Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Ellen, Bex and Alice watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss episode 5 of the sixth season of 9-1-1, titled “Home Invasion”.
Athena investigates when the same house is hit with two home invasion 9-1-1 calls within hours. The 118 race to the rescue when a DIY home renovation traps a man in an attic. Hen asks for a second chance with her medical school professor.
Content warnings for episode 6.05:
claustrophobia (trapped in insulation foam), cliffhanger ending, coerced action, gun violence, home invasion/robbery, racially tone-deaf casting choice, suspected home invasion, threat of gun violence.
Listen here:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
If you’d like to subscribe to hear more of our podcast, please check out the numerous ways you can do so on our Subscribe page.
Our intro music is “Tensions” by Northern Points.
Episode Transcript
Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1. What’s your emergency?
Bex: Welcome back to That WeeWoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show, 9-1-1. I’m Bex.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Ellen: And I’m Ellen.
Bex: Thank you to everyone who has listened to our podcast episodes so far, and especially those of you who have taken time out of your very busy days, I’m sure, to share our episodes, our social media posts, and do whatever it is you can to get our little podcast in more ears. We do appreciate it.
Uh, we are soldiering on with our discussion of Season 6. This week we’re up to Episode 5, but before we dive into that, Alice, would you mind reminding us what happened in the last episode? [00:01:00]
Alice: Yeah, so last week on 9-1-1, Hen begged for her place at medical school back. Just medical school, doesn’t have a name.
Uh, Daddy Diaz came out to play after Christopher was caught skipping science club. Buck agreed to be the sperm donor for his old housemate, and Bobby stole a dog.
Ellen: He did steal a dog.
Bex: He took it into protective custody for its own good.
Alice: He still stole a dog. I’m not disagreeing with his choice. He, he just stole a dog.
Ellen: Somewhere out there, there is a, a dog owner wondering where their dog disappeared to.
Bex: Well, no, they know that he, they know that he took it because he took it from right in front of them. Those little frat girls.
Ellen: Well, assuming that it did belong to one of those girls. But anyway, let’s not ask too many questions. Um, they have a dog at the moment featuring in this episode as well. So this is Episode 5, which is called “Home Invasion”. Um, the summary goes, “Athena [00:02:00] investigates when the same house is hit with two home invasion 9-1-1 calls within hours of each other. The 118 race to the rescue,” here we go again-
Bex: Drink
Ellen: … um, when a DIY home renovation traps a man in an attic. Hen asks for a second chance with her medical school professor,” which we went over last week. This week she’s actually-
Alice: That was last week
Ellen: … doing the second chance exam. “Maddie and Chimney regret hiring a nanny for Jee-Yun after the woman completely takes over their apartment in, in the all-new Home Invasion.”
And triggers for this episode include claustrophobia, um, which is being trapped in insulation foam. Um, a cliffhanger ending, which I feel should go at the end of the trigger section, but anyway, these are in alphabetical order, so it has to go near the start. Coerced action.
Bex: Oh, it is, too!
Ellen: Gun violence.
Bex: I’m sorry, I just noticed.
Ellen: Yeah. They’re, they’re always in alphabetical order.
Bex: We’ve been doing [00:03:00] this for how long and we’ve just noticed?
Alice: Yeah, I had no idea!
Ellen: … we’re actually over 90 episodes now. And you’ve just realized.
Alice: Wow. Shout out to Nikki for her alphabetizing, ’cause we had no idea.
Ellen: Well, I often thought they were in a weird order, and then I realized they were alphabetical, so that’s why.
Bex: Okay. Fair enough.
Ellen: Um, anyway, gun violence, home invasion/robbery. Racially tone-deaf casting choice. I, after watching it, I still don’t know what that means, um, in, in terms of-
Alice: I think it’s the nanny.
Bex: It’s either the nanny or Noah. Mm. But if any, if N- Nikki, if you’re listening, if you’d like to explain your, uh, trigger, or if anybody else is listening and they have theories as to which character casting was tone-deaf, uh, please let us know
Ellen: Yeah, that one’s not real clear, um, after having watched it. But anyway, um, [00:04:00] the last couple of triggers are a suspected home invasion and the threat of gun violence. Yeah, so this episode was written by Nadia Abbas Madden, which we’ve had a few episodes of already.
Um, she’s quite a prolific writer so far already in the series. Uh, including some episodes that we quite enjoyed, like, which I think The, “The Taking of Dispatch 9-1-1”, we enjoyed that one, right?
Bex: We did, yes.
Ellen: God, they’re all so long ago now those, some of those episodes so I’m trying to remember which ones we enjoyed. But yeah.
Alice: I know, season three does feel so long ago.
Ellen: Uh, I think this is the first time for this director though?
Bex: No, she’s directed-
Ellen: Marita Grabiak? Okay.
Bex: She has directed a couple too.
Ellen: Cool. All right.
Bex: I just … I didn’t feel that the directing was of any particular note to point out that, “Hey, it was directed by this person.”
Which is ha- It’s, that’s possibly a good thing, is that it’s [00:05:00] indicative that the directing and the choices made were … Actually, no. Wait. Does the director have a say in how the editing of the episode gets put together?
Ellen: I don’t think so. They just tell the actors what to, like how, what to do and how the scenes get, you know, set up and filmed.
Bex: Okay. I’ll pull her back from under the bus. That’s fine then.
Ellen: So I don’t think it’s an editing, anything to do with editing.
Bex: All right. The director is-
Alice: I mean,
Ellen: no, they, they might work with the editors
Alice: … the directors can work with the editor. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah. So like- I won’t- They probably work together but ultimately-
Alice: They wanna-
Ellen: I, I don’t know if it’s their decision …
Alice: I mean, I think it depends, it probably depends a little bit on the TV show as well, um, like who does what. ‘Cause I’ve been listening to the, the Supernatural Then and Now podcast- Mm … and they didn’t have a traditional writers’ room.
Bex: No, we know that.
Alice: Um, and so it’s like slightly different. But, um, but yeah, the directors, like a lot of the directors that they’ve come, ha- had come in to talk, and Rich obviously directs a lot as well. [00:06:00] Um, so basically like they want to give as many angles and stuff to editing as they can, if needed. But otherwise, like if there’s something they specifically want done, they’ll direct it and just give the editors like a really narrow sort of window, ’cause otherwise the editors can do what they want basically.
Ellen: Okay. Okay
Bex: pulling the director back from, away from the bus. ‘Cause there are issues with this episode.
Alice: Well, it’s like, um, The Winchesters. Remember that very short-lived show? Um- There was an episode where, um, John and, oh, was it Carlos?
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Um, Carlos, like, walks in with a Navy uniform, and the music that they put over the top and the way that it was cut together made it look like John was checking Carlos out. And Drake, the actor, was like, “That’s not how we played it at all.” And I was, like, shocked when I [00:07:00] watched it, ’cause I don’t know where they g- like, what happened there.
Ellen: But anyway, we are not anywhere near that Supernatural spinoff. Um, we’re in … in a big mansion in LA at night. Uh, there’s a lady asleep in her bed alone, and she wakes up when she hears a noise and wakes up, and then immediately calls 9-1-1.
Bex: Yeah, like immediately calls 9-1-1. Doesn’t, like, go down to investigate first. It’s sit up, reach for the phone, immediately call 9-1-1.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, no stuffing around.
Bex: And she gets Josh. Hi, Josh.
Ellen: Hi, Josh. I feel like we haven’t seen Josh much this, for a while actually, ’cause I guess we’ve had Noah coming into the dispatch and everything, so.
Alice: I mean, I’m pretty sure we had Josh in, like, episode one, and we’re only in episode five. Did we have Josh in episode one?
Ellen: Feels like a long time ago.
Bex: There was an [00:08:00] episode where Josh- Surely … was telling Maddie to, like… Like, the whole one-night stand with Maddie and Chim, even though they’re-
Alice: Yeah, that was episode one-
Bex: basically together
Alice: … wasn’t it?
Ellen: Yeah, but he was only in it for that one scene- Yeah … like, a moment. I guess in this one he’s only in it for a moment as well. But at least he takes a call.
Alice: He does.
Bex: Yay.
Alice: Way to go, Josh.
Ellen: Uh, he’s, he’s getting all her details because she’s on, she’s calling on a, an actual landline so he doesn’t that, that’s very handy they don’t actually have to ask for an address or anything. They just know where it is. So, um, he finds out this lady’s called Sharlo, and I th- like S-H-A-R-L-O. And I, when I first heard him say her name, I thought she said Charlotte, and then he wrote down this Sharlo and I was like, “What the was that?”
But I’ve never heard that as a name before, so I was confused. But no, Sharlo.
Alice: It’s ju- I think, [00:09:00] I think it’s throwing us because, like Australians put O at the end of everything, like bottle-o. Yeah. Like
Ellen: Any nickname’s gonna-
Alice: So it’s like, “Oh yeah, Sharlo” …
Ellen: … have an O on the end.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, it does make her sound like a bit of a bogan.
Alice: Fucking Sharlo needs to go to the bottle-o and
Ellen: Ah. But she, he sort of tells her to stay put, ’cause she’s in the house on her own because her husband’s out of town. And she’s like, “Oh no, I’m gonna go down and…” Like she goes downstairs, and he’s like, “What are you doing? Stay, stay where you are.” And she’s like, “I’m not waiting, I’m getting out.”
Alice: Yeah, this woman’s an idiot. Like if you hear weird noises and the dispatcher, like you call 9-1-1 and the dispatcher’s like, “Hey, don’t go down there,” like maybe don’t go down there.
Ellen: Yeah, police are on the way.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Stay where you are.
Bex: Yeah, ironically her husband has more sense when he calls later on, but no, she’s an idiot. Um, so she’s going to try and get out of the house so that the intruders can’t get to her. [00:10:00] Um, Josh try, is trying to keep her in the house. He’s like, “Well, okay fine. If you’re gonna go to the neighbor’s house, can you at least give us, um, the gate code?” I don’t know why he knows he needs a gate code. There must be, must something come up in CAD that she’s in like a gated community I guess.
Ellen: Yeah, there must be a note on the address, yeah, to say that it’s a gated community-
Bex: So he needs the gate code
Ellen: … I’d say. Yeah.
Bex: So she gives him the gate code. Um- Then has the realization that she doesn’t have her clicker, so she can’t get out through the gate. So she’s gonna have to go through the kitchen.
She’s an idiot. She heads for the kitchen. Josh is still pl- pleading with her to stay put. All of a sudden, the kitchen door very slowly opens behind her, horror movie style. She turns around and all we hear is her screaming, and then the f- the call drops
Ellen: Blood curdling scream
Bex: Like, full on, like bending over, um, screaming [00:11:00] from the depth of her soul. Which is hilarious-
Alice: Yeah
Bex: … when you find out what she’s screaming at later.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um, so LAPD have put their best and brightest on it, i.e. Athena has been dispatched, and she finds Sharlo on the floor in the gigantic ass lobby of her house. And it, it’s, it’s one of those houses-
Ellen: It’s a huge house
Bex: … where the lobby is so big that they have, like, a giant sort of statue in the middle of the lobby and then the stairs curving up around the sides of the room. It’s ridiculous. Way too big for two people.
Ellen: It looks kind of like the house that, um, Jennifer Love Hewitt was decorating for Christmas in that movie.
Bex: It probably is.
Alice: Yeah, it probably is. They already borrowed Buck’s loft, so.
Ellen: It, it looks just like it.
Bex: I’m assuming that there’s, like, one house that they… It’s just available for set locations.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: It- it’s this one. [00:12:00] Um, so Athena being there, she’s first on the scene, so she is giving Bobby the update when the 118 arrive. Buck is listening as well. He’s not trying to be captain this time, but he is paying attention to what Athena is saying, and he’s questioning what she’s telling them. Um, because Athena’s saying like, “I’ve searched the house. There’s no one here.” And Buck’s saying, “Are you sure no one’s here?” ‘Cause that’s seems to be like a very big overreaction on the part of this woman for no one being here.
Athena
Ellen: is so snarky in this, in this scene. She’s like, “I’m positive, Detective Buckley.” It’s like, all right. He’s just trying to help here.
