe.
Um- Y- yeah … one of the panicking, um, members of the crowd tells her that she’s wrong though, that everyone has to panic, um, because there’s a lady with a backpack with all these wires coming out and he thinks that it’s a bomb. And Yeah … so Athena’s like, “Oh really? Let me go check it out.” He doesn’t actually tell her where she is though.
Alice: [00:21:00] No.
Bex: He’s just like, “Somewhere in this stadium there is a woman with an, a bomb.” She’s like, “Cool, I’m just gonna go wander. I’m not gonna call in the bomb squad. I’m just-
Ellen: No, no
Bex: … gonna go for a walk”
Ellen: She personally is going to go and investigate this. Yeah. Um, maybe she just doesn’t believe him. Maybe she’s like, “This guy’s obviously full of shit. I’m just gonna go and have a look.” But yeah. They get the power out, so they-
Bex: Yes …
Ellen: uh, send a ladder up to where the… Like, I don’t know how tall this light, um, you know, pi- I want to say a light pole, but it’s like a really tall so I don’t know what they’re called. It’s got a different name. Um-
Bex: I don’t know.
Ellen: It’s one of those like, um- How does the ladder get all the way up there? Do not know.
Bex: Uh, we’ve seen the ladder go pretty high, so I’m th- of everything that happened in this episode, that was not something that I was suspicious of. It was, [00:22:00] I was completely accepting that the ladder would go high enough to reach the top of this.
Ellen: Anyway, it doesn’t matter. Um, they get, they get up there.
Bex: So it’s Chim and Eddie are being sent up the ladder. Um, Bobby is hanging down the bottom, uh, micromanaging the situation, which is literally all he does throughout this scene
Ellen: Yeah. For a change, he doesn’t wanna throw himself into the danger
Bex: He’s not the one climbing the ladder, no.
Ellen: Yeah,
Bex: no. Um, he’s just going to, he’s going to, um, just commentate over the emergency for them.
Ellen: Um, Athena finds Faye, who’s the, the girl with the backpack, and Faye tells her that it’s not a bomb, it’s her heart.
Alice: Because naturally.
Ellen: And Athena, like this is, I think we’ve spoken about this before. But she sends Maddie [00:23:00] a photo directly to her. Like, I-
Bex: No, it’s, it’s-
Ellen: did she text it to 9-1-1? Like- Yeah. No, she- We’ve, we’ve talked about this before.
Bex: That was, that was the question, because I would have bought if she’d pulled out her phone and then she text it to Maddie directly, because we know she’s got Maddie’s number, and then like Maddie pulls out her phone and she’s looking at it on her device. But it goes through the CAD system.
Alice: Yeah, she’s looking at it on her monitor.
Ellen: Because we, it comes up on her, on her computer.
Bex: And we have a, and we have a like a, um, this little moment where it goes like, “Receiving image,” as the CAD processes the file as it comes through. How the hell do you text photos to 9-1-1?
Like, I know that they-
Ellen: I, I know, let’s not think too hard about this. Because I don’t think it’s possible. But anyway, for the drama, she sends her a photo.
Bex: I know you can text- I know you can text 9-1-1 now, but I don’t think that you can like send GIFs through to 9-1-1. Oh my God, could you imagine that?
You start sending like [00:24:00] GIFs and memes through to 9-1-1 when you’re in the middle of an emergency just to like let them know how serious the situation is.
Ellen: It’s like, “This is fine. The room’s on fire.” Oh my God.
Bex: Um, so Maddie immediately Googles, I’m assuming, what Athena has sent through. Um, SynCardia is an actual company. That is their actual product. It’s not their actual website that comes up when Maddie Googles it, but SynCardia is an actual company, and they do make, um, artificial hearts
Alice: Um, yeah, they’re advertising for when you need an
Bex: artificial heart
Alice: It’s the weirdest
Bex: product, it’s the weirdest product placement that I’ve ever seen.
Um, yeah, like I said, I spent far too long googling, um, artificial hearts and what they’re used for and how they’re used. Um, they’re kind of an equivalent of the LVAD wire, so this is kind of [00:25:00] an option that Denny could have had. I don’t think- Damn it, Izzy … that Izzy could have c- I don’t think Izzy could have, um, sabotaged this one quite as, um, quite as easily.
But yeah, they’re meant as a stopgap measure for people who are on a transplant list.
Ellen: Very cool. Um, except this one – Yes … is damaged, so it’s not actually working, and this poor girl is passing out. Um, she lost consciousness, and then instead of, like, calling for help and getting the paramedics to her, Athena just sort of discusses with Maddie what she should do next.
Like, Maddie says, “There should be, like, a, a backup and someone else must have it,” but Athena can’t see anyone around. And she’s like, “Okay, I’m going to find the backup.” So she just-
Bex: Right …
Ellen: leaves
Bex: Leaves her?
Ellen: She just
Bex: Right. Would-
Ellen: Fucks off …
Bex: she sh- why, why didn’t she, like, call over the radio and go, “Hey, everyone who’s still in the [00:26:00] stadium, I need eyes out for a backpack,” or, “Hey, can I get paramedics to my location, or at least another LAPD officer to my location-
Ellen: I, I really hoped that she would call-
Bex: so you can monitor this person
Ellen: … for help at some point. But no, she’s-
Bex: I’ve … No.
Ellen: No. Athena doesn’t do-
Bex: Um, I also- …
Ellen: asking for help
Bex: No, she doesn’t, even when she leaves the life of someone who is dying, like, up in the air. She really should have had someone there. Um, because I was so bored with this emergency, I kept Googling.
Um, Maddie- … saying, “Don’t do CPR,” mm, no. Athena could actually have done CPR, and there is a, um … If anybody is interested, you can Google it. There is a paper in the American Heart Association that says that they’ve got, like, this entire flowchart on the back of the paper. Like, if you find somebody that’s got one of these devices, if, is this happening?
Yes, then do this. Is this happening? No, then do this. And you get down to the bottom and it’s like, if f- and if everything else has failed, [00:27:00] please start CPR.
Ellen: Oh.
Bex: Because again, the CPR is going to keep blood circulating around the body long enough for the person to, you know, get fixed at a hospital.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: Like, I get, I get that narratively it’s much more interesting to watch Athena run around crazy trying to find the extra backpack rather than, you know, doing CPR, but, um, it’s not medically accurate. Oh my God, this show’s not medically accurate.
Alice: I know. What a shock.
Ellen: How dare you.
Like, she, I think, she actually asks Maddie, like, “I, I think her heart’s shutting down. How long do I have?” And Maddie says, “Minutes.” So she’s like, “I can search the whole stadium in a few minutes.” No problem.
Alice: Yeah. I, like, this stadium’s very small, right?
Ellen: Yeah. Um, well, I mean, presumably her mum shouldn’t be too far away, like if they’d been running, but still-
Bex: That’s a big assumption to make.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Like, I-
Alice: Literally could be anywhere
Ellen: should, should’ve [00:28:00] called for help. But anyway.
Bex: Should’ve-
Ellen: Um-
Bex: Yes, but that’s not narratively in- more interesting. Um, plus, you know, they only had the 118, and they’re all standing around watching Eddie and Chim, um, head up the ladder for the blimp.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Oh yeah, they’re the only ones there, so.
Bex: I mean, Buck and Hen are just standing around doing nothing at this stage as far as we know. Um, so they could definitely have … ‘Cause, you know, Hen’s in med school, so surely she’d know how to deal with an artificial heart. Um, but no, they’re just standing around watching.
Ellen: I feel like there should be more people who are injured, like with the stampede or whatever, but
And, and later we do see some people who are. See- But they don’t-
Bex: Right? It’s like-
Ellen: No one goes to help them.
Bex: It’s like they’ve gone, “We’re, we’re gonna have this emergency, but we don’t actually want to put any effort into the emergency.”
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: It … Yeah. Anyway, uh, they get up the ladder [00:29:00] to the blimp, and they get the guys out of the blimp. That’s the end of the emergency. Yeah. Basically.
Bex: No, I mean-
Ellen: Like-
Bex: A l- a l- they, they drag it out a little bit, ’cause, uh, the, the blimp, um, cabin, I guess, is kind of balanced on the top of the, the lighting strut, and they decide that it’s gonna be like a one in one out situation. So there’s two pilots, there’s Chim and Eddie.
So they swap Eddie for the female pilot, and then Chim gets her down, which leaves Eddie inside with the male pilot. And as Chim goes down, Buck is sent up to help Eddie.
Ellen: They’re having a little balancing act to try to make sure that the thing isn’t gonna fall off the light tower
Bex: Yeah. Um, and it’s, it’s just, it gets stupider from here. So like Eddie is doing a sternum rub on the pilot because f- somehow, I don’t understand how considering how they landed and … Like if the blimp had actually crashed into something I could understand the pilot [00:30:00] having like a head wound if he’d been like-
Alice: Yeah, I don’t get that either
Bex: … but it’s just sitting on top of something. It’s not actually crashed into anything so I don’t understand that injuries. But the pilot’s unconscious so Eddie’s doing a sternum rub. But then he’s asking the dude if he can feel the sternum rub. Which is not the point of the sternum rub. The sternum rub is, you know, we’ve done the sternum rub. We know it’s, it hurts and it wakes you up.
It’s not like when you’re circ- I’m like squeezing your, squeezing your hand. Can you feel me squeezing your hand? Wow. Yes. Yeah Okay, great. You’ve got feeling in your fingers. Can you feel me squeezing your feet? Great, you’ve got feeling in your toes. It’s not like I’m rubbing your chest, are you conscious enough to answer that you can feel me rubbing your chest.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: It’s just so weird.
Ellen: And he just, he also just sort of goes, “Oh, yeah, yeah, I can feel it.” He doesn’t go, “Ow, would you stop that!”
Bex: Which probably means Eddie’s not rubbing hard enough. Meanwhile, um, Athena has found Faye’s mother [00:31:00] who in the massive stampede of like one person fell down and is h- hit her head hard enough that she can’t get back up again.
I don’t know. Athena finds her lying there and goes, “Yoink, that’s my backpack now. See you later, bitch,” and runs.
Ellen: She just leaves her behind. “You stay here. Stay here. Help is coming.”
Bex: She do- I mean, she does call dispatch, um, to get a team to the mother to help her, but she’s doing this as she’s running away with the backpack.
So this poor, this poor woman’s just been knocked out and now she’s being mugged by an LAPD officer.
