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 episode 9 of the sixth season of 9-1-1, titled “Red Flag”.
The Santa Ana winds bring in a variety of weirder-than-usual emergencies. Bobby worries about his AA sponsor. Denny questions Hen and Karen about his biological parents.
Content warnings for episode 6.09:
addict rehab storyline, dangerous driving (driving while asleep), discussion of adoption, birth parents, discussion of addiction and recovery, gore (severed hand and fingers), grief due to the death of a close friend and mentor, Hollywood evil rehab facility, illegal disposal of a body by burning, minor POC character death, needles, overdose, possible murder, sperm donor, and stalking.
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Episode Transcript
Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1. What’s your emergency?
Bex: Welcome back to That WeeWoo Show, our 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 always, thank you to everyone who has been listening to our episodes so far, um, who have shared our social media posts, and who have rated us on Spotify or Apple Podcast or whatever podcatcher that you are on that allows ratings.
Um, we have made it to the official middle of Season 6, because this is the fall finale of Season 6. So congratulations, we made it-
Ellen: Wow!
Bex: … halfway.
Alice: Woo.
Ellen: I can’t [00:01:00] believe we’re already halfway through this season. Wow.
Alice: Already. I’m pretty sure we started three years ago.
Bex: Unfortunately, it does feel like that, doesn’t it? Um- But look, things can only get better. We hope.
Ellen: Hmm.
Bex: But before we, we put that premise to, uh, the test, um, Alice, would you like to remind us what happened in the last episode we talked about?
Alice: Yeah. So last week on 9-1-1, Christopher went to his first dance, Buck babysat Jee, and May stopped an incel. That was-
Bex: Good for her
Alice: about it
Ellen: Was that it?
Bex: No, there was lots of like-
Ellen: It felt like more happened.
Bex: It was all the fantasy stuff and, like, nobody cares about all the fantasy stuff. Oh. Like the bees.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And the, the boss and-
Ellen: Yeah, okay …
Bex: the people on top of the firetruck. Trying to think what else-
Alice: I’m still trying to-
Bex: … is going on there
Alice: [00:02:00] still trying to forget the people on top of the firetruck.
Ellen: Yeah. All right, so this episode is, uh, episode nine. It’s called “Red Flag”. Just one red flag, not a lot of red f- like, okay.
Alice: Yeah, just the singular-
Bex: Act- … red flag No, no, no. It is actually, like, one red flag.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, I was gonna say, like, I don’t think anyone, like, there’s only one person who actually says the words “red flag”.
Bex: I th- uh, let’s … No, there’s another highlight somewhere down here, but it’s, it’s not a themed episode. There are very, very few red flags flying in this episode.
Alice: Yeah, I’m surprised they just didn’t call it Windy.
Ellen: Plenty of people do some, like, dubious things, but there aren’t any, like, literal-
Bex: But that’s-
Ellen: … red flags in this show, in this one.
Bex: Like, I- I could imagine if you were gonna name the episode “Red Flag” that you would have, like, a whole heap of shady people and really bad situations [00:03:00] and lots of metaphorical or possibly physical, I mean, we all remember, like, the Christmas episode was wrapped in red and Bobby literally wrapped a building in red tape.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, and there was- I-
Bex: That’s
Ellen: what I mean, like actual-
Bex: I would not have surprised, yeah-
Ellen: … literal red flags
Bex: … there were actual red flags. Um, but no.
Ellen: But all we get is just people going a bit crazy because the wind’s blowing.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: So the, the summary says the, the Santa Ana winds bring in a variety of weirder than usual emergencies as the 118 respond to a family dog retrieving a severed hand and a young woman sleep driving into the station.
Bobby worries about his AA sponsor. Denny questions Hen and Karen about his biological parents. And Chimney thinks he’s found the perfect house for him and Maddie. Which, which was a bit of a red flag. I was like, “Chim- no. Come on.” But anyway, um, the triggers for … Th- this is like a, we, I think we said last week, is a bit of a grab basket of triggers here.
[00:04:00] We’ve got, um, addict rehab storyline, dangerous driving, um, inclu- like driving while asleep, discussion of adoption, birth parents, discussion of addiction and recovery, gore relating to-
Bex: Gore! …
Ellen: s- the severed hand and fingers.
Alice: Oh, I forgot about that.
Bex: How could you forget about that?
Ellen: What, the, the severed fingers?
Alice: It was a while ago that I watched it, and by a while ago I mean-
Bex: There was the dog. Like, no-
Ellen: Like a few hours?
Bex: … the dog didn’t have severed fingers, but the, like the dog was carrying around a severed hand.
Alice: No, I know, but like I watched this episode, I watched the start of this episode, and then I took like a 30-minute break and then I watched the end of this episode, so.
Bex: Oh, okay. Oh. So the beginning of the episode is gone.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: It doesn’t exist anymore.
Alice: Exactly.
Bex: Excellent.
Ellen: Well, we’ll remind you in a minute. Um, one of the characters has, um, grief due to the death of a close friend and mentor. Hollywood evil rehab [00:05:00] facility, which kind of goes into the end, like the, the cliffhanger ending.
Illegal disposal of a body by burning, minor character death, uh, needles, overdose, possible murder, sperm donor, and stalking. Wow, that’s a lot.
Bex: So many triggers, so few storylines.
Alice: I know, right?
Ellen: Like I was, I was gonna say, it sounds like there’s a whole heap in this episode, but none of it is like really like w- memorable, I guess. Like it’s not, like there’s … The, the actual … What Bobby’s going through is probably the most heartfelt part of this whole thing. Everything else is just eh.
Bex: Yep.
Ellen: That was my-
Bex: True
Ellen: … that was my general reaction to this episode. Eh.
Bex: Eh?
Alice: Eh.
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: Well, speaking of Bobby, he’s gonna kick off this episode with a, uh, voiceover monologue [00:06:00] telling us that-
Ellen: Oh, his monologue is very poetic actually.
Bex: Uh, Peter Krause does give good monologue. Like, we’ll give him that. Um-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: he’s telling us all about the, uh, the weather in Los Angeles, and it’s, it’s, it’s more interesting than that description makes it sound.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Look, Peter Krause’s voice is pretty good. I w- I-
Ellen: The ch- the changing seasons
Alice: … would listen to him listen to the weather, uh, uh, talking about the weather. So I wasn’t, like, super mad about this, but yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, we don’t have to read the whole thing out, but he’s just, he’s talking about the Santa Ana winds and how they’re, how they bring, they make people-
Alice: They sure are windy.
Ellen: Yes. They set people’s teeth on edge, and they make people act weird basically.
Bex: Yep.
Ellen: But he does have a very nice, like, poetic kind of description of how it affects people.
Bex: Yes. Um, and while we’re getting this voiceover, we’re watching [00:07:00] Bobby, um, get up in the middle of the night ’cause he’s apparently not sleeping, sort of stare pensively into space because he’s unable to sleep, then gets up, um, gets in his truck, drives to the middle of this, like, canyon, bottom of the hills, not entirely sure where the location is, um, haul out his power tools and build a cross.
Not like a, a full, like, crucifix cross, but, like, one of those little grave marker crosses, and plants it in the middle of this sort of canyon.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s very strange.
Bex: I don’t know why he couldn’t have done that at home and then, like, taken the cross out to the canyon, but no, he had to do all the construction in the canyon itself.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, and then when we, we kick off to the title card, and when we come back, it’s apparently three days earlier. So we’ve, we’ve already got some foreboding going.
Ellen: Oh, yeah. So we have all of that before the title card.
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: And three [00:08:00] days earlier, uh, we go to dispatch and Josh arrives at work. Um, he’s there to cover for Jamal who needs an emergency root canal, which sounds like a load of fun. I’ve had one of those before. It is not, not fun.
Bex: So Josh has said that he would cover for Jamal even though it’s, uh, Windpocalypse 2022, and as we’ve learnt from previous episodes, Josh doesn’t work the crazy days.
Ellen: No. And he’s got … He’s, he gives us a full, like, um, info dump here of why, like, why he doesn’t wanna work on a Santa Ana wind day because just like full moons, um, blah, blah, blah, they do dumb stuff, and it’s dumb Did I mention they’re dumb?
Alice: They’re so dumb.
Ellen: But I do like th- I, I like this little banter between them though. That’s, that’s a gr- a highlight of this episode.
Bex: Yes. Like [00:09:00] Maddie and, and Linda are sort of, are sort of good scene partners. Um, the calls that they’ve had, you know, they’ve, they’re just been run-of-the-mill things. You know, people hit by a flying umbrella.
Um, the parrot stabbing was a particular highlight for Linda. Um- We eventually discover that it was a statue of a parrot or a parrot statue that someone was stabbed with. No actual birds were harmed in the making of this storyline.
Alice: Yes. Yeah, Josh was very confused how a parrot stabbed somebody. And like honestly, as somebody who lives with two parrots, I absolutely believe they would stab me if given the chan- chance.
Ellen: Yes. Yes. I’ve lived with a homicidal bird before. That, apparently this is not the weirdest that they’ve ever seen. But Maddie’s like, “How bad can it be?” So yeah.
Bex: Which makes it seem like this episode is gonna be Full Moon 2.0, and that we’re gonna be in for an episode of, like, [00:10:00] wacky hijinks and crazy storylines. Um, and then it turns out not to be.
Alice: Yeah, not at all.
Bex: So I’m-
Alice: Yeah. I don’t know what they were thinking
Bex: … I’m a little bit, it, there’s a bait and switch. It’s almost like, um, they’ve gone, “Oh, you know, we, we wanna do, like, a, a fun kind of wacky emergency episode, but we’ve also got these really devastating storylines that we need to put into place. So let’s just mush them all together and see what happens.”
Alice: Yeah, it’s, it’s a weird vibe, this episode.
Ellen: It really is like that. It, it does feel like a bunch of different storylines that they’ve just …
Alice: Which I think is what made, made it feel like such a long episode.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So our first wacky storyline is fireworks, and we get our first and possibly only reference to the title of the episode, where, um, the channel, Channel 8 News anchorman/weather dude, I’m, I thought he was the anchor, but apparently he’s doing the weather now as [00:11:00] well, um, is saying that, is telling all the viewers that the LAFD is issuing a citywide red flag alert, which refers to parking zones.
They don’t actually explain what that means.
Ellen: No. Oh, is it something to do with the wind?
Bex: I don’t know.
Ellen: Anyway, there’s we’re going to this house where the fireworks are going on above it kind of thing, because these people’s neighbors are setting off fireworks in a really windy environment for some reason. That sounds totally safe.
Bex: Oh, actually, it is to do with the wind. Sorry. Um, red flag parking restrictions are enacted when weather conditions meet specific criteria, such as high gusty winds.
Ellen: Okay. Huh. There you go. And where do they want you to not park when it’s really windy? Like, under trees, or?
Bex: Uh, no, I think it’s probably, like, on the, the, oh, let’s have a look. Um, [00:12:00] include narrow roads, sharp curves, hairpin turns, and key intersections where parked vehicles can block access for emergency responders and trap residents during evacuations.
Ellen: Right. Okay Well, thank you. That, that explains it a lot better
Bex: And that act-
Ellen: Than what went
Bex: on in the TV …
that actually comes from the LAFD’s official website, so cool. Yeah. Um, sorry to interrupt, but I thought that that was a very important addition to the episode.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Definitely.
Bex: Yes, on with the puppy dog.
Ellen: Yes, this very good boy or girl is, um-
Alice: Girl …
Ellen: standing up on a chair and barking out the window. Uh, but still wagging their tail very enthusiastically. Um- Um, obviously they love fireworks.
Alice: Yeah. She d- I know. It … When you, when you understand dog body language, it ruins dogs in TV shows for you. Um, but, um, [00:13:00] yeah, she’s very mad because there’s fireworks happening at eight o’clock on a Monday.
Ellen: And the l- the little girl in the house is trying to calm the dog down, but the dog is like, “Yes, fireworks. Yay.” Uh, no, actually the dog’s really upset about the fireworks.
