Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Bex, Ellen, and Alice watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss episode 3 of the fourth season of 9-1-1, titled “Future Tense”.
The 118 race to save a man under siege by his high-tech smart home, and a yoga teacher who has lost her vision. Athena hunts down a bank robber disguised by Covid protocols. The 118 prep an out-of-state mission.
Content warnings for episode 4.03:
Cadavers in a medical school context, discussion of cancer, discussion of bad parenting, fainting, the foster care system, stalking, worms in an eye.
Mentioned in this episode:
- We have stickers and other things on Redbubble!
- “Lasagne ultrasound meme”
- Snopes entry for MRI of a fetus
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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 A B C show, 9-1-1. I’m Bex.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Ellen: And I’m Ellen.
Bex: As we do every episode, thank you so much to everyone who has listened to any or all of our previous episodes, to everyone who has shared our social media posts and who has rated us on Spotify or Apple Podcasts In an attempt to get the word about our little podcast out, we very much appreciate it.
Uh, this week’s shout out goes to CelticWelsh over on YouTube, who in response to our thinking and [00:01:00] pondering and contemplating the sleeping arrangements in Buck’s loft during the pandemic, um, has put in their 2 cents.
Um, and they said that “I remember thinking that Chim and Hen slept in the living room area and Buck and Eddie shared the bed. In hindsight, that was probably Fanon that I just misremembered as Canon. Um, I also remember thinking that Chris was with Carla for some reason.”
Ellen: Oh, yeah. That’s a possibility, I guess. But how long for like, for months? Like
Bex: It does seem, I, I don’t know. I think remember it was a kind of gentler pandemic, so I think it was like only a month or so that they were in lockdown.
Yeah. But as we discussed, we never, nobody seems to care about where Christopher was during the pandemic. Except that yeah, there was
Alice: Buck mentions that Eddie went back to him. But like where was he?
Bex: Yes, but back to where like [00:02:00] my, my headcanon, is that he was stuck at camp the entire time that they just locked the kids down at science camp because I mean, it was like farm to table. So they were growing food, they would’ve had enough food to sustain them there.
Alice: True, true.
Bex: And I also wholeheartedly support the Buck and Eddie sharing a bed while Chim and Hen had the couch and the air mattress down in the living area.
Ellen: Of course you do.
Bex: So thank you celticwelsh for your comments.
Ellen: Thank you!
Bex: So before we dive into discussing this week’s episode, which is episode three of season four, “Future Tense”, Alice, could you remind us what happened in episode two? Yeah.
Alice: Last week on 9-1-1, Chimney and Buck rescued a group of kidnapped pregnant women from a house submerged in mud and Athena managed to escape from a house which has slid down a cliff in the landslide.
Ellen: So this episode is called “Future Tense”. This is the third episode of season four. [00:03:00] Um, so this first aired in February, the 1st of February, in fact, 2021. So we’re still mid pandemic, but the 9-1-1 universe is kind of coming out the other side, already lucky them. Um, the official summary for this episode says, uh, the 118 race to save a man under siege by his high-tech smart home and a yoga teacher who has lost her vision.
Athena hunts down a bank robber disguised by COVID protocols. Meanwhile, Buck confides in Maddie, Hen clashes with her antagonizing medical school lab partner and members of the 118’s crew prep for an out-of-state mission. Once again, they’ve described pretty much everything that happens in this episode, which is quite comprehensive, I guess.
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: None of these things were deleted from the episode.
Bex: No, it is comprehensive and correct.
Ellen: And we have [00:04:00] some trigger warnings for, um, cadavers in a medical school context. So like autopsy kind of vision here, we have, um, cancer and, uh oh yeah, the cancer is part of the medical school thing. Discussion of bad parents.
Fainting, the foster care system, stalking and very disgusting worms coming out of someone’s eyes, which is, ugh, really? Okay. This, there’s so many things in this episode that I just could not watch. I had to hide behind my eyes. But anyway, we can get, we get into that. Where are we even starting with this episode?
Bex: Uh, we’re going to start with Andy and his Hildy security system in, in his brand new smart home.
Ellen: Oh, yes. Yes. I quite like this Hildy things like, apart from like, when it starts to act a little creepy, um, it sounds [00:05:00] it’s got quite a comforting, like voice to it. I quite like the beginning part of it.
Alice: Like I’ve got Google running my house,
Bex: but, um, I was about to ask, does anybody have a smart house?
Alice: Yeah. It’s not, my last house was smarter. This one I haven’t fully set up yet. Um, but like my air conditioner is voice controlled. My, um, obviously like smart speakers are voice controlled, my lights are voice controlled.
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: Oh
Bex: right.
Alice: Which is cool, but yeah, I haven’t totally finished setting it up yet, so I need to get my TVs back to being voice controlled.
Ellen: Yep. Fancy.
Bex: I have lights that are connected to the Google Home device, so they’re voice activated. Um, I know it’s, it’s not like, it’s not cool to do Harry Potter stuff anymore, but one of our lamps is Harry. The controls are Harry Potter esque. [00:06:00] So rather than saying to turn the lamp on, I just like, “Hey Google, Lumos.”
Ellen: And there it goes.
Bex: It just, and then if you tell it “nox”, it’ll turn the lamp off. It is listening.
Alice: Yeah. I used to have mine all, um, like I’d say something and it’d automate a whole bunch of things. So like when I was leaving in the morning, I could say,
Bex: oh, yeah, yeah. That the routines?
Alice: Like goodbye. Yeah. The routines. Um, I could say goodbye and it’d turn everything off.
Bex: that’s cool.
Alice: And when I’d say, I’m home, it’d turn on various things. Yeah.
Ellen: Mm. Well, probably the fanciest, um, automation we’ve got is, um, the sprinkler system outside is, my husband had it set up so that if it had rained that day, the sprinklers wouldn’t go. And if it, and, you know, they came on on a timer type thing, but they would only come on if it hadn’t rained.
And like stuff like that, it was quite [00:07:00] cool. But, um, that’s, but no, we have, I, I don’t have lights that turn on when I ask them to. That’s quite, it’s quite fancy.
Alice: It’s cool except for like, I’ve got it set on a timer as well. Um, so that when I’m coming home from work, it automatically turns on like it used to do it, location, proximity, but it’s a bit harder now that I’m out in the bush.
Um, so it’s just on a timer, but I’ll be napping and it’ll turn on at sunset and I’m just like, no, I’m sleeping. Turn off again.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. So the, uh, automation isn’t always, I doesn’t always do exactly what you want.
Alice: No.
Ellen: Oh, well this guy is, something’s going wrong with his house this morning. Like when he gets out of bed, like it opens the curtains.
Bex: Well, everything’s fine when he gets outta bed. Yeah. The cur the curtains are like, Hildy controls the curtains. She controls the thermostat, she controls the, um, the coffee machine. She controls the sound system. [00:08:00] He also has cameras in like every room of his house so that Hildy can track him, which, um, I don’t understand.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Having the cameras inside the house, I know that people do it. They have like ring cameras set up inside their house. I don’t know about that.
Alice: I’ve got cameras outside.
Bex: Oh yeah, yeah. I’ve got a, I’ve got a ring camera outside too, which, you know, I really appreciate, but I’m not gonna start setting them up inside my house.
Alice: But yeah, inside’s kind of, I, I do have a friend who has it inside and um, she’ll occasionally, like if she trips over or if the dogs do something funny, she’ll send us vision of it, which is funny. Um, but they have it just to track the dogs when they’re not home. But, um, they just leave it on all the time.
Ellen: I mean, you wouldn’t wanna be the sort of person who walks around the house with no clothes on, right?
Alice: Oh, all the time. Like, because I my cousins…
Bex: Alice does that all the time,
Alice: like seriously. So my cousins had, um, had access to it [00:09:00] because they used to live there and when they moved out, um, like my cousin and my cousins like partner, um, when they moved out I was like, oh, you know, like just keep access to the cameras, it’s fine. Um, and then I realized like way too late that they had access to like all the cameras when I’d be like walking around naked. I’m just like, um, please don’t check the cameras.
Ellen: Yeah. About that.
Alice: ‘Cause they’ve got access to the ones…
Bex: Oh my god
Alice: that don’t record as well.
Bex: That reminds me of that story of Misha’s where he was house sitting for Richard and then Richard had to remind him that, um, that they had cameras in the house and that his wife was periodically checking the cameras.
And apparently Misha was in like a no clothing phase.
Alice: Um, Misha’s always in a no clothing phase. There’s the story of when he was at JIB as well. And um, and he was walking around naked and like in front of his window ’cause he was on the phone. And then he realized that like, he was walking around in front of the window that like went out to all the [00:10:00] other windows and he was like, oh shit.
And so he mentioned it to like the con organizer and she’s like, “we know.” He was like, oh cool. So you all saw it? Yeah. Great.
Ellen: Oh my god, that man’s a menace.
Alice: He’s such a menace.
Bex: Okay, but Anthony, apparently I called him Andy and that was wrong.
Ellen: We should get back to this episode.
Bex: Anthony is not walking around naked because it’s, um, you know, primetime, syndicated network television. They, they don’t have the, the ability to have like nudists on the show with everything like out. Um, so he’s not naked, but he does have cameras in his house. And like we were saying, the Hildy system seems to be working fine until he goes into the kitchen and asks Hildy to start making him a coffee.
And then he asks Hildy to play some music. He wants some happy music. Um, what he gets is like death metal.
Alice: Yeah,
Bex: I, it’s probably not death metal. I know that there are, they’re like, that’s a very specific genre within [00:11:00] sort of the heavy metal, but it’s, it’s loud and it’s,
Ellen: it’s very loud.
Bex: It’s not happy music.
Ellen: No.
Bex: Um, and while the, while he, it’s also playing at like top volume.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: So while Anthony is freaking out trying to get Hildy to stop the music, the coffee machine is also malfunctioning and the espresso is going everywhere.
Ellen: And she, he’s like shouting to, to tell Hildy to stop making the coffee. But Hildy doesn’t know how to help with that because it can’t hear over the music, I guess. Or has been told not to respond, as the case may be.
Bex: Right. That’s the question. So at this point we think it’s just Hildy malfunctioning. Was it Justine? Was she controlling the copy machine and the music?
Alice: Yeah, I think she was trying to fuck up his morning. Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. Because we definitely see that there are external forces [00:12:00] working on Hildy once Anthony gets into the bathroom, which like, dude, I like, I know for the drama they have a camera in the bathroom, but dude, why do you need a camera in the bathroom?
Alice: Yeah, yeah. In the bathroom’s too much.
Ellen: Um, anyway, he, he disconnects the coffee machine from the wall to get it to stop, which is a good start unless it’s like a wireless, unless it’s a battery operated thing, that’s pretty much the only way that you can stop an electronic thing is pulling the plug.
But anyway, he goes, yeah, he does try to get into the shower and asks Hildy to start the morning shower. Hildy is gonna set the water temperature to 99 degrees.
Alice: He has a lot of trust in Hildy.
Bex: He does.
Ellen: Well, I’m sure normally it’d be perfectly fine.
Bex: Yes. Normally it probably would be perfectly fine.
But after Anthony, uh, sets, gets Hildy to set the shower, we cut to a woman in a, an [00:13:00] apartment that is very definitely not part of Anthony’s house. Um, looking at a Hildy dashboard and pulling up the footage from the bathroom. And she says like, screw you, Anthony. Lukewarm just like you. Which yeah, 37 degrees, which is what 99 degrees translates to. That’s, that’s a, that’s,
Ellen: yeah, that’s, that’s not a very hot shower.
Bex: That’s not a very hot shower. Um, so not only does she have access to the Hilda’s cameras, she apparently has access to all of Hildy’s controls. So she starts turning up the water temperature.
Ellen: Before we get to this bit, can we just, I forgot to mention a minute ago that when Anthony, when when Anthony gets into the shower, he’s, he, thanks Hildy, which is, it’s very polite, um, to thank the robot overlords.
Bex: Oh, I always,
Ellen: after they do things for you,
Bex: I always thank Google.
Ellen: Yeah. Just in case. Just in case they take over. [00:14:00]
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: And we have to remember that we were nice to them.
Alice: Yes. Like, mine will spare me because I thanked it all the time. That’s fine.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Anyway, yes, she tells, uh, Hildy to turn up the water temperature and she’ll just,
Bex: well, she turns it up. There’s like a, a d on her dashboard, there’s a thermometer and she just like yos it right up to the max, which according to what they’ve put in post was 137 degrees Fahrenheit.
Ellen: And Hildy does say, are you sure? Which is good safeguards,
Alice: yeah. Even Hildy’s like, what the fuck, bro?
Ellen: Justine’s like, “oh yeah, I’m sure.” And so Anthony is like, you know, suddenly getting hot. So he is like, “No, stop. Ow, stop. Ow. Shut off.”
Bex: So like for the, I’m gonna be saying this a lot, this episode for the drama. I know that they have Anthony like, stay [00:15:00] in the shower cubicle because then it means that he slips and he falls and we have to get the 118. But why the fuck didn’t he just like step out of the spray?
Yeah, like the shower. Just get outta there, get out.
Ellen: All he does is like try and, and he runs his hands over his head to try and get the water off him. It’s like, yeah,
Alice: do like, that’s not how it works.
Ellen: You have to get out of the shower. Like Yeah.
Alice: Get out of the, to stop the water.
Ellen: Anyway.
Bex: But he does this
Ellen: for the drama.
Bex: For the drama. He stays under the water, um, slips in the, um, the tile and hits his head and Justine sees this or she doesn’t see that he slips, but she sees that all of a sudden there is like blood on the glass of the shower, which again, I don’t know how uh, ’cause it looks like it’s
Alice: blood in the water. It’s fine,
Bex: but it looks like bloody hand print has sort of smeared. But [00:16:00] this guy’s like fallen and he is immediately unconscious so Ha for the drama.
Ellen: Yeah. He hit his head and suddenly
Bex: they need Justine to, I don’t know. Yeah, they need Justine to see that there, that something is wrong. So it she’ll turn off so that they don’t like completely cook this guy or he drowns in his own shower for the drama.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Um, so she does turn off the water and then very, very kindly calls 9-1-1.
Alice: Yeah. How nice of her after, you know, trying to burn him alive.
Ellen: Yeah. She didn’t just leave him for dead. Like she was happy enough to burn him to a crisp, but she was like, okay, he’s hurt. I guess I’ll get some help.
Bex: I think probably like, she wanted to have a little bit of fun with him, but she didn’t really want to hurt him.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: I don’t know. She had like crazy ex-girlfriend vibes to me.
Bex: Oh. She’s definitely crazy ex-girlfriend. But I think, yeah,
Alice: she had the crazy eyes going. Yeah. All way.
Bex: But I think that there was probably a limit of [00:17:00] what she was willing to do to him.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Also, also for the drama, I don’t think that the water could have possibly got that hot.
