6.02: Crash & Learn and 6:03: The Devil You Know

Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Bex, Alice and Ellen watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.

In this episode we discuss both episodes 2 and 3 of the sixth season of 9-1-1, titled “Crash & Learn” and “The Devil You Know”.

The 118 race to the rescue when a structure collapse at a happiness convention. Athena’s father suffers a stroke and crashes through his house wall. Hen stretches herself too thin with test prep and her new responsibilities at the 118.

Athena and Bobby investigate the disappearance of her childhood friend from 45 years ago.

Content warnings for episode 6.02:

cheating, claustrophobia, being buried in rubble, explosions as in pipe bombs, falling asleep while driving, gore (exposed bone), life-threatening injury to a parent, medically induced coma, patient death, and stroke.

Content warnings for episode 6.03:

abuse of power by police, alcohol given to a minor, child murder, implied child sexual violence, life-threatening injury to a parent, medically induced coma, non-explicit pedophilia, threat of gun violence.

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Our intro music is “Tensions” by Northern Points.

Episode Transcript

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

Bex: Welcome back to That Wee Woo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show 9-1-1. I’m Bex.

Alice: I’m Alice.

Ellen: And I’m Ellen.

Bex: As we say with every episode, thank you to everyone who has listened to all of our episodes so far, who have shared social media posts, and who have rated us on Apple and Spotify. Uh, we do appreciate your efforts to get our little podcast into more ears.

Alice: Hopefully not Oliver, Aisha and…

Bex: Oliver, Ryan and Aisha?

Ellen: Yeah. We’ve already been there. Hi, hi 9-1-1 cast. We love you. Uh, you may not love this episode, but[00:01:00]

Bex: Uh, we have a slightly different episode for you this week in that we’re doing a double feature. Um, we are going to discuss two episodes in one. Uh, but before we explain that and get into the meat of the episode, um, Alice, could you mind reminding us what happened in the last episode we discussed?

Alice: Yeah, so last week on 9-1-1, Bobby and Athena prepared for their belated honeymoon, Bobby named Hen as the interim captain, Maddie and Chimney got back together, Lucy broke her foot, and Buck doesn’t have a couch.

Ellen: And it’s weird.

Alice: And it’s weird.

Bex: It’s weird.

Ellen: All right, so in this double-featured episode, we are going to be talking about episode two, “Crash and Learn”, and also episode three, which is called “The Devil You Know”. So I guess we’ll start with the summary for “Crash and Learn”, which [00:02:00] is, “The 118 race to the rescue when a structure collapse at a happiness convention traps people under rubble.

While on FaceTime with her mom, Athena’s father suffers a stroke and crashes through the wall of his house. Hen stretches herself too thin with test prep and her new responsibilities at the 118, while Maddie tries to help new recruit”… Uh, th- their new recruit? I, this, the words are not wording.

Bex: Hey, I just cut and paste.

Ellen: Yeah, no, that’s fine.

Bex: I just cut and paste.

Ellen: That’s how they wrote it. I’ll start again. While Maddie tries to help the new recruit get his bearings at the call center.

Bex: No, no, no. No, no, it doesn’t say, “The new recruit,” it says, “Help new recruit.”

Ellen: It says new- Help new recruit. Yeah. Yes. Um,

Bex: Look, they messed up. Let’s not cover for them.

Ellen: And all of those things are in this episode this time, but they’re all out i- in a different order to what, how they appear in the summary.

Bex: Except the Athena’s father happened last episode.

Alice: Yeah, that was [00:03:00] last episode- Yeah … but I didn’t even bother putting it in the last week’s-

Bex: And he also wasn’t on a FaceTime with Athena’s mother. He was, Athena was on a FaceTime with her mother, so that was like I, I don’t know I don’t, it’s- They wrote this at the last minute, I believe.

Ellen: Well, may- maybe it was in this episode, but then they decided to, like, stick it at the end of episode one to be a bit more cliffhanger-y

Bex: You know what? I possibly. Apparently, all of these episodes are out of order, so I would not be surprised if they did some creative editing after they’d already decided and sent out the promo stuff.

Ellen: Yeah. Uh, well, triggers for this episode two include cheating, claustrophobia, being buried underground or under, in rubble, um, explosions, as in pipe bombs, uh, falling asleep while driving, gore, which is an exposed bone.

It is quite gory, ugh. Um, life-threatening injury [00:04:00] to a parent, medically induced coma, patient death, and stroke. Um, I guess we’ll talk about the summary and triggers for the third episode once we get there, or should we do it now?

Bex: Do it now, and we’ll just, like, keep rolling

Ellen: I, I guess we may as well mention the triggers now at least.

Alice: Yeah, just now

Ellen: So, okay. So episode three, sometimes when they do back-to-back ones like this, they, like, cliffhanger-y type things, they air two of them on the same day. I don’t know if they actually do that with 9-1-1, but some shows do that.

But no, these did actually air a week apart, so there was a bit of a, you know, cliffhanger at the end. So the next one is, “While in Florida caring for her ailing father, Athena and Bobby investigate the disappearance of her childhood friend from 45 years ago.” That is the entire episode, and the triggers include abuse [00:05:00] of power by police, alcohol given to a minor, a child murder, implied child sexual violence, life-threatening injury to a parent, medically induced coma, pedophilia, thankfully which is not explicitly shown, and, um, threat of gun violence So it’s a heavy, a heavy load on paper-

Bex: A heavy load

Ellen: but in reality- Yeah … it’s just-

Bex: Not that heavy.

Ellen: No Not that he- well, it is, like the ending is quite heavy, but the rest of it was just like…

Bex: Ugh.

Ellen: Yeah. Anyway, we’ll get there. Um, we better start with episode two then.

Bex: Yes. Um, and in case anybody is wondering why we’re suddenly doing a double feature, it’s because we don’t wanna spend an entire episode talking about episode three, pretty much.

Alice: Or episode two-

Bex: Um …

Alice: honestly.

Bex: Um- Episode, I mean, episode two we could probably stretch it to an entire episode just on episode two, [00:06:00] but it’s gonna be very short, uh, because don’t think any of us had a good time in episode two, and then episode three, none of us had a good time

Alice: No.

Bex: Um, and so while it might have been entertaining to listen to us bitch and moan for two hours, I don’t th- we would not have fun and you would h- not have fun.

Um, so if episode three and episode two were your favorite episodes and you were really looking forward to hearing us go into beat-by-beat breakdown of the episode, we’re really sorry. Um, and if you hated episode two and episode three and wanted to hear us bitch and moan about the beat-by-beat breakdown of these two episodes-

Alice: You’re in the right place

Bex: um, we’re also very sorry, because we’re not gonna do that. We are going to try-

Ellen: No, we’re not gonna do that

Bex: … to savor as much as we can to get these out of the way as fast as we can.

Ellen: Yeah, I do have to say that these are some of my least f- favorite episodes that we’ve watched so far, unfortunately. Um, and you did pre-warn me.

Bex: And that was-

Ellen: You did, you did say- We did- Like, I [00:07:00] wa- I did go into it not expecting to enjoy it because you, you’d already prepared me for-

Alice: Sometimes, like, sometimes if people are like, “Oh, it’s really, like, it’s really shit. Don’t even worry,” like you go in with low expectations and you’re like, “Oh, that actually wasn’t too bad,” because you already went in with low expectations.

Ellen: Yeah, well, episode two wasn’t… Like, I didn’t hate episode two. It was just, it just, some of the stuff in it was just so boring. I just- Yeah … it just wasn’t as much fun as it could have been.

Bex: And to be fair, sometimes Alice and I have gone, “Oh my God, this is bad. This is bad,” and Ellen has gone into the episode and come out going, “No, that wasn’t too bad.” and then I get on my soapbox and afterwards she changes her opinion. Um, but with these-

Ellen: Hey, look, I’m, I’m easily led. Like, you can lead me down any garden path you like.

Alice: Ellen is very easily swayed. It’s fine.

Bex: But episode three specifically, in the group chat as she was watching, Ellen was going like, “This is bad. I’m not having fun with this. You guys were right.” So, um, I would like to just say that we did not sway [00:08:00] Ellen in this. Ellen came to her own opinion on these episodes.

Alice: Ellen watched them before we did because we were avoiding watching them.

Bex: Pretty much, yeah.

Alice: Um, I, I do wanna give full disclaimer that I was playing Stardew Valley the entire time I watched th- both these episodes today. Uh, so if I’m like, “Oh, did that happen?” It’s because I was not paying attention. Um, I instead was farming and trying to woo Sam this play through. Um, but somehow-

Bex: Sam?

Alice: S- apparently the dialogue’s good when you’re a male farmer and wooing Sam, and so I wanted to see.

Bex: Ah.

Alice: Um, but I’m also- Okay … like almost at max hearts with Shane because I can’t help myself.

Bex: Oh.

Alice: And- … I need to fix him, okay? I would marry him but his room is so messy that I can’t deal with that in my house anymore. Um, and so yeah, I just wanted to see what Sam was like. There’s also apparently really good dial- dialogue with Alex, so may move to him. Sam’s just real easy ’cause he, he loves [00:09:00] JoJo Cola and I have been fishing a lot in this save. So I have a lot of JoJo Cola. Like so much JoJo Cola

Ellen: All right, look, we’ve gotta talk about this episode, otherwise we will never get through it.

Alice: No, but my fishing.

Ellen: We could, we, you can update us on all the Stardew Valley things at the end, okay?

Alice: Um, okay. So yeah, so at the end of last episode, Athena’s father crashed into the, into his own house where Athena’s mother was.

Ellen: Yeah, and they kind of made it out to s- to, like, that he’d hit her mom. Like, she dropped the phone and she was, like, screaming and whatever.

Alice: Yeah, but she’s fine. She’s fine and bitchy as ever.

Ellen: She’s okay. She’s fine.

Bex: She’s fine.

Ellen: So Athena and Bobby don’t get to go on their, on their cruise.

Bex: No. Instead they- They’re spending their honeymoon in Florida in a hospital room.

Ellen: They go to Florida, yeah.

Alice: Which is not fun for anyone.

Bex: Uh, where we discover that the reason for the crash, I’m assuming, is that [00:10:00] Samuel suffered a stroke behind the wheel of the car. I’m assuming that’s what happened, the stroke came first and that’s why he crashed the car, not that he crashed the car-

Alice: I guess so. They, we don’t really care

Bex: and then had the stroke.

Alice: They don’t, they don’t explain it.

Bex: No.

Alice: We don’t care.

Bex: Um- No, we don’t care. Um, the important thing is that-

Ellen: Well, it doesn’t really matter in the end.

Alice: Yeah, he’s in a coma.

Bex: Um, no. He’s, yeah, they’ve put him in a medically induced coma to help try and reduce the, uh, swelling in the brain and all of the other injuries so that he can heal.

Alice: Yeah. Basically he, he’s having a nap. Um, everyone else worried.

Bex: Yes. Um, we also at this point learn that Beatrice has no concept of what is actually happening, because she assumes that her husband is just taking a nap and he’s gonna wake up soon, and then he can go home and everything can go back to normal.

Ellen: Yeah. Do you think she’s in pro- like, just denial, like, um, some kind of a-

Alice: I’m sure she’s in denial. I just don’t [00:11:00] care. Um, so then we go, after we get, like, the little snippet of the hospital room to be like, “Oh, he’s not dead. His, her mom’s not dead. They’re in Florida,” um, we then go to the first emergency of the episode.

Bex: Oh, my God.

Alice: And the longest emergency of the fucking episode. It just doesn’t stop. There’s, so we’re just gonna summarize.

Bex: Look, I, for those of you who are listening at home, I normally do very detailed notes with transcripts. I didn’t even bother for the opening emergency of this episode because it was so stupid I could not bring myself to write out in detail what was happening.

Alice: So fucking stupid.

Bex: Um, the, I think what annoys me the most-

Ellen: It just went on and on as well …

Bex: the thing, yeah, the thing that annoys me the most is that this entire opening emergency lasts for eight minutes of runtime, yet the actual emergency part of it is one minute at the end.

Alice: Yeah, I just-

Bex: So we get-

Alice: I just don’t care about them at all

Bex: We get seven minutes of set up for an emergency that ends up happening off-screen.[00:12:00]

Alice: It was like, what-

Bex: Because we don’t actually-

Alice: What happened last week?

Bex: We don’t see the rescue

Alice: God, no. Um, what happened last week that they were trying to David Wallace us and we were like, “That didn’t work”? It was like the-

Bex: No, they just needed a

Ellen: the mom and daughter

Alice: … oh, the, the heart patient people. Yeah. Yeah. That also went way too long, and it was just like, I don’t care.

