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 third episode of 9-1-1, titled “Next of Kin”.
Bobby and his team respond to an emergency at a children’s birthday party. One of the crew is involved in a devastating accident.
Content warnings for episode 1.03: Children at threat in an accident involving a bouncing castle, child in hospital after an attempted suicide by overdose, bullying, a car accident due to dangerous driving resulting in major head trauma (involving rebar, sorry Supernatural fans), migrants at threat.
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Episode Transcript
Bex: [00:00:00] Welcome back to That Wee Woo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show, 9-1-1. I’m Bex.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Ellen: And I’m Ellen.
Bex: Thank you to everyone who has listened to our first three episodes and shared our social media posts. In this episode, we’re going to be discussing season one, episode three, titled “Next of Kin”, which first aired on January 17th in 2018.
Alice: So previously on 9-1-1, Buck lost his first person in the field and slept with his first therapist on the couch. Abby gets a new carer and friend for her and her mother in Carla, and reaches out to befriend Firefighter Buckley. And Athena’s marriage takes another hit with her husband admitting that he’s met somebody[00:01:00] before the episode ending on their daughter having overdosed in her bedroom.
So a bit of a serious one last week.
Ellen: Oh my God. The cliffhanger. Okay. So this episode, the official summary goes like this. Oh my God. I’ve gone into mixtape mode. I’m just going to do it anyway. Bobby and his team respond to an emergency at a children’s birthday party. One of the crew is involved in a devastating accident.
Very succinct, these summaries aren’t they? So in this episode, before we get started talking about it, we will go through some content warnings. We’ve got children at threat in an accident involving a bouncing castle. We’ve got a child in hospital after an attempted suicide by overdose. We’ve got bullying.
We have a car accident due to dangerous driving resulting in major head trauma. [00:02:00] And we have migrants who are at threat. And we also have an extra, an extra content warning this time, because…
Bex: Extra special content warning.
Ellen: Yes, this one’s just for the Supernatural fans, because the injury, the major head trauma injury does involve a rebar.
And we know that people of Supernatural are traumatized by rebar injuries. So you know, if you need to skip the latter part of this episode, you go right ahead, protect yourself. We know how it feels.
Alice: Stay safe, everyone. Stay safe.
Ellen: Stay, stay safe. But we will, okay, let’s get into it. So instead of having… resolving the major cliffhanger that we had at the end of the previous episode.
What do we, what are we faced with first?
Bex: An actual cliffhanger. (laugh)
Ellen: Oh my god. Yes, it is a children’s birthday party. There’s a clown walking around on stilts. There is a bouncy house, which I, which in Australia, [00:03:00] I don’t know about you guys, this might be like a, a regional thing, but we call them, like, jumping castles.
Alice: Yeah, we call them jumping castles.
Ellen: Okay. Okay. I wasn’t sure if that was just, like, a Queensland thing or if… So every time they say, like, really seriously, “bouncy house”, I was just, like, laughing my head off. I’m like, a bouncy house? Sorry. Apologies to the people who actually call it bouncy house. So a man at the party asks the father, whose name is Dan “are you compensating much?”
And Dan says that, yeah, a little bit, but his son’s been dealing with a lot lately. So
Bex: Apparently Dan and his wife have been going through a divorce and Dan has remarried and has a new child on the way. And so yes, he is very definitely overcompensating for this party for his kid, trying to buy his kid’s love.
He even mentions that he thinks that his wife is trying to turn his son against him. Yeah. Dan’s a
Alice: jerk. Like he straight up avoids his infant son. [00:04:00] Is a jerk to his second wife, like,
Ellen: yeah.
Alice: Absolute jerk.
Bex: And while this is happening, the Santa Ana winds are blowing quite heavily through the party.
And multiple people mention… they talk about how strong that wind is. Just a little bit of foreshadowing there.
Alice: Just a little.
Ellen: The dad calls out to the son to ask him if he’s having fun. But then after he’s avoided his, his, like his wife and son, he goes over to the, the jumping castle and gets on with the boys and jumps really high, making the kids bounce around in there.
And that also makes the pegs come out of the ground that’s holding the whole thing down. And it gets picked up by the wind and thrown over the garden wall and it goes off the edge of a cliff and Dan falls to the ground.
Bex: We’ve cut to the 9-1-1 call where the the stepmother has called to report that the bouncy house took off.