Ellen: Yeah, she’s been robbed. Yeah. She’s like- … “What are you, what are you doing?”
Bex: Um, so then we go back to the blimp and this, I don’t understand what happens at this part. Um, [00:32:00] the blimp is rocking backwards and forwards As Eddie and the pilot are starting to move towards the door, it’s moving more, which worries everybody.
Um, so Buck says, “Lower the ladder.” I don’t understand why he has to lower the ladder, but they lower the ladder.
Ellen: I think it just moves- Um … enough that they couldn’t actually get on it.
Bex: I don’t know.
Ellen: Didn’t it, like, move out of position and then he needed to make the ladder lower so that he could actually get on it?
Bex: Maybe. I’ve, I’d kind of checked out at this stage. Okay. I’m just gonna go straight back and we’ll finish off the blimp shit and then we can come back and do the medical shit. Um, so they get the pilot out of the cabin onto the ladder. Um, Bobby is still doing his running commentary and he’s like- … “Eddie, this thing is gonna go.”
So the music swells. Eddie sort of grabs the sides of the cabin, yeets himself with this massive swing [00:33:00] onto the ladder to the point where he starts sliding down the ladder like it’s a slippery dip because he’s lost purchase, sort of grabs hold of himself, and the blimp does absolutely nothing.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
Bex: Nothing happens.
Ellen: It, it was very dramatic, but for no purpose.
Bex: It was very dramatic for no fucking reason. Yeah. And then he and Buck are just able to climb down, and when they finish this emergency, the blimp is still up on the lighting strut.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Like, I, I don’t understand. I was expecting some kind of, like, the blimp to topple and fall, or for there to be this massive explosion, or there for be some reason that Eddie has to yeet himself out at such high velocity. But no.
Alice: Um, yeah, I really wonder if they just ran out of budget. They’re just like, “Oh, let’s get a blimp. Oh, that’s all our budget.”
Ellen: Yeah, no explosions.
Bex: I, I will say that the set for the blimp really looked like, um, [00:34:00] it was just, like a c- a tiny cardboard room just sort of sat on top of something.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: It, it’s
I don’t know. I’ve never been in a blimp. I don’t know what the cabins and the, like, cockpit of a blimp looks like, but I’m guessing they don’t look like that
Ellen: No idea.
Bex: Anyway, back down on the ground, um, Athena and her stolen backpack have returned to Faye, where Maddie has Googled the instruction manual. I’m hoping that she’s, like, called the company and got somebody on the phone who can talk her through, or that she’s some way in this, in the 9-1-1 files there is, like…
And ’cause I know Abby told us at some point that there is a, like files for everything. Any possible scenario that you go through, there is a step-by-step on how to do it. They must have a step-by-step on how to deal with artificial hearts.
Ellen: Yeah, fix an artificial heart.
Bex: Um, I have a f- [00:35:00] I have a feeling she just Googled the instruction manual though.
Um- And so she’s talked-
Alice: Like you did.
Ellen: Well, I mean, it worked. And she’s- That’s pretty much how anyone discovers how to use anything these days, right?
Bex: Um, so she talks Athena how to replace the pump, um, in Faye’s backpack with the one from Mom’s backpack. And, like, there’s… It’s like there’s this stress where, you know, the m- the device is beeping and beeping, like the alarm’s going off ’cause something’s not working, and like Athena is like begging Faye to wake up, and we cut to Maddie who’s also looking really stressed, and then she wakes up and she’s fine.
Ellen: Yeah, she just- I th- … gasps in a breath and
Bex: it’s like- Oh yeah, she does that- … wow … like really weird thing where it’s like Like, girl, you weren’t suffocating.
Alice: Like, it’s just we don’t get enough… Like, they’re trying to make us care about these characters, but they don’t do enough to [00:36:00] actually make us care about them. Like, we j- we get a two-second thing and that’s it. And it’s like, okay.
Bex: See, I don’t… It’s not even the lack of David Wallacing, because I think w- I think if they did the tension right I could not know this character’s name and still be like, “Oh shit, is everything gonna be okay?” It’s just that there’s no stakes.
Ellen: Yeah, we, we don’t really know what’s happened. Like why, is her heart stopped? Like what, is she dying? Like what’s happening here? And then all of a sudden she just wakes up with a gasp. It’s like, what happened?
Bex: And there’s like, there’s nothing sort of else happening around her that makes it imperative that this has to happen and that they can’t, you know, pick her up and carry her out to an RA unit that could, you know, help her in the meantime.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Like imagine if this was happening but she was trapped under rubble Like the stairs had actually collapsed [00:37:00] because the blimp-
Ellen: Yeah, or they had to move her out of the way before the blimp fell down or something.
Bex: Yes, if there was something else that was the reason why Athena had to do this like crazy machinations in order to, to keep her alive.
But it’s not. It’s like she’s there, she could very easily be moved. There’s, there’s nothing time imperative except for, you know, the fact that her pump is broken. I, I don’t know. It’s just, someone had ideas and they just didn’t get fleshed out.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Like, “Yeah, we’re gonna do this. It’s not gonna work? Well, we’re gonna do it anyway ’cause we don’t have any other better ideas.”
Ellen: Yeah. And they get, like it works and she’s fine, and they wheel her to an ambulance and her mom is also there, um, about to get in an ambulance. And Athena is all happy because she [00:38:00] saved the day
Bex: Yes. And the blimp is still sitting up there. So apparently it wasn’t that big a deal that it was gonna crash and collapse and hurt everybody, or maybe Bobby just doesn’t care because his people aren’t up there anymore. I don’t know.
Ellen: I don’t know how they’re planning to get the blimp down from there, but- We don’t get to find out
Bex: Neither does Buck.
Ellen: That’s not our problem. That’s not the 118’s problem.
Bex: Which is literally what Hen says.
Alice: Yeah, literally what Hen says.
Bex: Hen’s literally like, “It’s not my problem.” It’s … Yeah, I just … It had potential. If … By the way the promo made it sound, it sounded exciting, and it just turned out to not be exciting.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: A lot of fuss and bother, and a lot of trying to tell us that we should be tense and tell us that this is happening and not actually showing us or making us feel the tension and the panic and the stress.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Which this show can do. [00:39:00]
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Just not in this episode.
Ellen: Well, we’ve got the … We get to move into the character stuff next, which is good.
Bex: Yes. Pretty much everything else is character stuff, with a couple of minor emergencies, um, that are mostly stupid, but one of them is fun for character reasons, so I will allow it even though it’s so stupid.
Um, but we’re going to start with the, “Oh, Eddie’s back in the 118, so I guess we don’t need Lucy anymore. What are we gonna do with her? Let’s sideline her for medical reasons.”
Alice: Yeah, she broke something.
Ellen: Yeah, this was weird. I was like, did, did Lucy … Like, did the character … Sorry. Did Lucy’s actor actually break her bone or something? Like, why is why did they just have her at home?
Alice: I’m pretty sure she was on a different show. Yeah.
Ellen: She wasn’t available to film this episode, so they just sidelined her.
Bex: But she was in the episode
Ellen: At least her face
Bex: Like, they showed her
Ellen: Yeah, at least her face was on [00:40:00] screen, yeah
Alice: Well, I mean, they show her- Could be on this on a thing, so she doesn’t actually have to film at the same time as anyone else.
Ellen: No. They, she could just do it by Zoom.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: No No, but they did, like, there was a shot where they showed her on the couch with, like, a full leg cast.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Bex: So she was on some kind of set with, like, the, at least a C team to do this scene.
Ellen: Fair enough. They just didn’t want her-
Bex: It’s just, I, it’s very-
Ellen: in the house.
Bex: Well, no, because we’ve got Eddie back now, so we don’t need Lucy. Yeah. But we can’t just, you know, um, completely forget about her because, you know, Ariel’s probably got a contract and they, they need to slowly phase her out. Um-
Ellen: Oh, dear
Bex: yes, she broke, the story is that she broke her leg, um, playing football at a family reunion, and so she’s out for six to eight weeks.
Alice: Yeah, and apparently it was a, like, young niece
Bex: Sorry, 4 to 6 weeks.
Yeah, a [00:41:00] sev- her seven-year-old niece, um-
Alice: Yeah, broke the firefighter’s-
Bex: pushed her from behind …
Alice: leg, so sure.
Bex: Yeah. Um, and Lucy, uh, finishes the call. She’s on Zoom. Like, Bobby is have, taking this call in the kitchen on Zoom, not, like, in his office where it could be kept private or on a phone at least. No, he’s on Zoom.
Ellen: No,
Bex: he’s, she’s- So that everyone else …
Ellen: she’s talking to everyone, yeah.
Bex: Well, she’s talking to Bobby to start with, but then everyone sort of sticks their nose in. Yeah. Um, and she ends the call by apologizing to Bobby, um, and saying that she hopes that she or her injury, um, doesn’t ruin his honeymoon.
Alice: Do you think she FaceTimed to be like, “Look, I’m not faking it,”? ‘Cause who FaceTimes?
Ellen: Maybe.
Bex: It’s one of those things where, like, maybe Arielle had, you know, you know, you have to, she has to appear in so many episodes and they’re like, “Well, this…”
It’s sort of she’s got something in her clause the same way [00:42:00] that Angela’s got something in her contract that says that she needs to appear in so many episodes, so this is their way of meeting that contractual requirement. Look, she was in the episode.
Alice: Yeah. It happens.
Bex: Um, but Buck is intrigued, concerned about, uh, what Lucy meant by, um, ruining Bobby’s honeymoon, the trip, the cruise, and Bobby’s like, “Oh, I was gonna have her, um, be interim captain while I’m gone.”
Ellen: Buck is like scandalized by this.
Bex: Like she hasn’t even-
Alice: Oh, he’s so, yeah
Bex: … been here that long. And Bobby’s like, “She’s been a firefighter for 10 years.”
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Like, “She’s been in the business longer than you have.”
Alice: She’s been in the business longer than you’ve like been walking, Buck.
Bex: Um, but it’s, it, it very much has upset his very delicate sensibilities about an outsider being brought in to be captain.
He’s like, “You know, but, but [00:43:00] there are other people here that are qualified.” And later on we understand where he’s getting, like what he’s getting at at this point. Um, but Chim’s like, “You know, I don’t wanna be captain again.” Well, it is-
Ellen: He, he didn’t enjoy it last time …
Bex: it’s a, it’s a f- it’s a fun line. He, the Chim’s like, “I don’t need to pressure Cap into asking me to be captain.”