Bex: Um, Eddie is also trying to help. He administers a sternum rub without, like, checking to make sure that Sharlo can actually feel it. Um, but she can. And it wakes her up, and she im- like, comes to and she’s immediately freaking out, um, saying that, “We have to [00:13:00] get out. We have to get up.” And she starts to move. It looks like she just moves her head and her shoulders, but all of a sudden there is a crack loud enough that everybody in the room goes, “Ooh.”
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And, uh, um, Bobby-
Ellen: Uh, Bobby knows instantly what it was.
Bex: Yep. Mm-hmm.
Ellen: He’s like, “Oh, that was her pelvis.”
Alice: Apparently it was her pelvis.
Bex: How, Bobby?
Ellen: He’s not even wearing a hat. How does he know? He’s, he’s not wearing the hat.
Bex: No.
Ellen: I don’t know. Anyway, it must have sounded like a pelvis cracking rather than any other bone that could crack when you-
Alice: Sure. Apparently, yeah
Ellen: … like sometimes when I move my back in a certain way, my, my back cracks, and it’s not breaking. It’s just popping, you know? Anyway.
Bex: Uh, anyway.
Ellen: So panic stations, everyone’s like, “A pelvic injury can [00:14:00] lead to internal hemorrhdrin- hemorrhaging.” I can’t even say it. Eddie says it fine. Um …
Bex: Yeah, but I wonder how many times it took Ryan to get the line. Like we only see it once. Many. There could be like an entire five minutes of him just stumbling over that word. You never know.
Alice: Oh my God, right. Bring back bloopers. Remember that?
Ellen: Yeah. We never get them anymore, or we do, we do sometimes on, on YouTube … ‘
Bex: cause nobody makes DVDs anymore. Yeah. ‘Cause they make the blooper reel to put on the DVD extras. Yeah. If you don’t make any DVD, you don’t need the extras.
Ellen: Yeah, they have to make it specially for YouTube instead. Um, but Athena’s not worried about pelvic bri- bones breaking. She’s like, uh, “You told 9-1-1 that you saw someone in the kitchen. Who was it?” And through her pain, I mean, they said they were gonna give her morphine, so maybe she’s as high as a kite now. I don’t know. But she’s like, “It wasn’t a man. It was a monster.” So [00:15:00] Buck goes and has a look, another look in the kitchen, and he finds a raccoon.
Alice: Yeah, so the police apparently cleared the building and didn’t notice that there was a fucking raccoon the entire time.
Bex: They- Yeah
Ellen: Well, I mean, I’m guessing it was hiding in the pantry, but they didn’t look in the pantry.
Alice: So could a man!
Bex: They didn’t clear the pantry? Exactly. It was a…it was a walk-in pantry. A person could have very easily stood in there and waited for them.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: I mean, raccoons are small. So- I’m sure they can make very little noise if they want to. Maybe Athena just totally missed it.
Bex: Well, apparently that’s not a, a good look for Athena, but it’s a great look for Buck because he gets to be the hero because he’s able to report back that he’s apprehended the suspect
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: And then-
Alice: Better than the fucking cops did …
Ellen: Athena’s not impressed though. Like she f- she-
Alice: No, she [00:16:00] just gives him shit the whole time. It’s like, sorry that he was doing your job.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: After he stopped him to say-
Ellen: She, she like she creeps up on him …
Alice: “Oh, I, we checked the thing.”
Bex: Like she-
Ellen: She creeps up on him while he’s in there and scares him. And she says, “Careful, Buckley.”
Bex: She’s just cranky ’cause she’s had allergies for like a week now.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Apparently the raccoon came in through the dog door that was perhaps pre-installed on the house before the, um, Sharlo and her husband moved in, um, ’cause they don’t even have a dog. She’s like, “Why do we need a dog door? We don’t even have a dog.” Bobby reassures her that there will be no more home invasions, take a drink- Mm
um, because he has got his top man on the case, which translates to Buck screwing planks of wood across the inside of the dog door. And not as Alice mentioned in her notes, just locking the dog door.
Ellen: I mean, they usually come [00:17:00] with a lock, right?
Alice: At least I- I mean, mine do, but maybe they lost it at some point.
Ellen: Anyway, Buck gets to do some drilling, so he’s happy.
That sounded way worse than I thought it was going to. Anyway, um, we, we go to, uh, where Chim and Maddie are at home. They’re sitting at the dining table, and like Jee isn’t there. And Maddie says, “When was the last time we had an entire meal uninterrupted?”
Bex: Yeah, but no, it’s not even that Jee isn’t there, it’s the entire room looks like that Jee doesn’t even exist in there.
Alice: Yeah. ‘
Bex: Cause we’ve, we’ve seen them-
Alice: Like normally there’s toys and stuff everywhere.
Bex: Yeah. There’s like baby paraphernalia everywhere. This looks like a grownup’s living area. Apart from I think that there’s the baby monitor on the table. Um, it just, it’s very, very different from the last time we saw the [00:18:00] Buckley Han apartment. Yeah. And yes, they are sitting down eating without being interrupted by a child or having to feed a child, or it’s-
Alice: Entertain a child getting food thrown at them by a child.
Bex: Um, and but, and funnily enough, when you’re used to having a child there, you’re uncertain how to actually act. Sitting there eating a hot meal, like oh my God, your food is actually hot, um-
Alice: Yeah … is,
Bex: is a little bit of a, a novelty. And Maddie’s like, “Well, I’m going to enjoy this and I’m gonna have another cup of coffee,” but before she can finish saying the sentence, this woman spawns in behind her with Jee on her hip, a giant baby bag over her shoulder, and the coffee carafe in the other hand, and she’s already filling up Ma- um, Maddie’s cup.
Alice: Yeah. Maddie’s like, “Um, that’s, that’s not your job. It’s, it’s okay. You’re here for Jee, not us.” And the woman who’s their nanny, called Magda, is like, “No, no, I can do both.” [00:19:00]
Bex: So
Ellen: She’s got like, she’s looks like, uh, maybe this is part of the, I don’t know why it would be racially in- insensitive, but she’s got like braids that go over her head like a Heidi.
Bex: She’s got the Heidi braids.
Ellen: Like she’s-
Bex: Yeah …
Ellen: she’s a little bit, a little bit Germanic. But doesn’t sound, she doesn’t have an accent or anything. She just sounds normal. So I’m like, is this supposed to be … I don’t know. Anyway, she’s v- extremely, extremely organized. She has everything ready to go out to the park with Jee.
And sunlight, which kills harm- potentially harmful bacteria. Um, Jee looks excited. She’s not perturbed to be taken out of the house by a total stranger. She just says bye to, to mom and dad, and off she goes.
Alice: She’s like, “See you later.”
Ellen: Yep.
Bex: Which is-
Ellen: So they- …
Bex: good. That’s a very-
Ellen: … are both going to work
Bex: very resilient, very settled child who’s not at all attached to her parents. [00:20:00]
Alice: Well, I mean, she barely knew her mother, but her and Chim were road tripping across the country for a long time, so.
Ellen: Yeah, well, I mean, I don’t know how long she’s known Magda for, but she seems very comfortable, so.
Bex: Probably not that long considering that when Ma- when Magda and Jee leave, um, Maddie and H- and Chim start having a bit of a, a quiet freak out about the fact that they’ve allowed a perfect stranger to walk off with their daughter.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, they’re the ones freaking out, not her. Um, they’re gonna get up and do the dishes before they go to work, but then they get a message from Magda saying to leave the dishes and she’ll take care of them.
Alice: Yeah. And Maddie starts looking around for hidden cameras ’cause th- she’s like, “How did she know?”
Ellen: And, and so we see, like, that Maddie isn’t completely comfortable with the whole thing because Noah’s asking h- her how the new nanny is. And Maddie’s like, “Well, she prefers the term household manager.” And, uh, and [00:21:00] Linda comes in and she’s, like, overhearing. And she’s like, “You hired someone to manage your household?”
And, and she does not like this idea at all. She’s like, “That’s a stranger in your home, all in your business. Recipe for disaster. Get rid of her.”
Bex: Yeah, but Linda’s, um, basis of comparison and the reason she’s saying this is Downton Abbey. Yeah. She’s been watching too much Downton Abbey. She’s been seeing the way that these servants talk about the, uh, the family. Um, and so she thinks it’s a bad idea to have someone else in your home.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, there are some people, some bad people in Downton Abbey, but there are also from some really lovely servants in, in that who actually do –
Bex: I just –
Ellen: … look after the family really well
Bex: I kept thinking of, um, the main lady’s maid, and I cannot remember her name.
Alice: I can’t say I’ve ever seen an episode of Downton Abbey, so.
Bex: Really?
Ellen: Oh, it, it’s gorgeous. I just, [00:22:00] I just had to stop watching it ’cause they kept killing off my favorites. I think I’ve talked about this before.
Alice: Oh, no.
Ellen: Every time, every time there was a character that I really loved, they would, they would die.
And I, and it got to, like, ep- like, series three or something, and I was just like, “Oh, I can’t watch any more of this. It’s too-
Alice: Yeah, I can’t-
Ellen: … too heartbreaking”
Alice: Can’t deal with it.
Ellen: No.
Bex: Um, O’Brien.
Ellen: Oh, yeah. Okay. ‘
Bex: Cause doesn’t she cause a miscarriage by someone at some point?
Alice: Jeez.
Bex: Cause, like, Thomas, Thomas gets in her head.
Ellen: Oh. Yeah. I don’t remember.
Bex: Anyway.
Ellen: Anyway.
Bex: Uh. What are we up to? Well, um, Noah is intrigued about Downton Abbey and says that he wants to… He’s going to have a lot of time to, um, you know, probably catch up on the series where he’s going.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Hmm.
Bex: We, on the other hand, are going back to the Bathena residence, [00:23:00] um, where May has, uh, come to see her mother, uh, in, which is in an, in a scene that is probably just there so that Corrine gets some screen time
Ellen: Yeah, it doesn’t really have any bearing on anything else in the episode.
Bex: Not really.
Ellen: Oh, and she gets to say the episode title while she’s there because her-
Bex: Partially, yeah
Ellen: … her apartment has been invaded. Yeah, it’s too noisy in her apartment.
Bex: Which I had two questions, which was number one, she had an apartment. Did she give that up to move to on-campus housing so that she now has roommates?
Ellen: Apparently.
Alice: I guess so, yeah.
Bex: And then num- and then number two, does she not know of the existence of the library?
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Well, it’s never quiet in the library.
Bex: Like, there’s one place on campus that she can go to study.
Alice: Or unless you’re in a fanfic, in which case it’s absolutely not a place to study and it’s a place to make out behind the [00:24:00] bookshelves, but.
Ellen: Well, maybe, maybe her apartment was, her apartment wasn’t very close to the, the campus ’cause the traffic’s too bad- No, I, um- … so getting to uni is hard …
Bex: like, 1, 100% I can accept that for travel convenience she gave up her, um, apartment to move on campus. I just think it’s interesting that, um, she went from having an apartment and now suddenly she’s living on campus and there was no sort of…
It was just a thought that I had when I watched this, um, episode. Yeah. That’s all. So yeah, she’s telling her mother that her apartment has been invaded, and her mother says, “Well, your house isn’t the only place that’s being invaded,” because May notices that Athena is sniffling and, uh, blowing her nose and sneezing.
Because unbeknownst to us and unbeknownst to Bobby, um, the Grant women are allergic to dogs [00:25:00] And
Ellen: Yeah, even though Athena’s been sneezing, she hasn’t told Bobby about her allergy.
Alice: And also apparently she doesn’t know what an antihistamine is.
Bex: No, see, I’ve got a theory there. Because if she takes the antihistamine, then potentially… Like I s- I don’t have dog, like pet allergies or any kind of allergies like that, but I, I don’t know if an antihistamine would completely eliminate her symptoms. But if she didn’t have the symptoms-
Alice: It does for my cat allergy
Bex: Could, yeah? Cool. Um, okay, so if she takes them, then she’s no longer like sniffling and sneezing and she can’t, you know, be the martyr wife and like, “Look, look how much I’m suffering, but I’m doing it because you love that dog and I love you.”
Alice: Like you can even get allergy shots and like they’re, it’s not like they’re not, like it’s not like they’re, they don’t have health insurance. [00:26:00] Like they’re both in government jobs.
Bex: She just want- she just wanted to like perform how good of a wife she was for Bobby, hoping that he would notice at some point.
Ellen: Aw, I thought it was because she, she knew that he was attached to the dog, so she was keeping quiet because he was happy.