Bex: Yes. Yeah, the dog’s- Theoretically the dog is-
Ellen: … obviously, obviously
Bex: … is having an incredibly bad reaction to the fireworks. Um-
Alice: Although look, like, my dogs do bark at fireworks and have a great time doing it, because they just like the sound of their own voice, so.
Bex: I think I like the interpretation that Lenny is having the time of her life.
Alice: Yeah. She’s like, “Fuck yeah, fireworks.”
Bex: Which then calls-
Alice: “Yay, 8:00 on a Monday. Party time!”
Bex: Which then, which then makes, like, even more sense, um, when dad comes home, ’cause apparently dad has been working overtime on the downed power lines that have been knocked down because of the Santa Ana winds. Um, and he opens, like, he walks in and leaves the front door wide open.
Um, and Lenny bolts. And we’re supposed to think- Mm … that, like, [00:14:00] she’s running out of anxiety, but no, I feel like she’s just going to try and get a closer look at the fireworks.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah, she’s trying to find where the party’s at.
Bex: Yeah. Apparently she found the party though, um, because while the family go to look for her, um, they don’t find her, but she comes home of her own accord in her own sweet time, and she got a party favor in the form of a severed hand.
Ellen: Yeah. And the girl’s like “What you got, what have you got there?”
Uh, and then we go to a 9-1-1 call where the mom is trying to explain to Maddie, um, that their dog brought a, a severed hand, and Maddie’s like, “A, a hand? Do you know whose hand it is?” And she wants them to pick it up to see if it’s still warm, which has gotta be a bad idea. Like, [00:15:00] shouldn’t you be trying to keep that thing kinda clean, uh, if you can? I don’t know.
Alice: Yeah, the, the mom doesn’t wanna touch it at all, and the daughter’s just like, “Mom, you’re so squeamish,” and just touches it, and it’s like, “Oh, it’s very warm.” It’s like, ew.
Ellen: Oof. Yeah, she’s having a great time.
Bex: Uh, Dad, and meanwhile, has been searching the house for a, uh, cooler to put the hand in so they can take it to a hospital or something and reunite it with its owner.
Uh, Maddie does make sure to tell them that if they’re gonna put the hand on ice, they have to actually protect it from said ice by putting it in a bag and then wrapping it in a towel and then putting in the ice so they don’t get-
Alice: Yeah
Bex: … freezer-burn it.
Alice: I like how last episode they couldn’t get a single ounce of CPR right, and this time they’re like, “Oh, make sure that you put it in a plastic bag. Place the towel betw-,” it’s like, seriously, you, you just spent like two minutes discussing that.
Ellen: Maybe the medical advisor was on holidays last week, and this week they’re back, and they’re like, “Look, we need to-“
Alice: Sure-
Bex: I’m thinking maybe it’s like the CPR [00:16:00] is just acting. Somebody’s gonna be watching this episode, and heaven forbid they’re ever in a situation where they need to put a, um, amputated appendage on ice. We wanna make sure that they’ve got the correct information.
Alice: That’s it. Very important.
Bex: Um, so Maddie tells them to protect it, then put it on ice, and then wait for the paramedics to arrive, and hope that they are able to find the hand’s owner.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And so the paramedics, plus Buck and Eddie and Bobby arrive, and Buck is telling us that every year he thinks that he’s seen everything and then the Santa Anas blow in and, “Oh, look, it’s something weirder.”
Um, Eddie is completely blase about it. He’s like, “It’s a severed hand. We’ve seen severed hands before.” And Buck’s like, “Yeah, but normally their owner is nearby. It’s… How many times we had a severed appendage with the owner nowhere to be found?”
Ellen: He’s got a [00:17:00] point. I was, I was confused during this episode because I d- I don’t know what time of year this is, and I d- like, I don’t think it ever gets particularly cold in LA. But when the winds blow, is it hot? Like, I need to go back to Bobby’s monologue at the beginning and find out. Is it hot or is it cold?
Alice: I assumed it was hot.
Ellen: All right.
Bex: Um, well, it’s Denny’s birthday, and according to the wiki, his birthday is in September. So it’s the tail end of summer.
Alice: It
Bex: says dry winds.
Like, heading into
Alice: fall.
Bex: But yeah, at one point- Yeah, but dry winds can be cold … isn’t Buck, like, shivering and, like, blowing on his hands-
Ellen: Yeah, that’s-
Bex: … and rubbing his hands like he’s cold?
Ellen: That’s what-
Alice: Oh.
Ellen: This, in this scene, they’re all standing around, like, rubbing their arms and stuff when… But they’ve got, he’s got his- But then- short sleeves on, his, like, T-shirt.
Bex: But then later in, later in the episode they’re hanging out on the roof having hot chocolate. So you would think if it was cold-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: … you wouldn’t be up there, unless they’re up there to keep themselves awake ’cause it’s, like, night shift.
Ellen: I don’t know. It’s just-
Bex: Like, nothing [00:18:00] makes sense in this episode when it comes to time or space
Alice: Yeah, so Wikipedia says they’re known as the dry hot winds, but they can arise at other times of the year.
Ellen: Okay.
Alice: So I’ve no idea why they’re cold.
Bex: Maybe it was just Oliver. Maybe he was just cold.
Ellen: Yeah, maybe he, or he was just, like, pretending that the wind was bothering him by shivering.
Alice: And they drive wild- like, really bad wildfires, and they were the reason that the January 2025 wildfires were so bad. So-
Bex: Yeah …
Alice: which is in their win- winter as well, so.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: But yeah, they come from the desert, so, like, that’s what I assumed, it was like our north- like Victoria, we have the northern winds, which comes down from the desert.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, but we have westerly winds which come from the desert, and they’re cold. They come now.
Alice: What?
Ellen: Like now we, we have like, um-
Alice: That’s so weird
Ellen: … yeah.
Bex: I mean, [00:19:00] the episode is supposed to be set in September. Who knows when they actually filmed it, so maybe it’s one of those instances where it’s supposed to be hot, but when they’re filming it, it’s actually cold, so Oliver was just cold on set. I don’t know.
Ellen: Who knows?
Bex: We are going to drive ourselves crazy trying to figure those sort of things out in this episode.
Ellen: Yeah. Uh, so it, so they’re all trying to work out what is happening with this severed hand.
Bex: Yeah. Chim, um, announces that the, the wound is pretty jagged, that perhaps it wasn’t, it was actually blown off rather than cut off or any other, um, method of amputation.
Ellen: Yeah, when he said that, when he said that, I was having a complete idiot moment, and I’m like, “Blown, like the wind blew his hand off?” And then I’m like, “Oh, the fireworks did it.”
Alice: Or it’s a really, really, really strong wind
Bex: Oh my God.
Alice: He’s like waving at someone and the wind picks up [00:20:00] his hand.
Ellen: I don’t know.
Bex: No, fireworks. The, the mum offers that she’d heard fireworks going off. Um, so the 118 go to door knocking, um, to try and find anybody who is at home with only one hand. Um, and while they’re doing that, um, this song called “Hand Clap” is playing-
Alice: Oh, it was so-
Bex: which talks about, um, people, like the singer’s making people’s hands clap. And like it’s not the worst needle drop that we’ve had … but it’s still pretty on the nose.
Ellen: And it’s also pretty silly because it just, the montage is just people just like showing that they have two hands. It’s like-
Bex: Yeah. Yeah
Ellen: uh, I don’t know. Just thought it was really silly.
Bex: It’s so silly.
Alice: So silly.
Bex: Uh, but yeah everyone’s-
Alice: Like they’re, they’re door knocking and everyone’s just holding up like two hands and laughing.
Bex: Yep.
Ellen: And there wasn’t anybody who they spoke to who was like, “Oh no, someone has [00:21:00] a severed hand. That’s terrible.”
Alice: Yeah. Everyone was just like, “Ha ha ha.”
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Like imagine somebody opens the door and they’ve just got a bleeding stump like, “Oh my God, you found my hand. Thank you. I was looking for that everywhere.” What?
Alice: Did wonder where that was.
Bex: Yes. No, so they are unsuccessful. They report back to Bobby and that they are unsuccessful. Um, there’s a guy sort of on the street sort of comes up to them and is like, “Hey, um, can I give you guys a hand with anything?” Ba dum bum ching.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: They sort of, they do like a cursory exam. The camera and I think Bobby kind of does a cursory examination of this guy, and they’re like, “Nah, no, we’re, we’re all good.”
Um, nobody brings up the fact that one of his hands is shoved under his armpit and it looks like it’s wrapped in a towel. Um, or that one of his shoelaces is missing.
Ellen: Bo- Bobby kind of clocks him at one point, but-
Bex: But doesn’t say [00:22:00] anything.
Ellen: No. He’s just like, “No, no, we’re good.”
Bex: We’re good. So the, the guy’s like, “Okay, cool.” um, dives for the cooler that they have left sitting on the ground outside the ambulance, like have not at all secured-
Alice: Yeah …
Bex: this cooler- Just we’re chilling … with Severed Hand in it, um, and makes a run for it. Buck immediately is just like, “Not it. I chased after the last guy. It’s somebody else’s turn.”
Ellen: Yeah, they just all stand there and watch him running off. Until, um, Eddie goes, “Ugh, okay, fine.” And then he chases after him.
Bex: It’s literally like a, “Ugh, okay, fine,” isn’t it? It’s hilarious. Um, they don’t get far. No stolen bicycles were required for this chase. Probably because the kid is suffering from, you know, shock- And blood loss. … and pain and, and blood loss because he trips, [00:23:00] um, and falls down and reveals that he’s missing a finger on one of his hands.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So the 118 have to now help him out, and Bobby radios for a second ambulance because they now have a second victim. And this dude who the closed captions were calling Boomer-
Ellen: Oh.
Alice: Sure.
Bex: Yeah. He tells them that he w- he wasn’t looking for his fingers because he was too, or for his finger, because he was too concerned about trying to find the hand for his friend Manolo, who’s in a truck down the road.
Ellen: Yeah, he’s very forthcoming with all this information. Like, I don’t know what he was planning to do. Like, they were gonna get to the hospital, right? Like, di-
Bex: They were gonna find the hand and then take it to the hospital, yeah.
Ellen: Like, didn’t he realize that they, these people are paramedics? Like-
Alice: Yeah. [00:24:00] But
Bex: I-
Alice: Clearly they can’t reatta- re- yeah, I guess
Ellen: And then he’s got some story about how his mom is the, um, the president or, or the, you know, on the council and she’s responsible for cracking down, so he didn’t wanna get in trouble for using illegal fireworks.
But that’s why they didn’t call 9-1-1. But, like, what was he actually going to do with the ha- with the severed hand? Like he’d have to go to a-
Alice: Literally, yeah
Ellen: … like, it’s a, it’s a weird story.
Bex: I kinda wonder if they were gonna, like, drive to the, to the merchants department and just kind of push Manolo and his hand out the passenger side and then screech off.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Like they do with your, like, gang shootings
Ellen: Yeah, I was gonna say drive to the next state, but that’s a really long way away in Los Angeles, so probably not.
Alice: Yeah, it’s a long way away from LA.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: It, well, it doesn’t matter now because they’ve got the 118 on site, and so they start attending to Manolo, um, who comes [00:25:00] to after they start putting fluids and tourniquets and all this sort of fun stuff, to proudly proclaim that he saved the finger.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: The only problem is that they discover, uh, that the finger is actually a thumb, and Boomer is actually missing his pointer finger.
Alice: Yeah. So there’s-
Bex: And apparently-
Alice: There’s another victim …
Ellen: at this point Bobby’s just done with all of this. He’s like, “Oh my God. All right, fine.”
Alice: We need a third ambulance. And the annoying thing is, though, like this is probably the most interesting part of the whole fucking episode, and we don’t even get a conclusion.
Bex: Nope.
Alice: Buck just says-
Ellen: No, that’s the end of this scene, that’s it!
Alice: … things keep getting weirder and then we get the commercial, and then that’s it.