And Eddie’s like, “I’d like to pressure Cap into not asking you to be captain.” Bobby’s like, “Oh, you, you wanna be captain? ‘Cause I rem- seem to remember the last time you did it, there were the words ‘never again’.” And Hen’s like, “No, no, no, that was from us.”
Alice: Yeah, that was just from us.
Ellen: Yeah. He don’t want him to be captain again.
Bex: And Chim confirms like, “No, I don’t want to be captain again, but it would’ve been nice to have been asked.” Um-
Ellen: Aw.
Bex: We then cut to, um, the Buckley kitchen where Buck is still talking about this whole interim captain thing, and we, we discover that he’s not so much pissed that Bobby asked Lucy rather [00:44:00] than Chim. He’s pissed that Bobby didn’t ask him or Eddie to be captain
Ellen: Okay. Firstly, let me say this scene is completely adorable. This whole thing
Bex: It’s so cute, isn’t it?
Ellen: It’s so cute. Chris and Eddie are sitting at the table
Alice: Th- this is the, uh, like the highlight of the episode. It’s the only good part of the episode.
Bex: Oh, yeah. Uh, yeah. Yeah. Um, yeah. Eddie and Chris are playing Boggle while Buck is cooking. And Eddie’s doing like double duty where-
Ellen: Boggle. Yeah, that’s the one where they’re trying to, you gotta find the words, right? Like the little dice come up with the letters-
Bex: Yeah, it’s got the-
Ellen: and you’ve gotta find the words
Bex: it’s got the dice in the frame and you shake it and all the letters settle, and then you’ve got like a certain amount of time to find as many words e- from the combination in the frame as you can. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, so Eddie’s both doing that and listening to Buck bitch about not being asked to be captain.
Ellen: Yeah. [00:45:00]
Bex: He’s com- Ed- Eddie is completely unfazed. I don’t think he is … Like he’s saying he just got back to the 118, so it doesn’t really bother him. I also don’t think he is like leadership material.
Alice: Yeah, I don’t think he wants to.
Ellen: Like he’s not, like he’s not ambitious.
Alice: He’s- He’s used to following orders.
Bex: Yeah … he’s a good soldier. He is good at following orders when Buck doesn’t corrupt him. Um, I don’t think he’s ever, like his personality, he’s not the kind of person who’s gonna push for leadership.
Ellen: Yeah, I’d agree with that. He does say like, “What are you offering?” But, um- right now he’s made Bobby’s famous lasagna with six types of cheese.
Alice: Is this where we name all six cheeses?
Ellen: Well, it sounds delicious, whatever it is.
Bex: Yes. Apparently, uh, Buck’s, uh, perfected it. It only took him three times, and that’s what he is bringing to the table if he were to be made interim captain
Ellen: Is he trying to get Eddie on side, like by buttering him up? Like-
Bex: I think so[00:46:00]
Ellen: ’cause I think Eddie’s already on his side, just saying.
Bex: Um- Very much so, but he’s not gonna turn down six cheese lasagna.
Ellen: God, no. No, who would?
Bex: Um, he does comment though that, um, Buck wouldn’t get three tries to get it right if he were interim captain. Um, because, you know, if you, three tries on job probably is going to come with significant body count.
And Buck counters that he just wants to know what the other candidates, i.e. Lucy, has that he doesn’t have. And Christopher, God bless him, pipes up and says, “Buck, you don’t even have a couch.”
Ellen: Ah, he’s so cute. I lo- I laughed so hard
Bex: And the camera, the camera pans to the living area where there is indeed a giant space under the stairs where there used to be a couch. Yeah. Like, the rest of the living room furniture’s still there
Ellen: It turns out Taylor did l- take her couch and [00:47:00] run. And how long has it been-
Bex: And Buck looks-
Ellen: since the last episode? Like-
Bex: I, I don’t-
Ellen: All this time-
Bex: Oh, four months …
Ellen: how has he been watching TV?
Bex: Four month- It’s been four months because Eddie says, “Taylor moved out four months ago.”
Alice: Yeah. So this is four months after the end of, um, end of Season 5, and yeah.
Bex: He has an, he has an ottoman arm- he has, like, that La-Z-Boy armchair. That’s how he’s been watching TV. ‘Cause then at the end of the episode he moves the La-Z-Boy, which was sort of off to the side, i- into the position where the couch was.
Ellen: Oh, I thought he got a new thing.
Bex: Which is very significant.
Ellen: Okay. Yeah. He already had that. Shush. Okay, phew. He had something to sit on while he was watching TV.
Bex: So Buck gets really affronted by Christopher pointing out his lack of a couch, and says like, “What does it, what does hell, not having a couch have to do with being captain?” And Chris is just like, “It’s weird.” [00:48:00] Um, and here is where-
Ellen: Chris is all of us right now.
Bex: And here is where couch theory becomes canon.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: Because Buck says, “My last two couches came with girlfriends.”
Alice: Well, the girlfriends came with the couches.
Bex: As Eddie says, but I- And, and again, he brings up that it’s been four months. You could have replaced your couch by now. You could have bought something else. And Buck’s like, “Well, maybe I don’t wanna pick the wrong couch again.”
Ellen: I.e. the wrong girlfriend
Alice: And hence-
Bex: Yeah …
Alice: the birth of couch theory.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: Couches equal girlfriends.
Ellen: I see …
Bex: and Eddie’s like, “Well, maybe that, that’s how Bobby feels about interim captain. He doesn’t want to pick the wrong one.” But this scene is adorable. Um, six cheese lasagna sounds disgusting
Ellen: No way. It sounds [00:49:00] amazing. It sounds like-
Bex: Sounds like it’d be like-
Ellen: Like-
Bex: Sounds like, like a one-way trip to all night in the bathroom
Ellen: Yeah, I was gonna say my, my stomach would probably not enjoy it, but it, it sounds amazing in theory. It sounds like it would taste amazing, but then you’d regret it later.
Bex: In the short term. Yeah. Very much.
Ellen: All right, so more cute stuff with, um, with Chim and Maddie. Uh, so Maddie is, uh- Hang on. No, this is not the, the cutest part yet, but Maddie is dropping Jee off, um, because Maddie has an emergency in her apartment, which she does have. She does have an apartment. She’s definitely not sleeping in her car.
Alice: Apparently she does have an apartment. Yeah.
Ellen: Um, but she’s about to not have the apartment for a little while because there’s a, a leak and it’s raining in her kitchen.
Alice: It is raining in her kitchen.
Ellen: And, um, and so Chim’s gonna look, [00:50:00] was gonna look after Jee, but then he convinces Maddie that she should just stay the night at his place, and they can watch a movie that they’ve tried to watch several times, but she keeps falling asleep in the middle of it.
Bex: Yeah, because Chim makes a joke about a plumber coming out on Saturday night after 9:00 is, is going to cost a pretty penny, and Maddie’s like, “Oh my God, it’s Saturday after 9:00. You would have … You must have had plans,” ’cause, you know, single guy out on the prowl. And he’s like, “No, I was just trying to finish the movie that you keep falling asleep in.”
Ellen: So cute.
Bex: And Maddie’s all affronted, like, “You’re watching without me?” And he’s like, “Dude, you keep falling asleep.”
Alice: Cause at the end of, at the end of last season, it’s like, oh, okay, like, they’re clearly getting together, and then it’s been four months and they’re still not together?
Bex: Were they-
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, there were inklings of it at the end of the season, weren’t there? …
Bex: dating? Taking it slow? Mm.
Alice: It’s like they were like, “Oh, we can’t just let them get back together off screen, even though we [00:51:00] kind of did it already, so I guess we’ll make an episode here.” I don’t know. It was weird.
Ellen: Well, I’m glad they didn’t leave it any longer, like it already stretched out too long.
Bex: Or, like, I wonder, I would love to know what the couples therapy storyline was. Like where did the couples therapy-
Ellen: It, it doesn’t come back?
Bex: … fit in this? Um, not in this episode. Not in the next episode either. So, like, how did it fit with this whole thing?
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Or is this whole thing new, completely brand new?
Ellen: Yeah, it doesn’t seem like they’re in a, any kind of conflict at the moment. Like, why would they go to couples therapy? Anyway.
Bex: It’s weird.
Ellen: They got rid of that, so it doesn’t matter.
Bex: They should’ve got rid of this next episode too. This next emergency too.
Ellen: This next emergency is, is really dumb. Um, the, this, a guy and his dad [00:52:00] who are playing golf and, oh, let’s just fast-forward to ‘Cause it doesn’t- Like, it, it has no bearing on anything else that happens. Like, there’s no-
Bex: The only, the only thing that it has bearing in this is that, um, when the 118 get called to the emergency, um, Buck tries to take over from Bobby. So there’s a moment where, um, Buck sort of rushes past and he’s trying to talk to LAPD, and he’s being very proactive, like overly, overtly proactive about, you know, s- establishing safety on the scene.
That does kind of come back to play later. Um, the actual emergency itself is, is pretty stupid and, and, and has no, um, bearing except that somebody swallowed a medical textbook at some point- Okay … and decided they needed to regurgitate everything that they have ever read. ‘Cause I swear there’s more medical jargon in this, like, 30 seconds than there was in [00:53:00] the entirety of season five.
Ellen: Oh, really? This is like- Okay, so, but what happens is the guy, he’s wearing a, a wedding ring, like a metal wedding ring, and the dad was like, “Oh, you should wear a rubber one like I do when I’m playing golf.” And he’s like, “Okay, whatever.” And then his ball, he sh- he hits the ball and it gets stuck in this, like, wood chipper thing that’s on the course for some reason ’cause his gardener people are doing stuff on the golf course, and he reaches in to the wood chipper to-
Bex: Oh my God
Ellen: retrieve the ball. And I’m like, “I cannot watch this. I know-
Bex: Nope …
Ellen: I know what’s gonna happen, and I don’t want to see it.”
Bex: I’ve seen far too m- like, final, this is, like, straight out of Final Destination. And I’m pretty sure this was in an episode of Supernatural as well. Yeah, yeah. You don’t put your hands into mechanical devices.
Alice: No, like what, for a fucking ball.
Ellen: That is designed to shred things.
Alice: Like, Jesus Christ.
Bex: But I mean- Like, oh my God … it was his dad- dad’s lucky golf ball. Um, [00:54:00] I, I would love that-
Ellen: But poke a stick in there or something. Don’t just reach in there with your hands. Like, oh my God.