There are children still inside. [00:05:00] Her husband got thrown, but the castle is now hanging from the side of the cliff. And hence why we have an actual cliffhanger for the start of this episode.
Alice: Ba-dum tsh
Ellen: So the 118 arrive and Bobby assigns everyone their tasks, including Chim, who he asked to man the winch, which he is very disappointed in. He’s like, how come I never get the fun jobs?
Alice: Working the winch is fun.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Oh, and Chim’s face is just.
Ellen: He’s not impressed.
Bex: No, it’s not impressed because we, we kind of seen this pattern where Chim never gets to do the fun stuff. He doesn’t get to do The Maneuver. He doesn’t get to rappel down the cliff. And we know from previous episodes that the hero stuff is like catnip to his girlfriend Tatiana. He’s constantly telling her about the cool stuff that he does.
So he wants to rappel down the cliff so that he can report back and say that he rappelled down the cliff. [00:06:00] Working the winches is not sexy. It’s not going to get him laid.
Ellen: Hen and Buck do rappel down the cliff and they get to the the, where the bouncy house is hanging and they kind of clip it on so it doesn’t fall down any further.
And Bobby goes to check out how Dan’s doing, and he’s alive but, you know, he’s got to get him to safety, so. Hen and Buck are like trying to get these kids out of there very quickly, like, they’re like, “Come on, let’s go, let’s go, let’s go,” and I’m like, hang on, you’re supposed to be keeping the kids calm, like, come on. They’re, they’re very urgent.
Bex: I don’t think it’s certain exactly how long that castle is going to stay on the cliff. They need to get them out as soon as possible.
Alice: Yeah, it’s still very windy.
Ellen: And they get everyone back to the ground, and Everyone’s going to be okay, that’s what the mum says, everything’s okay. And title card time.
Alice: And then we finally get into the end of last week’s.
Bex: We get a repeat of Athena’s call to 9-1-1, and then we cut to almost immediately after her 911 call, [00:07:00] she’s in May’s bedroom still trying to wake her daughter up.
Ellen: She sees the bottle with hydrocodone, is that what it’s called?
Bex: Hydrocodone, with Athena’s name on them.
Ellen: Yeah. So it’s like prescription painkillers, basically.
Yeah. She sends her son over to the neighbor’s and goes in the ambulance with May to the hospital. The paramedics are trying really hard to keep her alive. They say she’s like, you know, fading out kind of thing. But Athena puts her face down to May’s and says, Stay with me. You be strong for me. And I’m like, oh my god.
This is the first, this is the first point in this episode that I was in tears. I was like, my god, the little girl. Is she gonna die?
Alice: Athena’s just looking so upset like it’s such a polarization from her normal badass cop look, where she just looks completely broken mum. And it’s like, ugh.
Ellen: Absolutely brilliant acting.
Bex: [00:08:00] Which, once again, goes back to that theme of professional emergencies, they are on the ball, personal emergencies, they do not handle them well at all.
Alice: Yep. Falling apart. I do not blame her.
Bex: Oh, 100%. I do not think that I could be cool, calm and collected if one of my child children had attempted suicide.
Ellen: No, absolutely. And then she just has to let her go through the doors and wait outside, like for, while they save her life, I guess. Michael shows up and assumes that it’s all his fault.
Maybe they weren’t paying enough attention to how May was feeling, because she normally just tells them exactly how she’s feeling all of the time.
Alice: If we remember from last episode, Michael says that he’s not coming home. So he’s talking to Athena and then a man approaches who Michael was with and asked him to drive him there.
So it’s Michael’s boyfriend, which Athena’s not too happy about at this point in time.
Ellen: [00:09:00] It’s very, very awkward.
Alice: Very awkward.
Bex: She is very cool about it. She doesn’t make a scene. She simply excuses herself to make coffee. And we get a montage of her walking through the hospital alone, waiting to see her daughter.
She finally finds her way to, May has been released from… I think she was in the ICU. She’s now in the general ward and Athena can go see her.
Ellen: Yeah. And she wakes up. Oh, sorry. Before she wakes up she’s still sleeping, but Michael comes in then and Athena says, like, the last time she was lying in a hospital bed, I was lying in it with her, like, when she was a baby.
It’s like, oh, this makes my heart hurt. But May wakes up and she tells them she was stupid and she didn’t mean to take so many. And then they apologize to her and Michael says that, I’m sorry, this is my fault. [00:10:00] And Mae says, “this wasn’t because of you, Daddy.”