Ellen: Oh, right. ‘
Bex: cause I did look up the, like water stuff.
Ellen: You did your research.
Bex: Well, I, I actually remembered reading a journal article about this in law school where it’s now like, part of building codes is there is a maximum that hot water systems can be set to, in order to prevent scalding injuries. Like, so in Australia it ha you cannot, your hot water system cannot get hotter than 50 degrees.
Ellen: Okay.
Alice: Oh, there you go.
Bex: And it, and in fact, if you have a, that’s residential. If you are in aged care or childcare or a school, it’s 45 degrees. Oh, okay. I’m not converting that to Fahrenheit. So Americans just figure it out in your head what that equates to in, in freedom units. Um, yeah. [00:18:00] And I did check I, when I took a shower earlier, I put my, took my little digital thermometer that I cook with up into the shower and that was, um, that was, that was 53 degrees, so I was a little bit, yeah, so that’s like maximum.
Ellen: Well, very good research, well done.
Bex: No cold water. Yeah. So, yeah. Um, and at that temperature, yeah. If you’re under there for about a minute, you’re gonna get some serious scald injuries.
Alice: Yeah, definitely.
Ellen: Hmm. There you go.
Bex: There you go. And yes, Justine calls now, it’s one of the politest 9-1-1 calls that I think we’ve heard.
Ellen: Do we actually get her, we actually get her name here somewhere. Yeah. Is that why you are referring to her as by her name? Okay. I’m just, yeah. Checking
Bex: because later, later on when Athena, um, Athena goes to visit her. Okay. Um, she calls her by name because, um, Maddie has pulled the information [00:19:00] after she realizes what a psycho Justine has been.
Yeah. So yes, as per my rule, if there is any way, it doesn’t have to be, and like someone physically saying the name, as long as I can see the name, I’m going to use the name.
Ellen: All right. So, uh, to start with Maddie is like, um. You know, she assumes that Justine is there when she says, like, “My boyfriend fell in the shower. I think he hit his head.” And Maddie’s like, is, “Can you tell me if he’s still breathing?” And Justine’s like,
Alice: it’s hard to tell,
Ellen: “I think so.” and then she, she discovers that Justine isn’t actually at the house and she’s, um, she saw it on the video feed and Maddie’s like, “There’s a video feed in the shower?”
Alice: Yeah, the video feed in the shower is very weird. I would also be weirded out Maddie.
Ellen: Yeah. But then she’s, she reveals that he has a smart home where everything’s online. So still weird, you [00:20:00] know, it’s like you just happen to be watching the feed when he slipped over and hit his head?
Alice: Yeah, sure. Why not?
Ellen: Anyway, the 118 rock up.
Bex: Of course they do. Um, Bobby very politely rings the doorbell, even though Buck reminds him that dispatch said that the patient was unconscious. Um, Bobby reminds Buck that they also said that it was a smart home.
Alice: Yeah, it’s really cool. It like the Hildy system, we get a like point of view from the camera and it like highlights the badges and it’s just like, oh yeah, they can go in.
And it’s like, that seems kind of dangerous though because like, what if someone just steals a uniform or a badge?
Bex: It also scans their faces. Um, so I’m thinking it might be like cross-referencing it with their personnel records because it then immediately like, identifies Eddie later on.
Alice: True, true, true.
Bex: But for some reason, yes. It scans their badges, it scans their faces and it recognizes them as LAFD. So [00:21:00] it opens the door for them and welcomes ’em to the house. To which Hen finds really, really creepy and everyone agrees.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: So they find the guy in the shower, he’s still unconscious and he is all red. Like it looks okay, this is gonna sound silly, but it looks like someone’s just spray painted him with red paint, like
Bex: they probably did.
Ellen: I don’t even, I don’t even know what sort of this burn like scalding burn would look like, but I don’t know. It just, it didn’t
Bex: probably like that, but it,
Ellen: I, I hope it would look like, like I hope I never find out. But um, but yeah.
Bex: So while Chim and Hen are working on Anthony, Bobby notes that it looks like Anthony fell down while the water was still on because he still has shampoo in his hair, but they can quite clearly see [00:22:00] that the water is off. So he asks, like, “Who turned the water off?” And they all, and then turns to look at the camera and we cut back to Justine and she’s like, “Okay, cool. I see the firefighters now we’re all good. Right?”
Alice: Hmm. Yeah. She, she really wants to get off the phone for some reason.
Bex: Yeah. Well, Maddie is like, “no, no, no. We just, I just need to talk to you like a little bit more for the report.” And she’s like adding Justine’s details into the incident report.
Alice: Yeah. Maddie’s like, “So did the smart home send you an alert this morning?” Or Justine’s like, “I, uh, happened to check in on him and saw he needed help,” and Maddie’s like, “Yeah, he’s lucky you did check on him in the shower.”
Um, so Maddie’s definitely got some red flags going up here.
Bex: Yeah. She’s not the only one. Eddie is extremely creeped out by this house. [00:23:00]
Ellen: Oh, I love this scene. It made me laugh so much.
Bex: I do. There, there’s so much like I do I don’t enjoy about this episode, but the, the Eddie versus Hildy storyline is hilarious. I love it.
Alice: Yes, the Eddie stuff. Yeah, it’s, it’s the best part of the episode.
Bex: So Eddie, Eddie and Buck are getting the gurney from the, the rig. And as they, um, as they’re walking up, Eddie is questioning why anybody would wanna live in a house like that with a camera and microphones anywhere, you know, not sure who’s watching or who’s listening.
Um, and Buck is incredibly intelligent in this episode because he says, “I hate to break it to you, Eddie, but if you have a computer or a smartphone, a smart tv, smart anything, then anyone can spy on you.” Yeah. And Eddie responds, “Well, now I’m thinking I shouldn’t buy that fancy smart coffee maker that I keep seeing commercials for.”
At which point, Hildy pipes up greets him by name, even by, gets a photo of him [00:24:00] up on the display in the kitchen, which I think she took,
Ellen: it’s the worst, it’s the worst angle.
Bex: I think she took it, it from the, like the front door camera. Yeah. Um, and says, “Here are some popular coffee makers.” And then shows him, um, like ads for coffee makers and asks him if he would, if he would like to hear reviews for any of the coffee makers that she has selected for him.
Alice: Yeah. Do you want the reviews?
Bex: Buck thinks this is hilarious and just like whispers so that Hildy won’t hear him. You know, “Welcome to the Future,” and Eddie’s like, this is fucking terrifying.
Ellen: But it’s, it’s like that, right? Like all you have to do is mention something around your phone or whatever and you start getting ads for it.
Bex: Yes. But not to sometimes, not to the point of like Hildy greeting you by name, but yes.
Ellen: No, no. That is a little bit far. But yes,
Bex: all you have to do is start talking about something and suddenly your Facebook ads and like the ads that pop up [00:25:00] on Google when you’re doing searches, um,
Ellen: yeah.
Bex: Or even on web pages that are like powered by Google, have whatever it was you were talking about in the advertising.
Ellen: It’s a bit concerning. It’s occasionally useful, but mostly concerning.
Bex: Mostly concerning. Concerning, yeah. I mean, I’m not gonna go as like, as far as Eddie goes in this episode, but it yeah, it is slightly concerning. So they get Anthony out of the shower onto the gurney, start wheeling him out of the house, um, at which point he wakes up.
Alice: Oh yeah. Meanwhile, Maddie and Justine are still talking and Justine’s like coming clean and it’s just like, “oh, you know, I worry about him alone in the house. We’re we were supposed to be planning our future together, not giving each other space.”
Ellen: Um, yeah. You get the feeling that she’s like unloading onto Maddie, like,
Alice: yeah. Maddie’s just like, um,
Bex: what’s [00:26:00] also explaining why when Anthony wakes up and like, he’s completely freaked out. Freaked out about the fact that he’s strapped to a gurney in his living room. Um, and Bobby tells him that his girlfriend called 9-1-1, that he starts to freak out to the point that Chim thinks he needs to be sedated.
Alice: Yeah. Literally it’s just like, ah, let’s sedate him. Chim’s like, I’m not dealing with this shit.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And Maddie adds notes to the, her record as she’s talking to as Justine is unloading to her, that she is dispatching police for suspected cyber stalking and reckless endangerment.
Alice: Yeah. Whoops.
Ellen: So the next thing we we see is Athena knocking on Justine’s door.
Bex: Yes. Which she said she’s just there to check in, but Justine immediately knows what it’s about and she’s like, she says, “Oh, that 9-1-1 lady sent you.” [00:27:00] And because we need to have an episode theme name drop, even if it’s partial, Athena says, “She just wanted us to have a talk about your future,” which might involve some sort of mandatory counseling and possibly a, a restraining order
Ellen: or, I think one of the themes of in, in this episode is that every single person in it needs therapy badly.
Alice: Literally, it may as well be called the therapy episode.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: But the irony is the two of them are in therapy.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Possibly the two that maybe don’t need it as much. Everybody else needs therapy.
Ellen: Well, every, everyone in therapy is, is suddenly well adjusted, whereas everyone else is just like freaking out. It’s like, oh, maybe you should talk to someone about this. No, I’m fine.
Bex: But it’s also really interesting that it’s like everybody needs therapy. Um, and they are absolutely horrified at the idea of getting therapy, because the reactions to Buck’s, revelation that he’s in therapy and May’s [00:28:00] revelation that she’s in therapy by everybody else.
Yeah. Like, they’re like, why? That’s,
Alice: it’s like, gee, I wonder, have you seen who I’m surrounded by?
Ellen: Anyway, we’ll get there.
Bex: We’ll get there. Yes. Um, so the Bathena residence is where we come to after we’ve had the title card. And that is not a smart home like Anthony’s, but they do have a new,
Alice: but they have a new addition.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: This, this little robot vacuum, uh, is making like R2D2 noises, and that would be the first thing that would get turned off in my house.
Bex: I, I don’t think they do that.
Ellen: We have vacuum clean… we have a robot vacu… no, they don’t.
Alice: They absolutely do not do that.
Ellen: You could, you could make it do that if you wanted. But our, our one is loud enough on its own. It doesn’t need additional robot noises. [00:29:00]
Alice: Um, yeah. This,
Ellen: it drives me insane,
Alice: is the dumbest robot vacuum I’ve ever seen. Um, like it just full on crashes into Athena.
Ellen: Um, it gets stuck.
Alice: It crashes into a lamp and knocks it over.
Bex: But we do get like an amazing, like, resolution to it. So I’m quite happy to have a dumb smart vacuum cleaner for how it ends.
Yeah.
Alice: Um, yeah, so May has bought them this robot vacuum because now that she’s working, she wants to chip in. And so yeah, to contribute, she offered to pay rent and Athena told her no. And so she bought them the dumbest robot vacuum in the world,
Ellen: but it’s super cute. Like, it, it, it comes close to them and it says, “excuse me.”
Alice: But then just bumps into them anyway
Bex: and then it gets stuck on the base of a lampshade and just keeps repeating. “I am stuck. I am stuck,” as it tries to, to move forward. Um, but rather than [00:30:00] waiting for someone to rescue it, it, it keeps continuing its forward motion to the point where it manages to knock over the lamp.
Alice: Um, yeah. Just straight up knocks over the lamp.
Bex: Yeah. So they go, Bobby goes to rescue the robot. Athena goes to rescue the lamp, and I’m suddenly distracted by the fact that, uh, the fireplace has been rebuilt, um, and looks identical to how it was before. Bobby and Michael smacked it down to pieces.
Ellen: Really?
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Oh my God.
Alice: Oh, that’s so funny.
Bex: Which is, do you think is,
Ellen: did they just bring back in the part of the set that, like, is this a real house? Like, or is this.
Bex: No, I’m assuming it’s a set.
Ellen: A set that they can deconstruct
Alice: A set. Yeah. Yeah.
Ellen: Oh my God, that’s, yeah.
Bex: But, um, yes, I was taking photos of the screen because Disney won’t let you screenshot shit and yet they even bring back the, the weird sun ray mirror above the fireplace. I just think it’s,
Alice: they even rescued the [00:31:00] mirror that they had.
Bex: I think it’s, it’s just so ironic ’cause Michael said he hated that fireplace. And yet, you know, apparently Athena made, I, sorry, rebuild it identically to how it was.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah. She hated the fire pit so much, so she was like, no,
Bex: you can fix this.
Ellen: You put it back the way it was.
Bex: Um, so while I’m distracted by trying to work out what the fuck is going on with the fireplace, um, Bobby has banished the robot vacuum cleaner out onto the patio. Um, and Athena is, is, uh, making sure that her lamp hasn’t been smashed and is, um, bemoaning that she’s not ready for the future if the future is one that evolves robot vacuum cleaners.
Alice: Yeah, the vacuum cleaners stuck
Ellen: again,
Alice: again,
Bex: but it does lead to a conversation.
Alice: Oh, they have a chat about May. Yeah.
Bex: They have a conversation about, um, because Athena says that. [00:32:00] May can use her wages to chip in for groceries. And Bobby’s like, oh, does that mean that you are finally on board with, um, with May’s new job being a 9-1-1 dispatcher?
Apparently she’s passed training and they are going to start putting her on actual calls, and Athena is surprised that, or cannot believe that May made it that far
Alice: so mean.
Ellen: Yeah. Bobby’s like, you thought that she’d give it a try and then find out it’s not for her and things like, no, it isn’t for her because she’s not doing it for herself, she’s doing it for me. It’s like, oh, but Athena, she wants to protect you.
Bex: Yeah. Which Athena finds sweet but infuriating.
Ellen: Hmm. But Bobby, Bob think she’s, uh, she, she’s been played basically by, by May. Uh, you taught her everything she knows.
Bex: Yeah. Meanwhile, the robot vacuum cleaner is once again [00:33:00] stuck. Um, so Bobby goes out onto the patio to investigate it.
Um, and then the camera stays on Athena as Bobby walks back out to the patio and we just hear him go, “Give me your gun.” And Athena makes it like a, oh Lord, give me strength kind of look.
Ellen: It’s a weird line.
Bex: Oh, it’s so funny. It’s, it’s a weird line, but it’s hilarious and I can just understand the, the, um, understand the fuck, what’s the word I’m looking for? No, don’t have it. Good.
Ellen: He’s teasing her, basically. And the robot.
Bex: No, I honestly, the, I honestly think he’s incredibly frustrated with the robot that he thinks the only way out is to shoot it.
Ellen: Okay. Okay. It’s time to do some gross, uh, cutting up of [00:34:00] bodies because Hen’s at school
Bex: and it’s not a zoom school anymore. She’s actually like in person.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. I suppose you really can’t do gross anatomy online. That might be one.
Alice: I like that it’s actually called gross anatomy,
Bex: yeah, but it’s gross anatomy as in gross as in large.
Like it’s whole body anatomy.
Alice: Yeah, sure.