Bex: I would love that, like, later on h- the dad is like, “Why did you do that?” and the, the son is like, “But it’s your lucky ball.” And the dad’s like, “Do you know how many times I’ve lost that lucky ball? That’s like lucky ball number 55. I have a whole pack of them at home.” “I just keep replacing them.”
Ellen: Yeah. Oh, God.
Bex: But yeah, so he reaches into the wood chipper. He, the, it, his golf club accidentally turns it on. Um, it’s okay though, because he was wearing that wedding ring, and the wedding ring jams into the tines of the, the chippery thing, so he’s able to extract his hand.
Ellen: So his, so his hand is fine.
Bex: And- But- But just as we think, “Okay, well, that was a stupid emergency. What was the point of that?” Um, the tension of the motor on the tine thingies is too much for the wedding ring, and so the tines keep spinning, and the wedding ring gets shot out the other end and basically shoots the dad in the [00:55:00] heart.
Ellen: Yeah, and somehow whoever called 9-1-1 told… Like, we didn’t, we don’t hear the 9-1-1 call, but they told the dispatch that this guy had been shot. So when they, when the 118 arrive, they’re all like, this is why, like, Buck is rushing in and going, “We heard there was a shooting. You know, have you removed the weapon?”
And they’re like, “No, there’s-“
Bex: But they say, they say like, “Have you removed the weapon?” Like- There’s no-
Ellen: And lAPD are like, “It’s still embedded in the victim’s chest.” And they’re all like, “What?”
Bex: Which is not the weapon. ‘Cause, like, the weapon, if they’re saying he’s been shot, then the weapon would be the wood chipper.
Ellen: Yeah. Maybe they haven’t quite worked out what’s happened yet.
Bex: So no, the wood chipper is not embedded in the guy’s chest. The, the ring is still embedded in the guy’s chest. Um, but yeah, then, so then we get Eddie and Hen working on the dad, and this is when we start getting, like, the medical jargon just goes nuts.
‘Cause Hen’s like, “We’ve got a keyhole [00:56:00] thoracic entry wound.” Um, Eddie’s ticking off, like, the heart rate, systolic BP indicate is 98, indicating the patient was laterally struck by a large caliber round. Ooh, they- Hen’s like, “Well, based on…”
Alice: The fact that, like, in the 9-1-1 call it was just like, “Oh, he’s been shot,” and like, “Oh, okay, go to a, um, GSW.”
And then they go and it’s just like, “Oh, it was a w- ring.” Like, what? Like, wouldn’t you call and go, “My wedding ring has shot out of a wood chipper.” Like, I don’t… It was stupid.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, how do you even describe- Like- … what’s happened here? Like, he, he basically got shot, but it was with a, not with a bullet.
You know, like, I don’t… It’s weird. Anyway-
Bex: It’s weird
Ellen: … he doesn’t have… Nothing’s punctured his lung, and so he’s gonna be fine.
Bex: Yep. The end.
Ellen: That’s it.
Bex: That’s it.
Ellen: Um, except apparently the dad’s been playing golf with his son’s ex-boyfriend because he was the one, he [00:57:00] was like the son he never had, the one who can play golf.
It’s like, “Oh, thanks for that parting shot before we go, Dad.” Um, yeah, that’s it. Yeah, okay. They never, never see them again.
Bex: Yep I think the only, um, the only other reason for that call is because the episode is called “Let The Games Begin”, and it’s a game of golf
Alice: Has anyone else had Taylor Swift- Game … in their head the whole episode? No? Just me? Okay, cool.
Bex: Just you.
Ellen: Just you. Yeah, cool. Yeah, sorry.
Bex: No. Just you. I don’t even like-
Ellen: Although now that you turn, now that you say that, I do now have it in my head, so thanks.
Bex: No, it’s fine. Um, so yes. This is I think attempting to be a theme episode in that there’s lots of talks of games and-
Ellen: Yeah, there’s some sport …
Bex: game, sports and competitions and games and [00:58:00] games adjacent, which is also why we’ve got Boggle got thrown in there just randomly- Oh, yeah … ’cause it’s a game.
Ellen: Oh,
Bex: yeah. Um. Yeah.
Ellen: So Bit of a-
Bex: Anyway, let’s-
Ellen: a left-field one. Anyway, yeah …
Bex: let’s move, let’s move on to a random scene at dispatch
Ellen: Oh, there’s a new dispatch
Bex: Where we have-
Ellen: It’s the new dispatch. So s- and Sue has some new, um, 9-1-1 dispatcher people who are just starting.
Bex: Yes. She’s taking them on a tour, giving them an inspirational speech. Um, and Josh and Maddie are just watching with their cups of tea. If they had popcorn. Yeah. They would have had popcorn too.
Ellen: They’re sipping their tea. Um- Um, and there’s one guy out of the new guys who gets focused on a bit more than the others, and I’m like, “Oh, there’s a new character for [00:59:00] this season.” Yes.
Bex: They’re s- soft launching the new, the new minor character for this season.
Ellen: Yeah. But we don’t meet him yet.
Bex: Not quite yet. No. Um, we have to focus on Josh being, like, the gay bestie, um, where he’s trying to convince, um, Maddie to get back together with Chim.
Alice: I mean, to be fair, we’re all trying to convince Maddie to get back together with Chim.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s been four months. Like, come on. More than that.
Alice: Like, Josh is like, “You clearly still love each other. Just get back together already.” It’s like, yeah, thank you.
Bex: He, he tells her to s- That they can’t, that he, she and Chim can’t keep playing these guessing games, Maddie.
Ellen: Oh, God. Guessing games. Now that you say it, it’s … Now that you’ve told us about that- Yep … it’s everywhere. Yep.
Bex: I don’t know if this kind of theme episode is worse than an episode like Karma’s a [01:00:00] Bitch, where the theme was, like, jumping out at you every second.
Alice: Yeah. I have no answer for that.
Bex: Like, is it, is it better that the theme is subtle and it’s one of those, like, if you tilt your head and squint slightly you see it? Um, or if you really think about it and unpack it you see it? Or is it better if it’s like, yes, every single theme is about karma being a bitch and you can’t escape it?
Ellen: I don’t know. I, it… Like, we shouldn’t have to look this hard at it to be able to see. In my opinion. Like, I don’t mind the ones that are slapping you in the face with it, I guess. Anyway, Josh tells her that if she, “if you can’t figure out what he wants, maybe you should tell him what you want.” It’s like, go on, be bold, Maddie.
Bex: Yes. So while Maddie contemplates being bold, we’re going to May’s storyline version two, because they dropped the [01:01:00] whole dropping her off at college, and instead we get her sitting, um, at home. Well, not at ho- at her home, at the Bathena residence, um, looking at her potential college roommates. ‘Cause apparently they do, like, entire website presentations of your future roommates if you go to UCLA.
Alice: Sure.
Ellen: And apparently they all look so young. I’m like, May, that’s just ’cause you work with, like, adults.
Bex: Yeah, but like, the thing that really I could not understand about this scene is that they’re showing, like, the roommates are assuming, I assume that they’re sort of straight out of high school. So they’re like, they’re all shown to be 18.
May is 20, so there’s only two years difference between them, and Corrine is gorgeous and could very easily, [01:02:00] if you told me that she was like 16, 17 at this point, I would believe you.
Alice: Yeah, right? Like, they’re just, like, I don’t think anyone’s gonna look and be like, “Oh my God, she’s so much older.” Yeah. But who knows?
Bex: Yeah, like she’s talking like they think I’m, when I walk in, they think I’m gonna be the RA, who is usually like an undergrad, like a graduate student or a post-grad student. So like, you know, someone in their early 20s, someone sort of like 22, 23, sort of that age group. Like, I know she feels older because for the last two years she’s been working, but in the grand scheme of things, she’s still a baby and she’s still gonna fit in- Yeah
with these girls.
Alice: I think she just feels older, ’cause like, yeah, she’s not fresh out.
Ellen: Yeah, well, she’s been working with- Yeah … a lot of, a bunch of people who are older, so I guess.
Bex: I, yeah, I get that. It’s just, like in, that’s how she feels, but in reality she’s 20.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: She is. She’s not that much older than these girls.
Yeah, but remember
Alice: when you were 20? Like, you think you’re an adult, you think you’re top of the world, you think you’re so much better than the teenagers, and it’s just like, “Oh honey, you’re still a baby.”[01:03:00]
Bex: Um, we very, that, and that’s, that’s where that scene goes. It’s just May going, “Oh my God, I feel so old and decrepit, these, like ba- these babies that I’m gonna have to live with.” And then Bobby comes in and goes, “Okay, enough about you. Talk to me about these shirts.”
Um, he’s literally walking in holding two different Hawaiian shirts and like, “They’re both so different. I like, I don’t know which one to pick. You need to help me choose.” Um-
Alice: And yeah, even Athena’s just like, “Why don’t you just bring both of them?”
Ellen: It’s weird. It’s a weird scene.
Bex: It’s so weird. Um, May tells him that he’s a mustache away from Magnum PI. Um, I don’t know if sh- I know, I know she feels old. I don’t know if she’s old enough to be making Magnum PI references. I don’t know. I could be [01:04:00] wrong. I’m n- was not aware that like 20-year-olds in 2022 knew who Magnum PI was.
Ellen: Maybe she, maybe Athena was watching it with her at s- at one point. Although I would not want to watch that sort of thing with my mother
Bex: As an aside, I don’t even remember what the context was, but it was some kind of, um, it was a compilation video where it’s like the, when somebody thinks I’ve done something and I haven’t, and it was just like 30 seconds of Magnum P.I. giving like a smirk of like, “I haven’t done it.” But goddamn, Tom Selleck was a handsome man.
Alice: See, like I’m in the age bracket where I mostly know him from Friends.
Bex: Oh, no. See, I know him from Magnum P.I.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Goddamn it, he was c- gorgeous back then. Like he’s still, but yeah.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: Peter Krause is handsome but he’s no, [01:05:00] he’s no Tom Selleck. Not even with a mustache. He couldn’t pull it off.
Ellen: No, I don’t think he could pull off a mustache. That would be hilarious.
But he’s- Um- He’s committed to only bringing one small bag. A small, one small roller bag. But Athena is definitely- Yes … bringing more than one bag apparently.