Bex: I love the way she said it. It’s almost like she’s insulted that he thinks that what she did is because of him.
Yeah, I have my own problems, Daddy. Not everything revolves around you. And she does have her own problems. She’s being bullied at school viciously.
Alice: Yeah, including by the girl who she was thick as thieves with.
Ellen: Yeah, very sad. They made her feel like she was worthless and that no one would care if she died, which is a really awful thing to say to anybody at any age, but let alone teenage girls.
They are vicious. So Athena gives her a pep talk and said, “you’re strong and courageous.” She says “you’re filled with holy fire”. Like, wow, you can give me a pep talk any day, Athena.
Bex: Before they can do anything else. CPS shows up, ready to assess Mae.
Ellen: Yeah, and Mae says she just wants to go home.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: [00:11:00] So yeah, they have to assess her to see if she’s at risk of attempting suicide again, even though you know, she says she’s fine and she wants to go home.
But they have to do things by the rules, so. And Athena reassures Michael that, they might have their differences right now, but she’s holding her family tight and she won’t let anything happen. She, May’s going to be okay, so.
Bex: I love that. Like, “I can slap you with my left hand, but hold you and this family tight with my right hand.”
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: She’s trying really hard. I think we’ve all felt that way at some point.
Bex: So then we cut to Chimney and Tatiana at Chimney’s apartment. And Chimney is in the kitchen and he’s making a big deal about Tatiana not getting off the couch and not coming into the kitchen because he’s doing his thing and he can’t have a witness, it’ll ruin his method.
And his method is dumping pre cooked food from takeaway containers onto platters and trays.
Alice: Yeah, he’s microwaving stuff while also cooking, like, onion and garlic to make the smell good. It’s genius, really.
Ellen: Yeah. And she, she mentions the bouncy house because she saw it on the news. And when Chim says that he was rappelling down the cliff and she says, “is it wrong that that turns me on so much?”
And he’s like, ah, yes, I know. But he does lay on like the candles and the flowers and everything for their, their romantic dinner, which is very nice. And she says, you’re a keeper Chimney. And I was like, she calls him Chimney? That’s not [00:12:00] his actual name though, right?
Bex: But see, I wonder what he put himself in on the romancing…, was it Romancing the Uniform?
Is that the name of the app that he was using?
Ellen:
Bex: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So he’s probably put himself down in there as Chimney. I’ve…we’re going to find out later on in this scene exactly how well they know each other, but I really wonder whether she knows his government name.
Ellen: [00:13:00] Well, we don’t know what his government name is.
Bex: I know his government name, but…
Ellen: Well yeah, but at this point, I don’t know, you know, as a new viewer, I don’t know, but yeah, I just thought it was weird that she called him Chimney at this point,
Bex: but she also, like, she really doesn’t know him because why she thinks he’s a keeper is because he can rappel down cliffs, he can cook, where we, the audience, know he can do none of those things,
So she doesn’t really know who she’s keeping, but Chim goes along with it, And says, well, if you’re happy with dinner, I think I’ve got the perfect thing for dessert, which happens to be him getting down on one knee and pulling out a ring and proposing to Tatiana.
Alice: Oh, and did anyone else just like, cringe so hard at this moment? So hard.
Ellen: Well, at this, they’ve only been going out for like, since the first episode, right? So, which can’t have been more than two months ago, right?
Alice: [00:14:00] Yeah, it’s not long.
Ellen: It can’t be long.
Bex: It’s a very, very whirlwind romance.
Ellen: And she’s, she has a very negative reaction.
She says, “Oh, I need time to think about this. You should have okayed this with me first.” And he’s like, “you, you want me to ask you if it’s okay to ask you to marry me?” No, I don’t know what the, what the actual words are, but something to that effect.
Bex: You want me to ask you to ask you.
Ellen: Yeah. And. Then she says that she was engaged before, but she cheated on the guy before the wedding.
And she wants to make sure that she’s not going to do the same thing. She’s not going to hurt Chim in the same way. It’s like, what is your problem, lady?
Bex: Yeah, that clearly has commitment issues.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Chim had no idea that she was engaged before, which again, shows they don’t know each other.
Bex: Exactly. No. I don’t think that they should be getting married.
Alice: No. No. God, no.
