Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Alice, Bex, and Ellen watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss the very first episode of 9-1-1, titled “Pilot”.
Emergency responders must try to balance saving those who are at their most vulnerable with solving the problems in their own lives.
Content warnings for episode 1.01: near-drowning, suicide via jumping, snakes, abandoned infant, children at threat, armed home invasion
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Episode Transcript
Ellen: [00:00:00] Hi, and welcome to That Weewoo Show. I’m Ellen.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Bex: And I’m Bex.
Ellen: In this episode, we’re going to discuss the very first episode of 9-1-1. It’s just called “Pilot”. And this episode first aired way back in January, 2018. The 3rd of January, in fact, right at the start of the year. Gosh, that was a long time ago. (laughs)
Shall we just get stuck straight into talking about what happens in the episode?
Bex: Let’s do it. So the official summary for this episode is: “Emergency responders must try to balance saving those who are at their most vulnerable with solving the problems in their own lives.”
Alice: Dramatic.
Ellen: So this is like… the intro to this episode is really interesting because like we’re introduced to Abby first and she just starts the whole show off with, “What’s your emergency?” she says right at the start. So we know that… we find out pretty [00:01:00] quickly that she’s like the dispatcher. In fact, it starts even before that with Abby sitting at it, at her kitchen counter, drinking a glass of wine before work. I mean, mood, big mood, right?
Alice: Massive mood. She also mentions that her ex left a year ago and she’s still not over it.
The ex’s name is Tommy and I had to confirm with several people that it was not the same Tommy.
Ellen: Yeah. That’s in the show later?
Alice: That’s in the show later.
Ellen: Okay. But no, we get introduced to her mom who she, who lives with her who has Alzheimer’s. She looks like she’s sort of stuck in, in a hospital bed type situation forgetting things.
But her, her mom does say when she gives her the tablets to take, she says, “I’m healed”. You know, she sounds like a bit of a character. I like her. Yeah. I mean. I’m sure we’re going to lose her at some point and it’s going to hurt, but she’s, she seems fun.
Alice: Abby’s mom’s definitely a character. So yeah, so Abby’s a 9-1-1 [00:02:00] dispatcher, which is kind of cool because I haven’t actually seen that in a show before.
It’s definitely more about the, like, first responders as in the ones on the scene rather than the ones behind the phone. So.
Ellen: So this episode has like a number of different emergencies that, you know, the gang have to go and save people or whatever. And Abby sends them off onto each one.
I assume this is going to be like a theme that goes on like through the season. Right? Is this a thing that’s going to keep going on? She’s going to be taking the calls and sending them places?
Alice: Pretty much. Yeah. Like season one’s a little bit different than the rest of the seasons from what I’ve been told.
Season two is definitely a little bit different. But yeah, the theme sort of continues with the 9-1-1 calls and then cutting to the actual scene.
Bex: Well, before we get started, we should probably give a bit of a trigger warning for some of the [00:03:00] medical emergencies that we’re gonna be talking about for this episode.
Ellen: That’s a good idea. Yeah.
Bex: So in the pilot episode, we are going to be dealing with a near drowning incident, a suicide, an abandoned baby, choking by a snake and death of said snake, spoiler alert, and a home invasion which, slash robbery, which turns into a hostage situation involving a child.
Ellen: God, yeah. There’s a lot in, they pack a lot into 40 Minutes. Yeah.
Bex: You really don’t get a chance to breathe.
Ellen: No. Why? I mean, honestly, that makes it a great pilot episode, really, because, I mean, you’ve got a range of situations that they have to face, and you get to know the characters through the way they react to each situation, so it works pretty well.
So I guess the first emergency that the, they have to attend is a lady in Beverly Hills who is called because her [00:04:00] son hit his head on a diving board diving into a pool and now is not breathing. So they, so we first meet Buck, Hen I don’t, is the, is the the guy whose name is “Chimney”, is that how they refer to him as Chimney?
Sorry, I’m just showing my newbie status here, like what do we call him? Chimney?
Bex: Chim.
Ellen: Chim?
Bex: We call him, as of this episode, we’re still calling him “Chimney”.
Ellen: Okay, cool. And Bobby, who is like the, I don’t know, the team leader, I guess, right?
Bex: He is the captain of the 118, which is the firehouse from which this particular crew has been dispatched.
Ellen: Thank you. See, these are the details that you don’t really pick up on the first watch, right? You need to watch it four times before you get it.
Alice: At least!
Bex: So the way the way that I think it works in Los Angeles is that there are firehouses in all of the different sort of suburbs. Each of them has a particular number and 911 will dispatch a crew from the [00:05:00] closest firehouse to the emergency.
Just so happens that for our purposes, most of the time, the 118 is the closest firehouse. And it always seems to be happen, or the emergencies always seem to happen during Bobby’s shift. So we get this particular crew of the Greater 118 Firehouse.
Ellen: Okay. So they all show up on the scene, and they help to save the kid from like, you know, they do some questionable CPR.
Alice: Terrible.
Bex: Yes. Alice, would you like to talk to us about the CPR?
Alice: I happened to do my CPR refresher a week before I started watching the show. And like, it’s so hard when it’s fresh in your mind and you’re watching and you’re like, slow down, Buck. Just slow down. Take it easy. Slow down.