Alice: But yeah, just go to the pharmacy, get a histamine.
Bex: Yeah, but if she was really keeping quiet, she would’ve got an antihistamine so that she didn’t have any symptoms. But no, she’s having the symptoms. I’m possibly a little bit jaded, but that’s fine. Um, so yes, so it’s, um, news to Bobby that Athena is allergic to dogs. Um, and
Ellen: And then May starts sneezing as well
Bex: And then May starts sneezing as well, which, um, eliminates the possibility of handing the dog back to May, which would be then taking it from, like, the sorority house and then taking it back to college. I don’t really see the logic there.
Alice: Yeah, like the poor dog was already in college and got [00:27:00] saved, and it’s just like “Yeah, send it back to college.” Maybe it was in the middle of a degree. Poor Hoover.
Bex: Yeah, that, that’s why he’s, like, so unsettled. He’s supposed to be studying.
Alice: Yeah. That’s true. He’s like, “I need to get to the library, you guys. Fucking hell. I’m gonna fail medical school.” Um-
Ellen: Well, at least someone around here cares about medical school.
Bex: So that kicks off the, uh, the second storyline of the episode, which is Operation Find Hoover a Home
Ellen: Oh, this was a funny bit though, ’cause I enjoyed that
Alice: Oh, it just, it just made me mad because, like, as a dog trainer-
Bex: Yeah, I’m watching it and I’m just waiting
Alice: … they’re just doing everything wrong
Bex: I’m doing the notes and I’m, they’re sort of revealing stuff about Hoover and I’m just, I’m just gonna leave a gap here for Alice to insert her-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: rant about this, ’cause I’m sure she has thoughts.
Alice: Alice’s rant goes here, yeah.
Ellen: Well, it was also kind of [00:28:00] awkward because they just keep showing up at different people’s houses and going, “Oh, here, have a dog.” And it’s like-
Alice: Have a dog …
Ellen: you, you haven’t even asked anyone if they’d be willing. You’re just showing up. But anyway, we’re not up to that part yet.
Bex: No, we gotta do another home invasion first.
Ellen: Uh, Maddie’s gotta take a call first. Mm-hmm. it’s a call about a, a home invasion, funnily enough. Um, “my house is being robbed.” Maddie’s asking if there’s more than one suspect in the house, and this guy is saying there’s definitely more than one and they know that he’s in the house. And Maddie can actually hear, these people in the house, like when he gets- Hang on, hang on. He doesn’t even go downstairs. He’s just in-
Bex: No, because- …
Ellen: one of the rooms upstairs …
Bex: like, like I said, unlike his wife, this guy is sensible. He’s like, “I’m not fucking going downstairs. I’m gonna try and hide somewhere.”
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, but they find him anyway. And-
Bex: I’m pre- I think they hear him talking … [00:29:00]
Ellen: um, they say, “Don’t let him get away,” and then they shoot him. So, and Maddie hears these gunshots, and the call ends. I don’t know. Somehow he manages to fall on the en-co- end call button when he falls over. Um-
Bex: No, my assumption was that the, one of the intruders picked up the phone and ended the call. That’s where my brain went.
Ellen: I mean, I guess. Anyway, so the 118-
Bex: But we don’t know …
Ellen: the 118 go back to the same house that they were at yesterday. It’s not Taylor, but Channel 8 News are reporting, um, on it as well. Broad daylight home invasion. Uh- True … Maddie has no idea what’s happened, so she’s dissociating in the break room or somewhere.
Um, she doesn’t know what’s happened. But Sue does. She comes over and tells Maddie that the guy’s alive. And so when Sue showed up with, and told her that he was alive, I’m like, “Here we go.” Whenever Sue shows up like this, she has to drop [00:30:00] some, like, you know-
Bex: A pearl of wisdom?
Ellen: … wisdom.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: A, a wisdom to Maddie. Um, so yeah. “He’s on his way into surgery. And the thing that makes us good at our jobs is our ability to listen, blah, blah, blah” wise words from Sue. Yep. But anyway, they haven’t caught the guys yet, so.
Alice: Like, they can’t video call, so yeah, that, anyway.
Bex: Um, we do find out from Sue that, uh, robberies and home invasions have been on the rise lately, and that the suspects are getting more brazen, and let’s hope they find them before they strike again.
Um, the they in the question is Athena and Rick Romero. So the chances of them actually figuring out what’s going on are, like, either slim to none or amazing.
Ellen: Oh, that’s not very confident of you. Are you sure? ‘Cause these guys have got, like, plot detective [00:31:00] skills, so they’re gonna work it out one way or another.
Bex: Romero probably couldn’t tie his own shoes if Athena didn’t help him. That’s the way he’s been set up in the series.
Ellen: I, I know. I did, I did say at one point-
Alice: And Athena can’t even find a raccoon, so.
Ellen: Good, good thing Athena, good thing Romero’s got Athena there to solve all his cases for him. Because he doesn’t do it on his own.
Bex: And good thing in this change that Athena has Maddie to solve her case for her.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, they had, they had a lot of people working on this one together. Yeah. Anyway.
Bex: This was a group project.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um, but we do find out from Rick that, and Athena, that the mansion that they are walking into is the same one that Athena walked into earlier that day. Um, and the person that was shot was Sharlo from the opening emergency’s husband. He had flown back from overseas because his wife was hurt. He’d come home to pick up a few things for her and interrupted the robbery And Athena says very wisely- She ha-
Ellen: and he got shot through…
“The [00:32:00] raccoon definitely didn’t do this.”
Alice: Yeah, thank God because she can’t find the raccoon so maybe she’ll have more luck when it’s not a raccoon.
Ellen: And then she’s like, “Two home invasion calls from the same address,” and Romero’s like, “What are the odds?” I’m like, Yeah, but one of them was an animal.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: If they’re not related-
Alice: Like one wasn’t actually a home invasion
Ellen: at this point we don’t know that they’re related.
Alice: True.
Bex: To, to be fair the raccoon did come into the house, so he invaded the house, so technically it was a home invasion.
Ellen: I mean, I guess, but like-
Alice: Yeah, sure.
Ellen: He didn’t shoot anyone.
Bex: But like the only thing he stole was like bread.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: So, and I know that in our history that was a capital crime and people were punished very severely by like deportation for stealing bread, but like this is ‘Merica.
Ellen: And also raccoons don’t get sent to Australia.
Alice: And also it’s a raccoon, yeah.
Ellen: Ah.
Bex: Could you imagine the raccoons and the [00:33:00] possums?
Ellen: Oh man. I mean, possums bad enough-
Alice: No, I don’t want to imagine that because possums have been keeping me awake all fucking week.
Ellen: Aw. I wanted to see a raccoon when I went over there so badly, but I didn’t. I didn’t see any
Alice: Aww
Ellen: I was so sad. I’m like, “Come on.” I saw squirrels
Alice: I just wanna see s- yeah, I just wanna see squirrels
Ellen: Squirrels are so cute.
I squealed a lot when I saw them.
Alice: That’ll be me. Apparently, um, India has squirrels, and so-
Ellen: Oh, do they? …
Alice: like when Mom and Dad were over there they w- like Mom was just like, “Oh, your dad saw a squirrel for the first time,” and I’m just like, “I haven’t seen one yet.” I’ll just be trying to feed the squirrels, and they’ll be like, “Please, leave the squirrels alone.”
Ellen: Yeah. Okay, so it’s time. It’s, it’s Hen’s big day. Um, time for her to go and do her exam thing.
Bex: No, no. She’s still study first
Ellen: No, hang on.
Not yet. Oh, yeah First she’s got to have a study day. Karen has cleared everything out of her plate, off her [00:34:00] plate so she can just study all day.
Alice: Um, yeah, Karen’s gonna take Denny to school. Clive’s gonna pick him up after. Um, Denny meanwhile just chimes in with, “I like when you poach the eggs,” and Karen goes, “Don’t be pretentious.” It’s like y- … clearly you’ve poached the eggs for him before. Like poor kid just li- knows how he likes his eggs.
Bex: Maybe the eggs were like on a weekend when she had time to do it.
Alice: Maybe.
Bex: Um, you know
Alice: He doesn’t know how long p- poaching eggs takes.
Ellen: It’s a weird, weird comment. Like, it’s just so that he gets to say something in this scene
Bex: Yeah, right …
Ellen: otherwise he’d just, he would just be there. He wouldn’t say anything. But there’s no reason for him to mention eggs.
Bex: Yeah, there’s no, there’s no mention of eggs prior to that. I didn’t even realize they were eating eggs. Um, so Karen has laid out everybody’s plan for the day except for Hen’s, and she’s like, “Well, so what am I doing?” And Karen’s like, “You are going to study all day.” Um, do you remember when, like, [00:35:00] Karen put her foot down and said that Hen had to pick between, like, medical school and paramedics, and got, like, really mad at Hen about it?
Ellen: Yeah. Well, she said she couldn’t do both, so … And, and later in this episode, Hen’s, like, saying goodbye to everyone and I’m like, “Is, does this mean that now you’re choosing the other side?” Like, Karen’s like, “Okay, now you’re gonna do the medical school. You can’t be a paramedic anymore.”
Bex: So Hen has picked medical school, and so now, now Karen is 100% on board with the medical school that she’s picked.
Ellen: Well, that’s, that’s the impression I’m getting, but …
Bex: Okay. But before she can study, and I’m pretty sure this is gonna derail her entire day of study, um, there’s a knock on the door, and it’s Bobby and Hoover.
Ellen: Oh, bless.
Bex: And Bobby is asking for a massive favor for the Wilsons to take on Hoover because they have plenty of space. They’ve got a big house. They’ve got a big backyard, and apparently they don’t have a pet anymore because at some point in the [00:36:00] last four years Paisley died.
Alice: Yeah. They-
Bex: And I went- …
Alice: they haven’t mentioned Paisley, and I was like-
Bex: Oh my God, Paisley …
Alice: one, I forgot they had … Yeah. Like, one, I forgot that they had a dog.
Two-
Ellen: Which was a, which was another,
Alice: like holy shit, their dog died
Ellen: … stolen, adopted dog, right?
Alice: Yeah, another stolen dog. Yeah.
Bex: So shout out to the writer that binged the entirety of the season and remembered that at some point the Wilsons had a dog.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah
Bex: Um, and-
Ellen: We haven’t seen said dog in quite some time, so …
Bex: No, I don’t think we saw said dog since season two.
Alice: No.
Bex: Maybe the beginning of season three. I can’t remember. Hen may have been successful in turning away Bobby and Hoover, except for the fact that Denny comes in and he sees Hoover.
And I, I have to Question the smarts of this kid because he looks at Hoover, who is quite clearly a dog, and goes, “Oh my God, is that a dog?”
Alice: No, it’s a cat, Denny.
Bex: And [00:37:00] Bobby’s like, “Yes.”
Alice: You should probably go to school.
Bex: “Yes, it is a dog, and it’s your dog.”
Ellen: Yeah, good tactics, Bobby. Show the kid the dog, and there’s no way that Hen can say no.
Bex: Not without causing a massive fight.
Alice: So yeah, Hen says that Bobby owes her big time.
Ellen: All right. So Hoover’s part one adventure out of the way. We are going to Marisol and her brother. I’m told that Marisol is hanging around. I don’t know who-
Alice: We don’t know who she is yet.
Ellen: No, I don’t think anyone ev-
Bex: No, I know
Ellen: it … I don’t think anyone says her name- No at all.
Bex: No, no, they don’t. But I know her name, so I’m gonna get sick of the, the fact that there’s an entire scene where, once again, we don’t get the female character’s name, so I’m giving her her name.
Alice: Get, um-
Ellen: Okay
Alice: the captions gave it away. Like, the ca- the [00:38:00] subtitles said that it was Marisol, and I’m like, “Oh.”
Ellen: I didn’t know her na- her name or who she was until the very end. Yeah. When I- Yeah … looked something up. I looked one of the char- one of the-
Bex: Yeah, it’s once again where they’ve-
Ellen: … actors up or something
Bex: … named the character and the writer has forgotten to actually introduce said character. And it would’ve been so easy because Marisol in, um, introduces us to Vincent in conversation, so it would’ve been really easy for Vincent to, like, “Hey, Marisol, I’m here to help,” or something like that to get her name into dialogue. But they didn’t.