Bex: We don’t know where the third guy is. No. We never figure out if they pin the correct finger on the correct dumbass.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Um, it’s just, no.
Ellen: Anyway, we don’t need to know that ’cause we’re gonna go, um, to Karen and Hen’s [00:26:00] place And it’s Denny’s birthday
Bex: It’s Denny’s birthday. He’s turning 10.
Ellen: Yay.
Bex: Um, and he has lots of presents, including a giant robot. He gets to build a robot.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Uh, apparently-
Alice: Yeah, that’s kind of cool after, like, after he visited the lab.
Bex: I was gonna say, uh, apparently the, uh, the take your kid to work day, um, at the lab that subsequently exploded has not, um, dissuaded Denny from pursuing his love of robotics and science.
Ellen: Yeah. That’s good.
Bex: It’s very good. Healthy child. So he’s, he loves his presents, he thanks Hen, he thanks Karen. Um, they’re like, “You know, you’re welcome, sweetie.
It’s your birthday. You can do whatever you want today.” And he takes that and runs with it and goes, “Cool. Tell me about my biological mother.”
Alice: Yeah. ‘Cause what else do you want for your [00:27:00] birthday?
Bex: And Hen is absolutely floored and is like, “Why all of a sudden are you asking about your biological mother?” And Denny’s like, “Oh, it’s just, you know, I saw this woman the other day and she kind of looked me, liked me and I, I wondered if that’s was my mother.”
I’m like, “Oh, honey, no, your mother was a white woman. Whoever you saw on the street, that definitely was not her.”
Ellen: Aw.
Bex: Which made me realize, does, like, have they told Denny that he’s biracial?
Alice: Surely. Maybe. Potentially.
Ellen: I don’t know, they might- it might not have come up in conversation
Alice: … it’s weird that they, like, I, I guess I kinda get it, but I sort of expected them to have shown him what his mum looks like, like…
Bex: Apparently not. They’ve kept all information about Eva, like, completely locked down.
Alice: Well, he knows that-
Ellen: Well, they were waiting for him to ask the questions.
Alice: It sounds like he knows that hi- that his mum and Hen were a thing at some point [00:28:00] because, like, Karen doesn’t go into the fact that, like, why Hen would have old photos.
Bex: Mm. I don’t know. It just seems a little weird. Um, Hen promises that she’ll, like, pull the box, she’ll go through the attic and see if she can find any boxes, and he’s like, “Okay, cool. I’m gonna build my robot now.” So he goes off to build his robot and leaves his mothers in their sort of existential crisis.
Ellen: Yeah, Hen’s really rattled by it, and then when s- someone asks her about it later, um, she doesn’t really know why she’s rattled. Like, I don’t know, she just thinks it’s weird, and that’s the end of the story.
Bex: I don’t think it’s weird to want to know about your biological parents. I mean, you, we can see you, like, he loves Hen and Karen.
They’re his mum-
Alice: Yeah, he’s just curious. Like he’s, you know, 10 years old now.
Ellen: Yeah, but, but she’s, uh, she f- thinks it’s weird that it’s just come out so randomly, and [00:29:00] also that she’s like, I don’t know, she’s tried everything she can to get Eva out of her life, and now she’s coming back again. She’s, it’s upended, upended her life.
Bex: This, the really, the really crappy thing about kids is that it permanently ties you to, like, the other parent. N- as long as the kid is there, that other parent is in your life whether you like it or not to some extent.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So as long as Karen and Hen have Denny, Eva is always gonna be a part of their life even if she’s not physically there.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: She’s like a, a ghost in the corner just staring at them.
Ellen: Damn it. Speaking of staring.
Bex: There’s a lot of staring in this episode.
Ellen: It’s Bobby’s turn to stare.
Bex: Yes. He’s still staring.
Ellen: He does, there is a lot of staring in this episode, you’re right.
Bex: Um, I won- I don’t know if we’ve seen yet what the view [00:30:00] is out the, through the, the backyard of the Athena residence, ’cause Bobby does a lot of staring out into that backyard.
Alice: I think there might be a fire pit. Like, they’ve been out in the backyard.
Bex: Yeah, but like does it go beyond? Like is there a massive canyon-
Alice: Yeah, I don’t know
Bex: … or just a forest or something out there?
Alice: Maybe he built the fence and he’s just real impressed with the fence.
Bex: I don’t know. Um, but apparently he’s so intrigued with whatever he’s seeing out there that he doesn’t even notice that this strange man has let himself into Bobby’s house.
Ellen: I just assumed he was there to visit. Like-
Bex: Yeah, but, but what did Bobby-
Ellen: … he was, he was already there.
Bex: But what did Bobby do? Like go up, let him in, then come back down to the kitchen-
Alice: And then come back to stare at the w-
Bex: … and just stare out the window
Alice: Yeah, and stare at the backyard?
Bex: I don’t know. Like, “Oh, hey Wendell, like, sorry I was just in the middle of doing some like contemplative staring. I’m just gonna finish that off. You, you feel free to make yourself at home.”
Ellen: I mean, yes. Yes. That’s basically what happens. Um, anyway Wendell is… [00:31:00] I, I was wondering if we’d seen this guy before-
Alice: No
Ellen: … ’cause he looked kind of familiar.
Bex: No, we have not.
Ellen: But we haven’t, this is the first time.
Alice: It’s- And he’s- Oh, I hate this storyline so much.
Bex: Mm.
Alice: Because it’s, they, they, they’re so… They’re trying so hard to force us to have a connection with this guy, and I just don’t give a shit because we’re in season six and we’ve never seen him before.
And apparently he’s got this like long history with Bobby, and he’s Bobby’s sponsor, and he’s been there for Bobby this whole time, and I’m like, “Where have you been?”
Bex: I was trying to work out, ’cause we have… I’m sure that there was a scene at some point where Bobby was on the phone with his sponsor, and I was trying to remember what episode that was in and whether this guy was credited as like the voice at the other end of the phone. But I cannot find it or remember it for the life of me. Oh. But so-
Alice: Yeah, I have no idea.
Ellen: No. Well, he’s only credited in two episodes and, and one… Well, ’cause I was looking him up to see if we’d seen him before. Yeah. But the other episode he’s in is in the [00:32:00] future, so no.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: But, and I was like, “Was he in Supernatural or something like that?”
But no, he’s been in a bunch of other things, but, um, I must have just recognized him from something else
Bex: But yeah, they- they’ve got this deep, very personal connection with Bobby that we have never heard about before this episode. Yeah. Um, and I, I, l- um, yeah, like Alice, I don’t buy it. I d- I-
Alice: Like, I get that they’re like, “Okay, we, we wanna introduce this storyline. We haven’t done it before, so we’re like, we’re just gonna have to sort of shoehorn it into a later season.” I get that, but like, more than one episode might’ve been nice if they want us to give a shit, because I do not give a shit.
Bex: To slowly introduce him, like-
Alice: We saw him for two seconds, and then they’re like, “Oh, you have to care about this guy,” and I’m like, “I don’t, though, at all.”
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: I, I cared more about the fact that Bobby was so upset about the whole thing than the actual, than whatever happened to himself and the-
Bex: Yeah, and [00:33:00] sometimes that works. Sometimes you put your main character through trauma, and the, the, you, it’s the audience caring about the main character less than what actually happened to everybody else.
But I don’t think I even cared about Bobby at this point.
Alice: No. Oh.
Bex: Maybe I was just so annoyed that once again, it’s a Bobby alcoholic storyline. Yeah. Like, it’s slightly side, like a slight tangent to the normal Bobby as an alcoholic storyline, but it’s still about Bobby’s alcoholism.
Alice: Yeah. Which, yes, is an important part of his character, but I just don’t care about Wendell. And we’ve done it so many times.
Ellen: Anyway, Wendell is a little weird, um, anyway in this visiting that he’s doing. I’m like, is Wendell a ghost? Like, he’s he- he’s saying some really profound stuff, and Bobby’s, like, just staring out the window like, Is he really there?
Bex: It’s either Wendell is a ghost or Wendell is wrapping up loose ends before he does something really [00:34:00] bad.
Ellen: Yeah, that, that is what it turns out. Um, so he’s checking in on Bobby and making sure he’s okay, and Bobby’s, like, clocking on to this and going, “You sure you’re okay?” Um, and yet he, he doesn’t sort of like, stop him from leaving or anything. He’s just like, “Okay, see you later.” Like, not before, um, Wendell sees Athena and like, you know, is all excited to see her.
She’s ha- quite happy to see him too. But, um, and then Athena’s like, “Is he okay?” And Bobby’s like, “No, I don’t think so.”
Bex: Yeah, so the official story is apparently that he’s going to see his son’s family down in New Mexico, and he’s probably gonna be gone for a couple of weeks.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: But Bobby’s-
Alice: Sure
Bex: suspicious of this storyline, but Wendell’s not budging, and blames anything that Bobby is picking up as the Santa Ana winds making people crazy. [00:35:00]
Ellen: Oh, yeah. They’re gonna blame everything in this episode on the wind.
Bex: Maybe. Speaking of crazy, we’re gonna go back to dispatch. Um, Josh is having, is d- taking on another night shift, um, this time because Cedric is going to St. Louis to visit his family. And we get, like, a little montage of all of the quote, unquote “crazy calls” that Josh takes, which actually just sound like kind of run-of-the-mill 9-1-1 calls.
Ellen: Yeah, they don’t sound too crazy.
Bex: Just because, you know, people who call 9-1-1 are idiotic. Um, who would drink milk that’s sitting on their bedside for far too long.
Ellen: Yeah, don’t jump out the window. Let the firefighters come to you.
Bex: Uh, but the important call is the one that nobody is at the other end. He takes a 9-1-1 call, and all he can hear is static, and then the call disconnects. And concerned, [00:36:00] Josh tries to call it back, and he gets the, “We’re sorry, the number you have dialed is out of service,” message.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Bex: So he calls in for a welfare check for this particular address. Um, but As he’s giving dispatch the address, something triggers a memory for him, so it look, he looks it up in whatever the 9-1-1 equivalent of Google is. I wasn’t looking closely enough to figure it out. He basically Googles the address, and the first hit is an article talking about the murder house at that address.
I love the murder house.
Alice: Murder house for the win.
Ellen: He goes, “The murder house?” Like he’s never heard of it before. Yeah. But then everyone else seems to have heard of it before.
Bex: Knows. Yep.
Ellen: Like, so he s- he asks for a welfare check, so LAPD arrive at the murder house.
Bex: With lights and sirens going for a welfare [00:37:00] check.
Ellen: Sure. Well, we have to know that the police have arrived.
Bex: The, seeing the police officers walk up the front steps would not have indicated that the police had arrived?
Ellen: Not for the general viewing audience who aren’t looking at the television.
They’re looking at their phone.
Alice: Hey, I was watching it on my phone, so.
Ellen: Oh, wow. Yeah.
Bex: Actually, so was I this time. Um. But I was doing notes at the same time. I think I get a pass. Um-
Ellen: Okay …
Bex: so yes, LAPD have been dispatched. It’s Officer Williams and his new partner of the week. I don’t think he’s ever had the same partner twice.
Um, he apparently knows that it’s the murder house, and he’s complaining about how much he hates the place as though, as he and his partner approach. So they, they do a perimeter check. Williams goes inside, and it’s creepy on the inside. Like, it’s, um, dusty, spiderwebs. [00:38:00] It also looks like whoever was there just got up and left, because there’s still a Christmas tree in the corner, and there’s stockings-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: hanging from the mantelpiece. Yeah. Mantelpiece. Loads of furniture and like it’s- And garlands.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: There’s wrapping paper on the table.
Alice: There’s a newspaper, I’m pretty sure.
Bex: It’s just, it’s creepy. Then Williams is still investigating. He goes, he hears a rattling at a window, so he goes to investigate, and this white thing kind of jumps at him through the window, and he shrieks like a little girl and falls over and knocks himself unconscious.
Ellen: I was like, “oh no, it really is haunted.” but then the very next scene is like, um, everyone making fun of him because he thought it was a ghost.