Bex: Which is why he’s only bringing one bag, because he’s letting Athena bring more bags. Um- Yeah … and he, he’s gone into like full planning mode. He knows exactly how big their room on the cruise ship is, and therefore how much luggage they can fit into said room.
Yeah. And like how many clothes can fit into each bag that will fit into the room. Um, and he has created a spreadsheet with like the, everything that is on offer on the cruise, so they’re making all of their decisions beforehand. Oh my God, he- Including what they’re gonna have for dinner …
Ellen: he needs holidays more [01:06:00] often than this. Like, this is ridiculous.
Bex: It is. It’s an interesting dynamic, um, where you’ve got like the one partner who goes on vacation, or like takes a holiday and wants to experience all the experiences and wants to be like busy doing stuff, and then you’ve got the other partner who goes on holiday and just wants to relax.
Alice: Yeah. I just wanna relax and like Mum always is just like, “Oh, let’s do all the things,” and I’m just like, “Yeah, I do all the things at home. I just wanna like chill out for like at least a day or two.” Um, but yeah, I was just, like I’ve been re- rewatching Brooklyn Nine-Nine and, um, there’s the episode where they go on the cruise, like Amy and Jake go on the cruise and Judge Judy’s there.
And Amy has like, yeah, a binder full of like, “This is what we’re doing at this time. This is what we’re doing at this time.” And Jake’s just like, “Yay, organized fun.”
Ellen: Hmm. Yeah.
Bex: I will, um, confess that I tend more towards the Bobby side of things than the Athena side of things.
Alice: To be fair, the Bobby side of things, like [01:07:00] it makes sense when like Athena talks about it later.
Ellen: Yeah, he does it to cope with-
Alice: Yeah, he does it to cope with the fact that he’s basically-
Ellen: He’s anxious
Alice: … he’s, he’s going- Yeah … on a booze cruise as someone that’s sober. Like …
Ellen: But the way that he’s, he’s saying these things and she’s sort of laughing at him, it’s like, it feels a bit like she’s making fun of the fact that he’s got a spreadsheet.
Which is a bit of a contrast with later when she’s explaining to May or whoever, um, why he needs to do it But he’s, she’s like, “I don’t see why we sh- why I would have to jump off a perfectly good boat for no reason.” And Bobby’s like, “It’s called snorkeling and it’s fun.” So he’s gonna be trying to convince her to do activities the whole time, and she’s like, “Dude, I just wanna sit by the pool.”
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Just let me chill.
Bex: Pretty much, yeah. Yes. She’s like sh- she’s gonna be wanting to sit by the pool. She’s wanna go and get, like, a [01:08:00] massage and just, like, relax.
Ellen: Just get someone to bring her margaritas every few minutes.
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Sounds great. Damn, now I want a holiday where I can sit by a pool.
Alice: I know.
I was saving up for a cruise for a while, and then I kept getting puppies, so.
Bex: I d- uh, after COVID-
Ellen: Compromises
Bex: … and now hantavirus, I don’t think I could ever go on a cruise.
Ellen: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t-
Alice: Yeah, right
Bex: … because if you go on a cruise, you’re gonna get sick.
Ellen: Cruises are not attractive at all, yeah.
Bex: No.
Ellen: Athena just gets sick of arguing with him and just tells him the shirt on the right.
Bex: It’s, it’s so cute ’cause sh- like, Bobby’s been pushing her to make decisions, like, “Pick what you’re having for dinner. Pick what activities. Just pick a damn shirt.” And she’s like, “Fine. The one on the right.” He’s like, “Great.”
She’s like, “Great.” May’s just watching them going, “Oh, boy. This is gonna be fun.” Yeah, [01:09:00] like what is going on here?
Ellen: Ugh, okay, time for another stupid emergency.
Bex: Look, it’s so fucking stupid, but the scene with Buck and the saw makes up for the entire thing.
Ellen: It, it is funny, yeah. It is funny in the end. S-
Bex: so the, the basis for this emergency is we have a car salesman who, for a promotion, is doing a thing where, um, you touch a car, win a car.
Basically you have to have your h- one of the contestants have a hand touching the car. The last one standing wins the car. All well and good except this is, uh, September. It’s still very hot and, um, they’ve been going for two days.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Yeah, this I-
Bex: Um …
Ellen: I’m pretty sure I’ve heard this happening actually in real life before.
Alice: I’m pretty sure this was based… So there was one, I know there was one that was like hold your wee for a Wii, and people actually got kidney damage.
Bex: Oh. Oof.
Ellen: Wow.
Bex: Which is what happens in this situation. Yeah. So one of the contestants, a female contestant, um, [01:10:00] had, uh, I think intentionally dehydrated herself, um, prior to the competition and then was not drinking any water during the competition.
Alice: And- Oh my God, the contestant for Hold Your Wee for a Wii actually died.
Ellen: Oh, shit.
Bex: Jesus Christ.
Alice: Yeah, it was a radio, um, a radio show did it and, um, yeah, the patient died
Ellen: Jeez.
Alice: So yeah, that’s fun.
Bex: Yikes. Nobody dies in this one, thankfully.
Alice: No.
Bex: Um, but the contestants, the female contestant in particular starts, um, exhibiting severe pain.
Like she’s grabbing her back, she’s screaming. She’s still got one hand on the car. Um, so the car dealer guy has to call 9-1-1 and says that the game has gone awry, so they send the 118 Um, Buck once again tries to take control. Bobby very quickly nips that in the bud.
[01:11:00] Um, so Eddie examines the female contestant and says that she’s, uh… He, he must have borrowed the magical diagnosing tool from somebody, um, because he- Yeah … says that she is suffering from acute kidney failure. And she’s not gonna… She’s refusing to go to hospital because as soon as she takes her hand off the car, uh, she loses, and it’s, it…
She’s got this, like, sunken cost fallacy. You know, she’s been standing here for 45 minutes. She’s in excruciating pain, but if she wins the car, then it’ll be all be worth it. And, um, the other, there’s another guy who is not in acute kidney failure. Um, he’s fine, but he’s refusing to take a hand off the car as well.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um, so Eddie’s like, “We have to do something. My patient’s refusing to leave. The other guy’s refusing to leave.” Um, Bobby tries to, uh, reason with Rod [01:12:00] Billings from Rod Billings Cars, and he’s like, “Nope.” Uh, the rule, the, the rules are the rules. They have to keep one hand on the car at all times in order to win the competition.
And Buck and Bobby are sharing a brain cell at this moment because they both come to the same conclusion very quickly. Um, which is like the only-
Ellen: Like, we only have to keep one hand on one part of the vehicle?
Bex: They have to keep a hand on a part of the vehicle. And Bobby’s like, “Okay, Buck.” And Buck’s like, “I am right there with you, Cap. Saws and jaws.” And in the background, Eddie’s like, “Oh my God, here we go.”
Ellen: Um- I thought he was just gonna lean on the wing mirror or something and break it off, but no, he’s got a full-on saw. He’s about to cut the car in half.
Bex: So, yeah, Buck goes and gets the circular saw, um, while Rod Billings of [01:13:00] Billings Cars is like, “Are you gonna cut her hand off so that, like, her hand is still on the car so you can take her to hospital?”
Um, and he’s like, “No. We’re, we’re gonna cut the car, piece of the car off so that, like, her hand remains on the car at all time. You didn’t say the car had to stay in one piece.” Buck walks past with a shit-eating grin, brandishing the saw. Eddie’s watching this in the background.
Ellen: He’s enjoying this way too much.
Bex: He’s… Eddie’s like, “You know, that’s my man. Look how much fun he’s having right now.” And like, Buck really gets into it. He’s like revving the saw far more than he needs to, but then like very, very dramatically putting it toward the car and then pulling it back and then putting it toward the car. Um, Rod Billings is standing firm though.
He’s like, “No, rules are rules. They have to be. Like this car has to remain intact.”
Alice: Like you made up the rules.
Bex: You can very easily change the rules. Um-
Alice: Dumb ass …
Bex: Channel 8 News, not Taylor though because she refuses to go anywhere near the 118 [01:14:00] right now- Um, have been filming-
Alice: I know, I was actually kind of sad that there was no Taylor. I was like, oh, it’d just be so funny if Taylor showed up and just like … But like they ended quite amicably, so-
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Like they probably would’ve been fine
Bex: Oh, she would, she would be an absolute professional. Buck would’ve been tripping over himself.
Alice: Exactly.
Bex: Um, but no, unfortunately it’s not Taylor Kelly. It’s someone else.
Alice: No, I actually would’ve, I would’ve liked seeing Buck not tripping over him, so like it’s been four months, they ended amicably. I would’ve just liked them to s- like to see them like just smile at each other and, ’cause they, like, you know, if she does continue being a reporter, um, they’re gonna have to probably see each other.
Ellen: Yeah, they’re gonna have, especially the, the, the number of like things that they get involved in.
Alice: Yeah. But like it would’ve been really nice if they just saw each other and like gave each other a nod and that was it.
Bex: Unless Taylor has joined the list of, um, Buck’s ex-girlfriends who have fled the state in order to get away from him.
Alice: Fled the country, yeah. [01:15:00]
Bex: Um, but no. No, Channel 8, but without Taylor, who have been on scene filming the, uh, the competition just for like, uh, a fun, good news story in the morning, realize that something serious is going down and they swarm towards, um, Bobby and Rod Billings from Billings Cars. And Eddie’s like, “Oh look, more reporters.
This is gonna be great on the morning news.” And Rod Billings realizes that he’s in a like really bad situation right now. And funnily enough, when there’s a camera in his face, suddenly the rules are not the rules anymore, and he can change the rules.
Ellen: Oh, how convenient.
Bex: Because, um, now he’s saying that they can both win a car “because here at Billings Auto Emporium, the only thing bigger than our deals are our hearts.”
And there’s a shot of, um, kidney failure woman and, uh, the other guy like shaking car keys at each other as they get wheeled off to [01:16:00] hospital. Um, absolutely stupid, but the interaction with Buck and the saw and-
Alice: Yeah, it’s great …
Bex: is just adorable.
Alice: I, I don’t mind this emergency. It’s back to like 9-1-1 goofiness.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Like, it’s stupid but it’s not, like, terrible stupid
Bex: It’s fun stupid
Ellen: It’s funny, yeah. It’s fun stupid
Alice: Yeah, it’s fun stupid. That’s it. I don’t care if it’s stupid if I’m having fun
Bex: It, we’ve said that hundreds of times.