Bex: So in summary, uh, for this opening emergency, we have, uh, Gary, who is the next-door neighbor. We have Benjamin and Holly, um, who are married. Uh, Gary has dug a tunnel under the front garden of Benjamin and Holly’s house so that he can shtup Holly when Benjamin goes to work, because even though we are not shown this, we are told that Benjamin has security cameras all over the place, and tunneling under the garden is the only way that Gary can fuck Benjamin’s wife.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Um, but unfort-

Ellen: But we don’t find that out until the end.

Alice: They couldn’t, like, go to the gym. Ugh. They couldn’t, like, pretend to … No, no, like, they make a tunnel.

Ellen: A tunnel.

Alice: Because that shit is-

Ellen: We only, the only thing we see for most of that eight [00:13:00] minutes is the husband trying to work out why his garden is sinking into the lawn. That’s it.

Bex: Yes. Yeah, there’s this- Because the tunnel has caused, um, instability in the topsoil, which is causing his prize tomato garden to sink. He’s assuming that it’s rodents. Um, and then so for seven minutes we’re watching him lay rat poison, lay traps, et cetera, et cetera, until he realizes by looking at the security camera that perhaps the rodents under the tunnel are a little bit more human in, uh, shape and form, and so decides to start throwing pipe bombs into the tunnel, um, to kill the rodent. He lures the rodent in-

Alice: Yeah, bombs with nails.

Bex: Yeah, it’s not just a pipe bomb. It’s an IED. It’s a dirty bomb.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: So he goes to work. Uh, the wife thinks, “Great, he’s gone.” Gary goes through the tunnel. It’s a fake-out. Benjamin starts throwing bombs into the tunnel, and his suspicions that it [00:14:00] was Gary and not a, a raccoon or a squirrel or a rat or something are confirmed when Holly calls 9-1-1 The one cute thing about this opening emergency is that we see Hen in captain mode, and we see, like, Bobby…

No, we see Buck and Eddie and Chim just embracing her as “Cap” and, like, calling her Cap-

Alice: Yeah, they just call her Cap … Call her cap straight away- And- … which is real cute …

Bex: every single time they’re like, “Cap,” she’s like, “Don’t call me Cap.” Yeah. “What do you want us to do, Cap?” “Don’t call me Cap.”

Alice: Um, so the only notes I had from this emergency, um, the first time I watched it was, “Oh my God, it’s the secret J2 tunnel.” I’m so sorry for those who know that reference, but I will not be elaborating. Um, my second note for this, uh, this scene, like, this emergency, was what the fuck are they doing checking vitals through [00:15:00] thick gloves?

So Chim is wearing, like, thick, emergency gloves, like firefighter gloves, and he, like, checks, I think it’s the neighbor’s, it must be the neighbor’s- It’s, yeah … um, vitals, and he’s wearing thick as g- you can’t feel anything through those gloves. Like, you can s- kind of-

Bex: Look, maybe-

Alice: … feel a pulse through, like, the really thin ones, but he’s wearing the thick firefighter ones. You can’t feel fucking anything through them. He’s just magically being like, “Oh, yeah, he’s got a pulse.” It’s like, what? How?

Bex: And I think, like, the cherry on how ridiculous this scene is, is that it has absolutely nothing to do with the theme of this episode, which is crashing and learning, um, except for one line that Hen throws out at the end. Which they’ve, they’ve fished Gary out from under the tunnel, ’cause the tunnel has collapsed from all the explosions, but that happens off-camera. We don’t get to see Chim and Buck trying to extract this guy. Um, Hen realizes that Benjamin knew that Gary was in the [00:16:00] tunnel when he was throwing the bombs down, so she gets Eddie to arrest him.

They zip tie his hands, and Benjamin’s all like, “I didn’t know that you could do that.” Um, we as, we as well as Benjamin learn that LAFD are sworn peace officers who are allowed to arrest people, and so Hen says to him, “Looks like you learned two things today.”

Alice: Like, what? Okay, sure.

Bex: That’s the connection for this entire fucking eight minutes to the theme of the episode.

Alice: Yep.

Bex: And I’m just-

Alice: S- so basically someone in the break, like someone in the, um, break between 5 and 6 was just like, “Oh my God, LAFD can arrest people. Why haven’t we been doing… Oh, let’s do something with that.”

Um, meanwhile back down in Florida, because I’m not giving this emergency any more attention.

Bex: No.

Alice: Um, meanwhile back in Florida-

Ellen: Well nothing else happens, it’s done.

Bex: Yeah, that’s it.

Alice: Athena and Bobby get to Beatrice’s house, like Athena’s parents’ house, [00:17:00] and they’re like, “Oh, the car’s still in the house.” Like, I don’t know how long it took them to get down to Florida. I assume they weren’t there the next day because they’re still, like, giving the diagnosis.

But, um, yeah, the car’s still in the house, and Beatrice is like, “Yeah, your father will deal with it when he gets home.” And so Athena has to explain to her mother that, like, Dad’s probably not coming home for a while, if at all. And Beatrice is like, “No, no, he’ll be fine. Whatever.” Um, Bobby’s like, “Oh,” like, “What do you want us to do?”

Blah, blah, blah. Calls Bobby a big strong fireman and says that he can pull out the trundle bed. Um, normal Beatrice/Athena snipping. And then, yeah, it, it just basically cu- culminates to Athena saying, “Oh, we have an old family friend who is still their handyman, because we’ll need a contractor.” Yeah. Sure.

Bex: We’re setting up the introduction of the Franklins.

Alice: Yeah. But Bobby can get the car out. Yeah. That’s, that’s it. And Beatrice is [00:18:00] still a cow.

Bex: Pretty much, yeah. And still in very deep denial about the severity of what’s happened to her husband.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Uh, we then shift back to Los Angeles, where it is nighttime the same day. I don’t know. There’s no time references in this. Who knows? Um, but it’s night. It’s, uh, the night shift for the 118. Um, Hen is, of course, studying, ’cause that’s all she does in this episode. Um, so she’s sitting up in the loft kitchen studying. Buck is also awake for some reason, and is sitting up with her reading a book, which is weird enough that Hen notices and has to ask what he’s reading. Um-

Ellen: Um, we just have to say that- He’s- … at the moment, like, we’ve ha- we’ve spent this whole time asking why Hen hasn’t been mentioning med school or doing any study or anything, or going to class or anything. And then this one [00:19:00] episode they went, “Okay, the med school thing is gonna have to become apparent now.” So all she does in this episode is study and go to class.

Alice: She does all the studying that should’ve happened in, um, season four. The last- Uh, season five

Ellen: Either Hen is, like, an amazing procrastinator, and, like, I see you, girl, um, or- … uh, they just forgot about it until now, or they just didn’t bother showing us.

Bex: Oh. Ugh, I’m gonna say it’s mostly column B, with perhaps a little bit of column C. Oh, okay. ‘Cause I feel like even if they had shown that she was consistently going to school and consistently studying, she would be cramming her ass off. It’s just, it seems so over the top because we haven’t had any lead up to it.

It’s just been dumped on us that she’s doing all study all the time. And, like- Yeah … excessive amounts of study. Like, she’s got her notes in her lap in the engine truck as they’re heading to a call later [00:20:00] on.

Alice: Yeah. Yeah.

Bex: Um, like the, the, the reading when you’re on night shift and you should be sleeping, if they’d thrown that in through season five like they’ve got it here, I, I think we would’ve bought that.

But they didn’t, because they forgot that she was in med school and, or they just didn’t care enough to talk about it. But the, the sight of Buck reading is enough to distract Hen from her notes, which I f- I think is a very, um, very sad, uh, reflection on Buck. Yeah. Um, and it turns out he’s reading the AA handbook.

Ellen: Yeah. ‘

Alice: Cause sure, why not?

Ellen: He misses Bobby so much that he’s reading his handbook. But he apparently, Bobby had told him about this idea in AA. I guess this is, he mentioned this la- in the last episode?

Bex: Yes. He, he threw out a concept, uh, from Alcoholics Anonymous, and Buck has latched onto that, and has now gone down the [00:21:00] rabbit hole.

Alice: Buck, ADHD? Who said that?

Bex: It’s very much, very much the ADHD doing the ADHD thing. Um, and the, the main problem that Buck is trying to solve is that he does not think that he is at ease, and he’s trying to figure out, um, how to get at ease because the book, the Alcoholics Anonymous handbook, says that if he is at ease, all of his fear will fall away from him.

So, uh, we’re kind of, I think we’re setting up the Buck’s gonna spend this season, like, searching for himself, doing some soul searching.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Alice: Um, sure.

Ellen: Very much give that impression-

Alice: Um, even Hen’s like, “Yep, let me know how that works out.” Um, so then we go to dispatch. Yeah. Um, Maddie’s on a call the new guy who we saw for like two seconds is just like awkwardly like hovering

Ellen: He’s lurking.

Alice: [00:22:00] Yeah. He is lu-

Bex: He’s very much lurking

Alice: Maddie literally says, “What do you, what did I say about lurking?” Um, he thanks her because she, like he had the call with the dynamite in the garden earlier, and-

Bex: And fucked it up

Alice: Fucked it up. And-

Ellen: Well, he wasn’t sure what to do. Uh, I think that’s probably what happened

Alice: Yeah, ’cause like there was just a lot of yelling and like-

Ellen: Yeah, he was a bit overwhelmed by it

Alice: not really doing much. So Maddie took over as the supervisor, which is her job. Um-

Bex: Yes. Uh, we do have to mention that when he, um, c- approaches Maddie, he thanks her for “saving him when he crashed and burned”. So we kinda do have to take a little shot because crash, crashing, crashed, and variations of learning are also scattered prominently through this episode, you know, to keep stuff on theme.

Ellen: He did, he did also crash and learn according to himself.

Alice: He did. Yep.

Bex: Uh, take a shot.

Ellen: But Maddie doesn’t think he did. She says, “You didn’t do either of those things.” And then she tells him that if it, if you can’t focus their attention then try singing [00:23:00] to them. Is that like something you learned in training, Maddie?

Bex: Uh, the scene-

Ellen: Apparently it works …

Bex: culminates in, um, Noah, in Maddie showing Noah how to access the call register because he’s, he’s sitting there longingly going, “Gee, I wish I could listen to some calls so that I could like learn more about how the calls in reality work.” And Ma- and Maddie’s like, “Oh, here. You just type it in here and all the calls come up, and you can just sit and listen to them all.”

And it’s not the historical calls, it’s the active calls. It’s like the calls that are literally coming in, uh, as they’re sitting there. He’s like, “Oh, wow. All the calls I could ever want. Awesome. Thanks, Maddie.”

Alice: Yeah, that’s about it.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: I like, like it’s funny that they mention Maddie singing, ’cause obviously Jennifer Love Hewitt is a singer. Um, but yeah. That’s about it.

Bex: Yeah, ’cause Noah, ’cause Noah says [00:24:00] like, “I promise I won’t try and find the call where you sang.” And she’s like, “No, no, no. I nailed it. Listen to that shit.”

Alice: Um, so then we go to back to the 118 and Hen is doing paperwork as the captain, but Chimney mentions that she has finals this week and she should be hitting the books. Um, but she’s gotta get through the paperwork for her paying job so she can make the 10:00 review class, like the 10 o’clock review class.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: Um, whatever. And so Chim brought her some tea and is confused as to why she agreed to be captain when she knew that she had finals. And he- she’s like, “No, I’m fine.” Um, then we get a little montage.

Bex: We do.

Ellen: Oh yeah, bit of Rihanna in the background.

Alice: Yeah, well it’s “Pon Da Replay”. Just like so 2009. [00:25:00]

Ellen: Yes.

Bex: Look, I’m, I’m not, I’m not, uh, complaining-

Alice: Oh my God, it was 2005 …

Bex: but I love that song.

Ellen: No, I know.

Alice: Jesus Christ.

Ellen: I was watching the, the montage of Hen, like, spiraling into her despair while I’m, like, you know, bopping along to this song.

Bex: Bopping along?

Alice: Yeah, it is a good song. Yeah, not gonna lie.

Ellen: I’m like dancing in my seat.

Alice: Um, I do, I do like “Psycho Killer” that plays earlier in the episode too, so.

Ellen: Oh, yeah, yeah.

Alice: Um-

Ellen: That, that gets stuck in my head if I hear it, so.

Alice: Yeah. Oh, I’ve been singing it the rest of the afternoon. Um-

Ellen: Yes …

Alice: anyway, so yeah, so Hen is studying, like, on the rig on the way to the call as Bex said before. Um, leaving shift and going to class, getting quizzed by Luis, who is from med school.