Bex: Turns out it was a, a plastic bag that was being blown around by the Santa Ana winds. Um, and he’s incredibly embarrassed because his partner found him [00:39:00] unconscious and called for, um, medical backup, and Chim and Hen have been dispatched to patch him up.
But my favorite part of the scene is, like, Williams and his partner are bitching, um, Hen is trying to do the medical thing. Chim is just staring at the house in wonder. You see, like, this house apparently looks amazing to him ’cause he’s now like a house connoisseur.
Alice: Yeah, he’s, they’re like, “Oh, it’s a scary house.” and he’s like, “It’s got really good bones.” It’s like, what?
Bex: And then Josh-
Alice: As soon as he started looking around I was like, oh no, Chim. Oh, no.
Bex: And then Josh comes over the radio and goes, “Hey, guys, um, can you get the house to stop calling me please?” What? They’re like, “What are you talking about?” He’s like, “The house keeps calling 9-1-1. Make it stop please.”
Ellen: Since the police got there, I’ve had six more calls.
Bex: I don’t know, it’s just something about that line of dialogue, it’s just so funny to me.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. [00:40:00]
Ellen: So Chim goes on a little explore to try and work out what’s going on with the phone.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Um, and he takes the opportunity to, like, scope the place a little more. Admire all of the things. Apparently the phone, the, the wire, like it’s an actual landline phone that no one has anymore.
Um, and there’s something weird going on with the wiring, so he just tapes-
Bex: I’m assuming that-
Ellen: … over the-
Bex: … something has chewed-
Ellen: exposed wiring
Bex: … through the phone line. Yeah.
Ellen: I mean, if I remember correctly, phone line wires are not electrified anyway. So he-
Bex: Oh yeah, the-
Ellen: He should be okay to just wrap it up with tape.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I don’t think he even wraps it up with tape. I think it’s, like, bandage tape. Like a Band-Aid or something. It’s, he gets out his first aid kit is, is what he’s using to patch it up with. Um, and then-
Ellen: Yeah, I don’t know how he knows that that will fix the automatic calling of 9-1-1, but it does-
Bex: I don’t know, but-
Ellen: [00:41:00] so it’s fine …
Bex: the, the funny thing is, like, he patches the, the wire up, and then he looks at the house waiting for it to respond, and then when nothing happens, he’s like, “You’re welcome.”
Ellen: Well, you know, it’s haunted, so.
Bex: Yeah, we get absolutely no, we get no explanation for how the house is calling or why the house is calling or how, like, f- frayed phone lines and the Santa Anas combined could get the house to be constantly calling Josh. Um, but it’s a fun little storyline, so I don’t actually care.
Ellen: Yeah, I didn’t care as, as much about this as I did about what the hell happened with all the severed pieces of people’s bodies, but anyway. So Chim is still at the end of that scene, like, just looking around the house going, “Hmm. Yes, quite like the look of this.”
Alice: He’s basically, like, knocking on walls and- [00:42:00]
Bex: Yeah.
I mean, we heard last episode how dire the real estate situation in Los Angeles is, so he’s probably looking around going, “You know, in the grand scheme of things, a murder house is probably not that big a deal.”
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Sure, it comes with some roommates who, you know, don’t pay rent and call 9-1-1 constantly, but hey-
Ellen: Call 9-1-1 repeatedly.
Bex: We, we can live with that. My wife knows how to whisper to ghosts. It’s all good.
Ellen: Yeah, that’s right. I was thinking that. I’m like, I mean, I know that Maddie can talk to ghosts, but I don’t know if Jee wants to. Maybe she’s inherited the gift.
Bex: Ooh. Now, there’s a fic idea. Jee-Yun ghost whisperer.
Ellen: Yeah No, I’ve got enough, enough fics to write.
Uh, okay. So it’s night shift still. Um, I guess this is a bit later because Chim and Hen are back at the [00:43:00] station now.
Bex: Mm.
Ellen: So Bobby gets this voicemail. This was very out of the blue. I was, I was confused as to what was happening with the timeline here, because he’d just been talking to Wendell. Mm. And then he went to work, and then he got this message. Um-
Bex: If only they’d kept in the “first message received at” insert time, insert date, then at least we’d have some grounding on, like, the times, s- the sequence of events. Yeah. I don’t, I don’t know.
Alice: Yeah, it’s weird.
Ellen: Anyway, he gets this very drunk/high, um, sounding voice message from Wendell saying that he, you know, he screwed up.
He, he doesn’t know what to do, can’t handle it. He’s tired And Bobby call, tries to call him back, but it goes to voicemail, so he can’t get back in contact with him.
Alice: Yeah. Um-
Ellen: Meanwhile-
Bex: So meanwhile-
Ellen: … behind Eddie’s shoulder in the background, [00:44:00] uh, Eddie and Hen are, are chit-chatting about, like, Hen’s getting it off her chest that, um, you know, Denny wanted to know about Eva.
Bex: It’s probably her turn. Last week they were all about Christopher. This week it’s all about Denny.
Ellen: And Eddie’s being very reassuring dad. He’s like, ” You answered his questions. You handle it well.”
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Just thinking about what actually happens in this scene. There isn’t much.
Bex: Uh, we get… It’s just, like, the, the three of them sort of chit-chatting.
Um, Hen’s complaining that whatever’s going on with Denny, the winds don’t help because it, it puts everyone on edge. Chim joins them in the kitchen ’cause, um, he can’t sleep either because he’s been researching the murder house. Um- Which apparently is called the murder house because there was a triple homicide of the dad and the two daughters right before [00:45:00] Christmas associated with the house.
Alice: Yep, lovely.
Bex: And the house has been vacant ever since. Um, but that’s just, like, a segue into the real sort of emergency of this scene, which is screeching of tires and someone yelling down in the engine bay. And when we rush to see what’s happened, a car very sedately drives into the engine bay. So the only thing I can think-
Alice: I also don’t know who was yelling, like, “Oh no, don’t get, don’t come in here,” because there’s no one else there, but sure.
Bex: The only thing I could think is, like, sometimes, like, the concrete surface is so slick that no matter how fast you’re going, the tires are gonna make a squealing noise. Um, because-
Alice: Yeah, it’s like when you’re in the big parking garage things, like the really- Yeah … multi-story ones, and you turn a corner and it’s like, “Wee.” it’s like, okay- Yes … I just, yep.
Bex: Mm-hmm. Like, you’re, you’re not going that fast, but it’s still squeaking anyway, ’cause the car’s, like, just very calmly rolls into the engine bay. Um, and everyone’s, like, freaking out, like, “Oh my God, there’s a car in the engine [00:46:00] bay.” Hen’s like, “Oh, call dispatch.” Um, and they run down to check on the driver, who is just, like, staring out the windshield.
Absolutely not responding.
Ellen: Oh, yeah, she’s, she’s not awake. Not at all.
Bex: Um, she apparently can follow instructions though, because Bobby asks her to get out of the car and she just immediately gets out of the car, at which point they discover that she is butt naked
Alice: Yeah, absolutely totally naked.
Bex: Um, everybody’s reactions are hilarious. Bobby and Chim are just kind of staring in shock or surprise. Um, Eddie immediately sort of shields his eyes, ’cause, you know, he doesn’t want to look at naked women. Um.
Buck hears the commotion-
Ellen: But Buck does the same thing.
Bex: Buck is hilarious. Buck hears the commotion, comes racing in, and then immediately both turns his head away and shields his [00:47:00] eyes.
Alice: Yeah, he’s like, “I don’t, I haven’t had this dream before.”
Bex: Um, so they’ve come to the conclusion that she is asleep and sleepwalking or sleep-driving in this instance. Um-
Alice: Like, my first thought, like, would be, like, a seizure or something, but no, no, they’re like, “Oh yeah, she’s asleep.” It’s like, “Okay. Sure.”
Bex: Well, they did the, like, the clicking things, and the clickings didn’t wake her up, so of course she has to be asleep.
Alice: Obviously, yeah.
Bex: Um- Like, Bobby’s common sense kicks in and he’s like, “Right, we’re gonna get her a blanket, we’re gonna cover her up, and then we’re gonna check on her.” But as he’s putting the blanket on her, something about either the, the blanket going across her or the f- like, Bobby, like, taps her on the shoulder as well, and it wakes her up, and she starts screaming, and then the men start screaming, and then she starts screaming-
’cause the men are screaming at her. Ev- everyone’s screaming. And Hen’s like, “Oh my God, thank [00:48:00] God there is a woman in this station house,” ’cause she, like, rushes in and she’s like, “I know there’s a whole bunch of men screaming at you, but you’re actually okay. It’s fine. You’re safe here.” You’re, you’re safe. “I promise.”
Alice: I mean, you’re, you’re safe, I’m just a lesbian.
Bex: I’m just as much a threat to you as they are, but you don’t know it.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um, so it turns out that Lizzie has, uh, who is the driver, um, has a history of sleepwalking, um, but she’s never slept driven before. Um, especially as we discover because she doesn’t have a car.
Alice: Yeah, we-
Bex: So not only has she slept driven-
Alice: And we also don’t find out whose car it is
Bex: yeah, so she’s slept driven and she’s also stolen a car.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: In the nude.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Because she sleeps in the nude. She likes to feel a breeze, um, at night.
Ellen: But I don’t, we don’t even find out what happens to her.
Bex: Nope.
Ellen: Like, this is the end of it and that’s it.
Bex: Yep.
Ellen: It’s like, all right. ‘
Bex: [00:49:00] Cause it’s like-
Alice: Yeah, it should be called Unfinished or, like, yeah.
Bex: It’s like they’ve, like we were saying, we’ve gotta have the wacky emergencies, but we don’t actually care about the wacky emergencies. We wanna focus on Bobby’s storyline, and a little bit about Denny’s storyline, and, like, the house storyline. But we’ve gotta sprinkle these wacky ones in as well, but we’re not actually gonna follow them through ’cause they’re not important.
Ellen: They’re arguably more interesting. I shouldn’t say that because-
Bex: I wanna know how she stole the car.
Ellen: Yeah, whose car is it?
Alice: Yeah, I wanna know how she stole… Whose car is it? How did she get keys for a car when she’s naked?
Bex: How did she, yeah, how did she get the keys to the car?
Ellen: Maybe it was her roommate’s car.
Alice: I was thinking neighbor and she just like walked in and took some keys and left. And the neighbor’s like, “I don’t wanna get blamed for this. I’m just gonna-“
Bex: I don’t [00:50:00] know.
We will never know. We will never know. Because we go to commercial and when we come back it’s a little bit later in the evening/earlier in the morning and everyone’s up on the rooftop drinking hot chocolate.
Ellen: Which sounds like a nice thing to do when you’re stuck there all night, until they have to drop everything and like leave when the bell rings, but that’s not until later.
Uh, I … The teams just seem to also spend a lot of time sitting around chatting in this episode, which normally would be great, but they’re just a little-
Alice: But they’re just sort of repeating the same thing. Like, they just talk about the murder house, but not really talk about the murder house the whole time.
Bex: Yeah. So they’re up there, they’re drinking hot chocolate. Bobby is being dramatically pensive. Um, he gets up and stares dramatically off into the distance off the roof. Um-
Ellen: Ne- next to an American flag. Did you see? It was very-
Bex: It was an American flag and a California flag I think they’re flying up on the roof.
Ellen: No, it was very dramatic.
Bex: Um-
Alice: It’s pro- probably le- legally obligated. [00:51:00]
Bex: Yeah, I think so. Um, and the, the team are like, “Hey Cap, are you okay?” And Bobby’s like, “Smell that.” And they all start sniffing. And they’re like, “Oh, actually now that you mention it, I can.” Um, and Buck being the audience substitute goes, “Ooh, fire.”
And then immediately the little portable, um, s- alarm that they hauled up to the roof starts sounding.
Because apparently there is a fire. But even though it was close enough for Bobby to smell the smoke, it takes them hours to get to the scene because by the time they get there it’s full daylight.
Alice: It’s a really long drive, okay?