Bex: But, Chim very reluctantly agrees that he’ll give [00:15:00] her a few days to think about it and very slowly puts away the ring. And we cut to the 118 at the firehouse, where Hen and Buck are playing, does anybody recognize the game? They’re playing…
Alice: I don’t, so I, I actually paused it because I thought that they were playing, like, GTA. I don’t…
Bex: Can you control a fire engine in GTA?
Alice: I don’t think, I don’t know if you can control a fire engine, it’s been a while since I played it. But I know you… cause I know you can steal police cars, but the game that they seem to be playing, like the map was slightly different, and I think…
Bex: They seem to be not trying to steal it, they were responding to a call.
Ellen: Yeah, it might have been some kind of a simulator, a fire simulator.
Bex: And Hen says something like, you lose points if you murder people on the way to a call.
Alice: Yeah, it’s fine, it’s a flesh wound, they’ve got Obamacare. But yeah, like the map just sort of looked like Google Maps, so I think it was just like a game that they made for the show.
But I might be wrong. I didn’t get a chance to research it, but I want to play it if it is real.
Bex: [00:16:00] Whatever it is, Buck is terrible at it.
Alice: Buck is awful.
Ellen: Well, they’re definitely playing on an Xbox, Xbox 360.
Bex: And Hen basically confiscates the controller from him and gives it to Chim who has walked into the firehouse still in his civilian clothes while the other two are in uniform.
So I don’t know what’s going on with Chim at this stage.
Ellen: Yeah. And then he ignores her as he walks past and they, they realize that something’s up with him and they go over to see if he’s okay. “Is there something you want to talk about?” Like they’re trying to get him to use his words, but
He just asks, he says to them, “I’m a good looking guy, right?Like, I’d make you a good father, wouldn’t I?” They’re like, what are you talking about?
Alice: “You can do a lot worse than me, yeah?” And Hen immediately goes, “Chimney, I’ve done a whole lot worse than you.” And like, same girl. Same.
Ellen: And then he reveals that he asked Tatiana to marry him and they’re all like, what?
And she said, no. [00:17:00] And then Buck says, “did you offer her the option of an open marriage? It’s super modern.”
Alice: I love Buck so much.
Bex: He’s so serious too.
Alice: So serious.
Ellen: But Bobby, Bobby just makes a comment like, Oh, it’s for the best. And Chim’s like, what did you just say? But they have a bit of an argument about it and.
Bobby says he doesn’t like her for Chim. Their relationship is based on a lie.
Bex: And then we find out that that beautiful dinner that Chim had been plating up, Bobby cooked it for him. Bobby has been enabling him.
Ellen: Yeah. And she, and he, he says that Chim’s been telling her all about stuff that he does that he doesn’t do that he lies to her all the time.
And she, he’s, she’s in love with a version of him that doesn’t exist. It’s a fantasy version, that’s what he says. But then, Chim also says that he, that Bobby is quick to comment on everyone’s life, but he completely shuts down when anyone asks him about himself. Which is true. [00:18:00] He’s very stoic. He never gives anything away, does he, Bobby?
I mean, I’ve only known him three episodes, but I already can tell that he’s, he’s the straight man.
Alice: Yeah. So Chim says, like, “how long have we worked together? I know nothing about you. I’ve never even met your wife and kids. You know why? Cause all you do is sit there brooding, staring at that little book of yours.”
Bex: And that little book that Chim’s referencing is that little book that we saw Bobby reading in the church way back in the first episode with all of the names of the people that he has saved.
Ellen: Yeah. Chim like, just leaves. He says he’s getting some air.
Alice: Oh, before that though, he, he takes the real, like, the final blow and says he feels sorry for Bobby’s wife because it must be hard being with someone who thinks he’s right all the time.
Bex: Which, watching that, knowing what I know, that hurts.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: No spoilers, don’t tell me.
Alice: [00:19:00] No, no spoilers. No, no spoilers, but yeah, that, like, watching it the second time.
Bex: However painful you think that, that jab was. It’s worse.
Ellen: Oh, great. I’ll put that to look forward to. Oh no.
Bex: So Chim throws that punch and then storms out saying that he’s going to get some air, which, is he not working this shift?
Ellen: Yeah, apparently not.
Alice: Right? Like, did he just come to bitch?
Bex: Why did you come to the, why did you come to the firehouse if you weren’t going to work? Or were you going to come and then get changed? But it looks like the others have been here for a while. I’m not quite sure what’s going on in this scene. But then.
The next time that we see Chim, it’s night time, and he’s in a car.