Bex: Remember Luis?

Alice: They couldn’t get anyone else back, but they found the one guy …

Ellen: I couldn’t remember what his name was.

Bex: Oh, I had to look it up- Yeah … ’cause I’m looking at him going, “Did they actually manage to bring back the actor from season four?” oh, they, they did.

Alice: One of them. One of them

Bex: they did. That’s cool.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Yeah, they couldn’t get Sydney back.

Ellen: Is his name Luis?

Bex: [00:26:00] I’m gonna say Luis, yeah.

Alice: Oh, probably, yeah. I think it is Luis.

Bex: But yeah, so the montage is Hen studying, being captain, doing more studying. Uh, she’s even, like, set reminders for, and, like, reminders are constantly going off on her phone. She’s even got a reminder in there to feed her own child.

Alice: Oh, yep. Poor Karen is, like, trying to get some action and Hen, like, Hen’s phone dings with “cardiology” and Karen’s just like, “Okay, fine. Whatever.”

Bex: There is a cute moment where Hen falls asleep, obviously on the return from a call, and they just leave her in the truck.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: And Buck, like, Buck’s looking worried and like, “We should do something,” and Eddie’s like, “Oh, we’ll just get her a pillow. It’s fine.”

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Everyone’s worried about her.

Alice: Um, the, so there are, there are two that, like, I love from this scene, is when, um, when Hen’s looking at a patient’s mouth and is like, “Oh,” like, “When was [00:27:00] the last time you saw a dentist?”

And going through things, and Chim’s just like, “I think he has more pressing issues,” and he literally has scissors sticking out of his abdomen.

Bex: Yeah, that was, that was a, that was a very good sort of transition between, uh, med school Hen and, like, paramedic Hen. I d- I thought that was really clever and yes, um,

Ellen: It’s a good fake out.

Alice: Um, and then the second part that I really like is, um- Is that in this part? Yeah, it is, the, um, bowls of popcorn The

Bex: popcorn?

Alice: Yeah

Ellen: Oh yeah, I love that

Alice: Um, because if you have a look as well, Oliver’s popcorn doesn’t have butter on it, and I just think it’s real cute. They gave him just popcorn.

Ellen: How could you tell?

Alice: It’s not yellow. Like, it’s really white. Like, the others are all clearly flavored with something, and then his is just, like, this bowl of, like, bright white popcorn.

Ellen: Okay.

Alice: Um, ’cause he’s actually eating it too, ’cause-

Ellen: I didn’t notice. I was too busy- Yes … laughing at how cute it actually was.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: They just dump it on Hen’s head and she’s like, “Ooh, ooh.”

Bex: Yes. ‘Cause, [00:28:00] uh, ’cause, they’ve been watching her from the other side of the loft as she was quizzing herself with her flashcards, and she got all the answers right, and she’s, like, celebrating, doing a little dance, sits down on the couch, and they’re like, “Yeah, we need to bring her back down to Earth, so we’re gonna dump the popcorn over her head.”

Um- The montage doesn’t have a very happy ending though, because we transition from all of that to Hen sitting her neurology exam and she’s struggling. She’s the last one left in the room. W- All the other students have left. She’s still answering questions. Finally, reluctantly hands in her book. She’s driving home and I don’t know how long that montage, like the timeframe that that montage covered, but she’s exhausted, and she falls asleep behind the wheel and dr- veers into oncoming traffic and very nearly causes a crash

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Yep

Ellen: I recognize this like, um, saying yes to too many things and [00:29:00] burning out, because I think all middle-aged women have a, a similar… Well, maybe not all, but a lot. Um, thankfully I have not fallen asleep behind the wheel of the car, but you know, it’s quite relatable.

Alice: Yeah, like she’s seen enough car crashes that she should have pulled over, but I feel like it’s like that, like how doctors are the worst patients.

Bex: Yep.

Ellen: Yeah, maybe she wasn’t far from home anyway, and she was like, “I’ll just get home.”

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: It sh- uh, it showed that like she recognized that she was falling asleep because she rolled the window down with the idea- Yeah … that I guess the cold air would wake her up, but it just, it was not a match for the week-long, bone-deep exhaustion that she had.

No.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Um, and then that’s it. It ends with Hen sort of sitting in this intersection, cars honking around her, just absolutely terrified of what she’s done. That’s the commercial. Uh, we come back from commercial, she’s managed to get [00:30:00] home. And Karen wakes up and comes out, and Hen is sort of still sitting at the kitchen table.

Um, or Hen is sitting at the kitchen table. I don’t think she went to bed. So she’s probably been sitting at the table all night contemplating what had just happened.

Ellen: Yeah, poor thing. And she does say, “I was pretty wired when I got home,” but she doesn’t, obviously doesn’t tell Karen what happened.

Bex: No.

Ellen: But, um, she, like Karen reminds her that she actually does need to get some sleep, so Hen says, “Oh, I could probably get a couple of hours in before I have to go to work,” kind of thing.

Bex: But- Ironically, the line is actually, um, “I could probably get a couple of hours in before I die.”

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Like, oof, that’s… Should we be joking about that?

Ellen: Yeah, that’s, that’s dark. But she’s got to go into work early to fill in some paperwork

Alice: To do something. Yeah. [00:31:00] Yeah.

Ellen: And only now does H- does Karen say to her, “You shouldn’t have taken the captain’s job.”

Bex: Do you think at this stage they know what’s going on with Bobby and Athena? Like, do they assume that Bobby and Athena are off on their honeymoon, or do they know that plans have changed and he’s gone to f- they’ve gone to Florida to deal with Athena’s parents?

Alice: Yeah, I have no idea. No, I don’t know. I don’t think anything was actually, like

Ellen: Well, the way she’s talking here is, is she’s like, “Oh, Bobby will be back in a few more days.” like, maybe they don’t know.

Bex: It sounds, it sounds like they think that he- they’re just on his hon- their honeymoon.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: I feel like Athena would have told Hen.

Alice: Yeah, I’m sure that they know that-

Bex: At least Hen?

Alice: … but yeah.

Bex: Yeah

Alice: They don’t mention it at all. Like, there’s literally zero- No … mention of like, “Oh, poor Athena.” Like, they don’t care.

Bex: Yeah. No, there’s no mention. Um, speaking of Athena, we go back down to Florida where the old family handyman has shown up, but it’s [00:32:00] not… It’s Franklin and Sons, but it’s not the Franklin that Athena was expecting. It’s the “and Sons” that shows up.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. Junior.

Alice: Yeah, it’s literally Junior.

Bex: Who apparently is a long childhood friend of Athena’s. They used to play together in the orange groves. Or Athena says-

Alice: Well, apparently he used to chase her around in the orange groves, which is-

Bex: He used to chase her through the orange groves. Mm-hmm. Which sounds so innocent- Yeah … until you watch the next episode, and then you come back to this and you go, “Oh-

Alice: Yikes

Bex: that’s maybe not so innocent after all.”

Ellen: Yeah, and Athena even says, “You are sad because you lost your favorite target.”

Alice: Yeah. Oof.

Ellen: Ugh.

Alice: Yikes.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Yeah, so Bobby, then Bobby says, “I did what I could, but this place definitely needs a professional touch.” And Athena goes, “More than a touch.” And it’s more yikes. Um, but yeah, so they have a look at the room.

They’re like, “Yeah, we’ll have to reframe all this.” so they’re, [00:33:00] like, they’re talking about redoing the whole room that, like, he crashed into. So, like, there’s a small set of stairs, and they’re talking about turning it into a ramp. Um, they wanna do some upgrades, and Beatrice isn’t happy about that.

Like, she’s like, “You’re- Oh, no … you’re acting like he’s already dead.” Um, Beatrice then dumps to the fact that they wanna sell it apparently, and-

Ellen: Well, they’re, they’re trying to do it up so they can sell it out from under her and, and Athena’s denying it. She just wants to-

Alice: Yeah, athena’s like, “We’re literally trying to put a ramp in so that it’s easier for you and Dad-

Ellen: Yeah, she wants, she wants to try and make him-

Alice: because you’re getting older

Ellen: … make it better for Dad when he gets home kind of thing. And then she’s, she gets so mad with Athena that Bobby actually steps in and said, “Okay, let’s just calm down. Like, cool your jets,” kind of thing. So Beatrice retreats to her room like a child. She says, “I’ll go to my room.”

Alice: Yep.

Bex: Making no noise and pretending that I don’t [00:34:00] exist. Um-

Ellen: Yeah. And Junior does say, like, A- Athena apologizes to him, and he says that they turn back into kids. “We end up parenting our parents.”

Bex: So then we have the second emergency of the episode which is not quite as stupid as the first one but it’s still-

Alice: But it’s equally as long

Bex: like, equally as long, equally as I don’t care. Um, equally as it really kind of has nothing to do with the theme of the episode. Um-

Ellen: Mm-hmm

Bex: So we have a happiness convention

Alice: Which is a real thing I’m sure

Bex: Um, staffed by Cranky the grumpy dwarf as well.

Ellen: Cranky. He says, “Hi, my name’s,” I… Like, what, what does he say here?

He’s introduces himself. He says, “Welcome to the happiness symposium.” Welcome. “I’m Frankie.” But I thought he said Cranky. I’m like, “Is that guy’s name Cranky?” This is amazing. [00:35:00] But no, his name’s Frankie.

Bex: His name is Frankie. Um, and then we get introduced to the three amigos who are, uh, Ronald, uh, Lev, and, uh, a guy who looks like one of the doctors from MASH.

I don’t think we ever find his name though. Um who are like old childhood friends who have, uh, come on vacation to a happiness convention. Although, um, Ronald seems to be rather reluctant to be there. He’s like incredibly snarky about the whole thing. Very cynical.

Ellen: But they get the information and they head off. Um, and Frankie heads off in the other direction to do something else. So-

Bex: He has to go and get chairs …

Ellen: oh, to get more chairs. Yeah, he has to fetch more chairs.

Bex: Yes. Um, and the entire, uh, long story short, the convention center collapses. So the, for some unknown reason, Frankie walking across this, um, air [00:36:00] bridge, uh, above where all the convention goers are walking, uh, is enough to cause a massive crack through the structure and the bridge comes tumbling down on top of our three amigos.

Ellen: On top of the three old guys.

Alice: Cause obviously.

Ellen: A bunch of people call 9-1-1. “There’s been an accident,” that’s all they say. Very helpful.

Bex: Really?

Ellen: Um-

Bex: A bit of an understatement.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: So the 118 are dispatched and Julie makes a reappearance.

Ellen: Oh.

Bex: Um, which is always nice when we get to see extra people in the 118.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: The injured guys are underneath the rubble and so s- it’s like the return of the, um, plaster concrete, like polystyrene concrete, which-

Bex: But they, it, it wasn’t as egregious in this episode. Maybe, maybe it was just Ariel was so bad with her [00:37:00] polystyrene concrete acting that it kind of broke the illusion. I felt like it was better. They also didn’t have like Twizzler, um, reo-

Ellen: Yeah, they didn’t- …

Bex: steel.

Ellen: Yeah. They didn’t have- Yeah … yeah, rebar sticking out.

Bex: Yep. I do like, like the th- the three old guys were like hilarious. Cracking jokes, being snarky even whilst they’re being pinned under all the rubble. Um-

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So that was, that was fun to watch. So we’ve got two of them trapped, uh, Ronald and Mash guy trapped together, and then Lev is like on his own sort of off to the other side. Sort of within shouting distance ’cause they’re talking backwards and forwards because Buck is trying to, you know … Lev is the more serious.

He’s got like the concrete straight across his abdomen. He’s trying to keep him conscious, trying to keep him talking. Um, asks, you know, “Oh, so you guys are attending the convention together. Like, I, that’s really weird I thought you would go [00:38:00] golfing,” and it sets all of them off I’m like, “Oh my God, don’t say that. Ronald’s gonna start saying I told you so.” And Ronald’s like, “I told you we should have gone golfing.”

So that part was at least entertaining, those two were, like, were entertaining.

Alice: That’s it. Like, they’re, they’re funny guys. I just don’t care

Bex: No.

Ellen: And he’s like, “It’s nice you guys have stayed close this long.” And one of the guys says- … “I’d like to be less close right now, if you don’t mind.”

Bex: Especially when you consider that, like, their emergency is that, um, one of them has a compound fracture, like an open compound fracture which the bone is stuck into the other guy’s leg.

Ellen: The, the bone’s sticking, right. Yeah. Yeah.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: It’s, it’s pretty gruesome.

Alice: It’s, yeah.