Bex: It’s, yeah. Not gross as and disgusting. Um, although I think Hen’s lab partner Luis would probably agree with you that it’s gross because he looks like he is about to hurl.
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Alice: Yeah, he really does.
Ellen: He is really distressed. They get told to take the plastic off, you know, that uncover your cadavers, so,
Bex: yeah. ’cause the cadavers are lying on like autopsy steel, like the, the stainless steel kind of tables that you see in morgues and, and autopsy scenes. Um, with just like, it looks like a shower curtain over the top of them. So they peel them back and reveal [00:35:00] that they have a, an older man as their cadaver.
Um, Luis looks like he’s about to throw up, um, which Hen immediately starts trying to diagnose him. She’s like, “Have you got any other symptoms?” Um, yeah. Like no Hen he’s just grossed out. This is probably the first time he’s seen a dead body. Um,
Alice: yeah, like, just ’cause you see them regularly Hen doesn’t mean everyone else does.
Bex: The, they have a third lab partner, a young woman who just tells them to shut up so she can listen to what the instructor is saying. And when Hen sort of says, you know, Luis isn’t feeling well, I try to be a little bit compassionate. Um, the young woman whose name is Sydney, just says, we’ll take him outside.
Uh, Dr. Langford, who is the instructor um, says, it’s time for each team to make their first incision. And the student nearest the head of the cadaver should pick up the scalpel and Luis realizes that he’s standing at the [00:36:00] head of the table and he’s gonna be the one doing the incision. Yeah. And
Ellen: he, he’s absolutely bricking it. He picks it up and tries. But yeah,
Bex: Hen says, “You’ve got this” and Luis just does not got this.
Ellen: No. And she’s trying to get him to breathe. Hold for three, breathe out. And, um, Sydney eventually just goes, “Oh, this is ridiculous.” And then just shoves him outta the way, takes over.
Bex: But ironically, she shoves him out of the way, makes the first incision and then immediately faints. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. Just straight up passes out.
Bex: So here’s where I mentioned that, um, the actress that plays Sydney, uh, played April Nardini in Gilmore Girls and I ha absolutely hated the character of April. So unfortunately I had a very negative reaction when I saw Sydney for the first time.
Ellen: I mean, she’s not exactly a very [00:37:00] likable character.
Alice: Was April, is she the one that was, is she the one that was younger as well?
Bex: Yeah, she was Luke’s daughter. So they introduced her and she was in high school or maybe junior high, but she was like, she was supposed to be like the Rory replacement, ’cause Rory was already in college, so they needed someone to…
Alice: I have zero memory of Luke having a daughter.
Bex: It was season six, so like, that’s like the cursed season. Oh. But yeah, every April was an annoying character and I was doing a little bit of reading and apparently Vanessa, the actress even hated the character. So I feel a little bit better about hating April.
Um, but yeah, so I know that Sydney is kind of meant to be abrasive and irritating and annoying, but I think my reaction to her was like three times that because I just went, oh my God, it’s, it’s grown up April.
Ellen: Yeah. She’s kind of, she’s very brash in this, I guess.
Bex: [00:38:00] Yes.
Ellen: But yeah, she does, Ima like cut, make the first cut in the autopsy and then immediately fall over onto the floor. And they’re all Hen especially is like jumping in, going, oh, what’s wrong?
Bex: So then we go to commercial and when we come back we’re at, uh, the Madney apartment where Chim and Maddie are trying to put together a crib. Not very successfully.
Ellen: We are getting to see what everyone’s doing on their day off this time.
Bex: Yes.
Alice: Um, yeah. Chimney’s quite concerned that this crib looks like a death trap.
Ellen: Uh, but Buck is also there and he is baby proofing the entire place.
Alice: Lucky them
Ellen: that he thinks they should put alarm sensors on the windows just in case the baby tries to get out the window,
Bex: at which point Chim points out like, “you know, we live on the second floor, right?”
Alice: Um, yeah, like the, I think the alarms are supposed to be to stop people [00:39:00] getting in, but yeah. Buck’s just like, no, it’s to definitely to stop the baby getting out here,
Bex: which I mean, yes, that is a legitimate concern, but he’s got like two years before he has to worry about that.
Alice: Yeah. Because, yeah. And infant, like a newborn does not have the fine motor skills to open a window.
Bex: No, exactly. Buck is just, he’s very concerned and he doesn’t wanna underestimate the curious interiority of his nephew, of which Chim and Maddie are like, we don’t know that it’s a boy.
Alice: Um, yeah, apparently the, the last ultrasound, the baby was in the wrong position and Maddie said that it looked like the baby was mooning them and Buck’s like, “Well, it’s definitely yours then Chim.”
Um, but yeah, he helpfully pipes up that if it is a boy, he has some name ideas and there’s Buck or Buckley or Evan.
Bex: Meanwhile, Maddie’s, I mean, if, if they give the baby
Alice: they’re all names,
Bex: [00:40:00] if they give the baby like Chim’s last name so it becomes like Baby Han, um, then yeah, having Buckley as a name could be a nice, you know, nod to Maddie.
Um, but yeah, I don’t think that’s gonna happen. Um, so while those two are riffing, Maddie’s trying to get glasses out from one of the upper cabinets, but Buck’s childproof locked, like child locked them, um, to the point, but like, Maddie can’t even get them open.
Alice: Yeah, I’m, um, I’m not sure how tall Buck thinks this baby’s gonna be, but like looking at its parents, it’s not going to be that tall.
Bex: Yeah. You definitely don’t need to lock the upper cabinets. Um, and Chimney jokingly asks whether Buck’s new girlfriend has met Fire Marshall Buckley yet.
Ellen: I love it.
Bex: Um, and Buck comes clean and says, “Yeah, you know what, I, I don’t actually have a [00:41:00] girlfriend,” and Maddie is surprised because she said, “you know, I thought you were seeing someone,” and Buck’s like, “Yeah, I am professionally. She’s a therapist.”
Alice: Yeah, it’s a therapist.
Ellen: Which, yeah, Maddie’s surprised. She’s like, “why would you lie about that?” It’s like, we, did he lie about it? Like do you just conceal the truth a little bit?
Alice: It just did not correct them.
Bex: Yes, they jumped to conclusions. He did not correct them. Um, and they’re at first Chim’s okay with it. He’s like, you know, “Therapy is just part of the job. You know, we go out, we get traumatized by what we see on the job. We get traumatized, by what happens to us on the job, we get therapy. It’s just part of it.”
And Buck’s like, “No, this isn’t departmental therapy. This isn’t job trauma therapy. This is like personal trauma therapy.”
And that freaks everybody out. Especially Maddie though, Chimney tries to laugh it off by saying, “You know, [00:42:00] maybe, you know, maybe a sort of college funds parents should set up therapy funds for their kids.”
Alice: But like, “Yeah, I know what I’m getting you guys for a baby gift.”
Ellen: Yeah, it was weird ’cause this, this kind of reaction of Maddie’s, like, she’s obviously really worried about this and um, I was sort of thinking she was really overreacting to this because, I mean, people go to therapy for all sorts of reasons. And it’s not, you know, necessarily doom and gloom, but you know, as the episode goes on and you sort of find out more about why she’s worried about it, that kind of makes more sense even though I don’t know what the secrets are going to be.
I assume we’ll that’s coming up in the next few episodes, but Yes. Um, to start with, I was like, geez, Maddie, like there’s nothing wrong with going to see a therapist. Like you know, you don’t need to be worried about someone just because they’re going to see someone. Yes. She’s very concerned.
Bex: She is [00:43:00] very concerned.
Alice: Uh, so we go back to the cadaver lab and Sydney’s being looked over by paramedics and so Hen and Luis are having a look, um, Hen notices that there’s cinched hairs on the chest, probably from the defib. So they’re like, oh, maybe it’s heart failure, but we can’t be sure unless they see the heart, which won’t be for a few weeks.
And then Sydney reappears and goes, “Oh, you could just look at his chart.” And Hen’s like, “Well, it won’t be on the chart ’cause they don’t give us the cause of death until the end of the course. And aren’t you supposed to be going to the hospital?” Um, Sydney then calls paramedics medical Uber drivers and that their opinions don’t count.
Ellen: Oh. And Luis, Luis helpfully tells her that “Hen’s a paramedic.” So, you know, shut up. Yeah, he doesn’t actually say that, but,
Bex: oh, it’s implied.
Ellen: She’s not okay. Yeah, yeah. But they don’t, the cause of death isn’t [00:44:00] there, so they’re gonna have to figure it out for themselves. And so Hen says that she missed the first cut, so like, Sydney missed the first cut so she can try the next one. Medial line.
So Sydney is cutting into the body again, and I just have to look away because Oh my God. No,
Bex: no?
Ellen: This is why I do not watch the medical shows. No,
Bex: see. But at least it’s a cadaver, so there’s no, like, they cut into it. Um, like Sydney, Sydney does the line and there’s no blood suddenly starts pouring out of the wound.
It’s, it’s quite clearly just rubber that she’s cutting into that. That’s fine.
Ellen: No,
Alice: apparently Ellen begs to differ.
Ellen: No, can’t do it.
Bex: But yeah, so Sydney does the, um, she finishes doing the cut and Hen says that looking at the, sort of, the instructions from Dr. Langford that they’re supposed to [00:45:00] peel back the skin.
And so Sydney starts to peel back and then just stops and stares at the cadaver and announces to the, the, the team that the man died of cancer like Luis actually asks, “how did you know that?” Um, and Sydney points out that there is scarring on the man’s chest indicative of a chemo port placement.
Ellen: Oh.
Bex: Which Hen sort of congratulates her on having a very good eye. And once you sort of, he learn a little bit more about Sydney and her backstory, it’s kind of understandable why this freaks her out.
Ellen: Yeah. Hen’s trying to sort of comfort her and say, “you don’t have to be embarrassed. Like it’s okay to be a bit freaked out,” and Sydney just snaps back at her like, “I’m not grossed out or traumatized. You can save your pity.”
Bex: She is a little bit traumatized.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. She definitely [00:46:00] seems a bit traumatized.
Bex: Which is understandable
Ellen: Later it’s understandable.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Now she’s just snappy.
Bex: Yes. And when, um, when Hen says like “I’m, I’m not trying to pity on, I’m just trying to help,” she says, “well I don’t need a ride to the hospital.”
Ellen: Rude
Bex: Burn.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: Uh, so while Hen is getting her ass handed to her by a 20-year-old, um, buck has returned to his loft only to find that he now has a guest. ’cause someone is knocking on his door and it’s Maddie. Which he’s very confused about because he’s like, “didn’t I just leave your place?”
Alice: Yeah. He literally just left.
Bex: And Maddie’s like, “Yeah, but I, I wanted to come and talk about the therapy thing.” And he said, “Yeah, but I was just at your house.” We could have talked there. So she’s come to Buck’s apartment because she thought that perhaps he would be embarrassed about talking about therapy in front of [00:47:00] Chimney. So now that, you know, it’s private, it’s just, you know, brother and sister,
Alice: just the Buckley’s.
Bex: Yeah. So, you know, he can tell her the truth about, specifically the truth about why he has, he feels like he needs to be in therapy.
Ellen: He’s just like, there’s nothing to tell.
Bex: No. It’s like there’s nothing to tell. And then he says to her, “well, you know what, it’s all your fault.” And she’s just absolutely devastated.
Like, what do you mean it’s all her, all your fault? He’s joking.
Alice: Poor Maddie,
Bex: he’s joking. He’s,
Alice: yeah, he was kidding.
Bex: “You called me sad and lonely,” and Maddie’s like just this mental 180. Like, oh yeah, okay. That’s where we’re going. Right.
Ellen: Yeah. I’m, I feel this is like an e episode where if you’ve seen what happens in the future, this all makes sense. But for me, I was just sitting there going, what is happening here?
Bex: So the, so the um, the, the, you called me sad and lonely for anyone who’s like, [00:48:00] what the fuck is Buck talking about? It’s from the episode with Red from the end of season three. Um, whose name I cannot remember what the episode title is.
Alice: Oh my God. It’s, oh,
Bex: yeah. I’m not
Alice: left behind.
Bex: Yeah. I I’m not even gonna look it up. I don’t care that much. But you know,
Ellen: “The One That Got Away”
Alice: it’s bugging me now.
Bex: The one that got away.
Alice: The one yes. Got away. Thank you.
Bex: Yes. Snaps to Ellen. Um, you know, Buck was getting very, very upset about Red and his life, um, thinking that that was Buck’s future.
And, Maddie kind of said, “You know, are you feeling this way? Because, you know, you’re not quite happy with your life right now.” So that’s where Buck was going with that comment. Which Evan, which Maddie says, you know, that was months ago. And Buck says, “well, it’s kind this thing. That’s the thing that kind of sticks with you.
And honestly, you weren’t wrong. Even after I finally got to say my piece to Abby, you know, I thought I’d feel [00:49:00] better.” At which point I’m going, dude, you didn’t say anything.
Ellen: You just said…
Alice: it was like, good luck with your life.
Ellen: I’m glad you’re happy. Bye.
Bex: Yeah. Literally, like, like if you did get to say something to her, we didn’t get the privilege of seeing that that all happened off camera.
Yeah. But he’s, he’s very, um, he’s very mature about it. Like he, he says to Maddie, um, that he’s fine. It’s not a big deal. He’s fine. He just wants to be finer, which I think is a very mature approach. Yeah,
Alice: right. Look at Buck growing up.
Bex: Yeah. Oh, Maddie does kind of invoke the parents for the first time and says, “you know, have you talked to Mom and Dad about going to therapy?” And Buck’s like, “oh no, Fuck, no.”
Alice: God. No.
Bex: “You know how they are,” and Maddie’s like, “Yeah, I know how they are.”
Ellen: but she says she’s gonna be there for him, whatever he needs. [00:50:00] And, um, Buck’s like, “I just don’t think this is something you know how to fix, because I always felt like you were sad too.” And Maddie just looks so broken in, in this moment.
She looks really upset.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I mean, he’s not wrong.
Ellen: She’s just, she’s a pregnant lady. Don’t like, you know.
Alice: Yeah. What are you doing, Buck?
Bex: Can we, can we just take a moment that, now that you mentioned that, that yes, she is like very pregnant in this episode. She’s having a lot of emotional responses, yet not once is there a mention of like, oh my God, I’m getting, I’m crying so much because I’m pregnant and I’m hormonal.
Alice: Yeah, yeah. She’s like crying ’cause she’s scared of the future. It’s like, it makes sense.
Bex: She’s having a legitimate Yes, but not once did they mention that she’s overreacting or, or the emotions are because she’s pregnant. Which we do know that this show has a tendency to do. Yeah. So I would just like to,
Ellen: even though like when you’re pregnant, you do have like, well, I did [00:51:00] anyway. You do have like extremely hor hormonal reactions to things.
Bex: Oh yeah, yeah.