Ellen: [00:06:00] Yeah. Well, they, they, they save the kid. He coughs up a bunch of water and he’s okay. So like one thing that Abby says she’s sort of the narrator in this whole episode, I guess she’s speaking over what’s happening. She says that as soon as help arrives, most people just hang up.
So she often doesn’t get to hear how things turn out, which is kind of sad from her point of view. But she also then says, in some cases, that’s a good thing.
Alice: Yeah, definitely.
Ellen: The next emergency that they have to go and, and attend is someone who’s about to jump off a crane.
Alice: Yeah. So Bobby, Bobby like talks to her about how he’s been, where she’s been.
And like, you know, if she comes down, he’ll take her out for coffee. They’ll, you know, talk about things. But yeah, she, inevitably doesn’t believe him and unfortunately jumps. [00:07:00] And Abby’s on the line for that, so she gets the outcome for that one.
Ellen: Yeah. She says, no one can help me, and then she jumps. Yeah.
Right after that, I think you know, we get, we get a scene of Bobby, like, looking absolutely devastated standing on top of the crane, just going, what the hell? After that, a lady calls the 911 to say that the drive through only gave her six nuggets instead of nine. And Abby tells her to GTFO, basically, “Get some perspective, get the hell off my line”, hangs up.
So we find out that Abby’s a bit of a badass.
Alice: Yeah, she is. So that’s sort of the intro to the, like, the intro to the intro episode, I guess.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Then we get into some of the more deeper stuff and a bit more about the characters. So we start with Bobby in a church. [00:08:00] He’s going through a notebook with names of people.
The names of people are all numbered and yeah, then a priest comes in, they start going through confession, but the priest’s phone goes off, which is “Firework” by Katy Perry. Yes.
Ellen: Oh, that made me laugh.
Bex: And then he confesses to Bobby, “I am new at this.” Very obviously.
Ellen: Just like us, we’re all new to watching. (laughs)
So they, they ended up moving out to the pews and then Bobby confesses that he was an alcoholic and he did some drugs. But he’s been back on the job for 18 months now. And the priest is like, why are you confessing? Like that was a long time ago. And he’s like I confess it all once a week. So I can remind myself, you know, of how easy it is to lose control.
Bex: I think he uses confession. As a way to stop himself from drinking. So this was, [00:09:00] this scene comes directly after the suicide call. So he probably felt the urge to drink. So he’s gone to church to confess, to remind himself why he doesn’t.
Alice: definitely. So yeah, it’s quite, quite heavy. Like he talks about how in his line of work, people find their ways to cope. So some drink, some do drugs, some are sex addicts.
Bex: And that brings us to Buckley. Or should we call him Firehose as the name on his app is stated to be. (laughs)
Ellen: He’s driving one of the fire engines through the traffic. Some loud music is playing. I don’t know… I don’t, didn’t know this song. Do you guys know what this song is called?
Bex: No. No, I didn’t recognize it.
Ellen: No, but anyway, it’s he, he’s getting messages on his phone to, he’s meeting up with somebody. [00:10:00] And then when he eventually pulls up next to a sort of a convertible car with a pretty girl in it, and she says, “Is this why they call you Firehose?”
And he goes, “No.” And it’s like, oh no. And they get it on in the fire truck.
Bex: Which I really hope he gets that backseat cleaned before he took the truck back to the firehouse.
Ellen: And then like, immediately after, she then looks at his face and asks him if someone punched him. I’m like, So I guess it wasn’t that great? Like if you just immediately… like, anyway.
Bex: I think that was, I think that was their very, very ham fisted attempt to address Oliver’s birthmark, which does look like somebody has punched him in the face. And I believe that it was meant to be a running joke that everybody who met him was going to bring up the birthmark.
Alice: [00:11:00] To be fair, Buck 1.0 definitely deserves to be punched in the face a lot. So
Bex: Poor Buck 1.0.
Ellen: You know, I was, I was sort of kind of glad that they had this in there because I, you know, in all of the stills that I’d seen of, or GIFs or whatever of Buck in, on Twitter and whatever. And I always thought that he was just injured a lot, blood on his face or whatever, but no, it’s a birthmark, it’s always there. So, you know, good to know. Good to know.
Bex: And I do respect that they allowed all of it to keep it and they weren’t just caking the pancake on him to cover it up every single episode.
Ellen: So after they sort of, you know, get their clothes back on a bit he tries to get her actual number, her real number, but she says, “Oh, let’s just not ruin whatever this thing we have is by getting to know each other,”
Alice: by actually getting to know each other.
Ellen: [00:12:00] Yeah. And so he seems kind of disappointed by that, but. So yeah, then we’re cutting to Chim, who is watching Die Hard with a pretty lady in his apartment and eating some popcorn. But then we cut, we cut back to where I assume is the firehouse where he’s telling the others that this girl was bored and out of his league and whatever.
Alice: Yeah. So he met her on a new dating app for first responders.
Ellen: romancing the uniform.com
Alice: romancing the uniform. Hen and him have some really playful banter, which is like, it’s very obvious that they’re friends even from the first episode, which is really nice.