Alice: And that’s, and that’s exactly why I like the season eight opener so much, because it’s so fucking stupid but I’m having a great time.
Bex: Was eight the bees?
Ellen: Was that the bee-nado?
Alice: It’s bee-nado. It’s-
Ellen: Yeah, okay.
Alice: Yeah, I was trying to avoid spoilers, but it’s 100% bee-nado. No,
Ellen: no, yeah, I know about the bee-nado.
Alice: Like, it’s so fucking stupid, but I’m having a great time during it, so I don’t care.
Ellen: Okay
Bex: Um, you know who’s not having a great time? Hen. Because she didn’t do any studying or go [01:17:00] to any class last year, and finals are coming so she’s gotta do like a year’s worth of medical learning in a very, very short period of time. Um-
Ellen: Except that September is the beginning of the school year, so.
Bex: Ye-
Ellen: Maybe she got a kick up the pants and realized that she finally had to get on and do it or she wouldn’t pass. But anyway, it doesn’t matter. She’s actually studying, and s- she’s studying so hard that she’s gone into the flow state and completely forgotten that she’s supposed to be having lunch with Athena.
Bex: Yes. Uh, thankfully Athena is a very good friend and realized that Hen was probably studying and went and got food and brought it to Hen’s house in order to force her to, like, emerge from the books and eat something.
Ellen: Aw.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Thanks, Athena. Uh,
Bex: she says here that it’s end of, like, it’s end of her second year of medical school So I don’t know how that works.
Ellen: [01:18:00] Hmm
Bex: But y- she has big exams coming up. And she tells Athena that she used to think that they, I don’t know who they are, were exaggerating about how bad the boards would be. Now I’m starting to think they may be undersold it. Maybe if you’d studied at all during the year. Maybe if you’d gone to class, it wouldn’t be so bad. Um-
Ellen: Oh dear.
Bex: We c- We … I’m not go- I’m not gonna let this go. I’m so mad at this.
Ellen: Yeah, well Athena’s solution is to maybe talk to David about it. Like, what? How is David gonna help with- ‘
Bex: Cause he’s a doctor …
Ellen: studying for … Yeah, but like-
Alice: Yeah, he studied one time.
Bex: It’s, it’s not at all helpful. It’s just a, oh, h- you know, the person who’s binged-
Ellen: It’s a solidarity thing
Bex: the entire series went, “Hey, maybe we should, like, just remind everybody about Michael and [01:19:00] Harry and David ’cause they were in this show. We, we need to, like, see what’s going on with them, so this would be a perfect time to name drop, and we’ll do a quick tangent off to, like, the Grant men.”
Ellen: Yes. David, Michael, and Harry are- They live in Miami now.
Bex: Yes, and David commutes to Haiti.
Ellen: Well, apparently Harry sounds happy there, so that’s good.
Bex: While Hen is digging into… What’d she get, tacos? Yes, she got tacos. So she’s digging, she’s digging into tacos. Um, Athena’s phone is blowing up, and Hen’s like, “Who is texting you?”
Um, it’s Bobby. He still needs decisions to be made on the spreadsheet for the, uh, cruise activities.
Ellen: Oh my God.
Bex: Which is where we get the discussion of, you know, it can’t be easy for a person who is, you know, [01:20:00] sober to be going on basically a booze cruise.
Ellen: Yeah. He’s trying to show Athena a good time. Um, Athena is the one who drinks all the time at home while Bobby is there, and whenever they have people over, they’re always drinking wine. So I don’t know.
I– We’ve mentioned this before, that it, it feels weird. But anyway, at least, um, Athena is keeping in mind that they are going on a cruise where a lot of people are gonna be drinking, so All right
Bex: Okay
Ellen: Where are we up to?
Bex: Um, well, Chim is watching a movie. Maddie has once again fallen asleep.
Ellen: Oh, it’s so cute. She just wakes up wh- and the credits are rolling and she’s like, “Oh no, I missed everything again.”
Bex: Yeah, ’cause Chim, like Chim notices she’s fallen asleep and he’s just like, “Ha, did [01:21:00] not see that coming. What a big plot twist.” And she’s like, “Whoa, whoa, what did I miss? Oh, I missed the whole movie again.” And it’s so
It is cute because he tells her that the only reason they’re watching that movie is he thought that she would like it, and she’s just like, “I’m incapable of staying up past like 9:00 PM anymore.”
Alice: Yeah no, she says that she just doesn’t have the patience for them anymore. Um, she’s like, “Two people meet, you know they’re gonna end up together, and then you have to watch them bumble their way through stupid misunderstandings for two hours. I don’t know, it’s kind of annoying.” And it’s like, yes, Maddie, we also find this sort of shit annoying.
Bex: No, she said to, um, to Chim’s, “So you’d rather your rom-coms have less, less com,” she’s like, “No, I would just rather see two people overcome real problems, um, and still have their happy ending. That would be more satisfying.”
But, like, it takes her a good two minutes to say that sentence, um, because it’s really drawn out, and as she’s [01:22:00] finishing that line of dialogue over two minutes, um, she and Chim are kind of staring at each other. And we get cuts from all of the times the two of them, um, had moments together.
Alice: It’s… I like this here. It’s c- the, the song is good as well.
Bex: Yes. It’s cute. The song’s talking about they’ve got issues.
Alice: And one of them is h- how bad I need you. It’s great. Um, I’ve actually seen a Buddie edit to this, which is good.
Bex: Um, but it, it’s very much like they’re, she’s trying to communicate that she wants something else, and Chim’s sort of very slowly picking up what she’s putting down.
Um, there is, like, this awkward moment where, um, Chim kind of reaches out and he’s sort of touching her shoulder and then running his hand down her, the front of her. Um, and she, like, grabs his hand and laces their fingers together, which then gets kind of cut into all the other times that [01:23:00] they’ve held hands.
But it looked like he was going to, like, try to unbutton her top, and she’s like, “Ooh, no soldier. No, no, no. We’re not doing that right now.”
Ellen: Yeah, it did. At first I thought he was, like, going in to cop a feel. I’m like, “Dude.” “Slow your roll here.”
Bex: And but then it’s so weird because this whole edit we’ve been watching them, like, kiss all the different times that they’ve kissed on screen. Then they go in for the kiss, and the way they shot it, ’cause you… Um, they have Jennifer sort of with her, the back of her head to the camera. I don’t think they actually kissed.
Ellen: No, it didn’t look like they did.
Alice: It- it’s weird Are we still in COVID?
Bex: It’s such a fake screen kiss.
Ellen: Yeah. It looked like they kind of mushed their cheeks together or something instead.
Bex: I don’t even know if, I don’t know if they even, like, touched. It’s very much just, like, her hair and her head covering Kenny’s face so you can’t tell that they’re not kissing. And I’m like, “But why? Y’all have been kissing for years. [01:24:00] Why suddenly are you drawing the line here?”
Alice: Yeah, that’s why I’m like, is it s- is it still COVID? Like, we had the fake stampede and-
Bex: No. It’s… No, it’s de- very definitely not COVID. It’s just, it’s just-
Ellen: It’s a weird one
Bex: … weird. Especially considering the implication is that they have sex because Maddie wakes up the next morning, um, in the bed fully expecting-
Ellen: In bed, yeah …
Bex: Chim to be there with her and he’s not ‘Cause he’s apparently fled his own apartment two hours earlier than he’s meant to be, meant to have left.
Alice: Yeah. Which even Bobby thinks is weird.
Ellen: He freaked out a little bit.
Bex: It does lead to, as we said, it’s somebody’s binged the series, somebody’s finally remembered Shannon, and the shenanigans that Eddie and Shannon got up to where, you know, he was trying to sneak around Christopher with his own wife. Like, [01:25:00] forcing her to crawl out windows and escape out the back door so nobody knew they were sleeping together.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So.
Ellen: I’d forgotten all about that until he brought it up again. So.
Bex: But even, um, even Eddie agrees with Bobby that what Chim did is, is not a good idea. It’s one of those things, you do as I say, not as I do kind of situations.
Ellen: Yeah, you’re just avoiding, avoiding having the conversation Um, so then we get this lit- weird little scene at dispatch where Maddie literally bumps into… Well, uh, yeah, she leaves the room and runs right into Noah, who’s the new dispatcher guy. Um, Noah comes across as, like, a bit of a Maddie groupie.
Alice: Fanboy?
Bex: Fan girl?
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: And I’m like, “Oh, is this gonna be some kind of a rival [01:26:00] love interest thing, or is he just being annoyingly, like, attentive?” But, um, yeah, so hi, Noah. He’s like, “Any tips for a newbie?” And that’s it. That’s that whole scene. So then-
Bex: That’s that …
Ellen: then we get this scene with the, the, the two boys h- playing hide and seek. So Maddie takes a call where the, the, this kid can’t find his brother.
Bex: Which is… I, if anyone would, has any other reasons why this scene was put in here other than the fact that it’s a game, um, I would love to know them, ’cause I, I don’t understand.
Alice: It’s to stop Maddie from running away, obviously. Well- Even though she wasn’t the one that ran away this time.
Ellen: I mean, it’s kind of a throwback to Maddie actually running away and hiding, and then Chim finding her in the place where… No, I guess they went to Boston because that’s where he thought that she would be in the end.
But anyway, it doesn’t really relate [01:27:00] to anything else that’s happening as far as I can tell.
Bex: No. So which is why I wonder if this was like, “Shit, we threw out three-quarters of our episode. Um, we need to get some filler in.” Um, because it’s literally, it’s, it’s literally just Jennifer and these kids. So it would’ve been really easy to get Jennifer on set, send C team out with some kids, um, in a set to do the hide and seek part. I don’t know.
Alice: They were trying to get it on theme, but like Hudson in the morning, it was a big stretch.
Bex: But something about it inspires her to go back to the apartment, even though she wasn’t the one who ran from the apartment, um, and tells Chim that she’s not leaving, even though no one told her to leave. [01:28:00]
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: But then she’s not talking about the apartment, she’s talking about the family. Um, she’s wants in on the family. It, it’s, it’s weird.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s not-
Bex: It gets them back together
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: But it’s weird
Ellen: It’s not a- It’s- … a very obvious connection, but anyway Uh, Chim says he wants her to stay as well, and hooray. They’re done running. That’s it.
Bex: Relationship fixed.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So while Chim is dealing with that, we go either… Well, it’s either while Chim is dealing with that or the next day, um, we return to the 118 where Buck found a clipboard.