Ellen: But it was not made in a, um, stereotypical way in this. You are right.
Bex: Yes. Um, so from that, you know, very emotional, heartfelt touching scene, we’re going to go to. Why are all of the emergencies in this episode so stupid?
Ellen: I don’t, they they really are.
Bex: Oh my God. It’s, yeah, it’s sky. Yeah. It’s the weirdest episode because you’ve got this really deep, meaningful emotional storyline with Chim and Buck and Maddie. Um, and then you’ve got this slightly less emotional, um, but still quite entertaining storyline with Eddie versus Hildy. And then you’ve got these fucking, you’ve then you’ve got Hen and Sydney,
Alice: even the Hen story. Yeah. Even Hen’s, storyline’s quite serious.
Bex: And then you’ve got these emergencies, which are just like, what the hell?
Ellen: Well, maybe that’s why they’re trying to lighten the [00:52:00] mood, but it just ends up being stupid,
Alice: Yeah I think they’re trying to lighten the mood.
Bex: It’s so, it’s it’s whip It’s almost whiplash.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Yes. So we’re at, we’re at a bank this time.
Bex: We are,
Ellen: uh, we’ve got a, a line of people who are queuing to get into the bank. And they’re, they’re all 1.5 meters away from each other.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Like we, like we did for a while, but it’s kind of stopped now.
Bex: Oh, I wish it would come back. My God.
Alice: Oh my God. Seriously.
Bex: Personal space, people.
Ellen: There’s a guy going into the bank and he’s wearing a mask and everything and he’s look, looking around furtively, like not trying not to be suspicious,
Bex: but being totally suspicious,
Ellen: but being very suspicious. Yeah.
Um, and he goes up to the window and when the teller asks him, what can I do for you? He, he just says, I have a gun, [00:53:00] but she can’t hear him because of his mask.
Alice: Because of the mask. Yeah.
Bex: She’s also not paying attention to him. She’s still typing on her computer.
Alice: Um, because he did do like some weird like hacking thing? Or was he just tapping on his phone because it looked like he like changed the numbers on the screen.
Ellen: Oh
Bex: No, I think he was like, he was just holding up his, like he was holding his phone up to his face, so, and it would hide as he was sort of looking around.
Alice: Oh, okay. That makes more sense. I was like, what the hell,
Bex: I think he was using it as an excuse to like his, keep his head up. Because he’s holding his phone up and that way he can scan the bank and see what’s going on.
Because normally you’re, yeah, you hold your phone down sort of at your waist level and it would be really obvious if his head’s up and he’s scanning around what’s going on. But it was weird. Like
Alice: it was weird.
Bex: It’s either that or he’s like ordering his Uber.
Alice: He’s probably ordering his Uber actually, now I come to think of it
Bex: like he’s [00:54:00] pre-ordering his Uber because Yeah, that’s what happens. He’s, he has a gun. He’s trying to rob the bank. Well, actually he successfully robs the bank.
Alice: Um, yeah, he kind of does rob the bank
Bex: after he, after he, he writes the word “gun” on a deposit slip and slides it to the teller.
Ellen: Yeah. Then she finally gets the picture and starts loading the cash into a bag.
Bex: Yeah. Immediately starts loading cash into a money bag. Um, empties out her drawer, gives it to him. Um, and he flees the scene.
Ellen: We do get an informative 9-1-1 call. She says where she is and that the bank’s been robbed, but then dispatch asks, “Can you describe the suspect?” And she says, “um, he was wearing a mask.”
Alice: He was wearing a mask
Ellen: just like everyone else in the bank.
Bex: Yeah. Um, I did find it interesting that it’s obvious it’s for the drama, um, but I thought that Tellers had emergency silent alarms that they could hit.
Alice: Yeah, they do. Retail [00:55:00] does as well.
Ellen: I think in the banks, they also have like some kind of, um, a steel kind of barrier that can drop as well. Yeah. Like I, to protect the bank,
Alice: I’m pretty sure it’s not actually that easy to rob a bank anymore.
Bex: Yeah. Yeah. And like 100%. Um, when Athena rocks up, um, one of the other officers is slightly incredulous that the woman just allowed the man to walk out with a cash and Athena says, no, that’s completely understandable. It’s policy to just, you know, give them what they want.
Ellen: Yeah. You’re supposed to do what if they’re armed that you’re supposed to just do what they want.
Bex: Especially, I think retail’s also the same. Like if they’re, if they’re robbing you, just let them rob you because the insurance will pay for it and
Ellen: it’s not worth your life.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: It’s basically, it’s not, it’s not worth your life basically.
Bex: Yeah. But yeah, I still think that they, she should have hit the silent alarm anyway. Yeah. It’s for the drama. She has to call 9-1-1 and report a bank robbery.
Alice: Yeah. [00:56:00]
Bex: Um, but they do have footage of, if not the bank robber, then they have a footage of his getaway car, which they track down.
Um, but it’s not the bank robber driving it. It’s definitely that car. But the driver is not the bank robber and Athena puts two and two together when she sees the ride share unlimited kind of doohickey sitting on the dash and realized that the bank robber booked an Uber as he’s gonna wake up. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, this poor guy, they’ve like yanked him out of the car and put cuffs on him and everything and he’s just standing there going, “I never went near the bank!”
Bex: I hope he left the driver like five stars in a really good review.
Alice: Right?
Bex: Implicating him in a crime.
Alice: The guy at least deserves five stars here.
Ellen: Well, he, she, she asked him if there’s any way of getting the guy’s name and address. Um, and it’s on his phone, so
Bex: of course it is.
Alice: Well, she finds the [00:57:00] address, but then he tries to run away.
Bex: But then so, so he hears the police at the door, he runs and the police is, the other officers sort of take off in pursuit on foot, but the Uber driver who they have brought along with them to arrest this guy, um, calls out to Athena that she might wanna come and see what’s on his phone because the idiot has booked an Uber to escape from police.
And it just so happens that it’s come through and our Uber driver is in the back of the police car, has accepted the, um,
Alice: it’d go to the, the closest one who is obviously the Uber driver who is sitting out the front. So,
Bex: and Athena is looking at going, “Oh, he is not that stupid.” And Yes, yes, he is that stupid.
Alice: He is that stupid. Yeah. Because he’s just hiding around the corner waiting for his Uber to come along. Um, and sure enough, his Uber does come along.
Ellen: Yeah. But instead [00:58:00] of the, the driver, there is a policeman in the car and Yeah, he gets arrested.
Bex: Yeah. Athena jumps out, tells him he’s under arrest,
Ellen: and he goes, “But how did you find me?”
Alice: Yeah, Athena does the corniest line of the episode.
Bex: Oh God, it’s so bad.
Alice: Um, because it turns out there’s an app for that.
Ellen: Oh, of course there is.
Bex: Well, the, the thing is Angela Bassett has such gravitas when she acts that she can pull off almost anything.
Ellen: Yeah. She can do the corny lines. Yeah.
Bex: But I just wonder whether Angela is sitting like in her trailer reading the script going, they want me to say what?
Alice: She’s like, they want me to say what, and I’m getting paid how much? Yeah. Okay.
Bex: Yeah. Yeah. Then we cut to the Diaz’s household, and I love this. This is hilarious.
Ellen: Then wholesome, wholesome, uh, family scene. [00:59:00]
Bex: Buck and Christopher are playing a computer game while Eddie is running around the house collecting all pieces of technology, especially smart technology,
Alice: all of them,
Bex: and corralling them on the table
Alice: like even the remotes.
Bex: I’m guessing the TV is smart? I don’t know. But yeah, anything that’s wireless is, is going on the table obviously to be disposed of, to get it out of his house. ’cause he’s like in full on Tin hat paranoia mode and apparently Chris is winning against Buck, um,
Alice: he’s winning ’cause he is like headbutting buck while Buck.
Bex: That’s very true. He, he is like assaulting Buck to try to distract him. Um, but some kind
Ellen: Buck, Buck tells him he is cheating.
Bex: Yeah. And, and Buck complains to Eddie. Like, you know, you’ve gotta talk to your kid about playing fair. Um, Eddie’s response is to simply unplug the console. Yeah. [01:00:00] Disconnects it from the internet. And apparently the game requires the internet to run because the game immediately freezes and both of them complain.
Alice: Yeah. Both the kids complain.
Bex: Eddie says, “well we’re taking a little bit of a break from the internet now.” And Chris is like, “but I talk to my friends on that thing.” And Eddie whips around and stares at the console like it’s about to start talking to him. Yeah. “What do you mean you’re talking to people on this thing?”
Ellen: Buck’s trying to sort of talk him down is like, “You know I was kidding about the spying. Right?” And Eddie’s like, “Were you? Because ever since that call, every time I try to go online, there’s an ad for a coffee maker. Read the news, coffee maker, check the weather, coffee maker.” Yep. Welcome to the future, Eddie.
Alice: It’s actually really funny because like, I’d like to make fun of Eddie over like not understanding how the smart stuff works, but my best friend who is [01:01:00] um, a veteran is like, there’s this period of like the 15 years that she was in the Navy that she just missed. And so I’ll mention like pop culture things and she’s just like, what are you talk, like I mentioned something about Big Brother and she’s like, what?
And I was like, oh, that’s right, you were deployed then.
Bex: Oh my god,
Ellen: She missed Big Brother?
Alice: She missed the whole, like she knows what Big Brother is, but she doesn’t, like I mentioned something about like the diary room or something like that. Um, and yeah, she had no idea what I was talking about because she missed that whole period when it was popular.
Bex: No, but that’s, that’s so true. ’cause my ex is the same. He was also like 15 years in the service and the pop culture and also just technology. Like there’s, like he, it is, I don’t think it’s a Gen X thing because there are Gen Xs who are very technologically adept, but like, dude doesn’t, didn’t even know how to work a podcast until it’s,
Alice: see she’s, she’s not [01:02:00] bad with technology, but some things that like, she, like you would think she’d know just like a gap.
Like she’ll be like, I don’t understand how to do this. And I’m like, what do you mean you don’t understand how to do that? Yeah, when you can do everything else. Like she’s built web pages and she was in like a technology sort of branch, but she just missed like she wasn’t allowed social media until she was out.
And so like she doesn’t know what the start of Facebook was like and she missed the entirety of MySpace.
Bex: Like they’re overseas on de on. They were overseas on deployment when this shit sort of started happening. So
Alice: yeah. So like you mentioned something about your top friends on MySpace and she’s like, “I don’t understand what you’re talking about,” because she’s never seen MySpace.
Bex: Oh my God.
Alice: And it’s just so like funny And so I can’t even like be like, oh this is so unrealistic. ’cause Eddie is deployed a lot and then he got back and had a kid. Yeah. So like he’s been busy.
Bex: So good.
Ellen: Well [01:03:00] he um, he didn’t even want a coffee maker. The one he has is fine and he only mentioned it in front of you and Hildy and Chris is just like, “Are we getting a Hildy?” He’s so excited!
Bex: Eddie immediately shuts that down. He is like, no, we are definitely not getting a Hildy.
Alice: You’re not getting a Hildy.
Bex: And then Chris pivots, he is like, okay, so we’re not getting a Hildy, you’re not letting me play computer games, “Buck, can we go to your house and play computer games?”
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: He knows what he wants
Alice: and this is, this is the best scene.
Ellen: Adorable.
Bex: And, but there’s like this millisecond where Buck wants to say yes. He’s like, sure we can go and play video games. And he looks at Eddie and Eddie’s just got his hands crossed across his chest going like, think very carefully about what you say next.
Alice: And it’s literally like Chris and Buck on the couch and Eddie in between them and [01:04:00] Buck’s like, I have to choose between my child and my husband.
Bex: My husband.
He’s like, “Yeah, sorry Chris, I think we’re, we’re gonna have to play it old school for a while.” And Eddie’s like, yes, that’s right. You made the right choice. I’m gonna go off and find some more technology to destroy. But then Chris is like, “what’s old school?”
Alice: Yeah. Apparently they gonna play Scrabble.
Ellen: Scrabble’s fun.
Bex: Yeah, it is. I just, it’s such a, it’s such a fun scene with the three of them.
Alice: It’s so funny. Yeah.
Bex: Um, but then we go from like the fun husbands and their child to, um, back to Chimney and Maddie and their very like, heavy emotional scenes. Although I’m assuming it’s heavily emotional because, um, Kenny’s shirtless again.
Alice: Yeah. Oh yeah. I don’t know what happened.
Ellen: Yeah, when this scene came on. I’m like, oh no, this, I’m gonna have to describe this scene [01:05:00] again. Everyone’s gonna be blue-screening,
Bex: but it’s not just that he’s shirtless. He is fucking ripped. It’s like he went and did an entire arm and abs workout before he walked around the corner because, or, and, and he’s like not eaten for three days.
So he is like completely dehydrated. So every single… the dude doesn’t have a six pack. He has like a 12 pack and
Alice: yeah, like he is looking good and
Ellen: he’s got a lot of tattoos on his chest and stuff.
Bex: He’s got a massive tattoo on his pec, on one pec and on like his sort of upper arms. He’s just,
Alice: he’s looking good.
Bex: Once again, reiterate that we talk a lot about like Ryan and Oliver, but Kenneth.
Alice: Yeah!
Bex: Man.
Alice: He can get it.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yes. Well he’s also also looking a bit disheveled because he just got out of bed to come and check on Maddie. ’cause [01:06:00] she’s up in the middle of the night apparently.
Bex: Hey, I’m okay. I actually wasn’t looking at his hair. I was looking at other places.
Alice: Hang on. What?
Bex: Did we mention?
Ellen: Fine, but he just looked, he sounded, you know, like he just woke up.
Bex: I’m fine also fine with that. Did we also mention he’s in gray sweatpants?
Ellen: It’s a good look.
Bex: It’s a very good look.
Ellen: Um, but Maddie is sitting on the couch crying. So he comes to check on her and she says that she’s scared. Um, and he’s like “About the baby?” But no. She’s more scared of change.
Bex: She’s scared about the future and she’s scared about fucking up their kid. ’cause the baby is safe, like inside her. But, um, once the baby is out in the world, everything gets hard. Every decision, every choice that we make, it impacts them on who they become.
And when Chim tries [01:07:00] to reassure her that, that we’re gonna make good choices, she just starts bawling. And she’s like, “But what if we don’t? What if we make the wrong choice? What if we think we’re making the right choice, but it ends up hurting them anyway?”
Alice: Yeah. She specifically says, “what if everything you do to protect someone only ends up hurting them?” And Chim’s like, “Are you talking about Buck? Yeah. Like, what, what have your parents…” And Maddie just goes, “I told you that my parents were not bad people. They’re just bad parents. What if I’m more like them than I think?”
Ellen: Hmm. Chim reassures her and says we they’re gonna, we’re gonna make mistakes, but they’re gonna forgive us because they know how much we love them. And Maddie’s like, “I think you’re gonna be a really great dad.” So yeah, he’s like got over his…
Alice: I like that Chim was the one that was freaking out over the last two episodes.