Bex: And Bobby is cooking everyone lunch and we’re, I think we need to have a running count of how often does Bobby cook everyone lunch?
And he’s going all out. There are at least two big dishes of pasta, salad, this is not just frozen meals thrown at the rest of the firehouse.
Alice: There’s full meatballs. Like, it’s, it’s a whole thing.
Bex: [00:13:00] But, they don’t get to eat it. No.
Alice: Never do they get to eat it.
Bex: And I think we’re going to have to keep account of every time Bobby cooks lunch and nobody gets to eat it.
Ellen: Oh, that’s so sad.
Bex: Because as soon as they sit down and start plating the food up. The bell rings, and they are dispatched to another emergency.
Ellen: But before they do that Buck comes back. He, he backs the firetruck in. And when he sees everyone there, he gets out and he says, “Oh, damn”. And then Bobby gets cross with him and says, “This is not a family, not a clubhouse. What if we had a call and you’re not even here?” And I’m like, it sure looks like you’re a family. You’re all sitting down to eat lunch together.
Bex: Yeah. I want to flag the, this is not a family line because this is the pilot episode. We know from watching TV that the pilot episode often change it. The series often changes from the pilot episode.
So keep an eye on that. [00:14:00] This is not a family line because that may change.
Alice: Absolutely.
Bex: We do get in that scene it established that Bobby and Buck have a father son relationship. Bobby says to him, “We have this thing, you call me pops, I give you a hard time for being a dumbass kid. We went to a Springsteen concert”, which sort of establishing the, where Buck fits into the 118.
He is the baby of the 118. And they kind of treat him as such.
Alice: They definitely treat him like the baby.
Ellen: He is a bit of a impulsive kind of a kid, you know, in this one, jumping in without really considering.
Alice: He, he’s told at least twice to wash his hands as well when he comes back. Yes.
Ellen: All right. So then the alarm, when they sit down to lunch, the alarms do ring and they have to go off.
Chim shovels some food in before they go. But Abby takes the call and a guy says that someone has flushed a baby down the toilet. He can hear a baby crying [00:15:00] in his wall. I, I loved when they arrived and it was on, it’s on a higher floor. And Buck’s like, “I’ll race you”. And then Bobby goes, “race yourself Rambo. I’m 50 years old. I’m taking the elevator.” And then Buck goes, “who’s Rambo?” I was like, this is perfect.
Bex: The number of pop culture references that they make through this episode to kind of cement how young Buck is.
Ellen: Yeah, and how, at the age of the rest of them too, they do several times mention their ages, the rest of them.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: It’s cute.
Alice: Yeah, so Bobby’s 50 I believe Buck is 26 in Season 1.
Bex: Around 26 or 27. I
Alice: only remember him being 26 because he mentions it and my immediate thought was I’m 26, dude. Yeah.
Ellen: Yes. Dean Winchester season one. Yeah. Sorry. We are going to make Supernatural references. [00:16:00] It’s just going to happen. Sorry. I’m sure it’s going to happen.
Bex: It’s inevitable.
Ellen: Okay. They go up to the guy’s apartment and he’s like really high, but he says, “I did, I definitely heard a baby”. And they hear it, they do hear something in the wall.
Bex: But I call bullshit that a newborn, a premature newborn baby would be making those happy cooing noises when they’re sticking a pike in the wall. That thing would be screaming its head off. Definitely screaming. Not going, boo!
Ellen: And to be honest, when they had, when they pull the baby out, I’m like, That doesn’t look like a premature newborn to me, but I think often babies in, in TV shows are not fresh newborns anyway.
Alice: I actually mentioned the exact same thing to a friend while I was watching how, like, they’re just like, Oh yes, meet my newborn baby and it’s like a full six year old child.
Bex: I think Call the Midwife was the only show that ever used age appropriate babies.
Ellen: Right, yeah.
Bex: [00:17:00] There’s a little bit of trivia for you, but yeah, that is one massive premature baby.
Ellen: Yes, definitely.
Alice: It’s like a 10 pound premature baby.
Ellen: It’s chubby, it’s chubby.
Like Buck goes to bash in the wall with an axe, but the others are like, “no, no, no, stop. You’re going to hit the baby.” And so they start breaking down the wall with like saws and stuff instead.
Bex: So we also have count one of the 118 destroying property, which I would love to know what the legality is of that.
If you were renting an apartment and they come in and just rip out your toilet and cut up your wall and cut out the pipes. Who pays for that?
Ellen: That’s right.
Alice: Insurance.
Bex: But who’s insurance? The city’s insurance? Is it covered in, like, your, like, that’s a complete tangent, but this is something that keeps coming up, the property destruction in the course of saving someone’s life.
Alice: Interesting. Interesting.
Ellen: I mean, I imagine in Australia insurance would pay for it, but in America, I don’t know, they have quite different situation with that. [00:18:00] So who knows?
Bex: So in the midst of this emergency of the 118 trying to rescue the baby, we meet another character, which is Sergeant Athena Grant of the Los Angeles Police Department.