Ellen: Yeah, he drives and Wolfmother plays. Mother? No. Hang on, I’ve lost my… “Woman” by Wolfmother. Wolfmother, it’s nice to hear some Aussie band playing. That is a Sydney band. Hooray!
Bex: I’m going to bring up the… It’s an excellent song, it’s got a…[00:20:00] Like it really fits the, sort of the the angry beat fits Chim’s mood.
There is a slight foreshadowing in that the lyrics to this is something about like you see right through me. And I don’t know if that’s a reference to what’s about to happen. Or if that’s a reference to Bobby. If that’s a reference to Tatiana, maybe there is no reference. Maybe it’s just a cool song, but I’m so invested on linking all of these songs to what’s going on in the episode that I’m, I’m going there.
Alice: I love the linking of the songs. It’s great.
Ellen: Something’s about to go right through him. That’s for sure. Anyway he’s driving so fast. He calls, tries to call Tatiana, but she doesn’t answer. And you get stuck behind a, a ute, sorry, a pickup, a tradie. I’m just going to pull out all of the Australian words here.
[00:21:00] A pickup truck, it’s got tools and stuff on it, you know, they dodge around each other.
Bex: It’s also got a large bundle of steel rebar strapped to the top of the cage. And the camera does linger on that rebar for a few seconds.
Ellen: Yeah, if you’ve seen Final Destination, you know what’s gonna happen.
Alice: Like, I had my teeth gripped this entire time, I’m like, this is not gonna end well.
Ellen: Well, you can sort of, when you start speeding up and, you know, dodging around, you’re like, okay. This is gonna happen. And he, he almost hits a concrete barrier, but not, he stops in time, but the truck behind him.
Bex: At which point you go, okay, good.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And then?
Ellen: But, the truck smashes into him from behind.
Bex: And the last thing we see is those rebar flying off the cage. And then blackness.
Ellen: And then in the 911 call after this, Chim himself has called, right? “Send help. I was, I’m in a car accident.” [00:22:00] At the firehouse, Bobby gets a call. He’s cleaning the helmets in the truck and he gets a call on his, on his phone and he quickly rounds everyone up to get ready and they’re really confused.
Because there, there hasn’t been an alarm, but there’s lots of people in the firehouse. Like, I was a bit confused. I’m like, how many people are in the 118? We only ever see, like, the main four. Like, there’s all these other people around.
Alice: There’s actually a lot of members, and like, again, I’m in season three, but you don’t meet them. They’re just sort of there.
Bex: Yeah. There’s like an A shift and a B shift and then. You’ll have a crew for each of the vehicles, so there’ll be a crew for the ladder truck, a crew for the engine, a crew for each of the, or paramedics for each of the rescue ambulances. I’m assuming this must be like the cross shift time, so everybody is in the fire house at the moment.
Where the A shift, which would be Bobby and Hen and Buck are probably just running down the clock before they can go home.
Ellen: [00:23:00] Yeah, maybe they were. Were they making food this time? I don’t think so, there was no food.
Alice: No, Bobby was in the truck when he got the call.
Ellen: Yeah, that’s right, yeah. So, I mean, does he just make food for everyone who’s there at the firehouse?
Like, maybe when they have to run off to a call, then someone eats the food. Like, you know, maybe it doesn’t have to sit there on the table.
Alice: If you imagine if he cooked this massive dinner and then was like, no, no, only my friends can eat it. It’s like, Buck, you’re not eating this shift, I’m mad at you, but Hen and Chim are fine.
Ellen: Anyway, the alarms do go off before they get out of there and they arrive, but a different crew is already there. Dave actually calls Bobby because Chim won’t accept help from anybody except the 118, so.
Bex: Yeah, the, the 112 got called and it was Captain Serrano of the 112 that called Bobby to let him know that Chim was in the accident and he needed to get down onto the scene.
[00:24:00] And Bobby immediately makes for Chim’s car, but Captain Serrano warns him to prepare himself, so he calls for Buck and Hen to hang back and approaches the vehicle on his own. The camera pans around and we see Chim in the front of the car and Supernatural fans cover your ears if you don’t want to hear this.
One of those pieces of rebar has gone through the back window of Chim’s car, through the back of his seat, through his skull and is sticking out of the front of his forehead. But Chim is still alive.
Alice: Yeah. Chim’s still talking. chatting. He says he just can’t move his head. That’s it. He’s not in pain. He can move his feet.