Bex: The other sort of stupid thing about this emergency is that you’ve got these three guys that were on ground floor, on the, like the ground level. Everything came crashing down on top of them. [00:39:00] Frankie was on top of the whole thing, yet we discover in a few minutes that he is somehow underneath these guys under the rubble.

Alice: Yeah, I don’t know how he’s-

Bex: And I-

Alice: Yeah. Yeah, no.

Bex: No.

Ellen: And but he’s not near them. He’s over there, like they have to go and find where he is.

Bex: It’s, it’s, it’s so weird. So he calls 9-1-1. He’s like, “I’m trapped under the rubble.” And h- they, like, instantly find him, and then it becomes Sophie’s choice because you’ve got three separate places where they need to lift the rubble to get people out.

They don’t have that many hands. They don’t have enough pneumatic jacks. Hen has to make a decision. Do, does she help the two old guys who are pinned together? Does she help Lev, or does she try to help Frankie?

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: And I don’t know whether I’m just hypersensitive, but I hate that for me, in my opinion, my perception, my reading of this scene is that the old guy is the one that makes the [00:40:00] decision for Hen. That’s how it read to me.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Well, it, it sound to, to me it sounded like she was actually asking him permission.

Bex: Yes, exactly.

Ellen: Like, “Oh, there’s this, there’s this guy, there’s this young guy who’s over there under the rubble. We kinda need to rescue him first.” And then the-

Alice: Yeah, and he’s like, “Yeah, okay.”

Ellen: And Lev’s like, “Yeah, all right. That’s fine with me.”

Alice: Yeah. Like

Ellen: I don’t-

Bex: No …

Ellen: think he gets to give permission for that.

Alice: No, it’s weird.

Bex: No. It’s, it’s, it’s a, and I, I mayb- like I said, maybe I’m hypersensitive, but it just seems really strange that like the, one of the first major emergencies that Hen is put in place as captain, and she isn’t, doesn’t have the agency to make the decision on her own.

Like Chim makes the decision for her to start with, and then she goes and asks permission of this old white guy.

Alice: Yeah, it’s weird.

Bex: And it, it just rubbed me the wrong way slightly. I don’t know if that’s what they intended-

Ellen: You know what? I, I thought the same

Bex: … but that’s how I read it.

Ellen: No, I thought that was weird as well.

Bex: Okay.

Ellen: [00:41:00] Um-

Bex: Cool …

Ellen: and also they didn’t, they didn’t seem too urgent with, like, calling for more help or anything. They just sort of stayed there with him while he’s bleeding out And while the others are rescuing the other guy

Alice: Yeah, there was no real tension. Like-

Ellen: Yeah, it was just, it was a bit-

Alice: It was like, “Oh, I guess this guy’s gonna die,” and then they were like, “Oh my God, the guy dies.” It’s like a, yeah, we, uh, didn’t we work that out like 10 minutes ago? Why are we still-

Bex: Yeah. Um, also can we talk about the fact that once again Buck is stuck with an old white guy who imparts some deep, dark, like deep heartfelt wisdom before dying in front of him?

Alice: Oh my God, literally. And then he does terrible CPR again-

Ellen: He’s just attracts wizards.

Alice: Because when Eddie comes in- … they, he’s, they still- Yeah … haven’t taught Oliver how to do CPR.

Ellen: He did very frantic CPR.

Alice: Oh, it’s so bad.

Bex: Um, and it-

Ellen: But it did not help

Bex: It’s not

Alice: And like Hen doesn’t even do anything. Hen’s just like, “Yep, time of death,” and Buck’s still d- … like counting. And she’s like, “Time of death.”

Bex: I’m not even gonna check.

Alice: [00:42:00] Fuck sake, Buck.

Bex: Like I’ve, I’ve got thin gloves on, I could probably check for a pulse, but I’m not even gonna bother.

Alice: Yeah, no.

Bex: We’re just, we’re calling it.

Alice: That’s too much effort, yeah.

Ellen: So that’s that scene.

Alice: Um, yeah, so yeah, Buck is traumatized again. Oh, at the, at the end- Yeah … yeah, he find, he’s like, “Oh yeah, I’ve found the source of hap- like the reason for being happy or something,” and then dies.

Ellen: Yeah, ’cause he was saying that you live your whole life with work and mar- and kids and everything, and what, what is the point of any of it? And then, uh, before he dies he works it out apparently, but he doesn’t tell anybody- Yeah … what it is.

Bex: But he doesn’t tell Buck.

Alice: Y- you’re next, and he’s like, “It’s okay, I got what I came for. I think I get it now,” and then he just dies. And they’re like, “Oh, okay.”

Bex: And B- and Buck’s like frantically doing chest compressions like, “Tell me.” he’s like,

Ellen: “What is it?”

Bex: “You need to tell me.”

Ellen: “What’s the answer?”

Alice: “Tell me happiness. I don’t have a couch.”

Um, yeah. He f-

Ellen: Oh, poor Buck, he’s-

Alice: So basically Lev, Lev realized that the… at the end that he’s actually [00:43:00] in love with his besties and then dies and forgets to tell Buck that he’s gay for his best friend. Um, so we go back to Florida. Oh, and the, the cover of “Don’t Worry Be Happy”, that was-

Ellen: Oh yeah

that was cool as well … that was pretty- Yeah … that was pretty sad. So and I, it, I also thought it was a pretty interesting, it was a good shot with, um, the balloons that spell out “happiness” and Hen standing in front of them looking real fucking miserable.

Alice: Yeah, right? As they’re like wheeling out gurneys, yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. And the “Don’t Worry Be Happy” in the saddest possible way in the background.

Alice: In the most minor of minor keys.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: I mean, it wasn’t quite on, what w- was it the “Que Sera”? Was that the one with the, the mother that died with her kids?

Ellen: Oh yeah. No, that was “You Are My Sunshine”. That was,

Alice: um, “You Are My Sunshine”.

Bex: “You Are My Sunshine”. Like the saddest possible version of “You Are My Sunshine”.

Alice: Yeah. Like-

Bex: Um,

Ellen: yeah, that was, that was worse …

Alice: “You Are My Sunshine” already sounds sad, and they were just like, “Just dial it up.” [00:44:00] “We want it more sad.” Um, cool. So then we go to, back to Florida. Athena is existing. Bobby joins her in existing. Um, Athena then starts-

Ellen: This, I think this is a really nice scene though. I quite like it. I mean, they are like-

Bex: But there’s no point to it

Ellen: No, they’re, they’re expositioning. She’s telling-

Alice: Yeah …

Ellen: about the, the orange groves and how they had parties out there and stuff.

Alice: Yeah, so-

Ellen: That’s pr- that’s pretty much it

Alice: Yeah, so there’s an old oran- orange grove out past the woods, and they did bonfires, and they all hung out there in high school.

Her dad would get her oranges and tangerines. So basically her dad was a lawyer, and he was the first Black lawyer to pass the Florida Bar.

Bex: Her granddaddy was the first Negro lawyer, and then dad carried- Oh, her, her granddaddy … her dad carried on the tradition.

Alice: Yeah, there you go. And so that’s why she was gonna be a lawyer.

Bex: But I think it’s, it’s- Sure … them trying to reconcile the fact that they fucked up Athena’s backstory. ‘Cause they started with like, “Oh, I became a cop to catch whoever killed [00:45:00] Tonya Kingston,” and then they went, “Oh, no, no, no. She was gonna go to law school.”

So I think this is-

Alice: Until she met this m- this boy-

Bex: Until she met the cute- …

Alice: and then she decided she was gonna be a cop. Yeah

Bex: Yeah. So this is, like, them trying to explain why both things happened, like she wanted to be a cop because of Tonya Kingston and she wanted to be a lawyer. I don’t think it worked.

Alice: No, it’s stupid.

Bex: But that’s just me.

Ellen: No, I just like the cozy vibes of them sitting on the rocking chairs-

Alice: Oh, yeah

Ellen: … like, when the rain, it’s raining-

Bex: Oh, the vibes- …

Ellen: raining outside

Bex: The vibes are immaculate.

Alice: As basically Athena’s a huge daddy’s girl, um-

Bex: Oh, yeah

Alice: … and doesn’t like her mom, and she is sad to think that she’s gonna lose her daddy, and-

Bex: Yeah

Alice: Bobby’s just like, “He’s, he’s not dead yet.” It’s like, that’s nice. Yet. Um-

Bex: And then Ath- Athena says, uh, “The worst part of having to parent your parents is knowing that you’re that much closer to losing them.” At this point I realize we don’t actually know about Bobby’s parents. Like, for all we know, [00:46:00] they’re both dead.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Mm … and I’m pretty sure that Athena would know where Bobby’s parents are in this situation.

Alice: Yeah, she’s, she’s like, “Well-“

Bex: So if they are both dead-

Alice: “sure is a shame that my parents are alive.” And Bobby’s just like, “Oh, okay. Cool.”

Bex: Awkward.

Alice: Um.

Ellen: Mm.

Alice: But yeah, anyway, so-

Ellen: I don’t think they thought that hard about the line, to be honest.

Bex: No, it just, it just kinda struck me at that point, going like, “Wait, where are Bobby’s parents in all of this?”

Alice: Yes. Um, and Bobby has no children to parent him.

Ellen: Oh.

Alice: His life’s real fucking bleak-

Ellen: He does. He’s got May and Harry

Bex: and Buck.

Ellen: And Buck.

Alice: He does have Buck. So yeah, then we go to the station house. Um, Buck doesn’t wanna eat with Chim and Eddie, and Hen decides she also doesn’t wanna eat.

And then Buck goes on about the happiness stuff. Like, “Oh, what do you think he meant? You know, he said, ‘I get it now,’ and his eyes got all bright, and he looked up to the sky like he just found happiness.” [00:47:00] Hen’s like, “Yeah, I get it. I was there, but like I’m pretty sure he was just dying.” And Buck just keeps going on and Hen’s just like, “Yep, losing someone out there isn’t easy. Do you wanna see the department therapist?” Buck’s like, “No, no, it’s fine. I just need a couch.”

Bex: It was, Buck apparently, I don’t know when he did this, ’cause I have a feeling that this is like the morning after that shift. Um, but apparently at some point Buck researched the convention center and discovered that, um, the reason the walkway came down was because of some design flaws, like shoddy craftsmanship.

Alice: No, he saw it on the news.

Bex: And I was thinking-

Alice: He was stalking his ex-girlfriend. And Taylor Heller’s just like, “Oh yeah, like it fell because of these reasons.” And Buck’s just like, “Oh, it fell because of these reasons.”

Bex: And I’m just thinking Bobby would’ve had a fucking field day at this call.

Alice: Oh, yeah.

Bex: ‘Cause you wouldn’t know how much-

Alice: He would’ve yelled at the, he, he would’ve found the, like-

Bex: he loves workplace safety.

Alice: Yeah. He would’ve found the, um, whoever did it, and like they wouldn’t have e- even been on [00:48:00] site. He would’ve driven to some guy- Nope. … in another state and yelled at them, and they would’ve been like, “Who are you and what is happening right now?”

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Just, it’s just such a shame that like that happened on the one call that he wasn’t there for.

Alice: We, we all know how much Bobby loves a good yelling at people.

Bex: Um, but the, uh, the heart to heart that Hen and Buck are having is interrupted because Hen gets a call from medical school. Like, that’s literally what comes up on her, on her phone. “Medical school.”

Alice: Yeah. Medical school.

Bex: Not even like the name of the person, like the doctor’s name, like her teacher’s name because, you know, teachers give out their numbers for contact. Like it’s not her doctor’s name, it’s not the name of the school, it’s literally just medical school and I’m looking at the phone going-

Alice: Yeah, it’s not even med school …

Bex: “Is that the best-“

Alice: It’s medical school …

Bex: “Is that the best you guys you could come up with?” Like my kid’s school calls me and like the school logo comes up on my phone. Yeah. I didn’t enter it in. It’s just whenever-

Ellen: It’s just caller iD that knows, knows when [00:49:00] it’s the school … whatever

Bex: the,

the caller ID does it for me automatically. So I’m just like, “Really?” Um, but it is in fact her, uh, one of her professors and Hen gets a really weird look on her face and runs away from Buck to have a conversation in, um, privacy, uh, because it’s bad news.

Ellen: Yeah, she failed.

Bex: She failed her neurology exam.

Ellen: And she’s having a breakdown because-

Bex: Like, if she failed one exam …

Ellen: she failed everything

Bex: Well, she’s saying she failed neurology, but then she failed everything. So how, like, what she’s-

Ellen: I think she’s just saying-

Bex: She failed one class?