And she has been called because if there is a baby, there has to be a mother. And she’s in search of the woman who has negligently flushed her baby down the toilet.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And I, we should mention here that Athena Grant is played by the incomparable Miss Angela Bassett and how they managed to convince her to appear on this TV show.
I do not know, but she is glorious and we thank the deities that she agreed to do this.
Ellen: She’s so beautiful. She’s lovely.
Alice: She’s incredible.
Ellen: She’s also very fierce in this.
Bex: [00:19:00] Oh yeah.
Ellen: She goes and knocks, knocks on a bunch of doors and, and finds a man who shuts the door in her face. But then she sees some blood on the floor in the hallway.
So she starts following the trail of blood and this is all intercut with the, the 118 who were like cutting a pipe out of the wall and finding the baby inside this pipe.
Alice: Yeah, it’s, it’s very like, frantic feeling, which is good. Like,
Ellen: yeah, the tension is really good.
Alice: Like Hen also realizes that if anyone above flushes the toilet, they’ll end up drowning the baby.
So Hen’s running all over the place, screaming, “don’t flush the toilet!” The police are everywhere, door knocking to try and find the mother. Like it’s just, it’s very frantic while they’re also trying to get this baby out of a pipe.
Ellen: And they end up like getting the, the lube that comes with the defibrillator machine and easing the baby out. And they’re all, all the men are standing around going, [00:20:00] “you just be careful. You have to push from the other side”. I’m like, this is actually like delivering a baby all over again, like pushing it out of the pipe. But I think Buck eventually takes the baby and runs down the stairs with it, like rather than waiting.
Bex: Yeah, Bobby was going to take the elevator, but it was going to be too long. And Buck says, “you know I’m quicker”. So he runs down the stairs to get it to the ambulance so they can get it to the hospital.
Ellen: And so sweet, the whole time he’s like saying, “oh, you’re going to be okay. I’ve got you, it’s going to be fine.” What a sweetheart.
Bex: The entire time he was talking to that baby.
Alice: He just doesn’t stop talking. It’s like, it’s such a contrast for him, like being so trigger happy and like going to bash the wall with an axe and then being so soft with this baby.
Bex: But see, I think that the, the trigger happy was he was just so desperate to get that baby out and help it because he really cares that just the, [00:21:00] the caring overrode his common sense.
But when Buck gets down to the ambulance, he is prevented from taking the baby to the hospital because Athena has found the mother who was a young teenage girl. I don’t know. Did we, I kind of got the sense from the episode that maybe she didn’t know she was pregnant. It seemed to be that she was the daughter of an immigrant, maybe didn’t have the best sexual education.
Yeah, maybe. They didn’t, I don’t think they actually went, they didn’t show very much of her at all really.
Alice: She didn’t even like flush it down a toilet though, so Athena finds a, like, construction site, so there’s construction going on in one of the apartments.
Ellen: Oh that’s right, there’s just a pipe.
Alice: And they’ve taken the toilet off and she’s just put it down the pipe.
Ellen: Yeah, okay, so it wouldn’t have been an accident, she would have done it on purpose.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah.
Ellen: [00:22:00] Yeah. So sad. Very sad.
Alice: Like you can tell the girl’s scared and like, just, yeah.
Ellen: And she’s still bleeding. Like, you know, she also needs medical help.
Bex: Which is why Athena rushes her down to the ambulance, but then we get a confrontation between Buck and Athena where Buck is advocating very staunchly for the baby and hates the mother.
Ellen: Yeah, “after what she did? Fuck her.”
Bex: For putting this baby at risk. But Athena is feeling for the young mother and wants to get her the help. She’s like, she is a child herself. And then Buck, unfortunately, turns to Athena and says, “if the baby dies, it’s on you.” Which Do not mess with Athena Grant.
Alice: And like, don’t say that in front of the poor mother.
Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know. He’s, he’s got only got eyes for the baby at the moment. Absolutely.
Bex: He does. Yeah. [00:23:00] Oh yeah. 100%. That baby is his patient and he’s going to do everything he can to get that baby to the hospital.
Ellen: Yeah. Until they get to the, until they get to the hospital. And then Bobby makes him hand the baby over and says, okay, we’re, we’re done now it’s their turn.
Bex: Again, I’m going to put a flag on that because this whole, “we don’t go past the glass doors” is something that’s established in this episode. It may not survive the rest of the series.
Alice: They do reiterate again that they’ll be lucky to find out if she’s okay. So it’s very much like Abby deals with the first part, doesn’t find out anything.
The 118 find out, like, you know, deal with the next part, may not find out anything. So it’s very much like. Not, like, there’s not much closure in either role.
Ellen: And do we find out whether the baby survives or not? I don’t think we do.
Bex: We don’t even find out. No.
Ellen: No. Okay. [00:24:00] We cut the next scene to Athena at home.
She has a beautiful house.
Bex: She does.
Ellen: Her kids are whispering at the table, and her husband’s there too. And she, she’s like, don’t, just tell me what’s going on, and you don’t have to whisper, and And they think, they say that they think mom and dad are going to get a divorce because they’re fighting over something.
And then the dad says, “I’m going to tell them” and Athena’s like, “don’t you dare.”