Alice: Yeah, no, she doesn’t deserve a name. Are you kidding me?
Bex: Of course not.
Alice: She’s just a woman.
Ellen: Yeah, and we, she’s doing some DIY work, and she’s, like, got this nail gun, and she’s nailing something into the wall.
Bex: I, I think she’s nailing the baseboard into the wall.
Ellen: We get this fake-out where, um, the doorknob is, like, rattling around, and she thinks someone’s breaking into her house.
I’m like, “Oh, no, [00:39:00] a home invasion.” But no, it’s her brother. He’s like, “My key doesn’t work.” She’s like, “Yeah, I just changed all the locks yesterday,” so but and then she’s like, “Well, wait, where did you get a key?” Apparently their mom gave it to him.
Alice: Naturally.
Bex: Because I’m guessing that in that family, like, Vincent is the golden child who can do no wrong.
And so he’s like, “You should g- go help your little sister out.” Also that he’s like the man and, and she’s just, just not. So what, what could she possibly know about DIY? Except apparently she knows a lot about DIY and fixing stuff ’cause she spent a lot of her time fixing the shit that he’s broken.
Ellen: Yeah, he’s broken a toilet and three dishwashers.
Bex: And almost caused an electrical fire Um, but he is not here to help her fix things, um, unless, except her… He’s not [00:40:00] here to fix anything except her utility bills. Um, because he knows a guy, like he’s got a friend who does, uh, home insulation. Not invasion, insulation, and he’s gonna borrow the truck, and he’s gonna help Marisol insulate her house.
Ellen: Yep, he even knows how much insulation she needs, and so she’ll… He, he almost sounds like he knows what he’s doing. And he says that like it’ll not only save your heating and cooling costs, it’ll also block out traffic noise, like soundproofing, which is c- comes in important later when, um-
Bex: Mm-hmm …
Ellen: they, they can’t hear anything.
He wants to help, so she lets him, and we get this like little like cut scene ki- type thing of him in this full kind of hazmat suit thing, breathing apparatus and everything, spraying this foam into the attic underneath the roof. So yeah, this, this seems [00:41:00] like… This whole scene just seems very unsafe, not just because they’re doing D- DIY and they don’t really know what they’re doing, but also this, the, he- there’s a kink in the hose, and it, and so it stops flowing, and he’s like trying to work out what’s going on.
But there, there’s this warning which is not up where he is at all. It’s on the truck. So I’m assuming that you’re supposed to actually have more than one person, um-
Bex: Yes
Ellen: … operating this whole system. But- Yes … the, there’s no like automatic shutoff or anything. It just gets louder and, and more brightly colored warnings.
It’s like, “do you wanna override the warning?” Like it doesn’t, it doesn’t stop itself, which I would think would be a better safety measure. But anyway, the whole thing just explodes basically and, um, like covers… He, it like starts spraying around, and he gets knocked over and knocked out, I guess, and then covered in foam.
Bex: And the other safety thing is that [00:42:00] it’s not like a dead man’s trigger, so even though his hand is not pulling the trigger, the, uh-
Ellen: Yeah, it just keeps-
Bex: … the spray is still continuing to dispense foam everywhere.
Ellen: Yes, like did the, um, did the pressure in the hose like just blow the top of the thing right off? So it’s just spewing out rather than, you know-
Bex: I don’t know.
Ellen: … being stopped by a trigger. I, I don’t, it, the whole, the system is just very weird.
Bex: Just, just don’t think about it.
Ellen: Anyway.
Bex: For the drama,
Ellen: no, I’m try-
Bex: For the drama, this guy gets knocked out, and the entire attic fills with insulating foam with him still in it, um, causing Marisol to call 9-1-1 because she thinks her brother might have had an accident, but she can’t tell ’cause she can’t get into the attic ’cause the attic is now oozing insulation foam.
Like it’s coming down the ladder in a like giant purple tube thing Yeah, appendage? I don’t know
Ellen: It’s gross.
Alice: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah. Uh, and they, they’re like, “Have you tried calling him?” She’s like, “Yeah, I’ve [00:43:00] been calling him. He’s not answering.” But, um, he- they can’t hear anything, can’t hear any ringing, and that’s when she says that he, he said he would soundproof the house.
Um, and it’s also insulated because Buck can’t find him with the heat detector thing. So-
Bex: Do we think maybe this is, like, another one of those covert ads that, like, some insulation company has asked 9-1-1 to, like-
Ellen: I hope not,
Bex: because um- … slip their product in. Because they’re making a very good case for, like, how soundproof and how, like, insulating this product is doing.
Ellen: I mean, insulation is-
Bex: Because they can’t hear the guy’s phone ringing
Ellen: … a- an excellent way to keep your house cool or warm. ‘Cause we, we had it put in, like, a little while ago, and it makes such a difference. But anyway, um, I’m not an insurance … uh, like, an insulation salesperson. Um-
Bex: As long as it doesn’t have asbestos in it.
Ellen: No, definitely not. Um, [00:44:00] the solution to try to find this guy is to poke holes in the ceiling with these sharp- Yeah … pokey things.
Bex: Yeah. Bobby’s line is, “It’s the old-fashioned pick and poke.” So they’re literally using pike poles that they use to ventilate ceilings and roofs in case of building fires to try and find Vincent.
Ellen: Yeah, and like, what … Are they hoping to, like, they’ll stab it up into the ceiling and he’ll go, “Ow,” and then they’ll be, “Here he is.”
Alice: It’s so weird.
Bex: Like what? Like when the, the ceiling starts bleeding, “Hey, we found him.”
Alice: Yeah. “We found him.” Yeah,
Ellen: like yeah. This is not safe at all.
Bex: I th- I think, I think what I think what Eddie does is what they were aiming for. They were trying to find, like, a pocket of somewhere in the, um-
Alice: Yeah, but, like, how would they know that that’s where … Like, it’s so weird. It just looks like they’re gonna stab him. Yeah. And then be like, “Oh, found him.”
Bex: It’s like Battleship, but with, like-
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, it’s, [00:45:00] I don’t understand.
Bex: And eventually, like, you come back and there’s just, like, a person shaped-
Ellen: What are they doing here?
Bex: um, hole in the ceiling, like where you’ve outlined him.
Ellen: Yeah, where they’ve stabbed around him. And they, and they nearly do, like, actually. Like, it stabs up and it’s like-
Alice: Miss, miss
Ellen: … right in front of his face.
Alice: Miss, miss. Hit! Like, Jesus Christ.
Ellen: Yeah. And then, then they … Okay, so they find he pokes a hole in the ceiling and manages to find where he is. And then they get out-
Alice: Yeah, but like how can you see anything? It’s in the ce- like, it’s so weird.
Bex: I don’t know. I d- I don’t, I- ‘
Alice: Cause he just like finds a hole and he’s like, “Oh, guys,” like, “I found him.” And it’s like, how do you know? Because you don’t have a torch or anything.
Bex: He, I don’t think he specifically says that he found Vincent. I think the implication is that he managed to find, like, where there was no s- support beams. Like he found a gap in the, the, um, the roof.
Ellen: Oh, like in the ceiling.
Alice: Sure.
Bex: Yeah, it’s, ’cause like Bobby’s- Superb timing … talking about he wants to find like the edges of the floor up there, so he’s trying to [00:46:00] find like where the gaps are in the support beams.
I don’t know, it’s, I don’t know what they were thinking, um, what the intention was with this scene. Um-
Ellen: I’m confused … but they eventually get- But they do get, they also get a chainsaw out and like start like chainsawing the roof. I’m like, “I hope you know where he is now because you’re gonna cut him in half.” Like what the hell?
Oh, they cut out a, a neat rectangle right around him.
Alice: They, um, they use like a, um, oh, it’s got a name, but I actually have one. It’s a thing that like lifts the plaster and like holds the plaster on the ceiling while it’s being glued to the support beams
Ellen: Oh. Okay, so they’ve actually used this thing to, to put the ceiling up in the first place
Alice: Yes.
Bex: Oh, it’s a, it’s either a-
Ellen: And it’s, uh, handily still in the room
Bex: It’s either a panel lifter or a plaster lifter
Alice: Yeah. Um, but yeah, I have one, which [00:47:00] is pretty cool
Ellen: Well, there you go
Bex: Except it’s not lifting in this instance, it’s lowering
Alice: Yes. Which you can also use it for
Ellen: And then they end up having a perfectly rectangular piece of purple foam, and his, his face is sticking out of it. Like it was just the weirdest- It’s,
Alice: yeah, it’s-
Ellen: The weirdest thing.
Bex: Um- ‘Cause they, ’cause they lived it down, then they put it up on their side and they’re sort of hacking, pulling away the pl- the, the plaster and the wood flooring from the back of it. So because he fell kind of face down, there’s his f- the, the insulation obviously didn’t get under, between his face and the floor.
He just ends up looking like-
Ellen: Luckily for him
Bex: … Han Solo frozen in carbonite when they peel the- Yeah … the plaster and the floorboard away.
Ellen: Yeah, and they pull him out. Um, he’s not breathing. Oh no, he’s breathing-
Bex: No, he’s breathing,
Ellen: … very shallowly
Bex: Just not enough Yeah But they’re acting like he’s not breathing at all.
Like he’s still breathing. He just [00:48:00] needs more oxygen, which they give him and he’s fine. But it’s very dramatic like this guy’s about to drop dead any second.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: But they get him in the ambulance, they get him on high flow O2, he starts breathing, he regains consciousness. Marisol is, uh, very relieved because even though it’s her brother’s own damn fault, she like doesn’t wanna see him die.
Um- … he’s very grateful to be alive as well, and his first question is, um, like, “Is the house okay?” At which point Eddie and Chim exchange guilty glances because no, the house is not okay.
Alice: The house, the house is absolutely not even nearly okay, but sure
Bex: And once again, I raise the question of who pays for this
Alice: Marisol’s like, “Uh, let’s talk about it later.”
Bex: Yeah. After I lodge a claim with the, uh, the City of Los Angeles for, um, the, the destruction of my house
Ellen: Yeah, the ceiling I just put up.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Which you [00:49:00] completely trashed.
Bex: Yep, there’s like holes in every room, in every, in the ceiling, and then there’s a massive hole.
Ellen: Yep. Okay, so it is Hen’s big day tomorrow, so she’s looking at some flashcards while she’s lying in bed, as you do.
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Um, Karen comes in and she’s, like, takes the flashcards from her and puts them to the side because she finally, after all this time of Hen just studying 24/7, uh, she’s ready to get busy.
Alice: Oh, poor Karen’s been ready to get busy for ages and Hen just keeps falling asleep. Or studying. Yes. Or bringing home a dog, in this case.
Ellen: This is just one, uh, one thing after another with Hen at the moment, so, but, but h- she can’t. Like, Hen says she can’t, and Karen’s like, “What now?”
Alice: Poor Karen.
Ellen: But, um, Hen’s like, “Not with him watching.” And Hoover is in the room just [00:50:00] staring at them. Yeah,
Alice: he’s literally just staring at them.
Ellen: So apparently he’s making Hen uncomfortable, so, um, Karen kicks him out of the room. But, uh, Hoover is not impressed by this and just starts scratching the door.
Alice: He starts crying at the door.
Ellen: I had a cat that used to do this as well. She would just scratch at the door all night.
Bex: Oh, God. Um, apparently, um, Hoover’s whining and scratching at the door is not the aphrodisiac that Karen thinks it is, because funnily enough, Hen still doesn’t wanna get busy, uh- Mm … because she can hear the dog. So Karen lets the dog back in, and it immediately jumps up into her side of the bed. And gets comfortable.
Alice: Yeah, and makes himself very comfortable.
Ellen: When Karen goes to open the door she’s like, “Fine. Fine, fine. It’s fine. It’s fine. You can come in.”
Bex: It’s not fine.
Ellen: It’s not fine.
Bex: It’s really [00:51:00] not fine.
Ellen: Yeah, I think Hoover’s gonna have to find another new home as well, again.
Bex: Either that or learn to sleep alone.
Alice: Just speaking of dogs, Hudson is chasing his tail behind me.
Ellen: Aw.
Bex: Has he caught it yet?
Alice: He just keeps catching it. Yeah, yeah, he keeps catching it and continuing to just walk around in circles while holding it. Are you good? Okay. I think he caught it, Bubba. He got it. Good job. Are you gonna get it again? Okay, good job. Puppies just aren’t the smartest.