Ellen: I, I think it’s just hyperbole. Uh, she’s, feels like she’s-

Alice: I think she failed at everything

Ellen: failing everything …

Alice: because she almost crashed her car, and she also forgets, um, Denny. So like when she gets home- Yeah … ’cause like the next scene is her getting home and Karen’s-

Bex: Oh, okay. Failed-

Alice: … just like- Oh … “When I said you had to let something go, I didn’t mean your son.”

Bex: Okay. So when she’s failed everything, it’s not she failed everything at med school, she like failed everything in life. Yeah, yeah. Like [00:50:00] everything, everything. Every- yeah. Okay.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Okay. But then later, like, she says like, “I failed neurology and my professor thinks I need to repeat my second year.” Like she needs to repeat the entire second year because she’s failed one subject, or she just needs to repeat second year neurology.

They don’t explain this.

Alice: No, they don’t explain anything.

Bex: So I’m assuming, yeah. But Karen thinks that Hen is like overreacting for failing an exam, which I’m guessing Karen has never failed an exam in her life. Um, so she probably- … doesn’t understand this. No. Um, but Hen looks absolutely devastated, and she’s saying that the, “These past few weeks almost killed me.”

And Karen’s like, “You know, maybe ease up on the hyperbole.” And Karen, Hen’s sort of looking at her going like, “It’s not hyperbole. I literally almost died. I fell asleep behind the wheel.” And Karen gets super mad at her and like puts her foot down and says, “Okay, that’s it. You’re done. You have to choose. You either go to med school and be a doctor, [00:51:00] or you stay at work and be a paramedic. You cannot do both anymore.”

Ellen: Yep. It’s kinda harsh, Karen. Like I understand where she’s coming from, but it’s like… Yeah, anyway. It’s very black and white. It’s like-

Bex: Yes …

Ellen: you cannot be a doctor anymore. You must choose which one you wanna be.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. Dunno.

Bex: We’re gonna go back to Florida.

Alice: Yeah, it’s the weirdest, shortest scene ever where literally Bobby like, like he reaches something for Beatrice, and then apologizes for standing up to her earlier. And Beatrice is just like, “No, don’t apologize for standing up for my baby girl. She’s your problem now.” And he’s like, “Yeah, cool.” Um, and that’s literally it.

Bex: Yeah. But then it leads on because Bobby, what Bobby got down for Beatrice was a, uh, looks like an old chocolate box that’s full of letters that Beatrice then takes to the hospital, and she’s sitting there reading the letters aloud, and apparently they’re the letters that Samuel wrote to her during the war [00:52:00] and when they were courting.

And it, this scene is supposed to set up what, um, in our mind, like what a great man Samuel was, what a loving man he was, like the great relationship that the two of them- Yeah … had. We’re meant to-

Alice: Like he’s-

Bex: … building up-

Alice: He’s the best husband ever. He’s the, he was the best boyfriend ever Yes … he was the best husband ever. He was the best father ever.

Bex: He would never do anything bad

Alice: Um, best lawyer everywhere, uh, and like ever

Bex: Which then, uh, contrasts with Athena coming home and discovering that, or going back to her parents’ house and discovering that the front street, the street and the front garden are crawling with cops and coroner and crime scene techs because Bobby and Junior were, um, for some reason digging up the concrete foundation in the room where the car crashed through. I don’t know why they would need to dig up the concrete foundation, but they were and they found a body.

Alice: Yeah. [00:53:00]

Bex: And dun, dun, dun, it is the body of Tonya Kingston, the little girl that went missing 45 years ago, the supposed whole reason that Athena became a cop in the first place.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Athena instantly knows that it’s her.

Alice: Literally immediately.

Bex: Well, there’s this very dramatic-

Ellen: Well, may- maybe she just assumes that it’s her but-

Bex: Well, there’s this very dramatic scene of one of the techs, like brandishing an evidence bag with a silver barrette.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: And, um, we get a flashback to season two where she’s telling, um, Hen about the reason that she became a cop was because this little girl in her neighborhood went mi- went missing, and the only thing they ever found of her was her barrette.

And so we’re into the world of the barrette.

Alice: Out in the woods. Yeah. I just want to highlight that it’s mentioned several times that they found a barrette out in the woods

Bex: And then the t- twin of that barrette is, was found in the foundation of the house. Um, so Athena puts [00:54:00] two and two together and instantly decides that the body in the foundation is Tonya Kingston.

And so the next episode, episode three, is the investigation into the death of Tonya Kingston.

Alice: I don’t know how they were gonna do the next episode as episode four.

Bex: Yeah. I don’t- Mm … like could you imagine the cliffhanger after cliffhanger after cliffhanger of the opening of season six if they did it in production order?

So you would have gone episode one, Samuel crashes through the wall. Episode two, you get dun, dun, dun, dead little girl was buried in the Carter house the whole time. Then you do an entire another episode, and then you come back for Temu Criminal Minds.

Alice: Yeah, I don’t, like it’s, it’s weird. I don’t get it. Maybe they just, like I’m … ‘Cause production code’s just the order they filmed. I’m assuming they just filmed the Florida stuff last maybe, because they had to go-

Bex: I don’t know

Alice: … on location, and so they [00:55:00] did like all the-

Bex: All the LA stuff and then took Angela and-

Alice: Um, yeah … they did all the LA stuff all together and then went, like went on location for “The Devil You Know.”

Bex: I don’t know.

Alice: Like there’s no, like I don’t understand how this, this could have been done in any other order.

Ellen: No, not, I don’t think that would make sense. But I’m glad they did it in this order ’cause it, it’s good to go straight onto this. Yeah. Not just to get it out of the way, but it makes a whole lot more sense to go straight onto it than to have a break.

Bex: Yeah. But then it makes the season six opener the Athena show

Alice: again.

Bex: So this, like this, this episode is the season six opener. This is what all of those cliffhangers have been leading up to.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Like I feel like, it almost feels like episode two was filler, which is doing a real disservice to Hen’s storyline, ’cause Hen’s storyline was really important. But everything else was just filling in [00:56:00] the gaps until we got to this one, ’cause I feel like this one is supposed to be the big important one, the one they really wanted to get to.

Alice: And it’s just so bad.

Ellen: Yeah. I would say at this, like at this stage, like at the end of episode two, I had no idea that this was coming.

I hadn’t seen any of the, um- Like the summary for the next episode or anything. So for Bobby to then come out of the house and say, “We found a body,” I was like, “What the hell is going on?” Like it was a surprise, you know?

Alice: I was, yeah, I was the same, um, I was definitely the same when I first watched it. I was just like, “Oh my God, Athena’s dad killed this kid.”

Ellen: Yeah. Well, uh, I mean, to start with, that’s what they make out is happening. Like that he’s being investigated.

Bex: Oh, 100%.

Ellen: They’re taking all of, all of the stuff, like the evidence from the house.

Bex: The… Yeah, like they, they set him up to be such a good guy at the end of episode two, and then the beginning of episode three, all signs are s- very, very strongly pointing to Samuel Carter had something to [00:57:00] do with Tonya’s disappearance.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Um, which was why Ellen, um, we kind of told you to watch two and three together.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Well-

Bex: Because we wanted you to have that like, “Holy shit, I did not see that coming,” moment.

Ellen: Well, I did have it. Um,

Bex: Excellent.

Ellen: So rather than go through the whole of episode three, we can just-

Bex: Ugh

Ellen: … we, we’ve decided to just vaguely, um, s- go through a summary instead. Yeah … because, ugh, like what you said about-

Alice: Because it’s Temu Criminal Minds

Ellen: … T- Temu Criminal Minds is true. Yeah.

Bex: You called it Temu Criminal Minds.

Ellen: Like it’s not-

Bex: I just loved that.

Ellen: It, it felt like… you remember you were saying before about how the cop-centric mystery episodes are not 9-1-1? Like-

Alice: Yeah. Yes …

Ellen: it’s, it’s not the, the group dynamic-

Alice: Like if I wanted to watch Criminal Minds, I would watch Criminal Minds. I tried- Yeah … to watch Criminal Minds, and I don’t like Criminal Minds. I don’t have any issue with people who do like it.

Ellen: [00:58:00] Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. See- Um, I just d- it’s not my fa- type of show. I don’t enjoy it. I- And I don’t like rip-off Criminal Minds because it’s even worse

Bex: I love Criminal Minds.

Alice: Yeah. That’s it. So

Bex: I’m a big Criminal Minds fan.

Alice: N- no issues with the fact that you love Criminal Minds. Good for you. But-

Bex: But like- …

Alice: like this isn’t Criminal Minds …

yeah,

Bex: number one, if I wanted- Yeah … if I wanted to watch Criminal Minds, I would watch Criminal Minds.

Um, the other issue that I have with this episode is that, um, I think the idea was, like Athena is a cop, cops investigate crimes, crimes are committed by criminal, criminal minds, so let’s just like the, the… It’s a logical jump to go from Athena being a cop to investigating like a serial killer kind of, um, storyline.

But shows like Criminal Minds, SVU, all of those kind of crime mystery shows, there is a very definite formula. It is not as easy as it looks to create the tension, hold the tension, hold the suspense, throw in the red herrings, throw [00:59:00] your audience off, do a big reveal at the end that m- is satisfactory to the audience

Alice: Like, the only shows that can do… like, do other shows that have a formula is if they parody it.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: Like, there’s an episode of Two and a Half Men, um, and like, yes, Two and a Half Men is trash. However, there’s an episode that parodies- … CSI, and it’s actually like- decent because they’re parodying it. Like, they make it super fucking stupid.

Bex: But they still, they take the formula and they do it.

Alice: Yes.

Bex: Whereas-

Alice: Yeah, it’s exactly like they do the whole, like, close-up on things, and, like, the close-up on the gore, and they do the whole misdirect where they think that it’s one thing and it’s the other. Like, they do the formula, but they’re s- like, very clearly spoofing it. They’re not trying to do it seriously at all, which, and so it works.

Bex: So but here in this episode, I think they are trying to do it seriously. I think they’re trying to follow the formula-

Alice: They are, yeah, and it’s awful

Bex: … and they’re failing dismally.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Well, I, I didn’t think that it [01:00:00] was like, uh, the formulaic sort of, um, red herring stuff was that bad. Like, it, I d- I didn’t realize who it was until the end. Um, but it was just that there was no tension. Like, it just went on and on- No,

Bex: that’s what I- …

Ellen: and it was like-

Bex: That’s what I mean, like, the-

Ellen: It was meandering around, and, like, the, the actual mystery elements of it were pretty good, and, you know, you were directed in this direction, and then they f- found out some information and, oh, maybe it was this person, and, you know, it, that was fine, but I was just not interested. Like, I’m watching it going-

Bex: No, but that’s what I mean. Like, there’s a, there is a formula, but it’s not as simple as just A plus B plus C equals D. You’ve got to build your tension and your suspense into the episode. You’ve got to keep your audience engaged, and they got the formula right, but they missed everything else.

Alice: They also just fucked up the whole story. Like, it’s so stupid. It would make more sense for the kid to have j- like if, [01:01:00] if they were just like, “Yeah, there’s fucking evil in the world.” But instead, they made this whole other thing about how, like, the, like the kid actually snuck out. She wasn’t just snatched.

She also seemed a lot older. Like, I don’t know if Athena ever actually mentioned her name or if she just said it was a young girl, but, like, I always just pictured, like, a six or seven-year-old, like, a little kid, but instead she’s like-

Bex: No, I think-

Alice: … eight years old and starts drinking beer, and it’s like, “Okay, sure.”

Bex: Athena says in season two that she was a year behind, um, Tonya was a year behind Athena in school, and Athena says that she’s nine. So-

Alice: Right, so we did know she was eight.

Bex: Athena was nine- I guess she’s like- … so Tonya would’ve been about eight. Yeah.

Alice: Um, but yeah, it’s just, like, it’s s- I, I don’t know if they were specifically trying to show that the cops were really bad back then, but the fact that, like-

Bex: I think that was the implication as well

Alice: but then they [01:02:00] go back and, like, Athena has a run-in with the cop, and the cop’s like, “Oh no, I’ve still been doing it. Like, I’m still looking at, looking at it,” ’cause it’s another Black cop. And he’s like, “No, no, like, I care. I’m still looking into it.” And it’s like, okay, but you didn’t notice that, like… So the story was always, the thing that really gets me is that the story that Athena told was always that her bar- um, barrette was found in the woods.