Ellen: But then he sits down and he tells them that he loves them and he’s, you know, you know, he has courage because he’s their dad. And I’m just like, “Oh my God, what’s he… Has he got like a cancer diagnosis? Like, what’s, what’s happening here? Is he going to die?” And then he goes, actually, “I’m gay.” I’m like, “Whoa, okay. That’s not what I was expecting. Okay.” Like, you know, I was a bit out of left field because I had, I’d not been spoiled for that at all. I didn’t, I didn’t, obviously I didn’t read the any of the summaries or anything before I started watching.
[00:25:00] So I had no idea that was like, whoa, okay then. So the kids are kind of confused that the teenage daughter is like, “I don’t, I don’t want anyone to know about this at school or we’re going to be, you know, bashed up and stuff.”
Alice: The daughter’s very against it. Mentions that like the grandmothers in church are going to whisper about them, that they’re going to get beat up at school asks if like he can just keep it a secret.
So the kids storm off and then yeah Athena and her husband have a, not great fight about it. Accusing each other of, like, how they both knew all along, and Athena just wanted the kids, and that’s why she was with him the whole time.
Bex: Oh yeah. Michael was savage with that. Like, “you denied that I was gay because you were 37, and a single woman, and you wanted kids.” Ouch.
Ellen: Yeah. Yep. But he says he wanted the kids too in the end, so they both had something to gain out of this.
Bex: I’m team Athena on this one.
Ellen: [00:26:00] Yeah, it’s a hard, hard situation, isn’t it? Anyway so she’s not, they’re not speaking to each other after this for a little bit.
Bex: No, because she, she knew that he had revealed to her that he was gay several weeks before, they were in therapy. She thought to resolve the situation, but Michael jumped the gun in telling the kids.
Ellen: Right. Okay. So we go back to Abby, who is feeding her mom some applesauce. Her mom says she doesn’t like it and she should save it for when her dad gets home. And then Abby says, “actually, he’s not coming home”.
He’s been dead for 10 years, apparently. So that’s very sad. And Alzheimer’s is a really cruel thing. Very cruel. But she, the lady that she hires to look after her mum while she goes to work arrives late, and is obviously not doing a great job looking after her mum in general.
Alice: Yeah, she just doesn’t really care.
Bex: [00:27:00] Doesn’t seem like she really, yeah, I was about to say, she doesn’t really care. She is on her phone as soon as she walks through the door. Abby threatens to fire her, and she’s like, I’m with the agency, they’ll just reassign me. She does not care.
Ellen: Yeah. So Abby goes to work. I love how, before, like the episode’s broken up into its different sections.
This particular episode, I don’t know, I don’t know if it’s going to keep going. You can tell me, but the, each emergency call has like a little you know, sound bite in the middle and it says, “911, what’s your emergency?” every time
Alice: Oh, some of them are like, it continues. And some of them are so ridiculous.
Like you get like these entire stories and the dispatcher’s just like, Okay, where are you? And they just keep going with the story and it’s like, yeah, I just, I just need to know where you are.
Ellen: It’s probably like a real thing.
Alice: Yeah, that’s it. It’s definitely probably realistic, I’d say. But yeah, it’s definitely, like, I really like the format and being that they break up the episode into this, it’s very, very bingeable.
Like I got through most of the first season and was just like, Oh, I thought I was [00:28:00] still on episode three and I was on like episode nine because it’s just very bingeable being that it’s just like 911 call, section, 911 call, section. Yeah. So I got through it very, very quickly.
Ellen: So this one is like “help. I’m being choked.” And Abby says, “who is choking you? Do you know this person?” And she goes, “my snake!” So Bobby leads the way into the building and they check heaps of rooms until they find a room that is full of snakes.
Alice: So many snakes.
Bex: At which point, Chim nopes out. And we get our next pop culture reference that Buck doesn’t understand because Chim says that he’s never.
He can’t deal with snakes ever since Conan the Barbarian, which to which Buck is just like, “I don’t know what that is.”
Alice: [00:29:00] As far as Buck was concerned, the world started when he was born.
Ellen: And he goes, when they find the girl being choked by the snake, Buck’s like, “why don’t I just punch it in the face?” And then Hen is all like, “no, it’s just doing what nature intends, it’s natural, you know?”
And they’re like, “but we’re not going to be able to get it off.”
Alice: Yeah, there’s a lot of back and forth here where they’re like, “okay, like, do we humanely put it down? Like, what’s the best way to do this?”
Bex: And so Buck grabs that axe…
Ellen: And so this is a giant, lemon light colored… you know, that It reminded me of that, that episode in Supernatural where like Dean and Sam are sitting on the couch and there’s like this fucking python going over the back of it?
Alice: It’s probably the same python actor.
Ellen: It might be. I mean, that, I think that episode was quite a number of years before this one, but still, I don’t know.
Alice: Snakes live a long time.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Maybe. Unless Buck gets to them.
Ellen: Exactly. He just chops that head right off.
Alice: Yep, comes in swinging. Once again, very trigger happy. But it’s all to save people.
Ellen: [00:30:00] Immediately he goes, he just starts flirting. He goes full on, like, charm offensive on the girl.
Alice: And Hen’s, “I’m going to skip the part where the two idiots flirt”, just, yeah. I love her so much.