Ellen: Yeah, I was gonna say he’s got over his freaking out
Alice: and now Maddie’s like, okay, my turn. [01:08:00] Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. He was, he, he was completely terrified about how he was, how much, how good a dad he was gonna be. And now he’s completely on board with being a dad. He’s like, yes, we’ve got this.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: And hopefully they do got this because then we cut to, after the commercial, we cut to the Wilson household and we see just how chaotic,
Ellen: the Wilsons don’t got this
Bex: Hen don’t got this
Alice: Poor Hen does not got this.
Bex: No, it’s, it’s chaos in the Wilson household because Nia is chasing Denny around the kitchen table, and when Hen steps in to figure out what the hell is going on, we see that Nia has drawn all over Denny’s face apparently while he was sleeping. ’cause I don’t, I don’t think that he would’ve stayed like voluntarily done that, considering that he’s tried to run away from her while she’s continuing to try and do it to him.
Ellen: Mm-hmm. She says she’s so cute in this scene. Yeah, she’s [01:09:00] adorable. She’s like, “I made Denny pretty!”
Bex: And so while Hen is trying to handle Nia with markers, um, there’s a knock on the door and Denny completely forgetting about the fact that A, he’s in his pajamas and b, he’s got marker all over his face, just bolts to answer the door.
Alice: Yeah. Just immediately answers it
Bex: and Hen’s like, “no, don’t hang on one cata catastrophe at a time. Nia give me the markers,” like Nia is like, “no.” And this is such a smart move. And I remember this was a lifesaver when my kids were little, um, Hen grabs the unicorn that Nia gave her for luck that’s still sitting on the kitchen table and asks to trade and Nia’s like, oh hell yeah, I’ll trade you a marker for my unicorn back.
Alice: Um, it’s funny ’cause this is exactly what we do with puppies and so I’m like, excellent. Like dog training is just like raising a toddler.
Bex: Oh yeah, yeah,
Alice: yeah. Like when a [01:10:00] puppy like steals something that they’re not supposed to have, if you chase them for it, they’re like, oh, this is the best game ever.
Whereas if you go get like a better val, like a better toy or some like treats something value and you’re just like, oh, this is so much better. The puppy’s like, oh, fuck what I’ve got. I want that.
Ellen: Yeah. That is exactly what toddlers do as well.
Alice: Yeah, yeah,
Ellen: absolutely. Do that with toddlers. Yes.
Bex: So one crisis is averted. Hen has the markers, she turns to deal with the second crisis, which is Denny at the door, but she’s too late. Denny’s already opened the door, um, to reveal the social worker, Deidra, who’s come for a surprise inspection.
Which Hen’s like, “well, we weren’t expecting you,” and Deidra’s like, “uh,
Alice: that’s the point.
Bex: Yeah. Hen’s like, “Yeah. I, I get that that’s the point.” so Hen is like solo parenting for the moment. Karen is at the supermarket, and it’s like, it’s not looking good. Like the house is a mess. Denny’s covered in [01:11:00] marker, um, every once in, in their pajamas.
And Deidra said, yeah, it, it just looks like, you know, normal family life.
Ellen: I’m sure they’ve seen some things.
Bex: I am sure that in the, the vast scope of what Deidra has walked into when she’s done snap inspections on foster families, this is the least of her concern. But then to add to the chaos is another knock of the door, and Denny immediately goes to open it,
which Hen’s like, “Little man.”
Ellen: He’s being so helpful
Bex: “Little man, we have to deal with you opening the door to strangers.” But, um, so Deidra takes, or Nia takes Deidra off to see her room and Hen deals with this new event, which is Sydney standing on her porch.
Ellen: Sydney’s like “Someone wrote on this child’s face.”
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Yes. Yes they did.
Bex: And Denny’s immediately like, oh my God, do you know how to get it off? [01:12:00]
Alice: Um, yeah, she, she’s clearly not, um, not a kid person and not a great doctor yet because she suggested nail polish remover,
Bex: which to her credit would work like 100%. It would work. You just probably don’t wanna be putting nail polish remover on your face.
Yeah. Because we used to. That would hurt your face. Yeah. We used to have to write numbers in our arms when we did roller derby, and the only way to get, we’d write it on with Sharpie, and the only way to get it off would be like nail polish remover after the end of the bout. So, oh, it does work, but it’s like, not the best thing for your skin.
This is also why you only give children washable markers. So if they do like, turn your siblings, turn their siblings face into Picasso, you can literally just wash it off with soap
Ellen: Yes. And clothes.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Because a hundred percent they’ll get it on their, on their clothes. Yes. So he disappears. And Hen has to deal with Sydney now the third child in the room apparently.[01:13:00]
Um, what are you doing here? She’s not, she’s pretty hostile, but I mean, Sydney was pretty rude the other day, so
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Uh, she doesn’t actually apologize or anything, but she just says she wants to talk about the other day and Hen’s telling her that “it’s, it’s never a good time just to show up unannounced at my house.”
Alice: Yeah. She’s a bit defensive. Um,
Ellen: the reason that she’s there is because Dr. Langford, which I guess is their supervisor guy, um, asked whether everything’s okay with them between the two of them. And she’s like, “We need to be okay with each other because I need to be a doctor.”
Bex: He says that being a doctor is really important to her too, and Sydney kind of has not learned her lesson.
She says, just to Hen, “Oh, please. You gotta, you gotta be, what? 40? You’ve got a job. You’re married. There is apparently at least two kids. There’s [01:14:00] no way you can juggle all that. You can barely handle a marker.”
Ellen: Yeah. It’s like, fuck you Sydney. So Hen does get defensive,
Bex: Sydney reiterates, Sydney reiterates, “I need to be a doctor and I just wanna be sure that when you quit medical school, which you inevitably will, um, you don’t take my reputation with you out the door.”
And, uh, Hen looks like she’s about to cuss Sydney out, but the kids suddenly announce their presence behind her and she has to sort of pull herself back. Um, so she sort of satisfies herself with just slamming the door in Sydney’s face.
Ellen: “Sydney was just leaving.” Slam.
Bex: Sydney’s like, no, I was, oh, apparently I am.
Ellen: And, Deidra is just like, “um, so Karen will be back soon, right?”
Bex: Yes. Karen will be back soon. So let’s go have some coffee while we wait. [01:15:00] Um, Deidra takes Denny with her. Nia for some reason follows Hen, I don’t know where Hen’s going. Probably around the other way to get to the kitchen. And when Hen looks back, Nia just very adorably says, “Bad mama Hen.”
Ellen: She’s so cute.
Bex: She’s adorable. But then it’s even cuter ’cause she’s like pouting and she’s really angry with Hen and Hen sort of holds out her hand and like, “Come on.” And Nia immediately, all sunshine and roses is like, “Okay,”
She is adorable. Um, but for, I think either Hen’s not working today or she’s running late because Buck and Chim are already at the station house. Um, where Chim is watching Channel Eight News, which is showing footage of a blazing inferno in central Texas where there is, um, wildfires in Texas, which the news anchor tells us could not come at a worse [01:16:00] time because last week a volcano erupted, which,
Ellen: okay, in Texas? Do they have?
Bex: They do this specific volcano it’s called the Pilot Knob Volcano. It is a volcano in Texas, but it’s extinct.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Which means it’s, it, it doesn’t erupt.
Alice: Yeah. Not anymore.
Bex: For the drama. For the drama, Tim has apparently resurrected a, um, a volcano to erupt in Texas. Um, okay. Alice, do you remember whether the volcanoes, what caused the wildfires? Or are they just two separate emergencies that happened back to back?
Alice: I’m trying to remember. I, like, I vaguely remember the emergencies running into each other, but I don’t remember if the volcano’s actually what started the wildfire or not. Yeah.
Ellen: I, I love how Chim says, um, you know, but says something about a volcano is crazy and Chim’s like, I still can’t believe it didn’t happen here. Yeah. [01:17:00] Yeah. Everything else happens in LA Why not volcano?
Bex: Before Chimney turns the TV off, we hear the news anchor sort of plant the seed by saying that, um, firefighters from surrounding counties and even other states are being contacted to come and help, but then the TV gets turned off because Chim wants to have a deep and meaningful conversation with Buck about the Buckley parents.
Ellen: Oh yeah. “What’s the deal with your parents?” It’s like, oh, that’s very direct.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: Uh, he’s just, because apparently
Bex: Buck never talk about them. He never talks about them.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And Chim feels like he knows way more about Buck’s sex life than he does about his parents. And Buck’s like, “well, that’s ’cause my sex life’s more interesting, or at least it used to be.”
Ellen: A long time ago Buck,
Alice: poor Buck,
Bex: what, three whole years ago?
Ellen: Yeah. [01:18:00] But apparently Maddie barely talks about them either or to them for that matter. So he tells Buck about how she was freaking out the other night and, um, Buck just tells ’em they weren’t, they weren’t abusive or anything. They just, they were just absent. Mm. They just weren’t there.
Bex: Like they were in the house. They cooked meals, they washed clothes. It just, it felt to Buck like they liked each other more than they liked Buck and Maddie. They just weren’t great with kids. And then Chim says, so I shouldn’t be worried that you guys are hiding some deep dark Buckley family secret from me.
Alice: Um, yeah. No, no. To be fair, Buck answering no is like fair because he doesn’t know that there’s a deep, dark family secret. Um, so no Buck says “No. Just your average run of the mill is dysfunctional. Welcome to [01:19:00] the family.”
Bex: But yeah, we’ve got Chekov’s Family Secret, which we’ll come back at some point I’m sure.
Ellen: Alright, so it’s time to go to the wine and cheese night with Athena and Hen
Bex: is it night or is it like day?
Ellen: Oh, I can’t remember. I assume it was night, it might not be,
Bex: I feel like this is like after the debacle with Sydney and Deidra and Denny and the marker. So like, Hen’s apparently not working this shift.
Neither is, neither is Athena. Like the boys are off working but they’re not. They’re enjoying wine and cheese out on the patio while, um, while Hen kind of unloads about her morning.
Ellen: Yeah. The social worker understood it was a bad day. So they’re okay with that
Alice: Again, I’m sure they’ve seen worse.
Ellen: Yes, but she’s, Athena says, it doesn’t sound like Hen um, ’cause she doesn’t usually let people get under her skin like the [01:20:00] way that Sydney did.
Alice: Yeah. But Hen says, “You know that voice in the back of your head, the one that tells you you can’t do anything right, tells you that you’re crazy, you’re stupid for even trying. It’s all your doubts and all your fears just playing on a loop. Well, that’s Sydney.”
Bex: And the sad thing is that Hen is starting to believe Sydney in that voice in the back of her head because she’s tired. She’s got two kids, a full-time job now she’s trying to do medical school. Um, and she’s tired of having to prove that she belongs, that she’s worthy, that she’s just as good as the rest of them.
Ellen: Athena tells her that she, she is like, you know, she’s smart, she’s strong, she’s a self-made woman who built a family and a career, and she’s putting herself through medical school. She’s formidable!
But she says, “I don’t feel formidable, just exhausted.” Like, Hen, I feel you. Uh,
Bex: [01:21:00] but at least she’s not the one passing out in class. Um, and Athena’s a little bit of a better person in this scenario because she, um, when she hears that Sydney is fainting in class, she says, “well, maybe you are not the only one with too much on your plate.” And Hen’s like, “Well, I I, she doesn’t talk to me outside of, of school. Um, I don’t know the first thing about her.”
Ellen: Except when she shows up at your door?
Bex: Yes. Um, and Athena says, “Well, this wouldn’t be the first time that you’ve had to diagnose someone who couldn’t tell you what was wrong.” So she’s basically suggesting that Hen think of Sydney as a patient and diagnosis so she can figure out what’s wrong and then she can fix it.
Ellen: Yeah. It’s a, it’s a great strategy, but I feel like not every person who is antagonizing you is gonna be fixed like a patient. It works in this instance, but you know,
Bex: not everyone’s gonna have a tragic backstory that kind of explains
Ellen: Yeah. Some people are just [01:22:00] assholes.
Bex: Yes. Some people are just dicks who have no good reason for being dicks.
Ellen: Or they, or they really are just having a bad day and like a aren’t normally like that or whatever, but you know,
Alice: or they’re a dick that’s having a bad day.
Ellen: Yeah. Well that too.
Bex: Anyway, we will see whether Athena’s, um, approach works, but first we’re gonna eavesdrop on a phone conversation between Maddie and her parents, or actually her mother. So we don’t hear anything from the other side of the conversation. We are just hearing what Maddie says and Maddie’s reaction to whatever she’s hearing on the other side.
And it, it’s not a good phone conversation. Yeah, it doesn’t seem fun. No, because, uh, first of all, she has to identify herself. It’s like, she’s like, “Hey Mom, it’s me.”
Alice: Yeah. She’s like, “it’s me, Maddie.”
Bex: Maddie.
Like, just to, for Ellen, they only have two kids. They only have Buck and Maddie.
Alice: I was gonna say, how many [01:23:00] daughters do they have? Um, no, they’ve just, they’ve just got Maddie
Bex: that’s not like she could be, be mixing up her daughters like, there’s only two people that could call her Mom and only one of them sounds feminine on the phone.
Oh yeah. Um, she’s like, “Yeah, I know. We usually text or email,” so I am assuming that her mother immediately thinks that something is wrong. That’s why Maddie’s calling her. And so she reassures her mother like, “no, no, the baby’s I’m fine. The baby’s fine.”
Alice: and she’s got a doctor’s appointment coming up and then she says it’s the 4D ultrasound, which I just wanna put a bookmark in and we’ll come back to that.
Um, but yes. Yeah, Maddie’s hopeful that they’ll find out the sex this time and then immediately starts like having an argument with her mom. ’cause clearly her mom’s like, oh, like, why do you even wanna know? Because Maddie’s like, “Well, I wanna know so I can be prepared. It, it’s still gonna be a surprise. It’s just gonna be a surprise now.” Like, [01:24:00]
Bex: and then I’m guessing her mother must like go off on some sort of, um, tirade because Maddie cuts her off and says, “Listen, have you talked to Evan lately? ’cause I’m worried about him.”
Alice: I love this. There’s a little tiny like hesitation where she’s like, have you talked to Evan lately? Because like, they don’t call him Buck, so she is like, no, wait.
Bex: See, funny if she calls him Evan, like she does call him Evan, but only to his face when she’s
Ellen: Sometimes, yeah,
Bex: yeah. When they’re having sort of deep like Buckley sibling moments, she’ll call him Evan. But I guess to other people, she’s always referring to him as Buck.
So yeah, there’s that moment of, oh shit, I can’t call him Buck in this conversation, I need to use his,
Alice: yeah, because the whole family are Buckleys. So,
Bex: um, yeah. So she says, she asks her mother, “Did you know that he was seeing a therapist?” And uh, apparently that like sets her mother off and then we get, um, Maddie [01:25:00] saying, “No, it’s not like that. He doesn’t know anything, but maybe he should.”