And then when they actually show it, it’s in the fucking orange orchard

Ellen: The, the orchard was only beyond the woods, was the other side of the woods

Alice: Yeah, so like, but-

Ellen: So it could have been in the woods

Bex: … so she ran through the orchards into the woods. Yeah Although this is 9-1-1. They’re not known for their consistency in their storytelling.

Alice: No. But it’s just like-

Bex: So are we surprised that they got this detail wrong?

Alice: Like, the whole town’s going out to look for this child apparently. None of the teenagers who saw her there, none of them spoke up. Like, not one of them, ’cause teenagers are so, like, known to, you know, not backstab each other-

Bex: Yeah

Alice: and so [01:03:00] known to be, like, besties with each other and so known to not say anything. Not one of them said she was actually at the, like, at the bonfire. Like, the whole town- Yeah, so let’s just do- … was so worried and no one, like, no one mentioned it?

Ellen: Yeah, I feel like the sister probably would have said something as well.

Bex: Let’s just do a quick recap if… Well, no, because then she would’ve got in trouble. Um, but let’s just do a quick recap in case, A, you haven’t watched this episode at all, or it’s been a while since you’ve watched it and you just need a refresher. So the official story was that someone had bro- had s- climbed into the Kingston house, snatched Tonya from her bed, taken her, done God knows what with her.

They never find her body. What actually happened, we discovered, is that Tonya’s older sister would sneak out of the house to go to parties in the orange grove, and Tonya tagged along one night. She, uh, strong-armed her way into the party. She, uh, basically threatened, uh, Joanne, her older sister, um, that she would [01:04:00] tell on Joanne if Joanne didn’t let her, like, join in the party, so they gave her a beer and they let her in the party.

Joanne loses track of her. She goes home. Tonya never comes home because Tonya had a run-in with someone at the party who killed her essentially.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: But yes, everyone at the party knew that Tonya was there, but apparently not one of them-

Ellen: No one said anything

Bex: … Joanne didn’t say anything because she was afraid that she would get in trouble for, A, sneaking out of the house or, B, taking Tonya with her. Um-

Alice: Because, you know, sneaking out of the house is so much worse than like, “Oh, my daugh- my sister got s-

Ellen: Yeah, like, her sister is missing.

Alice: Yeah. Yeah, it’s like- And then she, like, took it to, like she was j- she, like, her parents both died. Her dad left. Like, all this stuff happened, and she just kept the secret the whole, whole time, and it’s like, okay-

Ellen: And then she told Athena

Alice: that’s kinda weird. But then she tells Athena immediately.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Um, because Athena’s like, “Ah, that window opens, and like, there’s a flower box under it.” And she’s like, “Okay, I [01:05:00] admit it. I snuck out all the time.” And it’s like, so the po- like, what?

Ellen: So apparently the cops are just useless.

Alice: The cops are so useless. Yes. Um, and yeah, so like none of the teenagers said it. None of the cops that apparently, like investigated the case, so again, like maybe they’re trying to make a commentary on the fact that the cops are useless. But that d- that flips when literally the cop who helps Athena with the case, or who arrests Athena originally, um, is like, “No, no, I’m real- I’m still looking into it.”

Bex: But to be fair, like that, the cop that A, initially arrests Athena for tampering in the police investigation or inserting herself into the police investigation but then ends up h- letting Athena read all of the evidence and assist in the i- investigation, he looks to be about Athena’s age. So I feel like he must’ve been a kid around that time, and maybe it’s just like a case that he-

Alice: Yeah, but Athena also is like, “Oh, this is where we used to do bonfires and stuff,” and it’s like, okay.

And like teens are notoriously messy.

Bex: I, I just, I feel like he’s not the original cop.

Alice: Like if … Oh yeah, [01:06:00] he’s definitely not the original cop. But like if they were having a party, there would be beer cans, the fire would still be hot, and like no one who went looking for this little girl was like, “Ah, someone’s been here at the fire,” which is still hot. Like-

Ellen: Yeah, look, there’s holes all over this story. Like-

Alice: There are so many holes …

Ellen: let’s, let’s just not go into that

Alice: It’s so fucking dumb. And then, yeah, the, the, when they show the flashback of, of Tonya running away from her attacker, she’s running through the orange groves, and dro- that’s where the barrette drops.

And so it’s like, okay, so it was in on someone’s property and no one thought to me- like to talk to the teenage boy who lived on the property.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Yeah, I-

Ellen: I, I don’t know. For the drama, um, the, the, the- … Athena is the one who solves the case

Alice: And also Athena has like, Athena’s like, “Oh, I’m gonna, I’m gonna solve this case,” but then moves to LA and just doesn’t bother

Ellen: Yeah. I, I think the funny thing that I, I thought was funny about this was that Athena is actually taking the cop’s [01:07:00] advice to heart and trying to stay out of it, and Bobby is the one-

Bex: And then-

Ellen: who starts looking at- Yeah … her father’s stuff and, and she’s like, “What the hell are you doing?” And he’s like, “Don’t you wanna solve the case?”

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Because-

Bex: I- …

Alice: Bobby’s like your

Ellen: Enabler Bobby

Alice: You haven’t shut up about this case the entire time I’ve known you. And she’s like, “I didn’t actually wanna do anything about it.”

Bex: No, but that’s really interesting because it’s at the beginning of the episode, and so Bobby is trying to find everything he can to clear Samuel’s name, and Athena is refusing to investigate, one, because the cop told her not to, but secondly, she doesn’t want to investigate because she is terrified-

Ellen: She’s worried that,

Bex: you know, that she’s going to uncover evidence that Samuel was the one who actually did it, and she doesn’t wanna do that.

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: She doesn’t wanna be the one to put her father in prison, which is like I, that was a really, that was really nice. I really liked where they were going with that because at that point of the episode they were implicating Samuel very heavily because you had the cops taking DNA and genetic samples.[01:08:00]

Um, Franklin Sr. had shown up to help Franklin Jr. with, like, the, the repairs and he said that the room was something that, like, Beatrice and Sam had been talking about doing for a long time, and then all of a sudden Sam’s like, “No, we need to do it now,” and that was the day after Tonya had disappeared. So he’s very strongly implicating that Sam had the room-

Ellen: Yeah, he was, he was insinuating …

Bex: made to hide Tonya’s body.

Alice: Yeah, to hide the body.

Ellen: But then, then I, the reason that I, my focus then turned to him w- was not through any kind of evidence at all, but by the fact that as his car drove away and made that funny noise and Bobby w- turned to look at it and, like, zoomed right into his face. And I’m like, “Oh, this is important.”

Bex: Oh, no.

Ellen: So, so then I thought, I assumed it was that guy until the end when we find out- And s- … who it actually was …

Bex: which was [01:09:00] then where the episode goes, because then we go to two bits of evidence, which is Joanne reports, Jo- Joanne tells Bobby that she heard a car going put, put, put that night at the party, and that’s kind of why they all scattered.

And we also discover that it wasn’t the cement had been laid and then, like, Tonya’s body got put on top of it. It was Tonya’s body had been put down, the cement poured on top of her. Yeah. Um, so then-

Ellen: Yeah, so where then-

Bex: all evidence-

Ellen: after that, after they’d mentioned that, I was like, oh, maybe at the end of all of this it will turn out to be a terrible tragedy because she’s gone, tried to go home but got tired and crawled into, like, a cement mixer or something and gone to sleep, and it was all a terrible accident. But no, it was- No … it was actually a murder.

Bex: But then, but the other thing is that they don’t give us, um, as the viewers time to sit with, “Oh, maybe it was Reggie Sr,” because almost as soon as we [01:10:00] get that, “Oh my God, maybe it was the dad,” immediately they went, “No, actually it was the kid.”

Alice: It was son.

Bex: It was Reggie Jr- Yep … the whole time, because he’s gone full psychopath now. Yeah. He’s pulled a gun on Joanne and dragged her out into the orange groves to kill her to then say, “Oh my God, I found out it was Joanne, so I dragged her out into the woods and we had a fight and, and I killed her, but she was the one that killed her sister the whole time.”

Ellen: Oh, God.

Bex: What is it with 9-1-1 and having bad guys go full psychopath when they get discovered?

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: Like, we had it with Jonah. And now we had it with Junior. W- what is it? It’s like it’s not enough for them to be bad, they have to go full balls to the wall bad.

Ellen: Yeah, they can’t, it, there can be no, like, um, you know, question. Uh, like, no-

Bex: There’s no m- there’s no gray. There’s no morally gray.

Ellen: No gray, no more gray area.

Bex: You are either innocent or you’re, like, completely evil.

Ellen: Or, or you’re a cartoon baddie.

Alice: Yep, literally.

Ellen: Anyway, he threatens to kill [01:11:00] Joanne, but in the end, uh, Athena and Bobby show up because they’re coming to warn Joanne, but how do they, how do they end up in the, in the, uh, orchard? No I can’t even remember what happens.

Bex: We… I don’t think we know. I don’t think we know how they end up in the orchard.

Ellen: They end up in the orchard.

Bex: Or, or, like, the orchard is how big, and they manage to pinpoint and find Joanne and Reggie Jr-

Ellen: I, I don’t know

Bex: … within, like, how, how much time?

Alice: It’s so stupid.

Ellen: Um- I don’t know. So then- And then Athena goes chasing after Junior to-

Bex: Yes … ‘

Ellen: cause he takes off and-

Bex: How the tables have turned. You know, he used to chase her through the orchard groves, and now he’s ch- now she’s chasing him, just the same way he chased Tonya all those years ago, and like, oh my God.

Ellen: Oh, god, that pa- that-

Bex: I don’t care

Ellen: there’s, yeah, there’s a really hideous bit where he’s, like, trying to… Ugh, no, don’t wanna know about it. Um, I’m like, did we really need to go so dark in this episode? Like, I’m not-

Alice: It was like they were [01:12:00] trying to, it was like they were trying to rip off The Lonely Bones and just did it real, real fucking bad.

Ellen: I don’t know. I have, don’t recognize that reference. Yeah.

Bex: Oh, it’s, um, it was a, a book that got turned into a movie.

Alice: The Lovely Bones. Sorry, yeah.

Bex: The Lovely Bones.

Ellen: Oh, yeah, okay.

Bex: A- again, for anyone who has not seen the episode or has taken a while, so the, Reggie was basically a pedophile, and he had got Joanne, uh, he’d got Tonya drunk.

He had isolated her. He tried to make a move on her. She ran. He chased her down, um, and either, depending on how dark you wanna go, he either killed her in order to, so she couldn’t say anything about what he had tried to do, or he did what he wanted to do and then killed her afterwards.

Alice: Yeah. Mm. Like, there are implications, but they don’t,

Bex: they don’t ex-

Ellen: Yeah, they don’t they don’t- thankfully they don’t actually go there …

Alice: they don’t expand on it.

Ellen: But my God.

Bex: No, they, um, very charmingly-

Ellen: Very dark

Bex: … leave it up to your imagination. Ugh, yeah. So depending on where your [01:13:00] imagination can go is where this particularly goes.

Alice: Um- Um, I just wanna note as well, so 9-1-1 does this thing where it doesn’t kill children. It does kill children-

Bex: Unless they’re already dead.

Alice: … in a flashback. Yeah, so like Bobby’s kids are mentioned to be dead, and then, like, they die in the flashback. Um, same thing happened to, like-

Ellen: Yeah, we already knew that Tonya-

Alice: Tonya is dead and so we already knew.

Ellen: … was dead. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Alice: But there has still been no, like, no-

Bex: Children death on screen

Alice: death of a chi- child in, in an emergency or anything.

Bex: Yes. So the, the resolution of the crime is that, um, Junior kills Tonya, panics, calls his dad, and his dad helps him cover up the crime by, “Oh, hey, we just, like, we’re building this house for the Carters. Let’s just toss her body in there.”

Alice: Yep

Bex: And the Carters will never know, and no one will ever know

Ellen: And the-

Bex: And they could have left it there

Ellen: if the police, uh, allow Athena to [01:14:00] question the, like, Senior.

Bex: Yeah, so from going from, uh, “But, uh, you are a daughter, not a cop in this situation,” to arresting her for interfering with a police investigation, she is now arresting, handcuffing, and running interrogations.

Alice: Yeah,

Ellen: yeah. Yeah, what, what the hell? But anyway, she’s the hero in this story.

So, you know, that’s pretty much it. Like she’s happy- Yeah … that she’s finally solved this case that she hasn’t been working on for however long it’s been.

Bex: Yeah, like she mentioned it in season two. It’s been four years since we’ve had any kind of mention of this story I just-

Ellen: And, and the happily, the happy ending is that, um, her father wakes up in hospital and is more or less okay

Bex: Not a, not a serial killer or a child [01:15:00] rapist

Ellen: No. He is still her-

Alice: Yay …

Ellen: still her lovely daddy

Alice: Good for him.