Bex: Even though they were saying that it’s, like, late enough for them to be having hot chocolate, but almost early enough that they should be calling it day chocolate, ’cause they’re about to
Like, the sun’s about to come up. But no, it takes them that long to get there, at which point you want to wonder, isn’t there a closer [00:52:00] house that could have attended that scene?
Alice: Apparently not. Just takes a long time to get out to the desert, okay?
Bex: Well, good thing it was an absolutely low priority fire. Because yeah, otherwise everyone would’ve been up shit creek without a paddle had they actually taken that long to get there.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: And see, the, the thing that really bugs me about this scene is that they’re doing everything to make this fire seem really, really high priority and seem really dangerous. ‘Cause everyone’s scuttling about in their little bushfire uniforms. Um-
Ellen: Oh yeah, I noticed they had their little yellow shirts on. Like, is this a special wildfire thing?
Bex: I think it is, ’cause they had the same ones when they went to Texas.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Which is probably why it took them so long to get to this fire, ’cause they had to go, like, through storage-
Ellen: They had to get changed
Bex: … and try and find them after they’d put them away after Texas back in season four.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, but, like, the music is, like, really dramatic and [00:53:00] really swelling in there. They’re trying to build the tension for this fire, which is small enough that the 118 can create a perimeter around it, and there’s a whole bunch of people standing off to the side watching it burn.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: And, like, I know that with the Santa Anas it’s entirely possible that it could pick up some embers and blow it into the trees and start an actual fire. But nothing about this makes me feel like there’s any kind of tension-
Alice: Yeah …
Bex: in this scene.
Ellen: No. Because the fire does look like it’s just in the middle of the road kind of thing. Like, it’s …
Bex: And it’s, like, there are trees, but they’re off to the distance. Yeah. It’s just in, it’s smack in the middle of this dust bowl Where there is inexplicably like two trees just planted in the middle-
Alice: Um, two trees-
Bex: that are now on fire
Alice: … and a body.
Bex: Well, we don’t know that there’s a body there yet.
Alice: No. But I mean, yeah-
Ellen: And the-
Alice: … that’s literally all that’s there.
Ellen: Like adding [00:54:00] to the- Yeah … the non-tension is the fact that they all, they spray, they start spraying it with water and, you know, covering it with, with dirt. Um, and then they just keep doing that, and then they do that some more, and then the fire’s out. Like it’s not, there’s no stakes left.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: They just put the fire out, that’s it.
Bex: They put the fire out, which like is exactly what their job is. Like-
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah …
Bex: go them. They’re excellent at their job.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: It’s just for once in the show, the fire is boring.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: But, but then also at the end of it, Bobby is just covered in, in soot. Like he’s, he’s, he’s all, his face is all black, you know? Like- I don’t, I don’t know. If you get a face full of smoke, then yes, you can get a, a, a sooty face, but like, the fire didn’t look that bad.
Bex: Oh, no, no, no. I was about to say like, I can understand if they’ve got like the wind is picking up and blowing the soot around, but didn’t they have visors? [00:55:00] Shouldn’t his visor have like-
Ellen: Oh, do they? …
Bex: protected his face a little bit at least?
Alice: Just a little bit. Anyway. No. Bobby’s been making out with the fire.
Ellen: Ooh.
Bex: Oh, that’s a little bit, um-
Ellen: Considering what he’s about to find, that’s really grim.
Bex: Yeah. No, I, I don’t like that. Um- So yeah, so they put out the fire. Yay, the 118.
Um, there’s, most of them are packing up. A couple of them are still just working to make sure that there are no sort of still burning embers. Um, Bobby is supervising, and by supervising I mean he’s just kind of leaning on his shovel and watching.
Alice: And- He’s literally just watching. And then talking to some randoms.
Bex: Oh, s- yeah. So these t- this, this man and this woman walk up holding hands, ’cause, you know it’s incredibly, you know-
Ellen: While the firefighters are still trying to do their job
Bex: I don’t understand the holding hands. It’s so weird, and every w- every time we see them they’re holding hands. It’s so fricking weird. Um-
Alice: And they’re like, “Oh, our place is close by,” and they’re, like, in [00:56:00] the middle of a canyon where there’s nothing. And it’s like, oh, yeah, okay. Do you live- Yeah … in the cave over there? Like, what?
Bex: So they’re checking to see if the fire is out. Um, and Bobby’s like, “Yeah, no, we’re just checking on it.” Um, Eddie is checking to make sure that the trees have been, like, the fi- they’re no longer smoldering, that they’re safe to sort of leave them.
Um, and sort of digging around the, the trunk and the wood that’s on the ground, and he finds something, and he calls Bobby over. For once he doesn’t, like, scream across the public space that, like, he’s found a dead body. For, for once they have a little bit of decorum.
Alice: He’s like, “We need a coroner over here!”
Bex: He’s like, “Oh, we got a dead one over here, Cap.” No.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: He, uh, he, he calls Bobby over, um, says, like, uh, “We’ve got a victim.” Bobby starts digging the guy out, um, and reveals the [00:57:00] very charred body of a man, um, with a very non-melted, broken watch still on his wrist
Ellen: Yeah, it’s, it’s a great advertisement for this watch company because the watch- Yeah, I
Bex: sh-
Alice: this looks pretty nice I feel like we need to mention that it’s such a non, like, nondescript watch that they then have to do a full flashback to when W- Wendell visited because they didn’t mention the watch, like, or draw attention to the watch
Bex: At all during the first couple of scenes with Wendell. This isn’t even a case of, oh, if you’re w- on your phone during the earlier scenes you would have missed this.
No, nobody got this because you didn’t show it. Yeah. Um, but apparently the watch is significant enough that Bobby immediately recognizes it, and then recognizes the body as Wendell. Um, which is devastating to him, and as he kind of falls to his knees he then sees that not only did the watch survive the fire, [00:58:00] but a hypodermic needle with some nondes- uh, nondescript yellow liquid in the, like, barrel of the syringe has also survived the fire.
Alice: Hmm.
Bex: Which I- Yeah … kind of call bullshit on.
Alice: Yeah. Like, it was a pretty sh- shit fire all around.
Bex: Yeah. ‘Cause, like, the syringe is a little bit melty, but it’s still mostly intact. But if it were in a fire that’s hot enough to completely turn Wendell crispy, shouldn’t the liquid have, like, evaporated from inside the syringe-
Ellen: Yeah, you’d think the syringe would have melted. Like-
Bex: Well, it would have completely melted, that’s what I would have thought, but they need the syringe there so that Bobby can go, “Oh, no, Wendell was shooting up.”
Ellen: Yeah, like what, what d- does he think happened here? Like, he, he shot up and then he couldn’t handle anymore and set himself on fire? Like-
Bex: I think so, yes
Ellen: is that the idea? Okay.
Bex: Yeah,
Ellen: well, I mean, it sounds like- I think- … he was pretty depressed anyway and, yeah.
Bex: Yeah, you, you kind of [00:59:00] put the, “Oh, I’m leaving town,” then the, the, the slurring voicemail, and then Wendell in the canyon with the syringe, and you sort of, you put the pieces together and come up with some sort of answer.
Alice: Yeah. In the, in the dining room with the candlestick.
Bex: I guess.
Ellen: Even though they’re making it pretty obvious that these people who came up and asked the question were somehow involved in this.
Alice: Sus as fuck? Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Anyway, Bobby’s obviously, um, really upset by this and, and Eddie just sort of stands there staring at him for a little while
Alice: like, “
Ellen: What, what, what is it?”
Bex: Eddie is such, Eddie is such a little bitch ’cause Bobby is clearly going through it, and Cap is just like, “I need a second. Like, I need a fucking second,” and Eddie’s like, “What do you mean you need a second? What is it?” Yeah, what’s, what’s the matter, Cap? “What’s going on?”
Alice: What is it? Who is it? What’s happening? Like, he’s, like, it would make more sense- Eddie … if Buck was doing this. [01:00:00]
Bex: Yes
Ellen: Poor Bobby.
Bex: Uh, there’s a, we see them go back to the station. There’s really no reason for that scene to be there, so we’re just gonna skip to later that day, um, where Bobby is once again staring out the windows.
Ellen: Well, he tell, he tells everyone he’s fine, like when they get back to the station, he’s like, “I’m fine. Let’s go. Everyone go home.” That’s it.
Alice: Oh my God, it was so annoying because I was watching on my phone and I had to close out to go do something else, and then when I came back, I, like resumed the episode, and for some reason it had gone back to this scene and I was just like, “Is it happening again? Like, the fuck?”
Bex: Yeah, Bobby’s caught in a time loop and he has to relive Wendell’s death over and over and over again.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Oh. There’s a fic idea. Oof.
Bex: I love time loops fics and stories. They’re so cool. Yeah. Um, but no, um, actually he only has to live through it once, um, and then, uh, he has to talk about [01:01:00] it with Athena, who has once again inserted herself into the investigation.
And we are told that the canyon, whatever, I’m calling it a canyon, I don’t actually know what it is or where it is.
Alice: We don’t know. They didn’t show much.
Bex: Um, if-
Alice: They got a permit for about a two-meter square area, and that’s what they could film in.
Ellen: It looked a lot like, you know the last time we heard about the Santa Ana winds was when that, um, bouncy castle flew away, and it looks kinda like-
Bex: Oh, yeah, yeah
Ellen: the area where this fire was, looked like that kind of cliff si- like desert kind of cliff top-
Bex: Yeah …
Ellen: location where that was. Yeah. So I was thinking it was, like, on the edge of a cliff, and then I’m like, no, they’re just out in the desert somewhere.
Bex: No, it’s actually, it’s like down under Hollywood Hills at, because we get a, a shot of the, the Hollywood sign.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Anyway, it, it doesn’t actually, there’s no, it does not matter at all. Um, except that apparently wherever it, wherever it, ah, [01:02:00] wherever it is, um, it is notable because there is a rehab center close by, and either people from the rehab center or just people in the general community find it completely ironic to go into this canyon within the vicinity of a rehab clinic and shoot up.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Obviously.
Ellen: Yeah, and Bobby’s just offloading onto Athena that, you know, we’re supposed to be, he and I were supposed to be looking after each other. We’ve done this for ages, even though we’ve never met him before. Um, and, you know, Athena s- says that, “Well, sometimes the darkness is too deep.” Bobby’s very frowny and sad.
Bex: Yes, because he, he wished that I- Athena’s full quote is, “Sometimes the darkness is so deep you can’t see the hands that are reaching to pull you out.” And Bobby’s like, “Well, he reached in and pulled me out so many times, I just wish I could have returned the favor.” The, uh, that he could count on me to do the same.
Alice: Could, could have returned the favor by mentioning him in the last six years, but sure. Mm-hmm.
Bex: Well, where [01:03:00] was he the last couple of times that Bobby, quote-unquote, “relapsed” or was suspected of being, of suspected of relapsing?
Alice: Literally, like Hen and Buck had to pull him out, like throw him in the shower, but-
Bex: Yeah
Alice: Wendell was the one that pulled him out the hole so many times apparently.
Bex: Yeah, I don’t know. But enough about Bobby. Let’s go back to Denny, um, who is starting to build his robot, but Hen is going to interrupt him because she has gone up to the attic as promised and pulled out the Eva box, where she’s put, like, everything about Eva into one box, which she then gives to Denny.
Ellen: Mm-hmm.
Alice: The Eva box.
Bex: The Eva box. It just, it reminded me of, like, in Gilmore Girls where y- where they had, like, boxes of their exes. So Lorelei had a Christopher box, and then they have a Dean box and a Jess box, like, shoved into their cupboards.
Ellen: Oh.
Bex: Anyway.
Ellen: But there’s not much in the box.
Bex: No, there’s not.
Ellen: Just a few things.
Bex: Um, there is a folder, [01:04:00] um, that Hen sort of pulls out and puts to one side ’cause she d- whatever it is, she doesn’t want Denny to see that folder Um, but, and Denny is thankful that she’s brought this stuff down, um, but doesn’t wanna go through it with her. So he, like, puts everything back in the box that she’s pulled out and hightails it to his room.