Everything’s fine. He just can’t move his head.
Ellen: You know, I know in my notes, I have like a, in capital letters, “Chim has a fucking rebar through his head from back to front and he’s fine. He’s totally fine.” [00:25:00] But they, but when Buck and Hen join Bobby and they wonder how he’s not in pain. And Hen says that the brain doesn’t have pain receptors.
Alice: They tell him, “Do not move your head.”
Bex: Which freaks him out because all three of them just jump on him. No, don’t move.
Alice: Yeah. “Don’t move. Don’t move.” So he’s like, “well, what is it? Tell me what it is.” And Bobby finally takes a video for him and shows him. And it’s bad.
Ellen: But he doesn’t immediately panic.
Alice: No!
Ellen: He just says, “how come I’m not dead?” And we all wonder.
Alice: Because the CW need to answer for their crimes.
Ellen: I’m gonna try really hard not to be salty about it.
Bex: I mean, medically, there are reasons, but yes.
Ellen: [00:26:00] They’re not, they’re not good reasons. In my opinion. (laughs)
Bex: So Jim asks for Bobby to get him out of the car, he’s starting to panic a little bit.
And Bobby says that they’re working on it, but normally he would be consulting his smartest EMT, but right now he’s got a rebar stuck in his head.
Ellen: Yes, they tie him down though so he can’t move and they load the car onto a tow truck and head for the hospital. And I did have to wince when the. tow truck following the ambulance pulled into the hospital, like, quite quickly over a bump, like over the driveway, the bump in the driveway, and like, ow, oh, that would have hurt.
Alice: I did, I did love Chim asking Buck how the car was, and was it a total loss? And Buck just goes, no, you’ll probably buff most of it out
Bex: But then we see the car being loaded up, and like, the windshield’s broken. They’ve had to remove the door in order to get to Chim. The front is completely crumpled.
Ellen: There’s not much left.
Bex: [00:27:00] Yeah. I don’t know if Buck thought he was being supportive by lying so blatantly to Chim,
Alice: Maybe he just doesn’t really know much about cars.
Ellen: They cut the rebar to free Chim and take him inside the hospital, but Bobby stops Buck from going in with him and says that their job ends at the glass doors, just like always.
Bex: Before Bobby pulls them away, Buck is protesting, says “no, we have to go in with him,” and the ER team ask, “are you family?” And I just want to put a pin on that. Then we cut to Chim going into surgery. And they are doing
Ellen: Yes, there is a very graphic head, like, brain surgery in this part.
Alice: Oh, have we cut to Grey’s Anatomy for some reason?
Bex: I was not expecting the full… When they said we’re going to be doing the craniotomy, I thought, okay, cool but I was not expecting to actually witness the full craniotomy.
Alice: [00:28:00] I thought that they’d stop us at the glass doors as well, but we just went straight into surgery. Oh, yeah.
Ellen: And they, they, they like, you know, cut his skull open and stuff and then they just like yank the rebar right out of there and all this blood’s going everywhere. Just like is that really how you, like, I don’t know, how else would you remove that from someone’s brain?
But like, it just seemed a bit violent to me, I don’t know. But yeah, he… machines start beeping and it’s all a bit frantic for a little while.
And then we just completely cut away from there to Abby’s place where. It’s her mom’s birthday and her brother and the family are there too. And Abby’s mom doesn’t recognize the perfume as her, that her son’s given her as being her favorite one.
Bex: until Abby sprays it on her wrist. ’cause the scent memory is stronger than the other memory. She, she seems to recognize it when she smells it.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah. [00:29:00] And you can sort of see her become more lucid and asks if someone’s having a birthday
Ellen: Yeah, and they all sort of look awkwardly at each other for a moment, but then later they’re cleaning up and Abby’s brother tells her that she looks tired, which is not a nice thing to say to anybody.
Bex: then don’t think we actually know that that guy was her brother. I went back and double checked and there’s, he never calls Patricia mom. It’s just, he’s this guy with a woman who I assume is his wife and a kid. But as soon as he says, you look tired and Abby turns around and is like, “Oh my God, shut up.”
I’m like, okay, that’s your brother. Cause that’s, nobody else is going to speak to you like that. And you are not going to speak to anybody else like that. That’s your brother. Which we get confirmed. He starts talking about, you know, sisters and brothers. Things like that. So yes, it is Matt, Abby’s brother who I think is feeling a little bit guilty about how much time and effort and how much of her life that [00:30:00] Abby is putting into taking care of their mother because he gives Abby a brochure for what he calls a memory care facility and says that he had put Patricia’s name down and a room has opened up for her.