Ellen: Oh, no.
Alice: Buck did find a clipboard.
Bex: And I love Buck with a clipboard. And, and Clipboard Buck is back, and he is still on his crusade to prove that he would make a good [01:29:00] interim captain. Um, and he’s-
Alice: Which only he agrees with, but sure.
Ellen: Yeah, and Hen’s just not having it.
Bex: He’s doing that by… Well, because he’s gone through her ambulance, um- Yeah … and he’s basically pulled out some kind of, um, report that says, you know, this is what an ambulance is supposed to have, and these are the…
everything it’s supposed to be stocked with, and this is all of the, um, the sort of procedures and, and safety shit, and all of that kind of stuff. And he’s gone through and has been checking off the list and finding that the ambulance is not up to par.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Well, the thing is, it is. He’s just trying to find issues
Bex: Yes.
He c- he specifically says that if he is elected interim captain, he is going to do a whole organizational overhaul.
Ellen: Yeah, and Hen says that this is not a class president election. [01:30:00] Like, Bobby is going to choose- … who the person is.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: It’s not a democracy.
Bex: It’s a cheer-ocracy. Sorry. Um, and then she snatches his clipboard out of his hands. Um, and she storms into Bobby’s office, and she demands that Bobby announce who the new interim captain is going to be because she cannot take any more of Buck trying to prove himself. And Bobby gets this, like, light bulb goes off above his head, and so he’s like, “Oh, so that’s what he’s been doing.” Like, sir, seriously.
Ellen: You didn’t realize?
Bex: You’re only now figuring- Okay, this, this is why you didn’t realize that Lucy and Buck kissed-
Alice: Oh, yeah
Bex: … for, like, two months until after Chimney told you, because you’re sh- you’ve somehow you’ve gone from all-seeing, all-knowing Buddie shipper number one to head in the sand, doesn’t even see what’s going on under your own nose.
Ellen: Yeah, well, I [01:31:00] mean-
Bex: Um …
Ellen: Buck even basically said that, you know, why, why is Lucy… Like, he, he didn’t, like, I don’t think he’s actually s- said anything to Bobby about this yet, but-
Bex: No, but when you’ve got-
Ellen: He’s been trying on calls and stuff
Bex: There is… Yeah, that’s exactly what I mean. Like, he’s been stepping up, he’s been trying to prot- like act as interim leader and what did Bobby think he was doing?
Ellen: Yeah. It’s like, well, it’s just Buck. It’s just being Buck.
Bex: It’s just Buck being Buck.
Alice: Buck being Buck
Bex: Like, is it a new, it’s a-
Ellen: Buck Bucking.
Bex: It’s like Buck, Buck 3.0 or whatever the, um, iteration we’re up to has just decided to be, like, overly, um, inserting himself into, um, or pushing himself as the… I don’t know what he thought was going on, but it was quite clear what was going on. Um, he didn’t realize that until just now.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah. Way to go, Bobby.
Bex: Um, and he tells Hen that he’s, uh, he’s [01:32:00] i- he’s still trying to make up his mind because in all honesty he wanted Hen to be interim captain.
Alice: Yeah, and Hen’s like, “What? Me? Why?”
Bex: And again, somebody has been going back and watching all the episodes because she goes, you know, “why me? You know, when I first started, Captain Gerrard wouldn’t even, like, let me out on calls.”
Alice: Yeah, Gerrard mention-
Bex: “And now you, and now you’re telling me that I could actually be, like, captain?” Um, and he’s like, “Yeah, you, you know, you’ve got all the makings to be a great captain. The only reason that I haven’t said or haven’t asked you is because, you know, y- it’s”-
Ellen: You’re in med school
Bex: “a lot of work and you’ve already got family, and you’re in med school.” Like, you might have forgotten you’re in med school, but I remembered you were in med school. Um
Alice: Med school mentioned, take a shot
Bex: He didn’t want to overburden her. Um, and Hen basically argues her way into becoming interim captain. She’s like, “It’s not too much of a burden. Like, I’m already…” It’s, he tells her that it’s, um, [01:33:00] like-
Ellen: It’s a lot of paperwork …
Bex: there’s extra. It’s a lot of paperwork. She says, “Like, I’m already doing paperwork. I don’t mind doing a little bit more.” Um, it adds another hour or two to every shift. She’s like, “I’m already here and it’s a week.
Like, how bad can it be in a week?” Um, so yeah, Hen becomes interim captain.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And so as promised, Bobby goes to deal with Buck who has pulled everything out of the ladder truck and is sorting it. And so it’s all, everything’s out of the compartments all over the floor when Bobby finds him.
He’s like, “I’m so sorry. I will have it all polished and sorted and back in the truck, like, within an hour, and, like, reorganized so that I’m the only one who knows where everything is.” And wh-
Alice: Yeah, even though I’m never in the ambulance and don’t know where, why things are in their place.
Ellen: Why, what happens if the bell goes off while he’s got all this crap all over the floor? [01:34:00] They just have to go without it?
Bex: She has to shove it all back in willy-nilly.
Ellen: Shove everything back in, like, really fast?
Bex: I don’t know. I don’t know.
Ellen: Uh, it, and then he says, Bobby tells him that, uh, that, you know, he appreciates that he’s been t- going the extra mile and, but he’s not gonna name him interim captain.
Hen is gonna do it. And Buck’s like, “Oh, okay. I mean, Hen’ll do a good job.” And then Bobby gives him the you’ve got potential speech. Like, “Someday-” It’s,
Bex: like he say it like that, but it’s really sweet. It’s, because he can see that Buck is clearly disappointed and he, and he’s like, Buck is like, “Hen will make a great captain,” and Bobby’s like, “So will you one day.
You’re a great firefighter, but it’s being a good leader is more than just the work. It’s about life experience, and you just need a [01:35:00] little bit more before you’re ready to be captain.”
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: And Buck goes, “Is this ’cause I don’t have a couch?”
Alice: Bobby’s like, “What?”
Bex: Which throws Bobby for a complete loop.
Alice: Why don’t you have a couch?
Ellen: Bobby hasn’t heard about couch theory.
Bex: Bobby hasn’t heard couch theory and Buck’s like, “I, I just, I’ve been having trouble picking a couch out. I’m, I think I’m afraid of making a mistake with couches again.” Um, so Bobby throws him, ’cause you know, Bobby’s an alcoholic and he’s sober and he goes to AA, so he throws out some AA wisdom, um, and tells Buck that in AA there is this idea that you, like take stock of your life in the hopes that one day you can be at perfect ease and at peace with yourself.
And Buck’s what, Buck’s like, “You don’t think I’m at ease?” and Bobby’s like, “I think only you can answer that [01:36:00] question.”
Ellen: But when you are your- Very philosophical.
Bex: And then he pats Buck on the shoulder with an open hand. Oh God, we’re nearly at the end of the episode.
Ellen: We are. Great. There’s like a little montage here, but not a voiceover one. It’s just-
Bex: Yes …
Ellen: Hen in Bobby’s office.
Um-
Bex: Yeah, we’re, we’re s- we’re setting up the characters for the, the rest of the season.
Ellen: Yeah. So how, how-
Bex: Except that-
Ellen: Bobby’s only going away for a couple of weeks, right?
Bex: One week. One week.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Theoretically-
Ellen: Yeah …
Bex: at this point. So Hen takes on the mantle of captain. She sits down behind his desk, pulls out his, the desk drawer and pulls out the passwords that she already knew Bobby had hidden there so that she can log in as him.
Ellen: Yep.
Bex: Actually, no, she just calls Karen and tells Karen that she’s gonna be a little bit late, and Karen’s like, “Yeah, no, that’s fine.” [01:37:00] Um- Eddie and Chris are playing Boggle again. I don’t know. Yeah. But it’s cute and-
Ellen: It’s Chris’ newest, um, hyperfixation. Must play Boggle.
Bex: Eddie’s got a, like a-
Ellen: Every day
Bex: a V-neck shirt on. He looks good on it, so I’m quite happy.
Ellen: Yep.
Bex: Um.
Ellen: Buck is setting up his uh, bachelor pad with one, with just his one chair. No couch, but-
Alice: He’s probably just been watching TV in the bedroom the whole time.
Bex: Probably.
Alice: But yeah, I don’t know why he didn’t move his one chair into the empty space. Yeah. Um, because-
Bex: Because it’s sym- because it’s symbolic now. Because now it’s like, okay, the couch is a girlfriend, so now he’s moving, like, a single armchair into that space. Mm. So it’s like it’s, he’s not focused on the girlfriends anymore, he’s just focused on himself.
Alice: Mm.
Bex: Symbolism. Couch theory.
Alice: Mm. Yep, that’s it.
Bex: Back in the Han, [01:38:00] um, which I guess is now the Buckley-Han apartment again, ’cause Maddie is moving back in.
Ellen: Yeah, she’s got a lot of stuff.
Bex: Um-
Alice: She’s got a lot of stuff.
Bex: She does have a lot of stuff, so she’s hauling bags backwards and forwards. Um, Jee sees her with bags, and even though she’s bringing the bags into the house, um, she says, ” Mama leave?”
Which breaks everybody’s heart in the room.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: She’s like, “No, no, Mama stay. Mama stay now.”
Ellen: Aw, cute.
Bex: Very cute. And then we theoretically set up for the next episode. We have, um, Athena is FaceTiming her mother. As they’re about to leave for their cruise, I think that’s the vibe we’re getting. They’re, like, packing up. They’ve got their luggage. Bobby’s in his horrendous shirt. They’re about to [01:39:00] leave, right?
Ellen: Yeah, I think so. Yeah, that’s … Isn’t, hasn’t he got, like, moving suitcases or something around?
Bex: Yeah, there’s bags there. I think, um, he’s taking out the trash so it doesn’t, like, stink up the house while they’re away. Um, so while Athena is sort of showing off her giant hat and showing off Bobby’s shirt, which Beatrice thinks is, like, loud and garish, um-
we see Athena’s dad say that he needs to go to the hardware store. They don’t know why he’s going to the hardware store. Um, uh, Beatrice thinks that he’s going to socialize. Like, he goes and meets all of his men friends down at the hardware store.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um-
Ellen: That’s why my, my dad goes to the Men’s Shed. I think it’s just the same thing.
It’s like instead- Yeah. … of going to Bunnings to meet up with his friends, he just goes down there and, like, they don’t do anything. They just chat. Which is fine.