He’s like, “I’m gonna go through it by myself.”
Ellen: Hmm.
Bex: And Hen’s like, “Oh, so, oh, wait. I, I thought I was gonna have to go… No, you don’t want… Okay, cool.”
Ellen: Yeah, it’s a weird little scene.
Alice: But yeah, Hen, like, notably has a folder and doesn’t give that to H- to Denny.
Ellen: Yeah, I must have missed her not, like, taking that folder out because later when-
Bex: Oh, the camera lingered, the camera lingered on it.
Alice: It lingered on that more than the wa- like, than Wendell’s watch.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: And I don’t know [01:05:00] what I was doing, but I wasn’t looking at the screen at that point. So, and then later when Denny had this folder I was like, “Oh, that was in the box? Like, what?”
Bex: No. See, there’s no explanation for how he gets that folder because the last time we see it, um, Hen has kept it out from the box.
He’s gone to his room. She’s got the folder tucked under her arm. She obviously goes and puts it somewhere, but then we don’t actually see the Dennys searching the house and finding the folder. There’s just- No, he just magically gets it later … He magically finds it.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Hmm, it feels a bit like parts were cut out of this episode.
Bex: I feel like they just went, “That part’s not important. We’re not even gonna bother writing it.”
Ellen: Yeah, I mean-
Bex: For the purposes of the storyline, there is a folder and Denny finds it.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: We’re not gonna connect the dots. You can just-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: … assume that they’re connected.
Ellen: It’s not really necessary, which is why it got cut, if it w- if it ever existed. But the way that all of the separate storylines in this episode are so [01:06:00] disconnected just-
Bex: Mm …
Ellen: made me wonder. But anyway, um, we’re going back to dispatch where Josh is getting more and more frazzled as the week goes on, and he keeps being at work every single shift. He’s drinking a lot of coffee.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: And apparently that’s just maintaining the baseline because coffee is what keeps him upright apparently.
Bex: Maddie’s apparently on this shift, and she comes into the break room where Josh is having intimate relations with his coffee, um and asks him and Linda if they know anything about a murder house. And Josh is so cute ’cause he kind of perks up and goes, “Oh, it called me last night.”
Alice: Yes. Josh. Josh is like, “Me and the house are besties now.”
Bex: But apparently now that Chim’s fixed it, the house is no longer calling to Josh, the house is calling Chimney. And for one second I didn’t, I didn’t realize that Maddie was talking in metaphor, and I [01:07:00] thought that the house was literally calling Chim.
Ellen: It really is haunted!
Alice: And you’re like, “No, Chim fixed it.”
Bex: And I’m like, oh no, no, it’s just like it’s, like calling to him like spiritually, not physically.
Alice: Chim puts some tape over it and suddenly the number changes from 9-1-1 to Chim’s, um-
Bex: Chim’s phone number …
Alice: Chim Cell for some reason. Yeah.
Bex: I don’t know, but just for a split second, yeah, I thought that he was actually getting phone calls from the house, like the house was begging him to buy it. Um, but, but it’s working because-
Ellen: Wow. That would be so cool.
Bex: Um, it’s working because Chim is absolutely obsessed with the house to the point that he’s looking up building permits for it.
Ellen: Building permits from 1942.
Bex: Yes, where they added a second bathroom.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Woo, exciting.
Ellen: Very exciting.
Bex: And then there’s this little thing about, they’re talking about the new bedrooms and like Jee loves having the master bedroom to herself. Maddie’s not so much loving sleeping in the living room.
Ellen: Yeah. Which we already-
Bex: Which I think is-
Ellen: … knew [01:08:00] was gonna happen.
Bex: We already knew it was gonna happen. Um, I think it’s just there to sort of, to show us that like in the, the balance between a murder house and sleeping in the living room, I think that the murder house is starting to look more and more, um, attractive to Maddie.
She’s gonna be more willing to accept a murder house so she doesn’t have to keep sleep… What does she say? Um, ha- so she doesn’t have to sleep surrounded by tomorrow’s chores.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s weird because-
Alice: Which, okay, sure
Ellen: … on the one hand she’s like, “Someone tell Chim to stop looking up this murder house thing because I don’t, like I need him to stop.” and then the next minute she’s like, “Oh, but I really don’t like sleeping in my living room.” It’s like, hmm, make your mind up.
Bex: I’d really love a second bedroom. I don’t care if there are ghosts.
Ellen: Josh doesn’t care because he is just enjoying his coffee. It’s like becoming one with the mug.
Bex: He’s having a, he’s having a, um, like When Harry Met [01:09:00] Sally moment with his coffee, and it’s, it’s not good.
Ellen: And Maddie and, and Linda are just sort of looking at each other going, “What the hell is happening here?” Although now that I know that they’re playing a prank on him, that this, their little snide kind of, you know, asides to each other make a lot more sense.
Bex: Yeah. And it also sort of makes, um, Josh’s performance a little, it makes that sort of funnier as well. Like he’s actually is being performatively tired. Like I’m sure he is tired, but he’s not that tired. He’s going a little bit over the top at this point.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: But they’re not buy- they’re totally buying the performance. Um, so while Maddie’s at work, um, the 118 are not at work, but are not sleeping, so they decide to have a group chat.
Ellen: Yeah, ’cause they haven’t seen each other enough in the last 24 hours.
Alice: Yeah, [01:10:00] they, they just start, so like, it starts with Hen and Chim on the phone with each other, which is like you know, pretty normal, ’cause they’re besties.
Bex: Yeah. Buck calls Hen, Hen connects him to her call with Chim.
Alice: No, no, Hen-
Bex: And then Buck-
Alice: Hen calls… I mean, Buck calls Chim, doesn’t he?
Bex: Oh, yeah.
Alice: Yeah, yeah. Hen call- I mean, Buck calls Chim, because-
Bex: Buck calls Chim. Yes.
Alice: So basically Chim has found the guy who owns the murder house, and has emailed him for more details. And Chim just says he found him on the internet, which sure, okay, that’s… Yep. Um, but then Hen’s like, “Do you think he’s gonna respond?” And then Chim’s phone rings, which Hen can hear for some reason. Yes Um, and goes, “Oh, ghosts are calling.”
And Chim goes, “Yeah, calling from Buck’s phone.” And Hen’s just like, “Yeah, conference him in.” So Chim just immediately adds him to the group call. Yeah. And it’s just like, “Hey, Hen’s here too.” But then Chim says, “Welcome to our pajama party.” And Buck just goes, “What if I’m not wearing [01:11:00] pajamas?” And he’s wearing clothes, but after the, like- after the sleepwalker, they’re all like, “Ah.” and then Chim’s like, “How did you even know I was awake?” And Buck’s like, “You’ve been sending links to the house every 15 seconds.” Like-
Bex: Um, so he’s calling Chimney because he has news. So while he’s got both Chim and Hen together, um, he decides that he’s gonna call Eddie and loop him in as well so he just has to say it once. By the way, Buck is, like, sorting his spices.
Alice: Yeah. He can’t sleep so he’s sorting his spices.
Bex: He’s sorting his spices.
Ellen: Is that what he’s doing?
Bex: Yes.
Alice: It’s so very ADHD, where he’s just like, “Oh my God, my spices aren’t in alphabetical order. I have to fix this.”
Ellen: I could see that he was fiddling with some little bottles, but I couldn’t see what they were. Yeah. I’m like, “What is he even doing?”
Bex: Spices.
Ellen: Okay. Sometimes you just gotta [01:12:00] do something. Um,
Bex: so he’s sorting, he’s sorting his spices. Like, Hen’s on the couch just chatting to Chim. Um, they conference in Eddie, who is trying to beat his high score on whatever fighting game, um, that he and Buck are always playing on Christopher’s game console.
Ellen: It’s so cute, this whole thing.
Bex: It is. ‘Cause occasionally while they’re doing the scene, sometimes it’ll cut sort of back and forth between whoever’s talking, and then sometimes they’ll have, like, all four of them, like, split screen on the screen at the same time. Mm. Um, it’s pretty cute. So Buck’s news is that he is officially responsible for the creation of new life.
So it looks like that donation that he finally was able to make, um, was viable and the, um, the fertilization process was a success and Cameron is pregnant.
Alice: Yep, which we definitely care about.
Bex: Well, we, [01:13:00] we kind of have to ’cause it comes up later.
Alice: I know.
Bex: Um-
Alice: I just don’t care.
Bex: So everyone’s like, “Hey, congratulations. Wait, do we congratulate you?” It’d be weird not to congratulate him. Should we congratulate him? Let’s ask the adultier adult whether we should congratulate Buck or not. Um, so they’re talking about Bobby. So they try to add him to the group call, but he declines, um, ’cause he’s got his own shit going on.
Alice: Yeah, this is … Well, I, I don’t understand this.
Bex: No. No.
Alice: So Bobby’s in … It just looks like a house. Like, it’s … There’s a desk in the middle, like, ne- in front of some stairs, and there’s a woman, like, sitting in on, like, sitting at the desk, but it just looks like a house. And it’s, like, the woman’s like, “Oh, sir, it’s very late.”
But, like, okay, the others are all not sleeping, so, but why is there a receptionist? And, like, w- how did Bobby get in?
Bex: And then we [01:14:00] find out later that it’s not, like, very late. It’s actually really, really early ’cause, like, Chris is gonna be up in an hour.
Alice: Yeah, ’cause Chris is about to wake up for school. And so it’s like, okay, so, like, is it, like, 6:00, like 5:00 or 6:00 in the morning? In which case-
Bex: Or has they-
Alice: … it would be very early. Like, it’s just, it’s, it’s weird. I don’t understand.
Bex: Or have they been on the group chat for hours, and Chimney’s just been leaning on the bench for hours at a time, which is not gonna do his back or his forearms any favors.
Um, but yeah, if it’s 5:00 in the mor- let’s say it’s 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, how is Bobby to walk into the facility? ‘Cause if he’s not an, if he’s not an approved visitor, how did he get access?
Alice: Yeah, surely they should lock it at night to stop-
Bex: I would think so …
Alice: people wandering in and yelling at them at 4:00 in the morning.
Bex: Or the residents walking out and, like- Yeah, I mean- … going down to that canyon to score.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Hmm. It’s very confusing, and I don’t … Maybe they intended it to be a different time of day, but the way they’ve cut it together makes it look like it’s-
Bex: I don’t know
Ellen: … [01:15:00] really early in the morning. But anyway, he’s trying to get information about Wendell And the receptionist is like, “No, I can’t tell you anything. Ev- it’s all confidential, and even if I could tell you, I’m not going to, so go away.”
Bex: Yep. And Bobby’s like, “Well, you’d… It does, you can breach confidentiality because Wendell’s dead.” And I’m going, in like in my brain I’m going, I think HIPAA still supply, still applies even if the person’s dead. I don’t think just ’cause they died-
Ellen: Unless you’re like, there’s next of kin or something and you are l- actually allowed to know that information.
Bex: Yeah. But I mean, even if he were an, like a, an actual next of kin they could probably tell him, but you can’t just release information to some dude that’s just wandered in off the streets, um, even if the person’s dead. When he says that Wendell is dead, the receptionist picks up the phone and Bobby thinks that he’s got her.
He’s like, “Yes, now I’m gonna get some answers.” She’s just actually calling security.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: To like get his ass [01:16:00] thrown out. Um, but it doesn’t matter because as he’s kind of like throwing up his hands and rolling his eyes and about to go full Karen on her, um, he sees this newspaper article that’s been framed on the wall-
Ellen: His eye, his eyes roll so far up over his head that they land on the wall behind him.
Bex: Yes, it like spins his body around with the force of his eye roll.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, and the, the newspaper article has a headline that, um, that says, where is it? I’ve missed it
Ellen: It says Hollywood’s Industry-
Bex: Oh, uh, yep, there it is
Ellen: … Leading Rehab Facility. Yeah.