And then her mother obviously continues and then she said like very loudly, “I don’t know, Mom, how do you tell somebody that you have been lying to them for their entire life?”and it cuts to a commercial. Yeah,
Ellen: so dramatic.
Bex: So about that like deep dark Buckley family secret.
Ellen: Mm.
Alice: Maybe there is a deep, dark family, uh, Buckley family secret. I’m sure it’s fine. Uh, so we go into an apartment,
Bex: uh, because we’ve just had a deep and meaningful, like really heavy emotional scene. So now we need some stupidity to lighten the mood.
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: yeah.
Alice: Uh, we’re back to Hildy, in fact,
Bex: who is doing a guided meditation and I don’t know, but Hildy’s voice is not like soothing. I don’t know that I would enjoy the sort of the AI voice. [01:26:00] Um, telling me to breathe deeply as I calf cast off yesterday and look to the future, um, and then to sit up and open my eyes and greet the world.
But, um, this woman who does not have a name, she is, she’s laying
Alice: We’ll call her Blinky,
Bex: She’s laying in Shavasana on the floor, and when Hildy says to sit up and open her eyes and greet the world, she sits up and she says “hello world,” and opens her eyes and the world is blurry.
Ellen: Um, she looks, her eyes look very red all around them, and her eyes are really, they look really blue, like pale blue.
Mm-hmm. Um, and she’s sort of like, “Oh God, I can’t see. I can’t see.” So she asked Hildy to call 9-1-1. So she’s, she hasn’t completely gone blind. She just can’t see very well.
Bex: Yeah. I have, like, part of the issue that I have with this [01:27:00] emergency is that she’s freaking out. She’s saying that she can’t see that she’s gone blind when we keep getting like shots from her point of view where she can quite clearly, not quite clearly. She can see quite fuz, quite blurry.
Alice: Yeah. She still can see, she can not quite clearly see, but she can, she’s still got some vision.
Bex: She’s still got some vision. It’s just looks like someone has sort of coated her eyes and she’s looking through a film. Like if you think of those windows that are sort of like the wavy glass for, um, that you put up in bathrooms so that people can kind of, can’t see through them. Yeah. But you can still sort of see shapes,
Ellen: Yeah, filtered?
Bex: You can kind of make out various shapes and colors and all those sorts of things through them. So she’s not completely blind, but she’s acting like she’s completely blind and it kind of pissed me off.
Ellen: Yeah. ’cause if I don’t wear my glasses, I, I ca I’m kind of that blind.
Alice: She still wouldn’t be able to drive to the hospital, but,
Bex: oh no, look, I do not have any, any issue with her calling 9-1-1 because yes, she would not be safe to get behind the wheel of [01:28:00] a car and probably wouldn’t be safe for her to like try and get into an Uber or anything at this point. So yeah, like call 9-1-1, that’s fine.
But don’t be like bumping into furniture in your house and tripping over things when you can still see that there is something sort of in front of you
Alice: and you should vaguely know where your furniture is. Like, come on.
Bex: Yes. Which is what happens because, um, she calls 9-1-1, she says like, “help me, I’ve gone blind.” They dispatched the 118. Um, and when Bobby knocks on the door, like he can hear crashing as she’s like trying to navigate her apartment. Um, so they used the battering ram to um, yeah, to open the door.
Ellen: They just love smashing things.
Bex: Without even checking to see that the door was unlocked first. Like, I don’t know, it probably was locked, but, you know, maybe he should have checked
Alice: They were bored. They just wanted to use the battering ram.
Ellen: Just stand back ma’am. Boof.
Alice: Yes. [01:29:00] Eddie’s not allowed to do fight club anymore. He is gotta get the,
Bex: But he doesn’t get to do it, Bobby does it like all that Eddie gets to do is hand him the battering ram.
Alice: Well, clearly the rage room is shut, okay?
Ellen: Yes, they get her upright because apparently she tripped over something and fell over and Hen’s like, “Can you tell us about your symptoms?” And she goes, “Well, it’s really just the one symptom. I can’t see.”
Bex: She’s like, I can’t see anything. But we can see that like, she can vaguely make out an Eddie shaped blur on one side and a Hen shaped blur on the other side. Um,
Alice: yeah, I’m pretty sure they wrote the script as though she was gonna be totally blind and then they were like, oh, for special effects we’ll just put in. Like blurry vision and it’s like, but why?
Ellen: Maybe
Bex: that it feel, that feels like what it was. It was that the script and the actress was told, okay, you literally cannot see anything. You’re blind. And then the director’s gone, “Hey, let’s chuck a, a lens in front of the camera and film some point of view [01:30:00] stuff just for shits and giggles.” Um,
Alice: yeah, because like all the lines act like, it’s like her vision’s completely gone. Yes. Because like Eddie asks if she’s had trouble with her vision before today she says it’s always been 20/20 and Hen’s, like, so this morning just completely gone.
She goes, “I woke to greet the world and it wasn’t there.” And it’s like, well, it was like, what?
Bex: But yes, a very definite disconnect between what we, as the audience are seeing and the way the script and the actors are reacting. So they, they go through the usual questions. Have you changed anything in your routine? Have you come in contact with anything?
Alice: Yeah. Any new skincare, any new makeup, any household cleaners, anything with fumes or strong scent?
Bex: Hen notices that there’s some swelling and some irritation in her eyes. So she just sort of says that, “Look, I’m gonna have a look at your eyes. I’m gonna examine the area.”
Um, she notices that there is minor clouding on the lens, almost like they’re covered in a film, which they kind of do look like she’s got [01:31:00] cataracts, which sort of explains the, the pale blue sort of color. Um, but as Eddie says, cataracts don’t appear overnight. And as they are staring at this woman’s eyes and shining lights at her, um, at her eyeballs, um, Eddie notices something move.
Ellen: Oof. This is where I start squirming.
Bex: It’s like, “What do you mean you saw something move?” And Hen’s like “Something like a worm?” And as soon as she said that, I went, man, Buck is gonna be so pissed that he missed this call.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: Like what do you mean you had a woman with worms in her eyes and I wasn’t there?
Alice: Right? Poor Buckley.
Ellen: Where is Buck?
Bex: Uh, he’s off with Chim having,
Alice: having dinner with Chim? Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. Why, why are they not there?
Bex: I don’t know. Um, so it’s up to [01:32:00] Hen to wrangle the worms.
Alice: Um, yeah. So Hen grabs forceps and a sample jar and they’re trying to work out how worms got in her eyes and Bobby’s like, “Oh, face flies. It’s a type of parasite that infects livestock. They feed off the tears and lay eggs in the eyes,” which apparently you don’t normally see it in people though. Mostly cattle.
Bex: I just love the fact that it’s the guy from Minnesota who knows about sort of the livestock stuff.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: So, funnily enough, this woman has not been around cattle. Um, she hasn’t taken any trips because she, as she says, everything’s closed.
Alice: It’s so frustrating though, because he said it’s a type of parasite that affects livestock. And she, and like, yes, he mentions that it’s mostly cattle, but she’s like, I haven’t been around cattle. And then like, oh my God. So then we get like, oh, what do you do for a living? I teach yoga. What kind of yoga?
She teaches goat yoga. Goats are a [01:33:00] livestock, you idiot.
Ellen: These goats are her friends. They’re not livestock.
Bex: She teaches goat yoga.
Alice: They’re coworkers. It’s fine.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Which Bobby…
Ellen: they’re so cute though. I’d love to do goat yoga. It looks like fun
Bex: because we, we get a shot of it. It’s um, like people doing the plank position with goats standing on their backs. Yeah. Like not full goats. I think they’re either baby goats or,
Ellen: yeah, they’re little goats.
Bex: They’re little ones. They’re little little goats. Um, Bobby thinks that it’s the most ridiculous thing he’s ever heard about. Like people pay to do that and then Eddie pipes up and says, “Well, you know, people say baby goats offer the perfect weight and resistance to hold a plank position.” And Hen and Bobby just look at him like he sprouted with third head.
Alice: Yeah. Because that’s a very, very Buck comment. Yeah. And Eddie just goes, “I can know weird stuff too.”
Bex: I would put good dollar bucks on the fact that he learnt that fact from Buck though.
Alice: [01:34:00] Yeah. Like Buck was probably scrolling through the internet one day and he is like, “oh my God, let’s go do baby, uh, let’s go do goat yoga.” And Eddie’s like, “we are not doing goat yoga.” He’s like, “but it’s baby goes off of the perfect weight and resistance to hold the plank position.”
Ellen: Oh. And the, the wom, the yoga instructor lady’s like, “It’s not weird. Okay. It’s a little weird.”
Alice: Yeah. But people really like the class and because the studio’s closed, like they have to do it outdoors. So goat yoga.
Bex: Yeah. The woman takes the, um, the flies in her eyes that from the goats as a sign that she should grow up and get a real job like her sister says. Um, and that triggers Hen. And Hen’s like,
Alice: she’s like, “Who cares what other people think. Goat yoga’s your, your jam, your dream, then own goat yoga.”
Ellen: She Hen’s like the poster child of, you know, changing your career to do the thing that you love. So, you know, good on her.
Bex: Bobby and Eddie don’t know [01:35:00] what to make of the, like the, the motivational speech that Hen’s just delivered and Bobby’s just like, this is a problem for another day. We, we’ll deal with that later. Let’s just focus on, um, focus on the worms in the eyes.
Ellen: The woman’s like saying thank you to Hen and like tries to touch her face. And Hen’s like, whoa.
Alice: Yeah. She, she fallen just pats he face and Hen’s, like, “I still have a tool that can make this whole blindness thing permanent. So stay still.”
Bex: So she pulls worm out of worm, after worm.
Ellen: Oh my God. I couldn’t watch. It just kept going on and on. I’m like, kept looking back to see if it was over and she’s like, pull another worm.
Bex: I did a tiny bit of Googling about this and there was one instance where, um, a woman pulled at least 40 worms out of her eyes.
Ellen: Oh my God.
Alice: How could you not feel that? Like, I get dust in my eye and I’m just like, rinsing it out for three hours.
Bex: Yeah, that’s the thing. You, you do feel like there’s something in your eye. It’s just nobody expects it to be worms. [01:36:00] And like they, they live in sort of the tear ducts, so they’re sort of inside the, the little and then the conjunctiva and sort of the like, not actually on your eyeball, but sort of inside your eye, but yeah.
Ellen: Okay. That’s gross,
Alice: did I tell you guys I found out that tear ducts are not what I thought they were recently.
Ellen: Oh.
Alice: So I always thought that tear ducts like made,
Ellen: do we have time to go into this?
Alice: Yes. Um,
Ellen: okay.
Alice: I always thought the tear ducts were what made the tears. Like that’s where the tears come from.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. No.
Ellen: Are they not?
Alice: The tear… no, the tear ducts are there to drain the liquid from the eye. So when there’s too much liquid in the eye, it goes into the tear duct and like drains through your sinuses.
Bex: Huh.
Ellen: So where did the tears come from?
Bex: Oh, that’s what I was about to ask.
Alice: Just your eye creates like moisture? I.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Bex: Did not know that. Very interesting.
Ellen: There you go.
Alice: Only found out ’cause one of our dogs kept having runny like weepy eyes and we tried allergy stuff and then took her to the eye vet to make sure it was nothing sinister. And they were like, oh, [01:37:00] her tear ducts really narrow so it’s not draining properly. And we’re like, what? So she had surgery to open up her tear duct.
Bex: Oh good Lord.
Ellen: Oh yeah. Alright. So yeah, thank you for the anatomy lesson.
Alice: So tear ducts do not create tears. They drain tears away.
Ellen: Good to know.
Bex: I guess that make sense why they’re called ducts.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, you’re right.
Bex: Um, this woman doesn’t need surgery. Um, Hen manages to extract…
Alice: no, apparently it just magically.
Bex: Yeah, because as, as soon as Hen pulls out the last worm, the, like, the ulceration that was causing the film over her eye miraculously heals itself.
Alice: Um, and also that like in, in the flashback to, yeah, in the flashback to her doing goat yoga, her eyes are very deep brown. Yeah. And this whole scene at her apartment, they’re bright blue,
Bex: but as soon as they pull the last worm out and [01:38:00] the ulcer heals, she’s back to brown eyes.
Alice: Yeah. Like what’s, it doesn’t even look like cat. Like, you know, I’d make, I’d, it’d make sense if it was like that milky sort of white. But no, they just make it, it’s blue.
Like they just give her a blue cat, like Yeah. Blue um,
Ellen: contact lens.
Alice: A blue contact. Yeah.
Bex: It’s for in like, in reality this kind of, in infestation of these like zootropic parasites could cause ulceration of the cornea, which would like make the film, um, would make your vision go blurry. But it’s definitely not an instant heal that as soon as you remove the parasite that your cornea miraculously heals itself.
Um, yeah
Alice: that’s a bit weird.
Bex: For the drama,
Alice: for the drama.
Ellen: For the drama, she’s healed.
Bex: She’s Hen has magic hands.
Alice: And she gets to watch and she gets to watch Hen add the last worm to the sample jar and yeah, she starts retching and she’s like, “oh my god, do rabbits have worms? Maybe bunny [01:39:00] yoga’s the future.”
And then we get Hildy happily piping up “Do rabbits have worms?” And Eddie’s head, like, he snaps around and is like, “no!”
Bex: We don’t wanna hear what you found on the internet. Like, leaps across the room, grabs the Hildy, um, console and just like slams it face down on the table. Like we do not wanna hear what you have found about on the internet about rabbits.
Ellen: Poor Eddie.
Bex: He’s absolutely traumatized by Hildy. That’s hilarious.
Alice: Poor Eddie.
Bex: But yeah, just that reaction is just love it. So good. Again, we go from ridiculousness to, um, like deep emotional scenes. It’s late, it’s nighttime, and Hen has returned to medical school for extra study, I guess, and is surprised to find that Sydney is already there.
Ellen: Yes. They have a bit [01:40:00] of a chat about what’s going on, Hen says, “I didn’t expect to see you here this late.” And Sydney is like, “I can’t let myself fall behind. And what are you doing here?” And Hen’s, like, “I have an annoying lab partner that constantly makes me feel like I’m failing.” It’s like, wow. Hen you’re still salty about what happened, right?
Bex: But then Sydney like triples down. She’s like, “I’m, I guess I’m, I’m just so used to pushing myself. I assumed everyone else did the same. Sorry.” Hen’s like, “wow, you’re apologizing yet still insulting me. That’s, that’s, that’s great.”
Ellen: Um, and then she does keep going by saying, um, “I, I can’t fail. You wouldn’t understand.”