Alice: Yeah, Abby talks about how, like, taking care of their mother is a choice that she made. Like she doesn’t feel like she was forced into it.
Ellen: Yeah. And it’s a choice. Yeah. So, and like, she’s chosen to care for her mom, but everyone seems to be so interested in telling her that she needs to live her own life as well.
And at this point it seems like she’s a little bit over that. You know, we’re fine. You’re helping. We’ve got assistance. We’re fine. And then her brother says, but are you living? It’s like, “shut up, dude.” And then we go back to the firehouse and Buck is pacing back and forth and he says, “It’s been 14 hours. Why haven’t we heard anything?”
Alice: [00:31:00] I just love Hen, who’s just casually like doing a crossword. She’s like, “you know the saying, it ain’t brain surgery? Well, this is.”
Ellen: But Bobby has heard from the surgeon and he’s still alive. There was some complications. So he’s in an induced coma, but he’s okay at the moment.
They all sort of, you know, Look at each other and wonder if he’s going to wake up.
Alice: I was really surprised that they did this sort of thing so early in the show, too.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, we haven’t really had that much of a chance to get really attached to anybody yet.
Alice: Yeah,
Ellen: even though I am quite attached to them already and it’s only been three episodes.
But yeah, but then it’s time for a 9-1-1 call again. A lady who can hear screaming from inside a truck and there’s no driver and the doors are locked and there’s people inside there.
Bex: So the 118 are dispatched, as soon as they get on the ground, Bobby orders Buck to get the tools. [00:32:00] And as he’s moving off to follow orders, Buck asks Hen if it’s wrong that he was stoked that there was an emergency, because it gets them out of the firehouse.
And Hen tells him that she agrees, but it’s still wrong, because they are there to help people not blow off steam. We also find out in this scene that Hen’s last name is Wilson. We see it on the bottom of her turnout. So everybody meet Firefighter Wilson.
Ellen: Yeah, there you go.
Alice: Yeah, so they don’t know where the driver is, they’re looking for him.
The vehicle’s registered to Texas, I believe. So Bobby and Buck are working to break in with tools. Hen’s looking around the truck for, like, clues and finds his ID in the sun visor. Dunno why the police didn’t notice that earlier, but, you know,
Ellen: Maybe they did, but he’s not around at the time. So, they didn’t find him, but they finally open the truck and pull out a bunch of people in there and buck, and he save a kid who’s not breathing.
[00:33:00] Here’s the questionable, questionable CPR of the day.
Alice: Oh my, literally in my notes, buck doing more terrible CPR .
Bex: I do have a note in here. It says, buck doing CPR. Pause for Alex. Yes, tell us about it.
Alice: It’s just too fast again. And like, yeah, like I feel like they blew their budget on everything, but just a basic CPR course for all the actors.
Ellen: Oh, it’s a shame really, because it’s an important thing to, to not get wrong. You know, like if you are gonna try and like… they do, say that you are not supposed to like, try doing it just in case you do it wrong and end up killing somebody . But if you can do it right then you may as well try and do it actually right. Right?
Alice: That’s it. That’s it.
Ellen: Yeah. My daughter was watching a, a TikTok recently, which is like a song that had the right beat of CPR that you can sing while you’re doing it.
Bex: You know what the song is that they recommend?
Ellen: [00:34:00] No, I can’t remember what it is. Tell me.
Bex: They recommend “Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees.
Alice: They do recommend “Staying Alive”. That’s what you’re taught in the courses. There’s a Spotify playlist of songs that work. There’s a couple Taylor Swift songs too, including “22”.
Ellen: Oh, really?
Alice: But then you’d lose your counting, so
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: It’s, I think it’s like 120 beats per minute that you need to, to hit, but I just find it so ironic that the CPR, official CPR song is “Stayin Alive”.
Ellen: Yeah. Should definitely remember that one.
Alice: Yeah. That’s great. It’s just “Ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin alive, stayin alive.” And yeah, it’s the easiest way to remember it.
Or in Buck’s case, I think he’s just listening to like a heavy metal song in his head. Like full thrash metal and just tries to do it as fast as he can.
Ellen: Well, he’s, you know, he’s panicking a little bit.