Ellen: And then we cut back to the station where Bobby realizes that the truck is not there and then he finds the truck at a building where… and the ladder is extended up to the roof and he goes up there and finds Buck and the girl doing the do on the roof. And he’s like, “how did you find me?” And he’s like, “the truck has a GPS, dumbass”, or something like that.
Alice: The truck has a GPS tracker, moron.
Ellen: Yeah, that’s one. And they have a big fight.
Bex: Yeah, because this was literally the day after Bobby had written Buck up for taking the truck for the previous hookup.
[00:31:00] So Bobby is absolutely ropeable that Buck is just rubbing this in his face. And he skips straight over… He initially told Buck that he was a three strikes and you’re out kind of rule. He’s just skipped the next two strikes and said, you’re fired. You’re out. And Buck freaks because he needs this job.
He loves this job. He doesn’t know what to do without this job.
Alice: He also throws in the, “I think I might be a sex addict”, which…
Bex: self diagnosed
Alice: yeah. Self diagnosed. , but yeah, Bobby’s just like, Is this a joke to you?
Ellen: Yeah. And he says, he says, “disrespect yourself or the women that you chase around, but don’t disrespect our firehouse and the way we do things there.”
If you don’t like the job, then you’re fired. Hen comes and comforts Buck at the firehouse when he’s clearing out his locker. [00:32:00] And she says that she’s sad that, you know, he’s leaving and whatever. But then the alarms ring and they have to go, so he’s left behind.
Alice: Hen also says when Bobby brought Buck on board, he said he should have got a Dalmatian instead.
Which would have made an interesting show, but you know.
Ellen: I don’t know, do fire crews use dogs at all, or is that just the police?
Bex: Not anymore. They used to have Dalmatians.
Alice: They used to use Dalmatians. Not anymore.
Ellen: Ah. That’s what the reference is, okay. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. So yeah, sirens go off and everyone moves out except for Buck, who is still stuck cleaning out his locker.
Ellen: So Abby takes the 9-1-1 call. It’s a young girl who is alone in a house. Someone is breaking in. She doesn’t know the address, they only just moved in recently and she can’t work out her location to tell Abby where she is. So, Abby’s kind of trying to work out a way that they might be able to find out where this girl is.
Alice: [00:33:00] Yeah, she’s in a, I think it’s like a brown house with a grey garage, and all the houses are exactly the same. Like, it’s literally copy neighbourhood.
Bex: They send Athena. Yeah. They dispatch Athena to see if she can find the house. They give her the description and Athena just says, She’s in Steven Spielberg land, and the camera pans up, and it’s just
Ellen: All the houses are exactly the same.
Bex: I can’t even describe it. Every single house, for street after street after street, it’s like an entire gated community just copy paste McMansions.
Alice: Yep, literally the exact same house.
Bex: There is no way that Athena is going to be able to find this house on her own. She needs help. But there have been a string of home invasions and robberies in the area, so they don’t want to send police sirens because it might spook the burglars. So, Athena has an idea, and she calls Hen, calling in a favor.
She needs a truck. But Athena and the 118 sorry, [00:34:00] Hen and the 118 are busy at a… looks like a traffic accident?
Alice: Yeah, some sort of car crash.
Bex: So, all of their trucks are busy which means that Hen makes a call and to Athena’s disgust and Buck’s as well, Buck commandeers an engine and meets her out in the suburbs because the theory is that the burglars will not get spooked if they hear a firetruck driving past them.
And Abby will be able to listen through the phone that Lily, the call is still open and if she can hear the sirens, then she’ll know that Buck has passed the house.
Alice: And they can narrow it down. My favorite about this is Athena going, “no heroics, don’t go chasing waterfalls.” And Buck just goes, “I don’t know what that means.”
Bex: I don’t know what that means. (laughs)
Alice: And Athena just replies, nobody thought you would. Like just everyone is so sick of Buck’s shit.
Bex: [00:35:00]I think it’s an interesting way for them, for the show to really place How young Buck is in the eyes of the audience, because I don’t know what the target audience is for this show. But all of the references have been ones that your older Millennials and your Gen X are going to know instantly.
And so when Buck says, I don’t know, I’ve never heard of TLC before, the audience has just gone, Oh, Buck. Why do you not know TLC? You are so young.
Ellen: So the kid goes down, the kid’s name’s Lily. Is that her name? Yeah. She goes downstairs. I don’t know why she goes downstairs, but.
Alice: Even Abby is like, why are you downstairs?
Bex: Because the next part can’t happen if she’s upstairs.
Ellen: Yeah, that’s right. The story needed to move on. The, one of the intruders see her, sees her and the, and like starts chasing her cause she’s, they see that she’s on the phone. And so.
[00:36:00] And Buck is driving around the neighborhood with the sirens on. And the intruders hear him, but they they, eventually they work out that it’s just a fire engine, so it’s nothing to be worried about. So, but then Buck and Athena work out which is the correct house, so. Oh, this is all like, this all happens so quickly, it’s hard to kind of describe.