Ellen: It’s okay, as long as he’s having fun, and not actually-
Bex: Well, at least he’s pretty.
Ellen: Injuring himself by biting his own tail.
Bex: It’s been… It’s all floof. Probably no- not even anywhere near the, the bone or cartilage yet.
Alice: I was gonna say, I don’t think he’s actually… Yeah.
Ellen: All right. It’s time to get back to the, you know, B1 and B2. Um … trying to solve [00:52:00] the armed robbers. There have been 10 other burglaries with a similar MO.
But, and the residents were never home.
Bex: Within 10 seconds of looking at the files, Athena has already found the pattern. Like Romero- Yeah … what have you been doing? Have you just been like s-
Alice: Eating donuts, hanging out.
Bex: He- … he’s just staring at the board- Doing nothing … waiting for the, the photos to speak to him, to give him a sign. He hasn’t actually been reading.
Alice: He’s been really busy harvesting blueberries in Stardew Valley, okay?
Bex: What?
Ellen: He must have been, because he just did not notice that these victims were all at the hospital when-
Bex: Oh, wait, wait. Are you implying that Romero has been playing Stardew Valley?
Alice: Yes. Okay. Yes, I am.
Bex: Not me just mentally flipping through all of the character NPCs in Stardew Valley, trying to work out if he looks like any of them. Um- Okay.
Ellen: I thought one of them might’ve been called [00:53:00] Rick or Romero.
Bex: No.
Ellen: Anyway.
Bex: No.
Alice: He’s, he’s l- he’s making his character in Stardew Valley, and it’s like favorite thing, and he’s like solving crime.
Ellen: Or not solving crime as the case may be
Bex: Um, he doesn’t do it very often though, unless Athena’s there.
Alice: He doesn’t do it, but he, you also don’t get to eat the, um, the things very often, so.
Bex: True.
Alice: Whenever he, um, he max- like he ups his energy, he’s just like, “Oh fuck, that’s right, I’m supposed to be solving crime.”
Ellen: Ah, well good thi- good thing that Athena is there to help him out. Although it is, it is a little bit of a leap that she makes here, that she discovers that they’d all been at the hospital, but then she realizes, or maybe they both realize at the same time, that they all called 9-1-1. Which I, I don’t know that I would make that logical conclusion, but
Bex: Athena notices that the homeowner interviews were all conducted elsewhere because, um, the victims [00:54:00] were never at home when the in- robbery took place. Um, and all of the, they were pretty much all in hospital and all in hospital, uh, for reasons that you would probably call 9-1-1 for. So you had someone had a heart attack, someone set their kitchen on fire, somebody had a slip and fall in the shower.
And then we, um, they’re sort of bantering backwards and forwards and they realize that when you call 9-1-1, um, the 9-1-1 operators ask you a lot of questions such as, “Is there anyone else in the house? Do you have any dogs that are possibly going to attack our, um, first responders when they come in? Are there any, um, security alarms that will need to be disabled so our first responders can get in? Can you give us the codes to disable said alarms?”
Ellen: Yes. Perfect information for breaking in.
Bex: So then rather than-
Ellen: So they go to dispatch, yeah …
Bex: But they don’t even go to dispatch, ’cause I have a [00:55:00] feeling that procedure would normally be LAPD would reach out to, like dispatch and they’d be talking to someone like Sue.
I have a feeling Athena just whipped out her phone and texted Maddie. Like, “Hey, can I come talk to you?”
Alice: Literally, Athena texted Maddie. Like, “Are you at work?” And Maddie went, “You bet.”
Bex: Can I come see you? I’ll bring coffee. Oh, Rick wants to come too. Yeah, no worries.
Alice: That moron? Sure.
Ellen: I’m so thank- Um, so Maddie just, and Matt- Maddie just lets them in, into the files at her desk, not, not worrying about anyone else who’s around, just-
Bex: And-
Ellen: They go-
Bex: Josh and Sue don’t appear to be worried about this at all.
Alice: No. Like, oh, that’s okay. Maddie, who’s literally just a dispatcher who’s just come back to work, she can do it, it’s fine.
Bex: Is standing in the middle of this open plan office with an LAPD officer and an LAPD [00:56:00] detective.
Alice: I mean, to be fair, it’s h- like, Athena talking to Maddie, they’re just like, “Oh yeah, it’s just her brother’s dad’s mum. Uh, dad’s wife.”
Bex: Brother’s, uh-
Alice: Again.
Bex: And Rick.
Ellen: It’s her, it’s her mother-in-law.
Alice: And Rick.
Ellen: Yeah, mother-in-law.
Bex: So Romero has printed out all of the, um, like, the victims, and he wants Maddie to find their corresponding 9-1-1 calls and see if there is any, um, patterns in who responded to these calls. So she’s going through all of them saying, “Okay, like this was, this was Linda, the 133 responded. This one was Josh, the 142 was called.
Um, Josh also took this one, so we’ve got a pattern with Josh, but this time he sent the 130, he sent the 118.” Um, she doesn’t see any patterns.
Alice: Until she does.
Bex: Until she does, but it’s not the pattern of who [00:57:00] was responding to the calls. Um, the CAD system apparently logs any, um, access that you make to the, the calls and the files in the system.
So it’ll log like, okay, this person took the call, then it’ll go, okay, this person accessed all of these records on this day, and Maddie has discovered that she has accessed every single one of those files multiple times.
Ellen: Oh, no.
Bex: Oh, no.
Ellen: Uh, we don’t find out about that yet though, ’cause we’ve gotta go back to, we’ve gotta go back home to Maddie and Chim’s apartment, and all of the food and the stuff that was in the cupboards is all over the table, and Magda is, like, standing on a ladder, like, cleaning out the cupboards that are up high.
And Chim’s just like, “What is going on here?” Magda’s cleaning out the kitchen. But [00:58:00] then she notices that-
Bex: She’s like, “Don’t worry.”
Ellen: … Chim’s wearing shoes, and Chim’s like, “Yes, sometimes I do that for the walking.”
Bex: Magda’s not worried about that. She’s worried about the fact that he’s wearing them inside.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So he has to take them off. Um-
Alice: Um, which is interesting ’cause you’d think that Chim would be a shoes off family
Bex: You would. This made me think of, um, Sandra Oh in Killing Eve. Um, because I w- I don’t know whether I read it or whether I watched her, an interview with her talking about it, um, where she insisted that when her character came home after the, for any, at any point, she would always take her shoes off because as a Korean woman, that’s what she did.
And because Sandra is Korean, therefore Eve is Korean, so Eve would take her shoes off. Um, and that was something that she had to [00:59:00] push really hard for because no one in the very white writers’ room on Killing Eve would have thought to do that because Eve was written as a white woman, and no one thought to update it to be a Korean woman once they cast Sandra.
Ellen: Hmm.
Alice: Hmm.
Bex: So it’s really interesting in 9-1-1 that we’ve got Kenneth Choi playing, uh, Chimney, but we never see any of Chim’s Koreanness. Now, that could be-
Alice: Which is sad because he was raised by, like, his mum, who was Korean, and then the Lees, who are Ko- Korean.
Bex: So it either-
Alice: So like, it’s not like he was raised by a white family.
Bex: Yeah, and it could either be a, um, a statement about the fact of how, like, Americanized he is, that he’s completely lost his Korean heritage, ’cause we’ve seen that, um, Chimney can [01:00:00] understand spoken Korean, but he can’t, he doesn’t speak in Korean. Um, and we’ve talked about that in previous episodes. Or it could be very much that the writers know fuck all about Korean heritage and keep forgetting that Chim is Korean and therefore, you know, they should have elements of like he takes his shoes off when he comes in.
Ellen: Yeah. I, I pr- think they probably just didn’t think hard enough about it, and Kenneth didn’t say anything to change it.
Bex: Probably not willing to rock the boat.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: You know, this is, like, his major break, whereas, um, Sandra has very much, she’s fighting for representation on her screen. Like I think to the point that the, um, the representation on Killing Eve was so bad that now like the last couple of projects that you see Sandra’s worked on, they’re all people of color in the writers room and the director seats. She’s not willing to work with white people anymore. [01:01:00]
Alice: Yeah. Wearing boots inside just icks me out anyway. Like I used to wear shoes in the house when I lived in my rental because the carpet was so shit that like I didn’t want to put my feet on it. Oh no. Um, like that’s how bad the carpet was. Like it was falling apart and like it was awful.
So like it was like a sensory thing. But now that I’m in like my own little place and I’ve got new carpet, I’m like, “Don’t put shoes on the carpet.”
Ellen: Hmm.
Alice: You’ll ruin the carpet. What are you doing?
Bex: It’s very interesting which families are like shoes off and shoes on families when it comes to houses.
Ellen: Anyway, Chim’s gotta take his off.
Bex: Uh, so yeah, he takes them off. Um, he asks where, uh, Maddie and Jee are. Apparently Jee went to bed an hour ago. Maddie disappeared into the bathroom, and then Magda realizes she’s been in there a while. Um, so Chim volunteers very [01:02:00] quickly that he’ll go check on her. Um, Maddie’s fine. She’s chilling in the bathtub with a bottle of wine.
Alice: Yeah, like the empty bathtub. She’s having a great time.
Ellen: She actually did need to escape. She needed a place to hide
Bex: Um, but I love that Chim’s come home. I don’t know whether it’s lunchtime, whether it’s dinnertime. He’s got like, um, a takeaway bag in his hand, which appears to be only enough food for him.
Um, so he climbs into the bathtub with her to eat his sandwich, and Maddie hands him her glass of wine and then grabs the bottle and just starts swigging out of that.
Ellen: Yeah, and he’s like, “How was your day, um, otherwise?” And she’s like, “Oh, great. I’m a suspect in a string of burglaries. The police think someone at the call center is using our log in- information,” blah, blah, blah. But so she kind of explains what’s going on, [01:03:00] but someone took her password.
Bex: And then she gets a look on her face, like as soon as she said, “Someone took my password,” that she has a suspicion that she knows who it is.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Mm.
Ellen: Yeah, so does she go into the next scene, like already knowing what was going on before Noah actually admits to any of it?
Bex: Yeah, ’cause she’s wearing a wire.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: She very much either knew or she very strongly suspected, otherwise they wouldn’t have put the wire on her. Um-
Ellen: Mm-hmm
Bex: … so yeah, so she climbs out of the bathtub, goes to find Athena, um, they, and then goes back to dispatch.
And she walks in, Josh immediately cuts her off. They have a very intense conversation that Noah, for some reason can’t hear, despite the fact that apparently you can hear everything that happens on the dispatch floor, or may- maybe that’s only when it’s on a [01:04:00] call. I don’t know. Um, but he’s worried about what he can see.
Ellen: The new dispatch has got totally different acoustics to the old one, apparently. You can’t hear things-
Bex: Ah, that’s true
Ellen: … from the other side of the room.
Bex: Yes, that’s what it is. It was the old dispatch center was like the chamber of echoes. Yeah. The new one is better. Okay. The new one’s fine. Everyone’s good. Thank you.
Alice: The new one’s got, um, it’s got insulating foam in it.
Bex: Yeah. Vincent came in with his friend and sprayed it.
Ellen: Totally.
Bex: Um, so Josh walks off. Maddie stalks off to the break room. Noah follows her. Um, and he’s like, “Hey, you know, I thought you were off duty today.” And, um, Maddie’s like, “Yeah, they called me in. I think I’m getting fired.” And Noah’s all like, “Fired? Why would they fire you?”
“Yeah, ’cause you know, apparently I’m the lead suspect in all those burglaries. ‘Cause you know, the victims called 9-1-1, then they get burgled, they think I’m the reason [01:05:00] because I lost my password and someone’s been using my password to access the system.”
Ellen: Because I kept it in a … on a Post-it in my drawer.
Alice: Right. Like Bobby.
Bex: Um, and even if they can’t find a connection between her and the burglaries, she’s a security breach, so they have to get rid of her. Um, Noah lasts two seconds
Alice: from when he-
Bex: Oh yeah, folds like
Alice: a, like folds like a cheap lawn chair …
Bex: in, in said there’s, there’s like no, there’s no hesitation. She’s like, “Yeah, I’m gonna get fired.” He’s like, “It was me. It was me. I did it.”