Bex: Yes. Um, and there is a photo of the founders of the facility, which were the two creepy hand holders from the fire earlier. Which they do actually flash back again in case you were on your phone at that point. But you should’ve remembered those two- Yeah … because they did actually show them.
Alice: A lot.
Bex: Yes.[01:17:00]
Alice: They basically had red flags.
Bex: Going, “Hey, these people are important. Pay attention to them. There will be a test later.”
Ellen: Yep.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: And having seen that, Bobby voluntarily leaves the facility even though the security guard is trying really hard to throw him out as well.
Ellen: He’s like, “Okay, okay, I’m going.” And, and at the same time not actually going. But he does go. Yep. In the end.
Bex: I mean, he is g- he is going, but it’s, like, obviously not fast enough for the security guard. Or maybe the security guard really just wanted to get physical. I don’t know. So he gets thrown or escorted off the facil- out of the facility. Um, and we cut back to the group call, which must be absolutely riveting ’cause Eddie was continuing to play through the entire conversation.
And this is where we find out sort of the time reference because he, um, loses and decides that he’s gonna have a nap because [01:18:00] Christopher’s gonna be up in an hour, which if he’s gotta get ready for school, that makes him getting up at around, what? 6:00, 7:00? Six, seven.
Alice: It’s- I’m, I- Oh, Jesus Christ.
Bex: Um, so he’s… Sorry.
Alice: How do I delete Bex from this call?
Um, I was gonna say, I know that schools in America start ridiculously early, but like I’m pretty sure they don’t start at like 2:00 in the morning.
Bex: No. So-
Alice: So
Bex: we’ll say that this must be like 4:00 or 5:00 in the morning, which just, yeah, it makes what the hell Bobby is doing even weirder.
Ellen: Yeah, so one at, one by one they drop off. Eddie just goes, “All right, I’m out,” and he just presses a button without even saying anything. Uh, and so- And so when- … even though Chim’s like, “Bye.” So Hen and Chim briefly talk to Buck about how he feels about [01:19:00] this creation of new life and, um, he’s- he’s happy about it. He’s like, “Yeah, I was worried that it wasn’t gonna work,” and blah, blah, blah.
So now he’s happy. He can go and get some sleep, so he drops off. At least he does say good night. Yeah. Um, so it’s back to Hen and Chim, who apparently are not ready to sleep yet. But, um, Hen didn’t think they were ever gonna have to tell Denny about his biological parents, but yeah, she s- she says, “I- I’ve spent so much time thinking about him as mine, I’m not sure I’m ready to share.”
Bex: Then we cut to Denny, who is standing in the hallway eavesdropping on this conversation.
Alice: At four, possibly 4:00, 5:00, 6:00- … 3:000-
Bex: In the morning
Alice: … 7:00 in the morning?
Bex: Yeah. Regardless, like child, what are you doing up?
Ellen: Yeah, and like spying on a phone call, like
Alice: it’s fucking weird. This whole thing. Like it’s cute, but the time makes no sense.
Bex: Mm.
Alice: I know we’re [01:20:00] not supposed to think about it, but it just, it makes no sense.
Bex: So we got a commercial. We come back. We’re back at dispatch, which I think must be day three, day four, possibly later the previous day. I don’t know, but Josh looks terrible. Like he can barely walk straight. Mm. He doesn’t, he looks like he’s like sleepwalking, but ironically the sleepwalking woman looks more awake than Josh does at this point.
Ellen: He looks like I did this morning after being up half the night.
Bex: Did you go back to bed? Like I know you said you woke up-
Ellen: Yeah, I did
Bex: … but did you go back to bed?
Ellen: I did. Uh, I’m gonna have to tell this story on the podcast, aren’t I?
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: It’s, it’s just so silly. I ha- So I usually get up at 5:30 on Fridays to go to, um, to yoga, and so this morning I woke up and I got up and I got dressed, [01:21:00] and I went and got some breakfast and I sat down.
And then I was like, “It’s still really dark.” Like normally by sort of 6:00 it’s starting to get light, and I looked at the time on my phone and it was fucking 2:00 AM. I’m sitting there going, “What? What the f-“
Bex: I’m just so surprised that you went from getting out of bed and getting dressed and you had not looked at a clock-
Ellen: No
Bex: or your phone at any point to confirm the time. Which is what I-
Ellen: I looked at my phone-
Alice: The first thing I do when I wake up is look at the time.
Bex: Yes, same here.
Ellen: Yeah, well I, I don’t, I don’t know what I was thinking. I- Clearly I was still half asleep when I got up.
Alice: Well, yeah, it was 2:00 in the 2:00 AM.
Ellen: Yeah, and then I’m sitting there going, “Well, I guess I’ll just go back to bed.”
So- And then I just lay there for hou- like it felt like hours-
Alice: So hang on
Ellen: … although it probably wasn’t that long-
Alice: You’d already had breakfast?
Ellen: … because I did go back to bed.
Bex: Did you have coffee? [01:22:00]
Ellen: No, I didn’t have coffee ’cause-
Bex: Okay …
Ellen: um, no, ’cause the, the coffee machine makes too much noise, so I don’t use it before I go.
Alice: But you’d had breakfast?
Ellen: Yeah, well I’d made, I’d made a piece of toast and I sat down to eat it. And then, and then I had to like either eat the rest of the toast or throw it out. I was like, well, I may as well eat it now since I’ve made the toast.
Alice: You’re like, Jeez I’m, I’m not really hungry considering I’ve had a full night’s sleep- No and you ate like two hours beforehand.
Ellen: Ah, it was just so weird. And then I, so yeah, I’m lying there in bed going, “What the fuck, me?” Um, and I must have gone back to sleep like at some point ’cause, and then I didn’t end up going to yoga anyway because I was like, well, fuck that, I’m not getting up at 5:00 or 5:30. Um, so I’ve spent the whole day just feeling really tired.
Alice: Not very mindful of you.
Ellen: Because if- like, and now that I don’t have children that wake up in the middle of the night, I’m not used to being up in the middle of the night anymore and it’s just messed up my whole day.
Alice: Oh, no.
Ellen: [01:23:00] So yeah, I’m feeling for the shift workers today. This is the weird disrupted sleep patterns that they have to put up with all the time.
Alice: Yeah, right?
Ellen: Anyway, where, what were we talking about before we got into this? Oh, Josh. Josh. Josh not having any, um, living on ca- caffeine for three days.
Bex: Yes. And it has taken a toll and he has had enough. He can’t-
Ellen: Yep. He’s not cut out
Bex: … he can’t do the job anymore.
Ellen: No.
Bex: Nope. He’s reached his breaking point and he is … He’s done. He needs to go talk to Sue. He can’t do this anymore. He quits. And through this whole thing, Maddie and Linda are looking really panicked. Um, not just like, “Oh my God, Josh is leaving,” kind of panicked, but like, “Oh my God, we need to stop this,” level of panic.
It’s like, “What have we done?” Yes. Uh, because apparently this whole thing was a prank. Well, [01:24:00] all of everyone calling in so that Josh has to work nights and/or day shifts during the Santa Ana’s was a prank. Um, because they were sick of him not working the crazy shifts, and they thought that he needed to experience it from, experience it for himself.
He, they needed to share the pain of working the crazy shift.
Ellen: Yep. Yeah, which is horrible. Like, if, i- if he wasn’t … The next part is him saying that he knew. Like, he didn’t know at first. They had him going for a while, but apparently George called in saying that he had appendicitis, and he also called in saying that he had appendicitis a little while ago. Yeah. So he knew.
Alice: He already had his appendix out apparently, and then he did it again. It’s like, way to go, mate.
Bex: The thing that really kind of bugged me is that, like, Linda and Maddie are new to dispatch. Josh has been working there for what a … Like, he’s been there for over 10 years. Yep. [01:25:00] Longer than they’ve been at dispatch.
Maybe he had his fair share of the Santa Ana’s and the full moons, and now that he’s in a higher position he can pick and choose what shifts, ’cause he’s paid his dues.
Alice: Yeah, right?
Bex: And now he has the privilege of not working the shit shifts.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, that’s fair.
Bex: He also, as he tells them, he works every Christmas and Thanksgiving.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: So those with families can spend time with their families.
Ellen: So there.
Alice: Poor Josh.
Ellen: So yeah, I mean, that, that whole storyline just sort of came to nothing, and it was like-
Bex: Yep …
Ellen: Oh.
Bex: Yep. It’s … I, I don’t know.
Ellen: Linda’s like, “You’re not mad at us?” And, and Josh says, “I guess you’ll have to wait for the next full moon to find out.” guess who’s gonna be working on the full moon?
Bex: Guess who. Yeah.
Ellen: Don’t piss off the one who makes the roster
Bex: Linda must have a new calendar already. Exactly. I think I could have bought that storyline if we’d had more [01:26:00] emergencies that Josh had to deal with, but really it was just the murder house, which was pretty benign in the grand scheme of things.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. So it doesn’t even really seem that much for Josh to be stressed about, that the fact that he had to work the windpocalypse, as he called it.
Ellen: Yep. All right. Denny is-
Bex: Okay, moving on …
Ellen: Denny is still wanting to talk about his bio mother.
Bex: Yeah, but it looks like he’s hosting an intervention. Like the way Karen-
Alice: It does actually
Bex: and Hen sort of like file in and sit down on the couch, and Denny’s sort of pacing in front of them.
Ellen: Yes. He wants to talk to them about something. He apologizes because he shouldn’t have asked about my bio mother, and Karen’s like, “You don’t have to apologize.” And Hen’s like, “You didn’t, you didn’t, it didn’t hurt us. We just want to make sure that you’re okay, and you can ask us whatever you want, and we’ll tell you.” Um, and he says that, [01:27:00] “I’m not looking for another mum. I have you guys, and you’re awesome.” So you know, they all love each other and, and they have a big hug and that’s that.
Alice: Or is it?
Ellen: And I thought that’s nice.
Bex: Or yeah. I think the scene would’ve made sense if at some point during this, um, like big group hug, happy families, Denny had sort of reached behind Hen’s back and slowly extracted the folder that she still had in her back pocket or something.
Alice: Right?
Ellen: He w- he was, are you saying he wasn’t sneaky enough for you?
Alice: No.
Bex: Nope.
Alice: They’re just wh- yeah. He was too sneaky ’cause we didn’t even see it?
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yes. I think I needed, like he’s 10 years old. They’re not that sneaky. They’re pretty damn obvious when they’re up for some… To something.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Well he had them fooled.
Bex: Yes Um, murder house time. Yay. Um, it’s-
Ellen: Yeah, Chim and Maddie are finally there
Bex: … [01:28:00] it’s the murder house tour.
Alice: It is the-
Bex: Because, yes, Maddie has come to visit the ghosts. But, um, apparently it’s not a murder house, much to my disappointment. Um, because while the family that lived there, the dad and the two daughters did die, um, the dad didn’t kill them and they didn’t die in the house.
Uh, apparently the dad was driving home, he had the girls in the car right before Christmas one night. Um, another car ran them off the road and they died.
Alice: It’s- And- I s- I don’t understand this at all. Like, what, wouldn’t that be in the… It wasn’t that long ago. It was the ’70s. There was, like, there weren’t computers, but, like, there were newspapers back then.
Bex: Newspaper articles? Yeah.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, well, I guess that’s what Chim’s found.
Alice: No, he took-
Bex: Well, it’s taken him-
Alice: … yeah, he spoke to the owner, and the owner said, like, the, it was the nephew or something. And the owner’s just like- Yeah … “Oh, yeah, no, [01:29:00] that, none of that happened.” And it’s just like, but what?
Ellen: Oh.
Alice: It, none of it makes sense. Yeah. It’s so weird.
Bex: No. Um, apparently the reason they had the, the Christmas tree and all the decorations and the wrapping paper, while the house looks like a, like someone has just got up and walked out, is because that’s exactly what happened. After the funeral, um, the wife and mother got up, left the house, and never returned.