Alice: Yeah, this this part gets very frantic. So the mother comes home, Buck grabs her, and like, Buck isn’t in uniform either. He’s just in his civilian clothes. And so she’s like, what are you talking about? Like, is there a fire? Cause there’s a fire truck out the front. And yeah, so he grabs her, then it’s just very frantic.
Ellen: Yeah, Lily drops the phone, but Abby starts shouting and cause one of the guys had said the other guy’s name. So she’s like shouting, “Petey, Petey!” trying to get him to pick up the phone so she can talk to him. And she says, “the police are on their way.” He should leave the girl and get out while he can.
And he’s like, “why the hell would I do that? [00:37:00] Why would you, would you let me do that?” And she says, “I care about the girl. I don’t care about, you know, whatever you’re doing”.
Alice: Yeah. Pretty much. She’s like, I don’t care about you. I just want to help the girl.
Bex: Yep. This is a really good scene of showing how badass Abby is.
She is not panicking, she is cool, she is calm, she is collected, she is thinking about what she can do to help that little girl.
Ellen: Yep. And the bad guys lock her in a cupboard, I think, and then leave the house. But Athena is there and one guy tries to get away by pushing the other guy and jumps on a motorbike.
Bex: No honor among thieves.
Ellen: The cop, the cops are there and they cut him off.
Alice: No, so first he, he runs back in and grabs Lily and drags her outside.
Ellen: Oh, that’s right. Yeah.
Alice: So full on, like, makes it an even bigger hostage situation. But
Bex: she is just as feisty and bites Petey on the hand, so he [00:38:00] throws her to the ground in disgust.
And jumps onto the motorbike that he’s stashed around the side of the building to make his escape. And one of the LAPD units cuts him off. So he chucks a u-ey, starts coming back. Emma, who is Lily’s mother. Lily and her mom are having a touching reunion in the middle of the street at this point.
And Petey just comes barreling towards them, pulls out a tiny little gun and starts firing.
Ellen: And then in a totally out of left field, I was not expecting this. Buck just sprays the bad guy with the fire hose. It’s just [00:37:00] like, it all goes flying. I laughed so hard when that happened.
Alice: He’s finally, finally earning that nickname Firehose.
Ellen: Apparently.
Bex: And probably Athena’s respect because some of those bullets got very close to her.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: [00:39:00] Abby is still on the phone going, whatever, “firefighter Buckley, firefighter Buckley, what’s going on?” But Buck speaks to her and tells her that the kid is okay and that she is the real hero here because she saved her life.
Alice: It’s very sweet. So Abby got some recognition finally.
Ellen: Yeah. So he returns to the fire station and everyone’s waiting there and he’s like, okay guys, I’m really sorry. And they’re all like, no way, you did a great job. I think Bobby’s still not quite convinced, but he’d had a few phone calls telling him how great Buck was.
So yeah, I think he got unfired.
Alice: “Athena Grant called me. She said, what an asset you are. I said she was half right.”
Ellen: Yeah. There’s some, there’s some cracking one liners in this
Alice: one. So yeah, Buck calls himself a he says he was a punk. He still is one, but he’s a punk who understands what he lost. So Bobby tells him to go get dressed.
Buck says, I think I’m not fired.
Bex: [00:40:00] And then we get the first of the slightly on the nose needle drops when under pressure starts playing in the background. There is a theme within 9-1-1. I don’t know what the music supervisor was doing, but they seem to enjoy picking the most… I don’t even know how to describe it.
The, the music choices that they make for certain scenes are almost in bad taste in some instances.
Ellen: Yeah, a bit cheesy.
Alice: So meanwhile, Athena’s checking on Lily and her parents who are for some reason, still sitting on the lawn.
Bex: I’m assuming it’s because LAPD are inside the house still collecting evidence.
Alice: Yeah, but yeah. So Athena’s checking on them. Her. husband calls and she asks if the kid got, kids got home from school and he says, are we talking again? [00:41:00] She goes, “no”. And he’s like, “well, are you coming home for dinner?” She’s like, “yeah.”
Ellen: Yeah. She looks really choked up. Like she’s pleased that that Lily made it, you know, like she’s been affected by this one.
Alice: Yeah. Definitely putting things in perspective.
Ellen: Yeah. That’s, it seems to be, well, we just say that the, at the end Abby says in the voiceover that the job is a lot of pressure, maybe because Under Pressure is playing. Says, “For those of us who choose this life, there’s nowhere else we’d rather be.”
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: It’s like a running theme of like how much pressure these people are under on a daily basis and how they cope with their borderline traumatic experiences, I guess, on a day, on like a regular basis.
Bex: And also the dichotomy of how good they are at dealing with the pressures of work, but how not well they cope with the pressures in their personal life.
[00:42:00] Athena is amazing when she is in uniform, dealing with people as Sergeant Grant, but Athena the woman, her marriage is crumbling in the background. Buck is great when he is on the scene, but he’s an absolute dumbass, he’s not on a scene and we’ll come to find the same with Abby. She is amazing when she’s taking calls, but in her personal life, she’s not as good as dealing with the personal emergencies as she is dealing with the professional ones.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: Same, to be honest.
Ellen: Oh yeah. I mean, it kind of makes sense. I mean, you’re trained to do a thing that you’ve been doing for some years. I mean, not in Buck’s case. He’s only fairly new, I think, but
Bex: Four months. He’s been a fiery for four months. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, the personal emergencies can creep up on you and are much harder to deal with in general.