And he’s like, “Wouldn’t I?” But, uh, Sydney says, “You’ve been in the field for years. You’ve probably saved hundreds of lives already.” And Hen’s like, “Hello, I’m a black lesbian that joined the fire department at 30 [01:41:00] and started med school at 40. Do you think I’ve ever walked into a room and not felt like I had to prove that I deserve to be there?”
And this finally gets through to Sydney that she actually needs to, uh, actually apologize for real this time. So she does.
Bex: Throughout this whole scene, um, Sydney has been wincing and rubbing at her head like she’s got a killer headache. Um, and after she apologizes to Hen, she reaches down to grab her water bottle, which for some reason is on the floor behind her chair.
Um, and as she sits up, we see that she has a patch on her arm, which her, the sleeve of her scrub has risen up and the patch is now visible and Hen says, “oh, you’re on hormone replacement therapy,” which Sydney realizes that the patch is now visible and sort of pulls the sleeve down over and it says, “Good catch. Most people just assume I’m trying to quit smoking.”
And Hen says, “Most people aren’t paying attention.” And she sort of [01:42:00] reels off all of Sydney’s symptoms, including the increased irritability or what she hopes is increased irritability, um, could be a reaction to the patch. And then she suggests that Sydney go back to her doctor and talk about if, if like she’s getting the headaches and the irritability through the patch, maybe she could try the gel or maybe she could try the tablet.
Like, she’s not trying to talk Sydney out of stopping the therapy. She’s just suggesting a different delivery system. But Sydney spills her guts and explains why she’s on the therapy, as if Hen has suggested like you should stop doing it, but she hasn’t.
Alice: Um, yeah. So Sydney has the BRCA one gene mutation. So six weeks before medical school started, she had a double mastectomy and RRSO surgery to remove her ovaries and fallopian tubes, which is why she has the patch.
Ellen: So this is like [01:43:00] an increased risk of breast cancer?
Bex: Yeah. The the brca, the BRCA one gene mutation, pretty much, it’s almost like a guarantee that you’ll develop cancer.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: Um, and so the, the surgery that Sydney had is the risk is risk reducing basically takes all of the cells, the majority of the cells out that this cancer can develop in out before the cancer can, has a chance to grow,
Ellen: Right.
Alice: Yeah. Um, Hen’s surprised ’cause she’s only 20 and is like, what doctor? And Sydney’s like, “Yeah. Trust me. It was hard to find one who’d performed the surgeries on someone my age who doesn’t already have children. But you know me. I love to fight.”
Bex: I just imagine that she’d be getting like the “But what if your husband wants to have children?”
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: Mm. Yeah.
Bex: But Sydney has a very good reason for having the surgery because she says that her mother died when she was [01:44:00] 34 of breast cancer.
Her grandmother died when she was 32 of breast cancer. And so that’s why Sydney had such aggressive, um, surgery and that’s also why she pushes herself so fast. Um, so hard because it’s not just that she wants to be the first woman in her family to graduate medical school. She wants to be the first woman in her family to live past 35.
Ellen: Ouch.
Alice: Yep. So Hen’s like, whoa, we better get to work.
Bex: Yeah. It, it finally, everything sort of clicked for Hen for what’s going on with Sydney, and she’s now sympathetic to Sydney’s cause. And of course, as the way this episode goes, we had deep and meaningful. So now we’re gonna get a little bit of ridiculousness, but this is such cute ridiculousness. I love it.
Alice: This is the best ridiculousness.
Bex: Yes. Um, so we returned to Casa Diaz where Eddie [01:45:00] has had a delivery. There’s a box sitting on his front step, which he pulls a lot.
Alice: A pretty large box,
Bex: very large box.
Alice: Although it’s definitely empty when he picks it up because it just lifts like,
Bex: no, no, no, no. Eddie’s just that strong.
Alice: Oh, right, my bad. Yeah,
Bex: he’s just that strong that he makes it look effortless when he picks it up.
Alice: The cardboard doesn’t even bend. That’s how strong he is.
Bex: No. Yeah. Um, so he brings it inside. Chris is sitting at the table, um, and he, he doesn’t like bat an eye at the fact that there is like a delivery.
And there his father’s bringing his massive box in, but he’s pretending to do his homework, but still watching what Eddie’s doing and what Eddie does is whips a pocket knife out of his back pocket. And I’m sorry, do men usually carry pocket knives around in their back pockets while they’re inside their own house?
Alice: My dad does.
Bex: Really?
Alice: Not like all the time, but yeah, [01:46:00] like if he’s doing stuff around the house, he usually has a knife on him because he’s,
Bex: well, I’m assuming Eddie’s like cooking dinner and helping Chris with his homework. Does he need a knife to do that? Like what kind of homework is Chris doing? Like how
Alice: My dad’s is on his keys. So if he’s got his keys on him, then yeah, he’s got his pocket knife on him.
Bex: Yeah. But Eddie’s aren’t on his keys, but anyways,
Ellen: yeah. But this is just a little, yeah. Anyway, maybe it’s a military thing he’s just carrying
Alice: Yeah, maybe it’s a military thing.
Bex: He whips a knife out of his back pocket to open the box, um, which the first thing he sees is like the, um, the packing information, which has in very large letters, “A gift from Hildy.”
Ellen: Yep. And he’s like freaking out.
Bex: And it gets worse because he rips off the bubble wrap. And it’s a smart coffee machine.
Alice: It’s a coffee machine.
Ellen: It’s, it’s a Hildy coffee machine
Bex: powered by Hildy. And the way you would react, you would think that Eddie was in like the movie Seven and he’s like, Brad [01:47:00] Pitt, like, what’s in the box? But no, it’s a coffee machine.
Alice: Meanwhile, while Eddie’s freaking the fuck out, Chris is like dialing the phone as like faster than he’s ever done anything and just goes, we got him
Bex: and you can hear Buck through the phone going, “We got him? Oh man, I wish I could see his face.” And then Eddie realizes what’s happened.
Alice: Yeah, so Eddie snatches the phone from Christopher and he is like, “yeah, thanks Buck real funny,” and hangs up and Buck’s like, you are welcome. It’s so good.
Ellen: It’s great.
Bex: Like ridiculous. Um, but I, it’s like the, the cherry on top of, of Eddie’s paranoia around Hildy. But for a second he really believed that Hildy had sent him a coffee machine.
Ellen: Yeah. Pat the [01:48:00] look on his face Buck was right. He should have been there to see it.
Bex: Yeah. I’m really surprised Chris didn’t like whip out his phone and start like, furtively filming Eddie.
Alice: Right. Yeah. Mind you, he probably doesn’t have a smartphone yet. ’cause he did use the landline to call back.
Bex: Yes. Maybe, maybe Eddie had confiscated all of the smart devices, including his phone.
Ellen: That’s right, yeah!
Alice: They’ve probably only got the landline. Considering they don’t even have remotes at the moment.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: They’re all at the back of the closet somewhere.
Bex: They’re in like a box wrapped in tinfoil in like he’s built, he’s built a Faraday cage to put all of the devices in, which he actually had to go to the library and like look up how to do that because he couldn’t Google it because he’d shut down all the computers.
Ellen: That’s right. Yeah. You seem to find out that you don’t know how to do anything if you take away the internet. [01:49:00] Alright, well it’s time for a bit of cuteness now. Um,
Bex: more cuteness, different kind of cuteness.
Ellen: Maddie gets home from work, I assume. She’s late 20 minutes. She’s very excited,
Bex: six months late
Ellen: for some reason.
Um, she, she washes her hands. She’s very COVID safe in all of these episodes that she washes her hands a lot, so that’s good. So she’s just, she’s been at the doctor, um, and the doctor says everything’s fine, the baby’s fine. And Chim’s like, if there’s anything wrong, you can tell me I’m not gonna run again.
And Maddie says that, I promise, if it had had anything to do with you, I would tell you so they’re gonna be, you know, they’re gonna be okay that she’s like, what I need for you is to play this DVD.
Bex: What I do like is that Chim is like, she’s saying if whatever is wrong has anything to do with you, I will [01:50:00] tell you.
And Chim’s like, no, you tell me everything. We are a family now. If it has something to do with you, it has something to do with me.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: But yes, they, they go to the living room and they put on the ultrasound recording and take it away, Alice.
Alice: Hang on, hang on. Just quick, just quick. Um, when Maddie says I need you to play this DVD, the reaction from Chip is the cutest thing. ’cause he goes, “Let’s go watch the greatest movie we ever made.” And I’m like, Awwww.
Bex: So that mean they didn’t make a sex tape?
Alice: Clearly not,
Ellen: apparently not.
Alice: Um, well, or, or it wasn’t that great.
So anyway, so Maddie and Chim are on the couch and they’re watching the ultrasound recording. And despite Maddie telling her parents that she was gonna get one of those 4D ones, it’s literally just a 2D ultrasound. Yep.
Bex: Yeah, it’s just your regular,
Alice: it like, it could have been from the nineties. It’s just your standard [01:51:00] ultrasound. It is not one of the like lasagna ultrasounds. It is literally just,
Ellen: it’s lasagna,
Alice: A black and white
Bex: Lasagna ultrasound?
Alice: Oh, you haven’t seen the lasagna ultrasound meme? Hang on.
Bex: No, I have not seen lasagna, ultrasound meme. Oh god,
Alice: I love that. I typed in ultrasound and then started typing lasagna and it came up with ultrasound lasagna meme.
Bex: Hey, I’m just gonna sit and wait for Alice to drop it in the group chat so that I can see what it is she’s talking about, because I’m pretty sure that’s what she’s doing right now. Here we go, Uhhuh, that
Ellen: that lasagna looks crisp.
Bex: So for of you who haven’t seen it, it’s a, it’s a clip of one of those 4D ultrasounds that, which, if anyone’s confused about what that is, it’s rather than the black and white ultrasound, it’s like, um, orange.
Alice: It’s a 3D ultrasound.
Bex: It, it’s 3D ultrasound. It’s d it’s orangey. It’s supposed to [01:52:00] be a little bit more Sure shows more dimension of the baby. So it’s this picture of this, this orangey brownie sort of shape and the commenter says, “that lasagne looks crispy.” And the op says, “that’s my daughter.”
Ellen: It’s so silly.
Alice: It just makes me laugh every time because I’ve had like several friends now who have had babies. Like, and they get offered the 3D ultrasound and they’re like, ah, it’s not that much. I may as well do it. I’m just like, “that lasagna looks, looks crisp” every fucking time.
Bex: They’re the creepiest ultrasounds though.
Alice: I hate them so much. Yeah. It weirds me out so much. Yeah,
Ellen: it’s very, very weird. And that’s, but apparently you’ve got a much better chance of being able to tell what sex the baby is from that.
Alice: Yeah. But yeah, this one is not a 3D ultrasound. No, it’s also not a 4D ultrasound, which like, wouldn’t even make sense.
Like how is it a 4D? Like there’s only three dimensions. [01:53:00]
Ellen: Well, it usually means that there’s an extra, extra things that they are able to detect in it, but either way, this is just a normal ultrasound that you get when you go.
Alice: It just, it just just reminds me of like, when I, when you used to go to movie world, like back in the nineties and there was like the 4D movie experience and like it was 3D, so like the stuff came out at you, but then also like when Daffy had like, you know, squirt with his like spray with his tongue water had come down on you.
Yeah. And that’s why it was 4D ’cause it had like the other thing. So I’m like, what an extra dimens the baby? And then the baby like sneezes in the womb and they spray water on it. Like, oh,
Bex: okay. So the fourth dimension is time. And so according to, according to this website, if, um. The, with a 3D ultrasound, a whole series of slices are taken and digitally reconstructed into a 3D image to produce a lifelike picture of the fetus.
4D ultrasounds [01:54:00] adds the element of time, which means that the lifelike pictures can be seen to move in real time. Right.
Ellen: So it’s a video,
Alice: it’s a, yeah, it makes it a video?
Bex: Yes. Rather than just pictures.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Right. This says, yeah, we don’t need to go into what, but Yes, yes.
Alice: Well, this is not a 3D or four 4D. It’s the traditional two DA regular black and white. 2D and Maddie got ripped off.
Ellen: Yeah. Anyway, they’re watching it and Chim is like, so excited. He’s adorable. This is amazing.
Bex: That’s their baby!
Ellen: That’s our baby.
Bex: Um, and he, he’s very touched because Maddie says, Chim is saying that he, he sees that they still don’t know the sex of the baby.
And Maddie says “What? It’s so weird because the, the doctor, the ultrasound tech said that she could tell the sex of the baby,” and Chim is like, “Wait, you [01:55:00] didn’t look, you didn’t find out?” Maddie says to him that “We’ve been apart for so many firsts since pregnancy. I wanted to have this first together.”
Alice: God, that’s so cute. I love them so much. Um, so then they look back and. Then they find out and they’re like, oh, I think, oh, and at the same time they’re like, “It’s a girl.”
Ellen: Aw.
Alice: Aw,
Bex: baby girl Han. And then we transition from baby girl Han to baby girl Grant, who has just come home from work.
Bobby and Athena are cleaning up in the kitchen. May has missed a dinner, but Bobby has very kindly made her up a plate.
Alice: Um, yeah. Athena’s surprised she’s already pulling overtime, but May says, “no, no, I had a counseling session.”
Bex: And then Bobby immediately jumps to, oh, you’re having like employment mandated therapy because you had a traumatic day on the job. Because, [01:56:00] yeah.
Alice: He’s like, did you have a rough call? And she’s like, no,
Bex: because everyone’s like, oh, therapy, you must have had like, it must be traumatic, like a job induced trauma. And she just like, May’s like, “No, it’s just precautionary. Sue thought it would be a good idea because I’m so young and you know, I’ve also had traumatic shit happen to me in the past.”
Athena’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know you told them about the, um, like the suicide attempt,” and May’s like, “Well, it’s on the record you did call 9-1-1.” They were gonna find out about it, or they already knew about it. Yeah,
Ellen: I mean, she’s had other traumatic stuff happen to her too, like, you know, having to hold onto that woman’s neck so she didn’t die. And you know, there’s other, there’s other things,
Alice: But I guess that didn’t like give her mental scars apparently. Um, but yeah, so May told them about it. Um, they said it wasn’t disqualifying, but they wanted to make sure she had someone to talk to. Bobby is like, well, “I’m glad she’s looking out for you.”
Um, May agrees, [01:57:00] but she’s like, “Yeah, I just spent the whole day talking to people. The last thing I wanted to do at the end was talk some more.”
Bex: And then we see the difference between Bobby and Athena when it comes to therapy. ’cause Bobby’s very pro therapy, like Bobby himself has never been to therapy. He prefers to talk to the hot priest, but he’s very, very pro everybody else going to therapy. Like he hooked everybody up with Frank, like, anything’s going wrong, he’s gonna send you to therapy. Athena, um, is not,
Ellen: I think Bobby talks to Hen like Bobby talks to the other people in the, in the group, but like, he’ll bail someone up and tell them about his problems rather than a therapist.