Um, and it’s just been sitting there empty. She passed, the house passed on, um, to her nephew, um, and he hasn’t done anything with it yet. He sort of intends to sell it, but he’s also, uh, doesn’t really want to sell it because it’s got the reputation of the murder house, it’s g- all of the weirdos are gonna come out to sort of poke around, and he doesn’t want that.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, weirdos like Chim and Maddie.
Bex: Yeah. But as soon as Maddie realizes that it’s not actually haunted, it’s not a murder house, it’s just a [01:30:00] sad house, she’s all like, “Oh, wow, look at these beams. That’s a nice kitchen.” Yeah. Oh, look, there’s a birth chart.
Ellen: She can see the potential.
Bex: She, she realizes, um, that there was a family that lived in that house, and then she’s thinking maybe our family could live in this house, too, a sentiment that Chim echoes.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s kind of sweet, I guess. Except that they’ve got, like, a whole lot of renovation to do.
Bex: Oh, they’re gonna need like a hazmat team to come in and clean it before they can do anything else.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s been abandoned for-
Bex: It’s real-
Ellen: … all this time
Bex: … I mean, it’s, it’s dirty and dusty, and obviously there’s some kind of rodents in there that are chewing through phone lines. But it’s re- it, like, it hasn’t been tagged. Everything’s sort of still left where it was, so nobody has come in and kind of looted the place. It doesn’t look like anyone is squatting there.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: I’ve … That’s … I [01:31:00] believe murder house more than I believe that this empty house has been sitting there and no one has tried to break in and tag it and squat there.
Ellen: That’s ’cause it’s haunted, apparently. Like, you know.
Alice: Apparently, yeah, ’cause, you know-
Ellen: In, in the local folklore
Alice: … homeless people are scared of ghost … Yeah, it’s weird.
Bex: Okay, we’re gonna go back to Denny for a few minutes, um, who has bike rode? Ridden his bike? Rode his bike? Wow, that’s a terribly grammatically incorrect sentence.
Alice: Yep. Used a bike.
Bex: Has used his … His … Has a bike.
Ellen: Biked?
Bex: And has transported himself by bicycle to a-
Ellen: Mm, yes
Bex: … a suburb, um, the address of which he got from the folder that Hen tried to hide from him. And goes up to the front door and says, “Hi, I’m Denny. I think you’re my dad.” And even though we don’t see the person who opens the door at this [01:32:00] residence, the implication is that it’s Nathaniel, which is the dude that we met, like, a couple of seasons ago when Eva was trying to get custody of Denny.
Alice: Yeah. Ah, yes.
Bex: Um, and then we’re back into the canyon, and Bobby is standing there with his little crucifix, and we’ve looped back around to the beginning of the episode. So we’ve used up our-
Ellen: Oh, yeah. Suddenly-
Bex: We’ve worked through our three days …
Ellen: it makes sense. Ev- and they do a little montage of, like, as Bobby’s giving a- another poetic voiceover. As he says, “The city rests,” then we get this image of, like, Eddie, like, drooling on the couch ’cause he’s out cold now. And everyone else is asleep, too, like-
Alice: Yeah, the tension and turmoil-
Ellen: It cycles through the rest of the- …
Alice: is finally released
Ellen: Yeah. We wait for the jacarandas to- I just noticed he says this, “We wait for the jacarandas to bloom and curse their flowers when they fall.” I’m like, “Oh, they have [01:33:00] jacarandas in LA?” I guess they’re all over the world. But yes-
Bex: Probably …
Ellen: we also wait for the jacarandas to bloom and curse their flowers.
Bex: Um, as we sort of pan through the 118, them sort of being asleep, um, things of note is that there is a tiny little LAFD onesie on Buck’s kitchen counter.
Ellen: Oh, that’s right. It’s so cute.
Bex: Which makes me sad. Um, and Chim has fallen-
Alice: Oh my God, I just thought it … ‘Cause I was watching on my phone, like in the little corner of my screen at this po- uh, point, and I just thought it was like showing that he was in the LF- uh, LAFD. Like, I thought it was a T-shirt.
Bex: No, it’s a onesie.
Alice: And so I was like, “I don’t understand why they’re, why they’re going over Buck’s T-shirt.” Like, okay.
Bex: Yeah. Um, and Chim-
Alice: Yeah, that makes more sense
Bex: … has fallen asleep with a, a house contract
Ellen: Because it’s, it’s kind of boring to read house contracts, so I guess it [01:34:00] just put him to sleep.
Alice: That’s fair. Sometimes I, um, when I can’t sleep I’ll read Ask Reddit. Yeah. My eyes get real heavy and I just like drift off with my phone in my hand.
Bex: They’re, they’re just reminding us about the important storylines for when they come back, um, the, after the hiatus. So you, you know, remember, Buck is potentially going to be a parent even though we’ve emphasized-
Alice: Not really
Bex: earlier that he was donor not dad, and he’s not- Yeah … supposed to have anything to do with this kid. And Chim and Maddie are actually gonna buy the murder house, except it’s not really a murder house ’cause no one actually died in there. Um, and Denny is having illicit, um, clandestine meetings with his biological father.
Um, and Bobby-
Alice: Donor not dad. Wait.
Bex: Yes, exactly. Yes. Um, and Bobby is stalking the rehab facility and the weird hand-holdy, um, owners of said facility.
Ellen: Yeah, and he says it’s all gonna burn.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: And [01:35:00] it’s br- it’s super dramatic.
Bex: Possibly ’cause he’s gonna set fire to something.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, he, he looks like he’s about to charge in there and set fire to the whole thing. But I mean, we don’t know anything about what’s going on in this rehab place yet, so …
Bex: We’ll find out in a couple of months.
Ellen: And I was like, “Oh, he’s on a rampage.”
Bex: But we’ll wait.
Ellen: He, he doesn’t even have Michael there to help him. Like, he doesn’t have the telescope. He’s got like pair of binoculars, but …
Bex: He doesn’t have Michael there to egg him on and David to hold him back.
Ellen: That’s right If, now if he got Athena involved, then they might have a better chance of actually getting something without the whole place burning down.
Bex: Athena- Athena wouldn’t do anything, or she wouldn’t let him do anything. She’d do everything.
Ellen: Yeah, she’d do it. Yeah. It’s just- She’d just charge in there and, like, arrest everybody.
Bex: Well, where’s the fun in that? Bobby needs friends.
Ellen: He does need friends. All his friends have moved away or died. [01:36:00] Oh, that’s so depressing.
Bex: Or, like-
Ellen: I’m sorry, Bobby …
Bex: under his command.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, friends who aren’t his, his, like, subordinates.
Bex: Yeah. Maybe we can get him into, like, a, an amateur hoc- like a beer hockey league or something.
Ellen: Well, he’s, he’s got AA. Surely they’re his friends.
Bex: Yeah, except his fucking mentor just died. Like, his sponsor’s dead.
Alice: Yeah, and he’s not allowed- Yeah … to beat the hell out of people in AA. So hockey would be fun. He knows how to skate.
Ellen: Yeah, he needs to get back into skating actually. Definitely.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: A few twirls around the ice. He’ll be right.
Bex: Well, that’s it. Maybe he could get back into figure skating, not-
Ellen: Yeah …
Bex: hockey.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Although I’d say that’s probably-
Bex: He just needs a hobby
Ellen: … a lot harder once you get to a certain age.
Alice: I mean, Bobby’s what? Gotta be the same age as, um, Scott Hunter.
Ellen: I don’t think Scott’s that old.
Alice: No, he’s not. [01:37:00]
Bex: No, he’s like a couple years older than Ilya.
Alice: I’m, I’m pretty sure he’s like three to five years older than Ilya. And that’s the joke.
Ellen: Oh, poor Scott Hunter.
Bex: Oh man. Poor Scott
Ellen: I, now that we actually talked about this episode a bit, I dislike it less. Like, there was some parts of this that were actually really funny. Maybe it’s just our, our discussion of them made them more funny than they actually were when watching them.
Bex: I think that might be the first time we’ve picked an episode to pieces and got to the end of it and gone, “Oh, actually I do like this episode now.”
Normally it’s the other way around, we pull an episode to pieces-
Ellen: Yeah, that’s right
Bex: … and Ellen’s going, “Oh, I don’t like this ep- I like this episode even less now.”
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, so I’m, I’m glad we were able to help improve your enjoyment of this episode.
Ellen: Yeah. Um, I think it was a case of the, the acting, like, elevated [01:38:00] a really weird and disconnected story l- bunch of storylines. Um-
Bex: Thank God for the actors, ’cause, yeah.
Ellen: And the directing and the… Well, yeah, I don’t know.
Bex: Yeah, no, I’m not giving the writer any, um, any credit for this one. Um.
Ellen: All right. Well, what is happening next time? Give the rundown.
Bex: Uh, next week when, uh, we return months later, i- back in uh, when this aired the first time, but for us it’s gonna be next week, um, we’re still on our weather shit. Um, we, we just got rid of the Santa Ana winds, but now a dry thunderstorm is gonna roll over Los Angeles, bringing-
Ellen: Ooh
Bex: … a series of lightning strike emergencies for the 118, and leaving a first responder’s life hanging literally in the balance. Um, Athena and May go undercover at the rehab facility to help Bobby with his investigation [01:39:00] into his sponsor’s-
Ellen: Oh, well there you go!
Bex: … mysterious death.
Ellen: He did get some help.
Bex: Yeah, but now they’re roping May into it. Yeah. Jesus Christ.
Ellen: Well, Michael’s not there so he’s gotta get someone.
Bex: Um- M- … Maddie dreads her parents visiting to help her in Chimney’s new and unfinished house, while Chimney gets a surprise of his own from a visiting Albert. Yay, Albert’s back.
Ellen: Oh, Albert’s back.
Alice: Oh, yay.
Bex: Triggers for next week’s episode include the continuation of the addict/rehab storyline, um, abuse of power, a car accident, childbirth in the field, daddy issues … um, gore, including an arterial bleed, um, continuation of the Hollywood Evil rehab facility, major character injury, pregnant woman and newborn at threat.
I don’t remember that storyline at all.
Alice: Me neither.
Bex: The other bits unfortunately I do remember, but I don’t remember that one. [01:40:00]
Ellen: Okay. Well, let us know what you thought of this episode as o- as usual. Like, I don’t know. I don’t even know what questions to ask about this episode. It was so, it was so strangely disconnected.
Nope, I got nothing. Um, please leave us a comment on either on the episodes post on thatweewooshow.com or directly in Spotify or your podcatcher app. Uh, we’d love to hear from you. Anything else to say before we sign off? We’re done.
Bex: No.
Ellen: Right?
Alice: I think that’s it.
Bex: We’re
Alice: done. Yeah.
Ellen: Okay. Well, thank you very much for listening this week, and we will talk to you next time about episode 10, which is called “In a Flash”. See you then.
Bex: Bye.
Alice: Bye.
Ellen: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world, too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you’re not [01:41:00] alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help. Just Google crisis support and your location to find out the number.
If you enjoy our podcast, you can help us out by leaving us a review on Spotify or your preferred listening app and by sharing our social media posts. Find out more at thatweewooshow.com.
[outtake 1]
Ellen: Wow, we haven’t talked about-
Bex: Poor Scott
Ellen: … Heated Rivalry for so long.
Alice: I know, all the casting announcements are coming out though, and I’m getting pumped.
Ellen: I know.
Alice: Sitting here in my, um, my Boston Raiders T-shirt. Mm.
Bex: Yes, we get the possibility of new merch. We have the Centaurs stuff coming soon.
Alice: Yeah, except Australia didn’t get any merch to start with, but, you know.
Bex: No, well, I’ve got illegal merch, or…
Alice: Yeah, same. But yeah, one of my friends, um, who’s really into Young Royals wanted the-
Bex: Oh …
Alice: um, the guy [01:42:00] for Luka
Bex: Luka. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. And he’s actually been cast, and so he is over the moon. He’s like, “I can’t believe I called this. Like, I did so-” And we’re like, “Yes.”
Bex: It’s perfect casting.
Alice: Good job.
[outtake 2]
Ellen: Right, halfway through.
Bex: Yep.
Alice: Whoa, we’re halfway there.
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