Ellen: Good for him.

Bex: I, like maybe I’ve just watched too many Criminal Minds, but a part of me kind of wished that he knew what had gone on, and that he had been involved

Ellen: Oh, that’s dark

Bex: Like, not that he’d done anything to Tonya, but that he had, like, helped the Franklins hide her body

Alice: Help cover it up or something. Yeah, they didn’t have time for that.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: They were too busy showing weird flashbacks- Yeah … of running through the orchard that no one cared about

Bex: I also hated that, again, to go with, like, the full you have to be 100% evil, they didn’t just leave it at, oh, he killed, that Reggie Jr. killed Tonya. Suddenly there was a series-

Ellen: Oh, there were other kids

Bex: of missing girls.

Ellen: Oh. Yeah.

Alice: Like there was- Oh yeah, and no one noticed that there were a whole bunch of them. It was only Tonya that they cared about apparently

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Well, then no one-

Bex: But no, there was a whole series-

Ellen: No one connected them

Bex: … of missing girls. So do we, did Reggie Sr. [01:16:00] know about all the others?

Like, has he been helping Junior cover this for years, or was this just, like, to rub salt in the wound? Like you helped your kid once, and look what you created. You created a monster.

Alice: Yeah, I don’t-

Bex: And Senior had no idea

Ellen: I don’t, I don’t wanna- No …

Bex: I don’t care enough to think about it

Alice: No. It’s just- Literally don’t care.

Ellen: I didn’t …

Bex: I’ll say, so this is where my Criminal Minds history is like- Yeah … leading me down the dark paths where I’m actually kinda interested in this aspect of it, but, um-

Ellen: Well, yeah. I don’t know. It just, it could have, they could have taken it down much less dark paths, but they-

Bex: They didn’t have to go down this path at all

Ellen: They did without actually

Alice: No, I think the whole episode was unnecessary

Bex: Cause they retconned Tonya Kingston away when they made Athena be a lawyer and meet Emmett, so they didn’t need to go down this route at all. And it’s not as though we’ve, for the last four years Athena has been pining over the fact that she’s never gonna solve this case, or it impacted her life at all, [01:17:00] as far as the narrative that we get to see as the audience goes This, this episode does nothing to Athena’s storyline.

You could literally not watch this episode and not miss anything-

Alice: Yep,

Ellen: yep …

Bex: in this season. It’s 100% filler. It’s

Alice: 100%… It’s letting Athena get the, like, hero cop moment, but, like, she’s has enough of those. We don’t care.

Bex: She had them in season five with fucking Jeffrey.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Look, there are a lot of people who love Athena and want her to have all of the hero moments.

Bex: I love Athena.

Ellen: So that’s fine. Athena can get her time in the sun.

Bex: I enjoy Angela Bassett. She is a great actress. She is beautiful. Yeah. But like I said, if I wanted to watch a cop show, or if I wanted to watch Criminal Minds, I would go and watch those shows. I watch this show for the pretty firefighters and the emergency rescues.

Ellen: And, and the group stuff. Not for- Like, the, the actual found family of it all.

Bex: The ensemble!

Ellen: Not just-

Bex: I love the ensemble …

Ellen: the [01:18:00] individual heroes.

Bex: And like, that’s not to say that I don’t enjoy the individual storylines. Like, all of the begins episodes were really interesting, but the reason that they were interesting was that, that they furthered that character’s storyline in some way, or they gave us backstory, which this episode did neither of.

Alice: Yeah, this episode was just shit. It

Bex: doesn’t give us any more backstory for Athena because we already knew about Tonya. We didn’t need to know who killed her. We just knew that she was a motivation, which then got retconned. Um, and it doesn’t affect Athena moving forward, because she just comes back to LA and they go on like nothing ever happened.

Alice: Um, I just need to mention-

Bex: It, it was unnecessary …

Alice: so the Wiki has a little thing that says that when Junior’s taken away by the detective, he’s not even wearing the handcuffs, and sure enough, he’s just holding the handcuffs. Like, what the fuck? Who… Like, he’s just holding the handcuffs in his hand. They’re [01:19:00] not n- neither of them are around his wrist. He’s literally just holding handcuffs.

Bex: I wonder if the actor didn’t wanna get handcuffed.

Alice: So why would you show him being led away with him holding the… Like, just take the handcuffs out and it would’ve been less obvious.

Bex: Because-

Ellen: I didn’t notice that …

Bex: maybe they thought, “No, no one, no one will notice.”

Ellen: By that stage I was actually probably looking at my phone more than I was looking at the TV. I don’t know.

Alice: Yeah, I was playing Stardew Valley. Yeah. I only noticed because of the thing, but that was so funny. And yeah, and I’m just checking ’cause I, like, went back to look at that, but I’ve also gone back to, like, where Tonya’s running around, uh, running away, and she’s 100% in the orange groves the entire time.

She doesn’t leave the woods. They very specifically show that she’s running between the lines of orange trees.

Bex: I’m going to assume that the-

Alice: And so this whole time they’re like, “Oh, the barrette’s in the woods.” And it’s like, it’s not. It’s in the orchard that’s specifically owned by a family who have a teenage boy.

Bex: I’m going to assume that they, when they wrote the original backstory with Tonya, it was the woods-

Alice: 100%

Bex: … and then they changed-

Alice: Yeah, they should have [01:20:00] gone-

Bex: And then they decided, “We’re going to do this,” and someone found the location of orange groves and went, “This would be so amazing on screen to shoot in. This is an amazing location.” Maybe it was cheap, um, and they’ve gone, “Let’s shoot it here,” so they had to rewrite the story to suddenly involve orange groves.

Alice: Yeah, it’s so fucking stupid. ‘Cause they even mention at the start of, um, or the end of last episode, they, like, have this whole thing about how it was found in the woods.

And it’s like, okay, maybe Athena’s memory’s not great because she was nine, but also she says it’s what inspired her to be a cop. Wouldn’t when you became a cop you’d look into the case?

Bex: I don’t know. But then that’s not why she became a cop. She became a cop because of Emmett.

Alice: Literally, because she found a cute boy

Bex: It’s,

Ellen: I think you’re thinking too hard about this terrible episode and we need to just put it behind us and move on with our lives.

Alice: I just don’t, I’m so sick of episodes wh- like, why do we [01:21:00] have to fix all of Athena’s entire backstory? Like, she gets to catch the guy who killed Emmett. Cool. She gets to catch the guy who killed Tonya Kingston. Cool. Like-

Bex: Because she’s Kristen’s favorite blorbo.

Alice: Literally.

Bex: And she’s an executive producer. She and Bobby are the favorite blorbos, and it’s also, it’s like the majesty of Angela Bassett, which is not a dig at Angela Bassett. It’s just when you’ve got someone of that caliber on your cast, you probably want to give them something meaty to do rather than just walking around in uniform or driving in a fake car every couple of episodes.

Alice: Yeah, I just don’t care about the cop stories.

Bex: So they’re trying to justify having Angela on the cast. Give her stuff to do. It’s just the stuff that they choose to give her is not the stuff that I personally want to watch.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, I feel like this is gonna be the front runner for our least favorite [01:22:00] episode. Overall.

Bex: Already it is my least favorite episode.

Ellen: Maybe. At least this season, and it’s, and we’ve only seen three of them.

Alice: Somehow on IMDb- So- … it has an 8.1 star rating out of 10, and I’m like, how? So maybe the general public liked it.

Ellen: Wow.

Alice: But-

Ellen: Maybe it’s just us who hated it.

Bex: I mean, yes, I’d be willing-

Ellen: Okay, once again, I’m really sorry if you actually love this, these two episodes. Please tell us why.

Alice: Oh, I like that, so hang on. I, I went in, and there’s only 11 user reviews, and the featured review is for one star, and it’s titled Did Anyone Really Need This Episode?

Bex: Hey, there we go.

Ellen: Fair. A good vindication.

Bex: No, nobody needed this episode, and I don’t think that it needed to be stretched out over three episodes either. No. I think if they were going to do this emergency, it could have been a B storyline amongst the normal emergencies.

Ellen: I don’t know. If it had been a B storyline, we would’ve been annoyed by the jumping [01:23:00] back and forth to Florida

Bex: We were already annoyed

Ellen: Like, um, well, I’m happy for-

Bex: I mean, we couldn’t have got any more annoyed

Ellen: them to get it. If, if they, if they had to have this, I’m glad they had it encapsulated in an episode that we could just-

Bex: Skip …

Ellen: get through. Like, chuck out. You know?

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Um.

Bex: Okay, that’s a fair point. Yeah, it’s very easily, you can go one, two, four, five, six, or just go straight to four if that’s… No, you can’t go straight to four. You need one and you need two to sort of-

Ellen: It’s, it’s like when you watch-

Bex: … set up the season and get-

Ellen: … season seven of Supernatural, I want to say, and you fast-forward all the Amelia bits.

Alice: Season eight.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: I o- I only know because I’ve been doing th- Like, I only remember so quick because I’ve been listening to the Supernatural Then and Now podcast.

Ellen: Oh, yeah, yeah. Oh, that’s great.

Alice: And they just- I have to do that too … they finally got to season nine, and they’re like, “Oh, thank God.” Um.

Ellen: Look, I, I have a soft spot for season eight, but I do [01:24:00] fast-forward a lot of it because it sucks.

Alice: Season eight’s, like, the, the back half is great. Season eight, just like season five of 9-1-1, the first half is like, “What the fuck are they doing? Like, I don’t understand what they’re doing here,” and then they finally pull it together by the very end.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Alice: Um, Supernatural does it a bit better than 9-1-1. Um, but yeah. And then season nine starts off s- starts off strong.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Like, with Sam being possessed and that sort of stuff, it’s cool. But yeah, like, I re- like, we, um…

They were doing the, um, the Amelia stuff, like, every time they interviewed any of the writers. They were like, “So were you told you had to do it?” And they were like, “Yeah, we, we had no choice. We had to include it.” Um, ’cause half the flashbacks are like, “Oh my God, a door. Amelia once walked past a door.” Yeah.

Ellen: All of a sudden Sam stares off into space

Alice: Like, “Oh my God, grass. We once sat on a picnic blanket on the grass.” It’s like, “Okay, cool.” [01:25:00] Um, but yeah, but when they interviewed the writers, like all the writers were like, “Yeah, we didn’t care. We just had to include it, so we just did it.”

Bex: Okay, so that’s interesting. So that kind of adds to sort of my theory with 9-1-1 and, like, writers’ rooms in general, is that, uh, ’cause remember last week we were talking about, was it last week’s episode?

Alice: Who knows.

Bex: Yes, last week. The, the season opener, which was Andrew Meier, and we’re like, “But Andrew’s usually, like, a really good writer.

We really like his stuff.” So now the fact that you’ve got the Supernatural writers saying, “No, the showrunners and the, like, networks are telling us we had to do X, Y, Z,” that kind of lends credence to my theory that in 9-1-1 the showrunners were going like, “No, you have to tell these stories.”

Alice: Yes.

Bex: These are the plot lines that you have to do, and they’re just desperately trying to write the best that they can with the material that they’re given. Yeah. ‘Cause like, uh, episode two, “Crash and Learn”, that was Juan Carlos Coto.

Ellen: Yeah. Mm.

Bex: And he normally does amazing stuff. [01:26:00]

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, I’m try- I’m, I’m trying to think what the- So- Like the groups st- like the ensemble stuff in that episode was, like, there wasn’t a lot of it to start with.

Bex: In episode one?

Ellen: No, episode two.

Bex: Y- oh yeah. Like the, the, Hen’s storyline-

Alice: Oh, the montage was the best thing, yeah …

Bex: Hen’s storyline was amazing. Hen’s storyline was the best part, and that had like the sort of the ensemble moments with the, uh, like the boys calling Hen Cap, and, and her getting grumpy with them, you know, uh, watching over her while she sleeps in the truck.

All of that montage.

Ellen: Yeah, those parts were good. That was really good. But that was, that was a very small part of the episode, and the rest of it was kind of just-

Bex: Unfortunately, yes …

Ellen: weird. Shitty.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: Um, eh, you know, emergencies.

Bex: So then you, you’re looking at, like, okay, so how much is the writer who gets named responsible for actually what goes into the episode, and how much is being dictated by someone on high?

Alice: Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Bex: Um, so then you get to episode three, um, and [01:27:00] you’ve kind of got the same question. Although, uh, this one was, episode three was written by, um, Lindsay, which makes sense ’cause she’s the one who writes sort of the Athena-centric and the very police-heavy, um, episodes. I think she’s the former-

Ellen: Oh, I thought Kristen was the one who did that.