Bex: See, but [01:40:00] I can totally see that happening at Bunnings, ’cause they’ve got cafes or a sausage sizzle going on. Yeah. So you- Yeah … could totally go down and-
Ellen: You could go down and hang out
Bex: grab a sausage and stand around and yeah. Um, he doesn’t get very, very far though, because he walks out the front door and then, um, not long after we get, um, engine noises, screeching tires, and a car comes smashing through the front door of the house And, uh, Beatrice is still on f- like FaceTime with Athena, and she drops the phone.
So from Athena and Bobby’s perspective, all they hear is like the crashing of the car, um, the horn blaring as, like obviously something is laying on the horn, um, and the, the ceiling.
Ellen: Oh my God, it’s very dramatic.
Bex: Because like- It’s very dramatic … it’s very dramatic and the episode ends with Athena just repeating, “Mama, mama, mama?” and that’s where it ends. [01:41:00]
Ellen: I, I nearly went straight onto the next episode after finishing this because I was like, “Whoa, that’s a cliffhanger,” but, um, I didn’t.
Bex: And it’s interesting because this season, like the pattern that this show has established is that the season opener is just like an ordinary episode, and then they have a cliffhanger which leads into like the big emergency that spans two episodes, right?
They, it, it, for that was the earthquake, that was the tsunami, that was the mudslide. Um-
Ellen: Yeah, ’cause the b- the first episode has to like set up where, where all the characters are at for this season.
Bex: Yeah. But then for this, like season five kind of broke the pattern. Season five was weird because it didn’t really follow that pattern.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: Yeah. Um, and then for this episode, the big emergency that you would expect to come from season two [01:42:00] and three is a personal emergency for Athena again.
Alice: Yeah. ‘
Bex: Cause I think that’s what we established that the emergency was for season five. Like it was a, it m-
Ellen: Oh, it was Jeffrey.
Bex: Might have appeared sort of … It was Jeffrey. Yeah, right. So again, it was a personal emergency for Athena. So now we’re back at season six, and again, the big emergency that opens the season is a personal emergency for Athena.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: That’s what it looks like it’s setting it up to be.
Ellen: All right. Well, you wanna tell me what next week’s is gonna be about then?
Bex: Next week. See, I don’t trust the promos anymore either.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: You know? Theoretically, the promo that was written for next week’s episode says that, “The 118 race to the rescue when a structure collapse at a happiness convention traps people under rubble.” As an aside, wouldn’t that have made sense to be like when the blimp hits the [01:43:00] stadium and have a like actual stadium collapse in rubble?
Anyway. Um, “While on FaceTime with her mother, Athena’s father suffers a stroke and crashes through the wall of his house.” No, Athena was on the FaceTime with her mother, and that happened last episode.
Ellen: Hmm.
Bex: Anyway, um, “Hen stretches herself too thin with test prep and her new responsibilities at the 118, while Maddie tries to help a new recruit get his bearings at the call center.”
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Which honestly is one scene.
Ellen: Oh, they just have to update what everyone’s up to apparently.
Alice: Apparently. They’re gonna just tell- That’s- … the whole thing in the
Ellen: Yeah, it’s like they’ve outlined every single scene.
Bex: Um, triggers for next week’s episode include cheating; claustrophobia, someone being buried [01:44:00] under rubble; um, explosions from specifically a pipe bomb; uh, falling asleep while driving; uh, Demion the dragon screaming, “Gore,” because there is apparently an exposed bone at some point; uh, life injury, no, life-threatening injury to a parent; a medically induced coma; uh, a patient death; and stroke.
Ellen: Wow. Okay.
Bex: And you will be not surprised that considering the cliffhanger for, um, this episode, which leads into next episode, was a car crash, that the next episode is called “Crash and Learn”.
Ellen: Crash and Learn.
Bex: ‘Cause there’s gonna be lots of crashes and people learning things from said crashes.
Ellen: Okay. Awesome.
Bex: Educational crashes
Ellen: Well, I thought this episode was pretty good except for the, yeah, like we said at the beginning, the emergencies are pretty, like, not the best. But the [01:45:00] character stuff was great. There were some pretty funny moments.
Bex: The character stuff was, character stuff was excellent. Um, I’m still just annoyed about the, the emergencies being personal again. Like, I, I understand that as a new showrunner, and she’s not even a new showrunner anymore, but, like, you wanna put, as a showrunner wants to put their own stamp on the show, and this is the stories that she wants to tell?
Ellen: Yeah, maybe they no, uh, like they’ve, they’ve done an earthquake, they’ve done like a tsunami, they’ve done like a, a bunch of things, and maybe they just decided they didn’t wanna do like a giant emergency this time. And then they, then after this- I don’t know … they kind of went up, went to the insane route to be doing bee-nados, et cetera.
I don’t know.
Bex: [01:46:00] I, I think I need to, um, to go back and work out, because season six was supposed to be the last season for the show. ‘Cause they got to the end of season six and it was announced that Fox was done. They weren’t gonna do 9-1-1 anymore.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: So then season seven they moved networks, they changed showrunner again.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, it went back to being Tim for showrunner. So that’s kind of why I feel like it went back to the previously established pattern.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: So-
Ellen: So did they know-
Bex: I w- for my own-
Ellen: By the, by the end of the season-
Bex: Well, that’s what I-
Ellen: did I, did they know that it was continuing or?
Bex: That’s k- that’s kind of my curiosity is I wanna go back and see if I can figure out at what point the show knew that it wasn’t going to be renewed.
Ellen: Yeah, ’cause that changes the whole tone of the end of this season- Yeah … if it, if they knew.
Bex: But to also sort of tie into where I [01:47:00] was going with this, it’s really interesting that you could think, okay, so, you know, the like the showrunner has just changed. This is like the evolution of the show. ‘Cause shows can’t stay stagnant.
Yeah. Even if you’re a, a procedural and like a, a monster of the week kind of show, eventually you have to change, you have to adapt. You’ve been on the air for too long. People are gonna get bored so you have to change. It’s just interesting that knowing what we know, that the show changes networks, it changes showrunner, and it goes back to what it was doing. It makes season five and six really stand out-
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, okay
Bex: as outliers in sort of the pattern of the show.
Ellen: Hmm. It’s weird
Bex: It is a little bit weird, and maybe that’s why we’re so down on it, es- especially this season. Um …
Alice: Yeah, they tried something different. It didn’t work. They got canceled over it.
Bex: Yeah. But then it’s not just that they got canceled, it’s that they got [01:48:00] canceled and then they went back to doing what they were doing before.
Alice: Yeah. ‘Cause they, that’s what worked …
Bex: ’cause they got picked up again, and they got their original showrunner back.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: And so they went back to sort of business as usual for a little bit. Yeah. Maybe it would be different if they, if we got to the end of season six and that was it, there was no more 9-1-1.
Maybe we would have different thoughts about season six, or maybe we would still be incredibly negative and perhaps even more negative about it because we’re like, “This was the final season?”
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: “This was where they ended it?”
Alice: Well, that’s what you were like at the time, so yeah.
Bex: Oh my God, that is exactly what I was like at the time. And I’m, I anticipate that I will still be like that when we get to that episode.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Even knowing that it’s not the last episode and it’s not the last thing we see.
Alice: Um, we also forgot to shout out, uh, Kiera at the start of this episode.
Bex: Um, she gave Oliver, Ryan, and Aisha stickers.
Ellen: Oh my [01:49:00] God.
Alice: Um, so yeah, Ryan, Oliver, Aisha, and Kenny all know that our podcast exists now. Um, hopefully they never listen to it because we do not actually wish to be perceived, and we’re happy doing this for- like specifically for our, our listeners.
Ellen: But if you are listening, hi.
Alice: Um, but if you are listening, hi. Um, sorry that we hate the show so much.
Bex: We’re sorry?
Alice: The thing, like, the thing is we don’t hate it, and that’s the problem because we know we love it when it’s good. It’s just so bad when it’s shit.
Bex: I know, but I don’t think I particularly want Ryan Guzman to be listening to the episodes where I’m, like, literally drooling on the microphone.
Alice: Oh, yeah, absolutely. Sorry, baby. Like K- Kenny, please no. Aisha, hit me up, girl. Um, the- Uh, oliver, let’s talk dogs, you know? Uh, but yeah, no, um, we-
Bex: And she’s not, that’s not a euphemism. She literally wants to talk about your puppy dogs.
Alice: I literally wanna talk about your dogs. Um, but yeah, [01:50:00] like, thanks Kiera for having us perceived. Um-
Ellen: Yes, thank you.
Alice: So yes.
Ellen: Thank you for taking our stickers to the con. That’s amazing.
Alice: We appreciate it.
Ellen: And we hope you had a wonderful time.
Alice: I saw the Redbubble order come through for 10 stickers of each, and I was like, “Who is crazy enough to buy 10 stickers of each?” And then Kiera’s just like, “Oh, hey.” And we’re like, okay, yeah, that’s, yeah.
Bex: Yep. That makes sense.
Alice: Of course. We do love Kiera.
Ellen: Amazing.
Alice: Um, she’s exactly our brand of crazy, yeah, shout out to Kiera for meeting the cast. That’s awesome. Yes. Um-
Bex: Very jealous …
Alice: one day when they come to Australia. Ha ha ha ha. Um, but yeah, so yeah, thank you, Kiera. We love you. We really appreciate you.
Ellen: Yeah. Yes. We do. And we hope you had a, a fantastic time, and we wanna hear all about it.
Bex: Yes, we can.
Ellen: Please tell us.
Bex: Yes. Please tell us everything. Share any photos that you’re willing to share. Um, and thank you so much for helping to, [01:51:00] uh, to rep the podcast for us-
Ellen: Yeah …
Bex: when we are unable to do so ourselves.
Ellen: Uh, may as well wrap up then
Bex: yeah. Yep.
Ellen: Okay, so let us know what you think of this episode and, I mean, I guess, Season 6 as a whole so far. Like, we’ve only had one episode, but, um, hopefully we’re not too down on it yet. Um, let us know. Leave us a comment, um, on this episode’s post on thatweewooshow.com or in Spotify or YouTube or on social media. Uh, thank you for listening this week, and we’ll see you next time for Episode 2, which is called “Crash and Learn”, and possibly Episode 3.
We may try and smush them together. We’ll see how we go with this next episode or two. Um, but yeah, see you then.
Bex: Bye.
Alice: Bye.
Ellen: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the [01:52:00] 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.
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