Alice: I did it.
Bex: “I, I did it.”
Ellen: We knew that he was a Maddie fangirl, like he he couldn’t let her take the fall for him.
Alice: No.
Bex: Which then, like no actually puts, was he a fangirl or did he like see that she [01:06:00] was an easy mark and like target her from the very beginning?
Ellen: Yeah, and then come up with this sob story about his dad or whatever afterwards to make himself look less of, like more of a victim.
Bex: Yeah, I don’t know. Anyway- So so yes, it was him. Apparently that stepfather that, um, that his mother married, the one that, you know, wasn’t the beating crap, beating the crap out of him, apparently he’s not a great guy ’cause he got himself into some financial, um, problems. And, um, he borrowed money for some wrong people. Noah was trying to help him pay the money back, um, by helping these guys rob houses.
Keep in mind, this entire conversation is happening in the middle of the break room. There are other people in this break room. This is not a private conversation. Other than even taking into consideration that Maddie’s wearing a wire. Um, so he’s telling Maddie the sob story, like, “I, I didn’t wanna [01:07:00] do it.
I was trying to help my dad. I w- help my stepdad. I was trying to do a good thing.” Um-
Ellen: No one was supposed to get hurt.
Bex: No one was supposed to get hurt. Someone did get hurt.
Ellen: Famous last words.
Bex: Um, yes. And Maddie says, “I wish you could have told me about your family’s financial problems. We could have helped you.”
And he’s like, “Well, can you help me now?” And, um, Maddie says, “No, I’m sorry. It’s too late.” And she shows him the wire, and as she flashes it, um, Athena and Romero appear in the break room door. And Noah is, like, most upset about that over everything. He’s like, “You tricked me.”
Alice: Like, mate, you folded so easily.
Ellen: But he knows where these guys are gonna be because they wanted one more job, and he told them where to go. Um, so they know where they’re gonna be. So the, the would-be robbers go to this place. They grab the spare [01:08:00] key from a fake rock.
Bex: Oh, this is so stupid.
Ellen: Let themselves in, disarm the door with the code that they got from Noah. Um, apparently … Oh, they, they can hear something in the kitchen, so they go in there and see this woman who’s wearing a robe, and they tell her not to move, and it’s Athena. She turns around and points a gun at them.
Bex: So why did they need Athena in the robe pretending to be the homeowner? Why didn’t they just have police, like, standing in the lobby waiting for the intruders to walk in?
Alice: Lit- I don’t know.
Ellen: I thought the same thing. For the drama. It’s for, it’s for the drama.
Bex: For the drama.
Ellen: Absolutely. It’s way more dramatic to have Athena pretend to be a housewife.
Bex: It would’ve been more fun if Romero had been the one pretending to be the housewife.
Ellen: Yeah. Yes.
Bex: Yes. Put Romero in a robe, have him turn around, point the gun at them, and then Athena sort of walks up behind him and bonks him on the head. That would’ve been much more [01:09:00] interesting.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Um, but yes, so they have caught the intruders. They arrest them. Um, they also- Yeah, they’ve caught Noah … arrest Noah and do a perp walk from the, um, break room through the main dispatch floor-
Ellen: Poor Noah … to the elevator I feel so for him …
Bex: which, I don’t know, that’s why I wonder whether the racially insensitive casting was Noah because of the optics of having this young Black man being led out in handcuffs by two white police officers.
Ellen: Yeah, maybe.
Alice: Maybe.
Bex: I would love to know what that tag is. So that’s the end of the home invasion storyline, and I thought the episode was over. And I’m doing the notes and I’m thinking, “Wow, I got through that so quickly. That’s excellent.” And then I look at my Disney tracking of the, like how far through the episode I’ve gotten, I went, “Shit, I’ve still got another 15 minutes left.”
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Yep, there’s more.
Alice: It, it’s still going.
Ellen: [01:10:00] Yeah, so we’re going, i- now it’s time for Hen’s, um, you know- Yes … it’s the big day.
Bex: The entire rest of the episode is Hen’s medical stuff.
Ellen: Her ala- like, she, her alarm goes off at 4:00 AM, uh, and she immediately turns on a light and wakes up Karen as well in the process.
I’m like, jeez, when I have to get up super early, I like creep out of the r- out of the house basically Uh-huh … just to not wake anybody else up. That’s so mean to force Karen to get up at the same time. But she does say, “Oh, I’m sorry, you can go back to sleep.” It’s like, you just turned on the light.
Alice: Like she’s basically gonna go into the kitchen and bang pots and pans while she’s there. Like-
Ellen: Yeah
Alice: Um-
Ellen: But Karen goes out of the bedroom and she finds the living room in pieces, and Hen’s like, “Did someone break in? Was there another home invasion?”
Alice: Um, but Karen noticed [01:11:00] that the baseboards are chewed, ’cause they weren’t burgled, they were Hoovered. And this is why you should crate train your dogs.
Ellen: Poor Hoover.
Bex: So at some point they must have kicked him out of the bedroom, ’cause the last time- Yep … we saw him he was, like, asleep on the bed. Um-
Alice: Or they just left the bed- bedroom door open.
Bex: I don’t know. So he’s gone into the living room and absolutely destroyed it.
So yes, crate train your dogs. Give them somewhere to be at night, or when you are not there. Uh, Hen pretty much just says, “Okay, too bad, so sad, gotta go,” and buggers off to the hospital.
Ellen: Yeah,
Bex: she has no time for that. Leaving Karen to handle the dog and the mess that the dog has just made.
Ellen: Yep.
Bex: Uh, ’cause Hen has rounds to do.
Ellen: Oh yeah, this very stern Dr Simmons, um, is ready to take Hen with her. She wants to be impressed. So off they go. Um, Karen has taken Hoover to [01:12:00] Eddie’s place
Bex: No, no, I think Eddie came to pick up Hoover
Ellen: Oh, okay. I don’t remem- Maybe by the time I got to the end of this I wasn’t paying attention anymore. I remember, I remember Hoo- Hoover getting passed around to everyone else.
Bex: Yeah. So I think, I don’t know how or why Eddie gets involved, but I feel like he’s volunteered to come and, um, maybe, um, Karen has called him, like bitching about what has happened, and Eddie’s like, “I’ll take him.” So he comes over to pick up Hoover. He is sure that Hoover is great, and he thinks that Chris is really gonna love having a dog.
Alice: Yeah, like Chris, who’s supposed to be being punished because he’s lying, is now getting a dog, but it’s fine.
Ellen: Um, um- Maybe his purgatory is over now.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: So I don’t know how much l- how much later this is, because we’re cutting back and forth to Hen doing her, um, medical thing, which apparently goes for a few days while, um-
Alice: Yeah
Ellen: Hoover is-
Alice: Literally Hen’s [01:13:00] doing her practical exam for a few days. Um, while Hoover is getting passed around.
Bex: Either that or Hoover is literally spending like 10 minutes at everyone’s houses.
Ellen: Yeah. I think, I think it’s just-
Bex: It’s the same day and it’s just
Ellen: timey wimey.
Alice: Can’t fucking- Hoover at Eddie’s place, um, somehow makes a giant mess of like food, of like cereal and also a pan. Like how did he-
Bex: How did he get the fucking sautรฉ pan on the floor?
Alice: How did he get it? Yeah. Um, poor Chris is like, I think he has separation anxiety, and Eddie’s like, “Yeah, I think he needs a specialist,” and then provi- uh, proceeds to not get a trainer and just dumps him on Chim instead.
Bex: Uh, with attempts to dump him on Chim, Magda takes one look at the dog and slams the door in Eddie’s face while Chim just stands there going, “So sorry, I love you, bye.”
Alice: Yeah. Hen is still doing things, I think. [01:14:00] Uh, I don’t even remember. Like apparently she diagnoses a tumor at some point, but she just says that she recommends surgery
Bex: I wanna know what the other med students are thinking, ’cause this, like I’m assuming they’re, they’re like f- medical, like either interns or first year residents or something.
And they’re standing there watching this, like, med school dropout –
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Diagnosing and assessing patients. Yeah. What the hell do they think is going on? Um, so with Chim being out of the picture as far as Hoover, Eddie still does not get a trainer or a specialist for Edgar.
Alice: Oh, we, we do need to mention Eddie’s like, well, the doors shutting in Eddie’s face.
Eddie just goes – Yes … “That was weirder than usual.” Yeah. Like, I’m glad that like someone mentions the how weird their lives are, and that’s not even like, that’s not even that weird and it just –
Bex: Yeah, it’s like it’s not –
Alice: It’s still apparently weirder than usual …
Bex: it’s not weird, it’s weirder than usual. There is like a baseline [01:15:00] level of weird that is acceptable. Um. I love it. So yes, the, the dog then gets passed over to Buck.
Alice: And I think Buck would actually do really well, it’s just the stupid that he lives in a loft in like an apartment building.
Bex: He lives in a loft- Um … in an apartment building, yeah.
Alice: But yeah, like Hoover’s like yelling at, like barking up the stairs, and Buck’s running, like yelling down the stairs going, “I said I’d feed you. Give me a, like hang on, give me a minute.” And I’m like, oh, this is basically like me and my dogs. Buck’s like, “Hey, hey, listen, I know you’re hungry. You can’t bark like that, I have neighbors. Like, you need to listen to me. Listen. You got this? Not gonna embarrass me.” Um, but yes, unfortunately Buck’s landlord, I assume landlord, um, turns up and goes –
Bex: Yeah
Alice: “You know the rules, no dogs in the building, only cats.” It’s like, he’s, he’s as small as a cat, it’s fine.
Bex: Yeah, but cats don’t yell like that.
Alice: Yeah
Bex: Hen has [01:16:00] apparently succeeded in whatever she was meant to be doing, and she now gets to scrub in for surgery
Ellen: Yeah, but she’s only watching. She doesn’t get to actually stick her finger on an artery or anything this time
Bex: She still seems to think it’s pretty cool that she gets to scrub in.
Ellen: Yeah
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: She’s like, “Yes.”
Alice: Meanwhile, Hoover’s now returned to the Bathena household.
Ellen: Bathena’s like, “It didn’t work with anyone?”
Alice: Yeah. And Bobby’s like, “I called everyone I could think of.” And it’s like, no you didn’t. You passed it on to Hen, who then pa- Then passed- Like, and then he was passed around to everyone
Bex: Hen gave him to Karen, Karen gave him to Eddie, Eddie tried everyone that he knew. Um, so-
Alice: And none of these people that are living in LA and have government salaries hired a fucking dog trainer, or bought a fucking crate. But sure, it’s fine. I’m sure it’s the dog’s fault
Bex: Or like doggy daycare while you’re at work
Alice: Literally, just something. I’ve ca- like, it’s not separation a- he … Oh my God, he just doesn’t know who you are. [01:17:00] Give him time to decompress. He met you 10 minutes ago
Bex: Or send him back to the Sorority House
Alice: No, they’ll kill him Like, I get it.
Ellen: He’s recovering from a drug overdose, the poor thing
Alice: Yeah
Bex: That’s probably why he has separation anxiety, ’cause there’s so many fucking people at the sorority house that he’s never alone.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Um-
Alice: Poor Hoover. Justice for Hoover.
Bex: Yes. So Hoover did not pass any of his, like, assessments. Um, Hen apparently did pass hers though, uh, because she walks out of surgery sounding absolutely exhausted. Um, Doc Simmons doesn’t seem at all phased. Um, and-
Ellen: And Doc Simmons doesn’t show any kind of emotion at all. She’s a, she’s a-
Bex: Like an android …
Ellen: robot, yeah.
Bex: Um, she tells Hen that the end of the surgery concludes her practical exam. Um, Hen says, “How did I do?” And we cut to a barbecue at the Bathena residence, which by im- by, uh, implication we’re [01:18:00] meant to assume is that she passed, ’cause otherwise they wouldn’t be celebrating.
Ellen: Well, they might be commiserating.
Bex: Unless it’s like one of those instances where they have the two cakes, where you have, like, the cake if you pass and the cake if you fail.
Ellen: Yes, but it does- Um- … sound like she’s passed.
Bex: Yes, ’cause she is the guest of honor at the, um, at the barbecue, because Bobby wants to know how she would like her burgers cooked.
Um, I’m pretty sure she just wants it cooked, so she doesn’t die of salmonella- … before she can start med school, ’cause
burgers are not steaks. Yeah.