Bex: It might be ghostwritten. Um, I feel, have a feeling Lindsay’s either ex-cop or a 9-1-1 dispatcher.

Ellen: Oh.

Alice: I don’t know. Lindsay Beauliu wrote the one where Athena, like the whole Jeffrey stuff.

Bex: Yes. Again, police-heavy.

Ellen: Okay. Yeah. Well, I hope, um, that, I hope A- Athena and Bobby get to have a holiday sooner or later Like obviously they’ve, they’ve missed their, um, cruise now, but-

Alice: Well, um, interestingly,

Bex: uh, no. No. [01:28:00]

Ellen: Don’t tell me. Don’t tell me.

Bex: No spoilers.

Ellen: I mean, you said before- I- … that they go b- right back to LA, so I’m guessing they don’t get to have a holiday now. They’ve just used up all their leave.

Alice: Yeah, just don’t look into the Season 7 opening disaster.

Ellen: Okay. Uh, well, what are we going to get into in Episode 4, since we’ve skipped straight over Episode 3 now?

Bex: Okay. In Episode 4, the 118 race to the rescue. They’re… Whoever’s writing these promos needs to get a thesaurus so they can start coming up with some new descriptions, ’cause I think-

Ellen: It’s just Paw Patrol

Bex: … this is like the fourth time.

Ellen: We’re just racing to the rescue every time.

Bex: Oh my God, now I wanna sit down and have a talk about, like, which member of the 118 is which pup.

Um, the 118 race to the rescue when a birdwatcher is trapped under a tree. Ooh. Chimney is in for a wild ride when he tends for a drunk driver. [01:29:00] Maddie helps a mother and her young daughter when an abusive father shows up at their house. Eddie catches Christopher in a lie. Buck begins a year of yes to possibilities, and immediately receives an interesting proposal from a former roommate.

And oh my fucking God, we’re up to the storyline.

Alice: Already, yep. Already. It’s, it’s straight out the gate. Ugh.

Bex: Okay. Yeah. Um, triggers for next week’s episode includes a generic bugs, and I can’t remember what exactly that’s in reference to. Um, car accident, specifically a car versus cars and cyclist. Uh, a child at threat.

Claustrophobia, which I’m assuming is in reference to the birdwatcher trapped under a tree. Uh, crush injuries, possibly from being trapped under a tree. Mm-hmm. A dog at threat for consumption of opioids. Possible dognapping, but I think they resolve that [01:30:00] in the end. Uh, depictions of domestic violence, drunk driving, fertility issues, and sperm donation

Ellen: Wow. Interesting mix of- Yeah. traumas there.

Alice: Um, I really like that this has been, like, an hour and a half and we discussed two episodes.

Ellen: Yeah, I know. Two episodes of- I was just looking at that I mean, we, we, we skipped through a lot of episode two as well because we just-

Alice: It was shit, yeah …

Ellen: the emergencies weren’t that interesting, so.

Bex: No.

Ellen: And there weren’t- And they just- Like, there was-

Alice: They went for a long time …

Ellen: montages and-

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Oh, well, uh.

Bex: Here’s hoping episode four is more interesting and we have more to talk about.

Ellen: Yeah, well, if we, if I, if I watch, if I get to the end of episode four and I’m like, “Maybe I’ll just go on to episode five,” and see if we can do quick.

Bex: Oh, no.

Ellen: But no, I don’t think we can fast-forward too many, but

Bex: We’ll leave it in your hands, [01:31:00]

Ellen: Okay. All right. We’ll see. All right, uh, if you’ve made it to all of the end of this shorter episode, um, let us know what you thought about these two episodes. Did you agree with us that they could have been an email?

Alice: Um- If you like them, please tell us why.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Like, tell us what you liked- Seriously … about this episode. Z.

Bex: And that’s not us saying, like, we’re judging you harshly. We’re, that’s-

Ellen: Yeah,

we’re not gonna argue …

Bex: truly, that is curiosity. Like, we have our opinions. We would love to know your opinions.

Alice: Oh, I forgot to mention-

Bex: Because maybe you will-

Alice: When they’re in the orchard, there’s a gunshot

Bex: Oh my God, fucking orchard.

Alice: There’s a gunshot, and Athena thinks that it’s Bobby, and like yells out, “Bobby,” and runs. And I just wanna point out the parallel between then and when Eddie was ki- like, Eddie and Buck were kidnapped by Mark PeIIegrino, [01:32:00] and Buck’s inside the hospital, and there’s a gunshot, and he yells out, “Eddie,” and runs.

I just wanted to point out that parallel, because it’s a very, very, very, very, very obvious parallel that I’m sure was totally on accident, but it’s very obvious. Anyway, that’s all, that’s all I had to say about that episode, um- … was that they fucking paralleled Buck and Eddie with a married couple again.

Bex: But they do that constantly. They constantly- Yeah … parallel Buck and Eddie-

Alice: Again

Bex: … with the married couples in the show, in their reactions to each other.

Ellen: Mm-hmm I’m looking forward to seeing him again

Bex: Don’t mind me, I’m just slapping the clown makeup on

Alice: Yeah. That’s it. Like, we have to- Yes … we have to pick out some, um, some Buddie. This is the reas- reason that we’re here

Ellen: Well, I did miss everyone else in this one episode that didn’t have anybody in it except Bobby. Even Bobby wasn’t even in it that much. No.

Bex: Nope, not really.

Ellen: Just like the Athena show. Which is fine, like, she’s great.

Bex: Once again-

Ellen: But the episode was bad …

Bex: he’s, he was just … Bobby was [01:33:00] just being husband, supportive husband.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Enabling husband and supportive husband.

Ellen: He was v- he was very enabling. He was like, his eyes lit up. He was like, “Some investigating time. Let’s go!”

Bex: Oh, he loves an investigation.

Ellen: Yeah. All right. Let’s wrap this up. Um, please leave us comments on, uh, thatweewooshow.com on the episode post or in Spotify or YouTube or social media. We’d love to hear from you. I was gonna say you can chew us out for skipping an episode, but no, don’t do that. Just say nice things.

Bex: But if you feel that strongly about that-

Ellen: Be nice

Bex: … then yes, you can chew us out, but chew us out nicely, ’cause, you know, our feelings will get-

Ellen: Politely. A polite chewing.

Bex: A little bit hurt

Ellen: That’ll be fine. A little nibble.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Um, thank you so much for listening this week. And we will talk to you next time about episode four, which is called “Animal Instincts”. See you then.

Bex: Bye.

Alice: Bye. [01:34:00]

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

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

[outtake]

Ellen: Oh my goodness, I can’t believe how short that was.

Alice: Literally. So funny.

Ellen: Well, we said at the beginning it was probably gonna be…

Bex: I think I’ve watched, I think this is, like, the second time that I’ve watched this episode, because I think I watched it once and then I’ve skipped it with every subsequent re-watches.

Alice: Which is very valid- Yes … because what the fuck?

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Oh, I just realized [01:35:00] it’s been so long since I watched any Supernatural, but I also do that with it. Like, I will skip, unless it’s like a, a, an episode that I know that I really like, if it doesn’t have Cas in it, then I’m not watching it.

Bex: Oh. Fair.

Ellen: Cause a lot of the other ones are just, like… Like the one where Dean can, like, talk to the dogs and stuff, like I don’t need to see that again.

Bex: I’m gonna be honest, when I started watching Supernatural and I realized that I had 15 seasons to watch, I looked up one of those, like, watch guides, which is if you wanna understand the main sort of the lore episodes, here are the episodes to watch, and here are the standalone ones that you can skip because they don’t impact the main, like, storyline.

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Bex: So there are some episodes I’ve never seen.

Alice: Oh my God.

Ellen: Oh my god. Really?

Bex: Because they, like, I’ve ne- I’ve never seen “Dog Day Afternoon”. I’ve seen clips, and I get [01:36:00] secondhand embarrassment from the clips so much- Oh, yeah … that I just can’t bring myself to watch the episode.

Ellen: I mean, you can totally miss that one. I mean, it is, it is funny-

Bex: Um, but yeah

Ellen: … in, like, a cringey kind of a way, but, like, it, it doesn’t have any bearing

Bex: I don’t think I could get past the cringe.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Um, so yeah, there are some episodes that I’ve just never seen because they were not part of the main storyline and-

Alice: See, I started watching Supernatural when it, like, it was the break between season one and season two. So season one had aired fully, and so I binged season one in time for season two to start.

Bex: So I watched, I watched one, two, and three live. They got to Cas and the angels, and I went, “For fuck’s sake, it’s angels and demons. I’m so sick of fucking angels and demons. I’m out.”

Ellen: Oh no!

Alice: Fuck this Cas guy! Wow.

Bex: I was … And so I didn’t start

Ellen: Whereas, I got up to the episode one of season four and went, “Oh my God, I’m sat.”

Bex: I don’t remember what I was watching around the time, but there was another series where I think it went from, like, monsters to fucking angels [01:37:00] and demons, and I’m going, “I am so done with this, all this biblical shit.”

Alice: Oh my God, that’s so funny.

Bex: I’m out. So then I came back to watching Supernatural, like, when I came back to watching it. But I had been there from the beginning, I just took a break, and it’s incredibly ironic that, like, yeah, the entrance of Cas is when I’m like, “No, I’m done.”

Alice: Um, no, see I got to half… I got, like, most of the way through season six, and j- like, I quit just before season six, like, started improving. Like, not that season six improves much, but, like, it does improve at the end. Um-

Bex: It does, yeah …

Alice: and, like, I quit literally, like, an episode or two before it starts, like, getting better. Um-

Ellen: Oh …

Alice: and then I went back in season seven because I was like this, like, “I can’t deal with this show anymore.” Like, there was…

‘Cause I was a big part of the fandom when it was first airing, and when, with season five we knew that it was Kripke’s last season. And so there were all these rumors that, like, it was gonna end and rah, rah, rah, and we’re like, “Okay, cool.” And then, like, obviously it had the big, [01:38:00] like, the end of the big arc.

And we were like, “Cool, that wrapped it up nice- Yeah … neatly.” And then at the end, like, Sam’s back, and so it was like, “Okay, I’ll watch to see, like, what they do,” and it was just so fucking stupid. And I, like- … tried to watch it, and then all my friends dropped off too. They were all just like, “This is so fucking stupid.”

And I was like, “Yeah, I can’t deal with this anymore.” So then when season seven started airing I went back and, like, watched a couple episodes of season seven, and again, like, I think I watched… Fucking, is the fairies episode in season seven?

Ellen: I don’t know.

Bex: I don’t know. I don’t think I’ve seen that one.

Ellen: It’s all ble- it’s all blurred into one now. I don’t remember.

Bex: That’s the other thing about binging. You d- you s- Yeah … you lose the differentiation between seasons.

Alice: Okay, so no, apparently the fairies was season six. So I think the fairies episode may have been the last one I watched, and I was just like, “What the fuck is this bullshit?” And I noped out.

Ellen: That’s fair. That’s pretty stupid. [01:39:00]

Alice: And yeah, then I, like, I noped out. And then season seven, I, I feel like I watched, like, maybe one episode, and it was the f- like, obviously the Leviathan, Le- Leviathan were doing shit, and I was like, “Yeah, no, I’m done. I’m done with the show. I’m, I’m, I’m not dealing, I’m not doing this anymore.”

Ellen: Mm-hmm.

Alice: Um, and so yeah, then I didn’t pick it up until after, like, it ended, and I was like, “Okay, I have a lot of seasons to watch. I’ll get to it at some point.” And then during COVID, I was binging, like, everything. So, like, I binged Psych, I binged House, and then I was like, “Okay, I guess I’ll do Supernatural.”

And I got to season 10, and then mentioned to my brother that I was wa- like, I was rewatching Supernatural, and he’s just like, “No way, I’m rewatching Supernatural,” ’cause we watched it together when we were, like, younger. Um, and I’m just like, “Oh, what season are you up to?” And he was, like, two episodes behind me.

Bex: Oh. Oh.

Alice: Like, neither of us had mentioned it. That’s cool. Ne- like, nothing, and yeah, I think… No, he came over to my house for dinner, and I had it [01:40:00] on. Like, it was just, like, paused. And he’s like, “Are you watching Supernatural?” And I’m like, “Yeah,” like, “I thought it was about time that I went back.” And he’s like, “What season are you on?”

And I’m like, “Oh, it was, like, season 10, episode two or something.” And he’s like, “I’m the end of season nine.” And I’m like, “What the fuck?”