That’s it. That’s the first episode.
Alice: That’s it. Very Yeah, gripping pilot. Yes. Like, I want to know more about these people.
Bex: [00:43:00] Well, we’ve still got two members of the 118 that we haven’t really met being Hen and Chim.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, we don’t know anything about Hen at all yet. Like, the only thing we know about Chim is that he has met this girl through this app.
Alice: And Hen wanted a Dalmatian instead.
Ellen: That’s right. That’s pretty much it!
Alice: It’s hard with the pilot. Cause there’s no real theme yet.
Ellen: Yeah. It’s just the introduction of the whole thing.
Bex: Not as obvious as a lot of the other episodes get, no.
Alice: Yeah. When. Like one of the other, some of the other episodes are literally called “karma.” And then the whole thing is just karma.
Ellen: That makes it easier. Well, there you have it. Yes, it was very gripping. I think the pilots often are though, aren’t they? Like they’re obviously designed to convince network executives to take your show on. So they have to be like compelling. And this one certainly is.
Alice: I was [00:44:00] told a lot that like season one is very different tonally than the rest of the show. And so I was like, Oh, do I really have to watch it? And everyone’s like, no, you still have to watch it. Like it’s, but I actually really, really enjoyed it. Like I, I definitely went in like expecting it to not be as great.
I guess I’m used to like The Office and Parks and Rec where you’ve sort of got to get to season two to actually enjoy the show.
Ellen: Okay.
Alice: But yeah, this isn’t like that at all. As I said, smashed through it.
Ellen: Yeah, I had a friend tell me today that when I mentioned I was watching this, that yeah, just the, the first season isn’t the best one. Just get through the first season and then it starts getting really good from season two. But I’m like, I don’t know. I kind of really liked the first episode. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Yeah. It’ll be, I mean, it’ll be good. You know, interested to watch more right away, so,
Alice: which is how I ended up watching like several episodes in one night till like 2 AM.
Ellen: [00:45:00] Excellent. I love it when a new show just sucks you in like that. All right. Well, that’s our first episode. Well, it’s our second episode really, I guess, but the first of the show.
If you are listening and you would like to tell us what you thought of the pilot or you know if you wanted to add to our conversation at all, you can either, there’s lots of different ways you can tell us about it.
Our episode on like the, the blog post on thatweewooshow.com you can leave comments on there or you can email us contact (at) thatweewooshow.com. Yes. I didn’t say Mixtape Book Club. Yes. Okay. We have all our social medias on Tumblr, Twitter, Instagram, which is at yeah, at that we, we show, and you know, you can DM us or whatever as well if you want to.
So yeah, let us know what you think. [00:46:00] We would absolutely love it since we’re a new podcast. If you would go on Spotify or Apple, wherever you’re listening and give us a rating and you can leave a review there too. That’s the, what the best way to help us apart from sharing our social media posts, of course to get, you know, the word out that we’re doing this.
We’d love to have your help with that, if that’s all right with everybody. So I think at this stage, we’re going to try and get a new episode out at least every couple of weeks. It may be sooner than that. If we decide that we really desperately need to talk about it every week, but we’ll see how we’re going.
But yeah,
Alice: we will get less awkward as we go along.
Ellen: It’s just the first episode!
Ellen: and a big thank you to you, Alice and Bex, thank you for joining me for doing this. It’s so exciting to get into this show.
Bex: Thank you for inviting us.
Alice: Yes!
Ellen: And thank you everyone for listening and we’ll, we’ll talk to you again soon when we are gonna talk about episode two: “Let Go”. See you then!
Bex: Bye!
Alice: Bye!
[outro music]
Ellen: (over music) 9-1-1 is a fictional show but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you are not alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help: just google crisis support and your location to find out the number.
If you enjoy our podcast, you can help us out by leaving us a review on Spotify or your preferred listing app, and by sharing our social media posts. Find out more at thatweewooshow.com.
(outtakes)
Ellen: … a podcast where we watch every episode of 9-1-1 and talk about it afterwards. That is a terrible introduction! I’m starting again!
(laughs)
Ellen: Follow the notes, Ellen!
Alice: The creepy but necessary… no wait, wrong one… (laughs)
Ellen: No, I’m not gonna say that! Okay. Been listening to those guys way too long. Okay, gonna try again.
Ellen: (next outtake) You know we’re gonna get a bunch of people saying, “I can’t tell you guys apart, you all have the same accent!”
Alice: We all have the same…I know
Bex: I was actually worried that I was going to slip into my TikTok accent, so that’s gonna be a compliment.
Alice: Ooh, what’s your TikTok accent?
Bex: I dunno, I start to get very American when I’m just talking to myself. But I think cause you guys are here, the tism is clicking over into Australian so we’re good.
Alice: Yeah we’ll just get like a weird feedback loop of Australian and we’ll end up sounding like Kath and Kim by the end of it. We’ll be like what is happening right now? (laughs)
Ellen: (next outtake) All right, I’ll try again, start again. Let’s do it. This time it’s gonna be fine. Good.
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