Alice: You cook fucking burgers. Yeah, I’ve seen people do, like, different ways to co- and I’m just like, “But how?” Because you’re supposed to cook it all the way through, but …
Bex: I mean, I’m okay with it, like, a little bit pink in the middle But that’s … I’m not asking for my burger medium rare.
Ellen: Mince can’t be partially done. It’s gotta be-
Bex: No. Done Mince needs to be cooked. [01:19:00] Yes. So yes, she has passed her neurology practical exam, um, and the further implication is that she’s now, like, full-time med student.
Ellen: Yeah, they never they actually never say this out loud, but I’m guessing by the rest of it, ’cause they’re all saying, like, “We’re g- we’re really gonna miss you,” it j- it sounds like she’s just given up. She’s, like, quit her job, and now she’s just gonna be a student until she is done- Yeah … with it.
Bex: Like, there’s even the whole, like, montage flashback of all the good times that she had as part of the 118, and I’m sitting here panicking even though I’ve seen up to episode ni- up to Season 9. I’m thinking, “Oh my God. Is Hen leaving the show at this point?”
Ellen: Yeah, is she leaving? Yeah. It just, it makes it feel like it. I mean, I, I was sort of like, okay, so is this the end of the med school arc now because she’s gonna realize how much she loves being a paramedic and she can’t … [01:20:00] I mean, like, she’s already gone back and begged for her, her degree, you know, place.
Anyway, I guess we’ll find out. Um, I mean, I know that she doesn’t stop being a paramedic, so we know that much at least. Hen’s like, “We live 20 minutes f- away from you all. Like, this is not gonna be the last time that we’re all together.”
Bex: Yeah, and Eddie, just because you refuse to talk to anybody when you stopped being a member of the 118 and went to dispatch doesn’t mean Hen is gonna be petty like you.
Ellen: Yeah, that’s right. He did. He suddenly felt out of place and decided that no one actually wanted to see him.
Bex: Sulked.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yes. Went outside and ate some worms. Um-
Ellen: Oh, bless him …
Bex: and so they’re all like, “Oh my God, I’m gonna miss you. Oh my God, I’m gonna miss you,” and Buck goes, “Hey, speaking of missing people, where’s the dog?”
Ellen: Yeah. Like, “Where’s my dog?”
Bex: Um, Athena has re-homed [01:21:00] him. She found him his forever home in someone else’s home.
Ellen: Which she sounds so happy about. And, um, Bobby’s like, “Hey, that’s my dog you’re talking about.”
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: But yeah, she’d found a quiet neighborhood and a house with a big yard, older couple, no kids. Uh, husband travels a lot. The wife hates being alone, and it’s Sharlo. She’s in bed, and her husband is actually there Um, do we see this now or later? No, this is now.
Alice: Later.
Bex: Oh no, we see it now. We see it now.
Alice: Oh, do we see it now?
Bex: Yeah, we see it now. I just couldn’t be bothered typing out the whole scene. But basically her-
Ellen: Yeah, and there’s, there’s not much to it. But yeah, they, they take the dog …
Bex: the husband is… Yeah, he’s leaving for another business trip. She doesn’t care ’cause she’s got the dog.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: All is right with the world.
Alice: They do have to, um, to unblock the doggy door again, but that’s fine. [01:22:00]
Ellen: It was just screwed in. I’m sure that they could work it out.
Bex: I’m sure that Hoover will have great fun playing with the raccoons.
Ellen: Hey, now he’s got a s- you know, a fall guy. He can, he can trash the place and just go, “It
was totally the raccoons.”
Bex: It was him. Yeah. Totally the raccoons.
Alice: It was the raccoon. Mm-hmm.
Bex: Um, speaking of rehoming, um- Maddie- Chim comes back from the party to, uh, to Maddie and Jee. Maddie is still feeling a little bit sad about the whole thing with Noah, she didn’t really feel like going celebrating, so she’s setting up a, uh, a picnic in the living room, which she’s allowed to do because Magda isn’t hovering and, um, complaining about how dirty the floor is or how unclean the blankets are or anything like that, because Maddie rehomed her.
Ellen: Jee doesn’t mind. She just comes in and sits down and hands Daddy [01:23:00] a fake sandwich because they’re gonna have a picnic in the living room.
Bex: Uh, because Magda went from, you know, “Sunlight is great, the UV rays kill all kinds of bacteria,” to, “No, the park is a f- um, breeding ground infested with bacteria. We can’t go there at all.”
Alice: Yeah, she’s like changed hardcore there, but sure.
Ellen: Yes, she suddenly developed germaphobia.
Bex: Yeah. Uh, so Jee was upset she didn’t get a park picnic, so they’re going to have dinner on the floor. Have an in the home picnic.
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: And the episode keeps going. There’s still more
Alice: Yeah, it’s still going.
Bex: Um, timey wimey-ness, I don’t know where we are in the days, in the weeks, in the time of day. Uh, but we’re going back to, uh, Marisol’s, uh, DIY disaster house, where she has gone grocery shopping, supply shopping.
I don’t know. She’s walking back towards her house on her phone with her mother, [01:24:00] um, complaining because she can’t get any contractors to come in and fix the mess that LAFD made of her house. Um- But it turns out that’s not a problem because LAFD have shown up to fix the mess that they made of her house-
Ellen: I, I thought it was-
Bex: specifically …
Ellen: funny actually. She said that, um, “I can’t… No one has a jo- the time to take on a job this small.” Small? I’m like, “They, they destroyed every ceiling in your place.”
Alice: Literally. Yeah, it, what?
Bex: They have to replace every single ceiling, and clean, possibly clean out all of the insulation in the attic and then redo it.
Ellen: Yeah, re-
Alice: Yeah, it’s-
Ellen: … redo that and then replace the ceilings, paint everything. Like, it’s a huge job. What are you talking about? It- Anyway.
Alice: It’s, yeah.
Ellen: It doesn’t matter ’cause the, the boys have showed up.
Bex: Yes. The boys have showed up, and because it would be weird if it was just Buck and Eddie showing up at this pretty girl’s house to help her fix, um, the mess that they’ve made, they’ve roped in a couple of the, like, background firefighters, [01:25:00] ’cause it’s totally not weird if there are other people there.
Ellen: So she looks very happy that the big strong guys have, uh, shown up to help her out She’s like, “Um, I gotta go, Mom.” It’s still not the end though
Bex: And we see every- No, but can I just mention, this is the first time we’ve ever seen them do any kind of rectification works.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: They have destroyed so much shit throughout this show. Like, so many doors and walls-
Alice: Yeah, starting from the pilot –
Bex: … and windows
Alice: … where they ripped down a wall. And a pipe.
Bex: Like, apparently it’s not just, you know, we stop at the… It used to be like you stop at the glass doors, you don’t go into the hospital. Like, you don’t go back and fix shit, and now we’re like, “Oh, it was a pretty girl, so of course we’re gonna go back and fix her shit.”
Ellen: As far as I remember, they don’t actually make any, uh, reference to the fact that she’s a pretty girl while they’re there poking holes in her ceiling. Like, I think they’re just there to do their job, but now they have to go back and fix everything.
Bex: Yeah, but it- yeah, but [01:26:00] it, it’s television. Um, and especially this kind of drama style of television that when you’ve got, like, attractive male characters that are single and an attractive female character, of course at some point there’s gonna be like, “Oh, is there going to be a romance?”
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Otherwise, why would they go back and fix it? Because they’ve never gone back to fix anything before. Yes.
Ellen: No, but if you hadn’t told me that there was a potential romance in the end of this, I would never have known.
Alice: No.
Ellen: It was not foreshadowed at all.
Bex: Really?
Ellen: Nope.
Bex: I don’t know. I think I remember watching it and going, “Okay, it’s ’cause it’s the pretty girl that they’ve come back to fix the shit.”
Ellen: Yeah, that part I can believe.
Bex: Gee.
Ellen: But I-
Bex: I wonder if there’s- I wouldn’t have- … gonna be a potential romance here.
Ellen: Yeah, I wouldn’t have gone that far. It w- it is weird that they went back to fix it when they haven’t done that before, but…
Bex: Hmm. Especially Eddie fixing stuff, ’cause he’s [01:27:00] better at breaking it than he is fixing it.
Alice: Yeah, at least Buck has pr- a proven track record of fixing walls. Eddie just let Buck do it.
Bex: Yeah, pretty much.
Ellen: Yeah, and he’s, he, like, lived in his apartment with the broken walls until Buck came over to fix them for him.
Anyway, that’s not the end.
Bex: Yes, that’s not the end of the episode. Oh my God.
Ellen: But wait, there’s more.
Bex: Please no. Uh, so yes, so we watch, um, Buck and Eddie and Marisol and the other 118, uh, firefighters walk into the house, and we’re gonna have one more 9-1-1 call, and I’m going like, “Oh my God, really?” It’s really interesting ’cause the subtitles for this 9-1-1 call, it’s “dispatcher” and “caller” through the entire thing. Um-
Ellen: Oh …
Bex: except as soon as they, we, we hear the dispatcher and then as soon as we hear the caller, I’m like, “I know who they are. I recognize those voices.”
Ellen: Yeah, me too. I recognized it as [01:28:00] Karen right away.
Bex: It’s so, like, th- I, they set it up like it’s this big reveal like, “Oh my God, it’s Karen,” and like as soon as she starts talking I’m like, “That’s Tracy.”
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: “That’s Karen.”
Ellen: Like,
Alice: it’s Karen.
Bex: So there has been an explosion at the polytech- Polytechnic Applied Astrophysics Laboratory. Um, the, the building may be on fire. Karen’s not sure. Um, she has a good reason not to be sure. She’s, like, got a massive laceration on her forehead. She’s covered in blood. She’s probably hit her head at some point.
She’s, she thinks some people are dead. Um, we’re getting, like, flashes of what the laboratory looks like. Um, and there’s very definitely somebody who’s missing an arm somewhere in the lab, ’cause there’s just an arm on the floor.
Ellen: Ew.
Bex: Uh, and then there’s the, like, the big reveal is that it’s Karen on the phone, and it just goes like, “Tell them to hurry,” and like, that’s the big reveal?[01:29:00]
Alice: Yeah. Like, we know her voice.
Bex: We knew it was Karen as soon as she started talking.
Ellen: But oh no, what’s happened? It’s, it’s a weird, um-
Bex: The lab blew up …
Ellen: it’s a, well, yeah, but, like, it’s a weird cliffhanger because it’s just out of the blue. Like, one minute they’re all celebrating because Hen has passed her thing, and the next minute-
Bex: Yeah
Ellen: the lab’s blown up and Karen’s on the phone. Like, it’s just, I feel like they’re trying to, that they’re getting, they like the idea of this cliffhanger thing, so they’re like, “Okay, quick, we need something to lead into the next episode.”
Bex: My cynical ass says the only way they can get people to keep tuning in each week is by having cliffhangers. ‘Cause if you wrapped up the story all in one episode, people would be like, “Well, okay, and I don’t really wanna watch next week. Let’s just skip next week.”
Alice: Yeah, I’m never watching this show again. I was trying to work out if there was, like, a little break or something, but no, it aired literally the week after.
Ellen: Hmm.
Bex: Yeah. They just really got a hard on-
Ellen: So it’s weird because we-
Bex: … for cliffhangers this season.
Ellen: Yeah, we never really had that before. Like, we, [01:30:00] episodes tend to wrap up pretty well.
Bex: Yeah, cliffhangers are meant for, like, you have a cliffhanger at the, um, the season one, the end of s- the end of episode one to lead into your emergency for season two, and that’s usually a double episode, so you’ve got, like, your cliffhanger maybe between those two episodes.
Like, maybe you have a cliffhanger at the end of the season-
Ellen: Yeah, if the story’s continuing, then yeah, okay
Bex: … but not in the m- like, not every single week.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Um, yeah, I, I’m starting to think this is why I didn’t like season nine, because they, it was the same sort of formula as season six. Like cliffhanger, cliffhanger, cliffhanger, hiatus, cliffhanger, cl- hiatus, cliffhanger.
And I’m like, “Yeah, I don’t… Like, just give me an episode. I don’t c- don’t need cliffhangers every five minutes.”