Alice: To be fair, they do the same to him
Bex: very much so. Um, but Athena’s thinking of therapy as, again, it’s sort of linked to the job and it’s temporary. So once, um, Sue sees that May can handle herself, she won’t have to go through therapy and Bobby’s very quick to jump in and go, “But there’s, there’s nothing wrong about seeing somebody long term, [01:58:00] you know, especially in this line of work. You know, I have someone that I talk to at AKA hot priest.” Um, he’s also got his AA meetings and, you know, “your mother’s got Dr. Sanford.” And Athena’s like, “No I don’t, I ditched her months ago.” Yeah. A few weeks ago actually, which is news to Bobby. And so they’re having
Alice: Yeah, she’s like, Brook Shields was great, but, and I’d absolutely see her again if I needed to.
Bex: We just can’t afford to bring her back because she, you know, commands to hire a, a paycheck. But the good thing is that Bobby and Athena then get into this backwards and forwards and May is just sitting there watching them bicker about therapy.
Ellen: And he’s, he’s trying to, you know, convince her that maybe she should see her again. And Athena’s like, “no, I don’t need anyone to baby me. Go away.”
Alice: Yeah. Never have, never will. Um, and May’s just like, “so if I’m your daughter, shouldn’t that mean you don’t have to baby me?” And Athena’s comeback is the best. She’s [01:59:00] like, “You’re only half mine. Your daddy’s side still needs looking after.”
Bex: Oh, the shade.
Ellen: Poor Michael, he’s not even in this episode. She’s given him heaps
Alice: Poor Michael.
Ellen: And then she’s like, uh, “that maybe 50% less then,” and Athena’s like, “No, you are gonna be my baby forever.”
Bex: Bobby’s given up at this point. He’s like, yeah, I’m gonna cut my losses. We’ll deal with this another day.
Alice: Yeah. Um, so we have one more Madney scene and Chim’s very excited about baby girl Han. Um, and he’s like, I guess we’re gonna have to get serious about finding a name now, should we do something traditional or more modern like Chicago?
Bex: Oh, please don’t name a Chicago. If only because
Alice: Chicago Han
Bex: everyone would then assume like, um, the Beckhams that she was conceived in Chicago. Because that’s how the Beckham’s named their kids. Right? Their kids are named after where they were conceived.
Alice: [02:00:00] Really? Oh my God.
Bex: Isn’t that why the kids’ Brooklyn? ’cause that’s where they were.
Ellen: Oh God.
Alice: I don’t know. Brooklyn’s a trendy name. Jesus. Oh good lord.
Ellen: That’s a really traumatizing thing for the kids to find out one day
Alice: poor children.
Bex: But yeah, Maddie looks incredibly worried. So
Alice: speaking of traumatizing,
Bex: yeah, she does look traumatized. Not at the fact that, that Chim wants to name the baby Chicago. There’s obviously something else on her mind. Um, she tells Chim that, um, that he was right, that it, she shouldn’t just tell him about things that concern him, that they’re gonna be a family and he needs to know everything.
Alice: Yeah. Chim’s like, look, I told you you don’t have to protect me. And Maddie goes, you are not the one I’m trying to protect.
Bex: Dun dun. But before we can find out what, um, Maddie needs to tell Chim, [02:01:00] the wildfires in Texas are now completely out of control. They have progressed to, in San Angelo and apparently LAFD has put its hand up and said that it will come and help
Ellen: This section at the end of the episode is like, it feels like a completely different episode.
Bex: It really does feel like a totally different effort.
Ellen: Tone is different.
Bex: Yeah. Yeah, tonally it doesn’t fit. And what’s really weird is like the news anchor is talking about the wildfires and we’ve got like very wild west music playing underneath this, but the visuals are all of LA
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I would’ve thought if they were talking about the wildfires that we would’ve got shot of, you know, wildfires or the wildfires.
Yeah. Something, you know, very stereo, stereotypically Texan. But no.
Alice: Um, anyway, Buck is very excited. Um, he’s been on the list for special deployment ever since he joined the department and he is never got, got a call before today. Um, so he is loading up the [02:02:00] trucks. Um, Eddie’s apparently coming too ’cause he says that they’re ready to roll and then Hen just shows up and is like, “Oh no, I know how you guys are. Everyone make sure you use the bathroom before we go. I don’t care if you think you need to or not. We have a 20 hour drive and we’re gonna make good time.” Um, so yeah, mama Hen’s come back. Um,
Ellen: yep.
Alice: Eddie seems surprised that she’s coming, but she’s like, “No, I got two kids and medical bill, uh, medical school bills to pay. I’ll take all the emergency overtime I can get. Besides, it’ll be fun. I’ve never been to Texas.”
Bex: I would also, I would just question like, you’ve got two kids and you’re in med school. Do you really think now is the time to be like leaving the state?
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, they, she has just been through the fact that she’s really tired.
Alice: Sucks to be Karen!
Ellen: Yeah. She’s got all this stuff going on. Oh, she just needs a break. Okay?
Bex: So she’s gonna go to Texas and fight wildfires as her break. I mean, strangely, strangely enough. I do actually understand that, that that would
Ellen: A change is as good as a holiday. [02:03:00]
Bex: Yes. Um, so the episode ends with the 118 rolling out on their epic road trip, um, in the trucks to Texas. And my God, that must be the worst road trip to be on.
Ellen: Oh yeah. That’s a long way in a fire truck I’m sure.
Bex: Especially because we found out that like the firetrucks are not the most comfortable things to ride in.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah.
Bex: Shock absorption sucks. The, the, like the seats and padding is pretty much shot, not fun.
Ellen: Yeah. Can’t be good on the butt or the back.
Bex: Definitely not.
Ellen: I imagine.
Alice: Yeah. It’s almost a full day of driving, so, yeah. Ouch.
Bex: And that’s where the episode ends.
Alice: So before we go to next week, Ellen.
Ellen: Yes.
Alice: What do you think the secret is?
Ellen: I’ve absolutely no idea.
Bex: You haven’t watched, you haven’t watched onwards?
Ellen: No, I haven’t watched onwards. Um, she said they weren’t [02:04:00] abusive.
Bex: Mm-hmm.
Ellen: So, I don’t know, don’t know what it is. I’m assuming that they’ve, they were involved in something that you know, made them,
Bex: ill say that.
Ellen: Not available for the children.
Bex: I will say that there is absolutely no way that you could pick it.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Oh God, no.
Alice: Yeah. Like I had theories.
Bex: Because I honestly, I think I binged this so fast and so hard the first time that I didn’t even stop to think, I just kept watching and never really took the time to try and come up with my own theories.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But unfortunately for Ellen, uh, she has to wait two weeks to find out, um, what the big bad, what the big Dark Buckley family secret is because we are going to follow Buck, Hen and Eddie to Texas next week.
Alice: Yeah. We’re gonna Texas.
Ellen: Woohoo!
Alice: I’m finally forcing Beck to watch Lone Star.
Bex: [02:05:00] No, I, I will watch this one episode again. I will say that I’ve already watched it today. Um, so I will watch it again, but I’m not watching anything else. I refuse.
Ellen: Okay. So tell us about what’s happening next week.
Bex: So next week we have the 9-1-1 and 9-1-1 Lone Star Crossover. It’s as wildfire spreads across Texas, which may or may not have been caused by an extinct volcano suddenly becoming active again and erupting, um, Evan “Buck” Buckley, Henrietta “Hen” Wilson and Eddie Diaz. Who doesn’t?
Ellen: Eddie “Eddie” Diaz,
Bex: which should, should be like
Ellen: No, Edmundo “Eddie” Diaz.
Bex: Um, from, and Edmundo “Eddie” Diaz from the 118 Firehouse in Los Angeles arrive in Austin to help Captain Strand and the [02:06:00] 1 26, as the crew race to save a group of teenagers trapped by the fire at a campground. Owen and Hen. Owen being Captain Strand, um, fight for their lives in the aftermath of a helicopter crash.
Um, and because the, our normal trigger warning document doesn’t cover Lone Star, I had to watch this episode today to find the triggers. Um,
Alice: yeah. Nikki also has not watched Lone Star.
Bex: So triggers for the 9-1-1 Lone Star episode “Hold the Line” include Rob Lowe, uh, wildfires. It’s a trigger for me.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: Wildfires, uh, hallucinations caused by a traumatic brain injury, children at threat. Um, references to wilderness therapy, depiction of burns, uh, [02:07:00] possible child abuse, firefighters at threat. References to 9/11 and references to Hen’s ambulance accident. Also references to Buck’s Spiderman County, Spider-Man accident with the Ferris Wheel, and the guy that let go.
Ellen: Oh geez, that’s a callback. Yeah.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Okay. And did you wanna mention what is gonna be in the next episode of 9-1-1 itself? Oh, for those, just in case people are gonna miss,
Bex: for anybody who does not care about Lone Star is just gonna skip next week, um, on the next episode of 9-1-1, so if you’re not coming with us to Texas.
Athena investigates a mysterious murder during a neighborhood block party, and the 118 rush to save lives endangered by a bomb threat. Meanwhile, Chimney has a hard time keeping secrets [02:08:00] when Maddie and Buck’s parents come to town.
Ellen: Oh, they’re coming to town.
Bex: Oh, yeah. You don’t think they’re just drop the deep dark Buckley family secret and then just not go into it. Did you?
Ellen: Yeah, I did think that because, because we’ve got “Buck Begins” coming up, don’t we? In a couple of episodes.
Bex: And the triggers for that specific episode, which I love, the title of that one by the way, is “9-1-1. What’s Your Grievance?” Which I think is just brilliant. Um, we have bad parenting, blackmail, uh, a dog at threat. Don’t worry, the dog does not die. Um, gun violence and threat of workplace mass violence via a bomb. I really like this episode.
Ellen: Yeah, I I did. It wasn’t as like thematically, uh, smacking you in the face as other ones that we’ve had.
Alice: I like, it was a good, like, it was a good start of the season. Like there was enough [02:09:00] stuff to move the story along, but also like funny emergencies.
Bex: Yeah. So you had the, like, the funny emergencies, but they were woven in between like the actual character development and character storylines. Yeah. Um, and it was, I thought that it was very clever with, you had like Eddie who is afraid for the future technologically wise, but then you also had like Maddie who was afraid for the future, for the future of her child.
Um, that was also tied with her past and Buck’s past, which then allows for that storyline to sort of continue. Yeah. Or to develop.
Ellen: Yeah, it was a good mixture of, um, different types of futuristic things too, like,
Bex: and a nice play on words with the title without anyone actually like physically dropping the, the title reference. Uh, the reference to the title. Is it like future tense as in, [02:10:00] you know, the as tense as, as in writing. So we’re talking about the future, but also tense as in just like tension. Um, yeah. Yeah. Very clever. Um, this episode was written by Andrew Myers. That makes sense. So I think we’ve talked about Andrew, that he’s like the, the Bobo of 9-1-1.
So with the
Ellen: Oh, right. Yeah.
Bex: The it that makes the Buck and Eddie scenes kind of makes sense when he realized that it was Andrew who wrote it.
Ellen: Yeah. All right. Uh, well please do let us know what you thought about this episode by leaving us a comment on, uh, the episode post on thatweewooshow.com, or you can leave us a comment directly in Spotify or on social media.
You can join us next week for the crossover episode with 9-1-1 Lone Star, which is called “Hold the Line”, which is actually do we have, have we got like a season and episode number of that one so that [02:11:00] we can let people know,
Bex: uh, that is strangely Season two… “Hold the Line” is the third episode of season two, so season two episode three.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: And we can talk about how weird it is that there are three episodes into the second season of doing a crossover with the og when we actually watched the episode,
Alice: did it air right after? Hang on.
Bex: Yeah, it funnily. So it goes, um, “Future Tense” was at 8:00 PM on February the first and then “Hold the Line” for Line 9-1-1 Lone Star was at 9:00 PM on the same day.
Okay. So just like the Dr. Odyssey crossover? Yes. They did the same thing. Yeah. Yeah.
Ellen: It was like immediately after?
Alice: It was immediate that to,
Ellen: I guess that’s to encourage the 9-1-1 viewers to just to
Alice: stick around. Yeah.
Ellen: Hold the line. And
Alice: it confused me so much when I first watched it because I didn’t realize that the crossover was gonna happen on Lone Star. And so the next episode started and I was like, why are they not in Texas?
Bex: Yeah. Like we can go into It’s like why they did that. [02:12:00] Yeah. When we actually watch it. ’cause it’s the weirdest fucking thing. But anyway, so yes, if you want to, if you wanna join us, it is season two, episode three. Um, and Alice will be able to explain all of the backstories and everything.
So if you watch it and you’re confused as fuck about what’s going on, Alice will hope you’ll be able to explain that.
Alice: I’ll, I’ll fill, I’ll fill you in on my babies. Yeah. I get to see Judd and Grace again
Bex: because I know a little bit, but I don’t fucking care enough to learn all of it.
Ellen: No, and I know absolutely nothing, so you have to introduce everyone to me.
Um, okay. So either next week “Hold the Line” for 9-1-1 Lone Star, or in two weeks time we will be talking about
Bex: “9-1-1, What’s Your Grievance?”
Ellen: 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 [02:13:00] world too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you are 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.
[first outtake]
Ellen: Have you seen the picture of why they don’t do, um like MRI on, on fetuses?
Alice: Oh yeah. They look fucking terrifying. ‘
Ellen: cause they look really scary.
Bex: Ooh.
Alice: They look like fucking weird demon things.
Ellen: They look like aliens like, yeah, because it’s like a, an actual cross section of
Bex: Oh, oh
Ellen: yeah.
Bex: Okay. Oh, good Lord. [02:14:00] Oh, that is terrifying.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: It’s staring into my soul. Oh my god! Oh, hang on, hang on. It’s on Snopes. It’s being fact checked.
Ellen: Oh, it’s not real?
Bex: Hang on. Oh, no, it’s, it’s, it’s true. God dammit.
Ellen: Oh, Snopes. Wow. I haven’t looked at that one for a while.
Alice: Right.
Ellen: Every single thing on the internet would be false on Snopes nowadays.
Bex: This is the one that’s on Snopes.
Ellen: Oh Jesus. Oh,
Alice: Jesus Christ. That is not crispy. [02:15:00]
Ellen: That looks like you need to say some Latin to get rid of it
Bex: Exorcizamus te. Oh my God.
Alice: Oh Jesus.
Bex: Well, I don’t think I’m getting any sleep tonight. I’m just gonna be haunted.
Ellen: I know.
[second outtake]
Bex: Episode four, I believe. Let me just check.
Alice: I wanted to say episode four.
Bex: Uh, Lone Star. “Hold the Line”. (sings) Love isn’t always on time. Whoa whoa whoa.
Alice: Glad it wasn’t just me thinking that.
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