Bex: If your story and your characters are compelling enough, your audience will stick around because they want to see more of those characters. You don’t need to keep hooking us. And if you’re having to keep hooking us, then there’s something wrong with your characters and your story. [01:31:00]
Ellen: Yeah, I mean, in this one, there isn’t really anything wrong with any of it, that they could easily end the episode at several points earlier in this episode before the cliffhanger. Um, and it would’ve been fine, but yeah, it’s just odd.
Bex: Yes. Yeah, I, like, I found it odd that they finished the home invasion storyline so early, and then, like, dropped it like a hot potato and went, “Okay, moving on to Hen.”
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And, like, the entire back end of the episode is all Hen and Hoover.
Ellen: Yeah, that was, that is kind of a weird structure, isn’t it? Look, I didn’t hate this episode. I thought parts of it were really good, but, um, but yeah, the kind of overall structure of it’s a little weird.
Bex: I shit on him, but I, I like Romero. I like it when he shows up. It’s always a fun time-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: when Romero is there. And it’s nice that they brought him back. Like, whoever was watching the seasons before and remembered Paisley’s gone, “Hey, what about Detective Romero? Why don’t we bring him back?”
Alice: [01:32:00] Yeah. Yeah. It’s just funny how, like, he never seems to do anything, and then Athena walks in and solves it in two minutes and leaves. And it’s just like, “Yeah, cool.” It’s like, “What, what have you been doing, mate?”
Ellen: I think sometimes Bobby solves things before he does too.
Alice: Bobby and Michael’s telescope, um, he solves things before-
Ellen: Yeah
Bex: Wait, was that, that wasn’t Romero though. Was that Lou Ransone?
Alice: I think that was Lou.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: It’s been a while though. Like, to be fair, Lou’s the one that got his throat slashed, yeah?
Bex: Yes.
Alice: Yes. Yeah. Like, Lou was the one that I could not remember what he looked like because he was just so generic looking. That I was giving the show shit for spelling things out to the audience, and then they had to really zoom in on Lou’s scar for me to realize who he was.
And I was like, “Oh, yeah.” And then I’m like, “Oh, no, I am that, I am that audience now.” Um, but to be fair, he just looks like a generic white male. I [01:33:00] don’t know. Don’t ask me. Took me so, like I was just like, “Oh, is that Bobby?” No, it’s apparently Lou.
Ellen: All right. So what is happening next week then after this cliffhangery ending?
Alice: Oh, maybe something about Karen in danger? I don’t know.
Ellen: I think, I think that might be it.
Alice: Do you reckon they’ll race to the rescue?
Ellen: Good chance.
Bex: Nobody is racing, nobody is racing to the rescue this week.
Ellen: Oh.
Alice: Um, they’re just, they’re just smoothly, um, smoothly strolling to the rescue. I will-
Ellen: Just wandering over …
Bex: I will- Yeah … I will give them props that at least n- next week’s episode does follow on from this, ’cause I would absolutely have not put it past them to have that little teaser and then have an entire episode dealing with some other storyline before we go back to Karen.
Um,
Alice: but no. We’re, we’re working out where Hoover’s going next instead.
Bex: We’re gonna have an entire another Athena episode and then we’re gonna go back to Hen and Karen. Um, but no.
Alice: Oh my God, yeah. Athena’s gonna find out who, like, who stubbed, [01:34:00] like who stole her binder in, um, in high school before we go back to fucking Karen and Hen.
Bex: No, we are, we are going back to the laboratory. Nobody is racing to the rescue, but Hen is going to panic when the ex- an explosion rocks Karen’s lab. Um, the promo then-
Alice: Oh my God, that was Karen’s lab?
Bex: It’s apparently at Karen’s lab. Um, the promo does contain a spoiler, um, because it’s not just that Karen was in the laboratory when it blew up, uh, but apparently it was bring your kid to work day. And so Denny-
Ellen: Oh
Bex: … is in the lab as well.
Ellen: Oh, no. It wasn’t his arm-
Bex: Yeah …
Ellen: on the ground, was it?
Alice: He’s got one arm-
Bex: It was a very-
Alice: … for the rest of the show.
Bex: It was a, a very long, muscular arm. It doesn’t look like a child’s arm. Um-
Ellen: Okay,
Bex: that’s good.
Alice: But he likes his eggs poached. What? I don’t know. That was his only line last epis- this episode, so. But, but,
Bex: no, it was-
Ellen: No, he also asked whether it was a dog
Bex: … “I like my eggs poached,” [01:35:00] and, “Oh my God, is that a dog?”
Alice: Oh yeah, I forgot, “Oh my God, is that a dog?” Um- No, Denny, it’s a poached egg.
Bex: Um, so triggers include, like, arm removal. I don’t think we actually see the removal of the arm, but we see, like, the end result of the arm being removed, um, which goes under a broad umbrella of gore.
Um, there is funnily enough gonna be explosions. And there’s going to be recurring character injury/near death.
Ellen: Oh my goodness.
Alice: Damn, I hope they don’t kill Karen.
Bex: Or Denny.
Ellen: I- Well- Well, yeah … they don’t, they don’t kill children, so
Alice: They haven’t killed a kid yet. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. It can’t be him, he’s protected by the plot armor.
Bex: Yes, he has very thick plot armor.
Ellen: That’s slightly terrifying. Now I, maybe I should have gone straight on to the next episode while I was watching. [01:36:00] Anything else about this episode?
Alice: Like, it was fine. The dog stuff was infuriating. Because just hire a fucking dog trainer, you fuckheads. Stop bouncing it from home to home. He’s not getting any time to decompress.
Ellen: Poor Hoover, he gets a pretty raw deal in this whole episode.
Alice: And put him somewhere secure where he can’t eat the fucking house anyway.
At least he’s with a good wealthy couple now who can probably afford a dog trainer
Ellen: Well, it seem- it sounded like that woman was at home all the time anyway, so he’ll have someone with him
Bex: And she probably won’t care-
Alice: Yeah, but Hen- … he won’t know the other one … Hen and Karen were home when he ate the house, so
Bex: But it was the middle of the night
Alice: Are you saying that what’s-her-face is never gonna sleep?
Ellen: Yeah, he might do it at the wealthy people’s house
Alice: See what I mean? So get a dog trainer-
Bex: I’m going to say he’s going to be a perfect-
Alice: And crate train your pet anyway …
Bex: he’s gonna be a [01:37:00] perfect gentleman for her because he knows that he’s loved and wanted. Yep. He doesn’t need to act out.
Alice: That’s how dogs work. Mm-hmm.
Bex: Exactly.
Alice: Yep. Yeah. Hudson, you hear that? Stop acting out when I don’t walk you for three days. He’s not acting out, he’s just barking at possums. Anyway, justice for Hoover.
Bex: Justice for Hoover. Justice for Hoover. Hoover got justice. He got himself a new home.
Alice: What we learnt is that Eddie and… Eddie should never have a dog. Hen and Karen you’d think would be used to having a dog.
Bex: Christopher can have a dog though-
Alice: Yeah
Bex: … because he seems like he would be a responsible dog owner.
Alice: Yeah. Eddie’s like, “Chris, you have to be responsible. You’re not a child anymore.” And Chris is like, “Okay, I’ll be responsible.” And Eddie’s like, “Never mind, I can’t be responsible. Fuck this shit.”
Although to be fair, like, Eddie didn’t raise Christopher as a baby either, so He’s just like, “Fuck, I can’t leave for the military this time. I guess I’ll just re-home the dog.” [01:38:00]
Ellen: Aw.
Bex: Oh no.
Ellen: He, he only had the dog for one day. Like, I’m sure it wasn’t-
Alice: 10 minutes!
Ellen: … forever.
Bex: I don’t even know if he had it for a day.
Alice: 10 minutes he had the poor dog, and somehow it managed to get a frying pan.
Bex: I, I honestly think it’s that he picked, um, Hoover up from Karen’s and Hen’s, like, Hen has gone for her exam. Eddie has come to get Hoover, like maybe an hour or two later. Um, ’cause Chris is in his school uniform-
Alice: Yeah …
Bex: when he, when he discovers what Hoover has done. So th- he’s s- getting ready to go to school. So that’s what, maybe an hour or so after Eddie has come home with the dog.
Alice: Oh my God. Maybe… Hang on. Chim, um, Chris was making breakfast, dropped everything, and was like, “Oh fuck, Dad’s already mad at me because I skipped science class.” So he’s like, “Hoover.” And then he’s like, “Oh, we’ll just re-home the dog,” and Chris is like, “Oh shit.”
Ellen: Aw. Justice for [01:39:00] Chris. But then it’s- I mean justice, justice for Hoover.
Alice: Justice for Hoover.
Bex: But the, like the amount of mess, ’cause it wasn’t just breakfast. It was like both types of breakfast cereal, so at least Hoover’s balanced. ‘Cause it was the Space Stones and the wholewheat. It was a bag of popcorn. It was the skillet with like food still inside it, and then a massive bag of flour. So,
Alice: Like, and Hoover was a little dog. How did, how would he get… Oh my God. Anyway. Yeah.
Bex: Okay, so yeah, I’m going with your theory that Chris has dropped something and then-
Alice: Yeah
Bex: … just gone over the top to manufacture evidence to frame Hoover.
Alice: The, the cereal he got wasn’t great after all, so he’s dumped that on the ground so he can get new stuff. But then it-
Bex: Even the boxes are still so neat …
Alice: like he, he also didn’t wanna eat the fiber stuff, and so he dumped that as well.
Bex: No, because he knew that if, like he’d dumped out all of the Space Stones, Eddie’s gonna go, “Well, I’m not gonna go to the supermarket and buy any more cereal-“
Alice: Yeah, exactly. You have to eat the fiber stuff
Bex: because he’s dumped out the wholewheat stuff.
Alice: Yeah. So he’s like, “Nup, dump that as well.” Yeah. [01:40:00] And Hoover’s just sitting there like, “What did I do to deserve this?”
Bex: “What did I do?”
Ellen: All right. Well please tell us what you thought about this episode.
Alice: If you’d like any tips on crate training your dogs, um, hit me up.
Ellen: Yeah. Who do you believe, Chris, or do you believe the dog? Team Chris or Team Hoover.
Bex: Let us know if you too would have liked to have seen Romero in a robe, um, apprehend those intruders.
Ellen: Leave us a comment on Spotify or YouTube, or send us a DM, whatever you want to, however you want to get in touch with us. Yeah. There’s lots of different
Alice: ways. We have BlueSky, I think.
Bex: We do. If you’re sending me a DM-
Ellen: We do have BlueSky
Bex: … if you’re sending us a DM on BlueSky, um, please be patient. I’m still not willing to verify our age on BlueSky, so it locks me out, so I have to log in with my VPN. It’s a process. I don’t always remember to do it, so I miss DMs on BlueSky. But you can DM us on-
Alice: Yeah, here in Australia, um, we’re not allowed social media [01:41:00] unless we’re over 16, and apparently the fact that we’ve all had social media accounts for over 16 years doesn’t count.
Bex: BlueSky is taking it-
Ellen: Well, BlueSky’s only been around for a year
Bex: very, very seriously.
Alice: Yeah. Bl- BlueSp- BlueSky’s only been around for not very long, but, like, all the other-
Bex: I don’t even know how we could verify, ’cause the account is in the name of the podcast, so the podcast doesn’t have a government ID for me to upload either- Oh … is the issue.
Alice: The, the podcast isn’t old enough to be-
Ellen: You’d have, you’d have to put your name on it
Alice: to be on BlueSky. That’s the problem. It’s not 16 yet.
Bex: So, like, Twitter is a dumpster fire. Um, but our DMs are open there. They’re also open on TikTok or on Instagram. Um, I mean, they are open on BlueSky, I just need to take additional steps to be able to read them.
Ellen: Well, all of the contact information is on the website, thatweewooshow.com. Uh- Yeah … that’s it for this week.
Alice: Talk to us. We like getting chatted to.
Ellen: Yeah. Do let us know. Um, thank you for listening this week, and we will talk to you next time [01:42:00] for s- episode six, which is called “Tomorrow”. See you then.
Bex: Bye.
Alice: Bye.
Ellen: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world, too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you’re not alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help. Just Google “crisis support” in your location to find out the number.
If you enjoy our podcast, you can help us out by leaving us a review on Spotify or your preferred listening app, and by sharing our social media posts. Find out more at thatweewooshow.com.
Leave a Reply