Bex: So while Buck is doing his questionable CPR, Hen’s got the Ambo bag and the… [00:35:00] Am Ambu? Is that how we’re going to say it?
Hen has the Ambu bag and is providing oxygen to the boy. And he thankfully wakes up. She has noted that it was four and a half hours from the Mexican border, if that’s even where they started from, and we did hear earlier in the scene that it’s a hundred degrees that day, which for the metric people out there, that’s about 37 degrees.
So these people have been locked in a container with no ventilation, with no water for over four and a half hours in 37 degrees heat. No wonder that they are dropping like flies.
Ellen: Yeah. And they have just laid all these people out on the ground in the sun to treat them, which I am not sure if that’s a great idea, but maybe there wasn’t anywhere else that was in the shade to help them.
Bex: Bobby did call for backup. He’s called for extra rescue ambulances and a chopper in case they need to medevac anybody.
Ellen: Right. Yeah. [00:36:00] But they do save the kid and then Hen spots a guy in the crowd who is looking kind of shifty and looks exactly like the ID of the driver. So she runs over and tackles him to the ground.
Alice: We get the first sign of Hen breaking, which is interesting because we don’t really know too much about Hen yet, but she has sort of been the person that’s pulled Buck up a lot of the time, including just before when she’s like, we’re not letting off steam. But you know, Buck’s pacing and she’s doing a crossword before while waiting for news on Chim.
She’s generally been the voice of reason, and then she sees the driver and literally just screams, “Hey, you dick.”
Bex: Once she gets him on the ground, she then yells for someone with a badge and a gun to take the piece of trash into custody, at which point LAPD are like, “Oh yeah, okay, we’ll take him.” And Buck comes running over and he’s absolutely chuffed.
He’s like, that was bad, badass. [00:37:00] But then he can’t help but poke her and go like, “I thought we weren’t supposed to be blowing off steam.” And she just whips it around and says to him. “You know what you can blow,” and walks off. Like, mic drop, thank you, Henrietta Queen
Alice: Ah, I love her.
Ellen: Yes.
Alice: But yeah, really good to, like, not, not great that she’s losing her cool, but it’s good to sort of see Hen’s personality coming out a bit, because until this episode we hadn’t really explored much about Chim and Hen.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: So it’s nice to see their personalities coming out and then Abby calls
Bex: and Buck answers and Abby says gratefully “you answered, you always answer” which…
Ellen: was a bit confused by this because wasn’t like didn’t Abby just take the 9 1 1 call a moment ago? [00:38:00] Like And now she’s at home and she says of course you’re on a call and it’s like didn’t you just send them on the call?
Okay Maybe it was a different 9-1-1 lady?
Alice: They do do different dispatchers, like you can hear different dispatcher voices.
Bex: I’ve just got the 9-1-1 call, I don’t think that I specifically said that it was Abby that took that call.
Ellen: Yeah, well I was, when I got to this point I was like, did she not just… But, yeah, maybe it was a different lady, it just sounded a lot like her.
Alice: But yeah, that would be kind of funny if he
Ellen: Maybe I’m not supposed to ask questions like that.
Alice: If she’s like, go to this call, and then calls him, and he’s just like, hey, you’re on a call.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah, that’s, that was what threw me off. I was like, didn’t she just send him there? But yeah, it must have been someone else.
So, okay. I’m just being picky now. But no, they do have a chat about you know, Abby tells him about her mum and, and Buck says, yeah, that must be hard. And hard decision to make and but if… [00:39:00] “I don’t know much but one thing I have learned is that family is the only thing that matters.” I’m not sure exactly when he learned today that family was the only thing that mattered, but okay It’s a good point to make
And then Bobby goes to see Tatiana at Chim’s place, I think right? She’s putting
Bex: Yeah, that’s Chim’s apartment .
Ellen: Yeah, she’s got a load of food that people have brought over, and she’s putting it away in the fridge.
Alice: So much food.
Bex: Interestingly, Bobby has to introduce himself to Tatiana, which means that they’ve never met her. And again, Chim, why are you proposing to this woman when she’s never even met your friends?
Alice: Yeah, she’s never met the people that you spend full days with. Yes.
Ellen: And she says, now I know why Chimney always calls you Gary Cooper. [00:40:00] And I had to look him up, like, and, because I was like, who the hell’s Gary Cooper? But he’s an American actor who did a lot of westerns and movies in the 1940s and 50s.
Who looks quite a lot like Bobby. Yeah, strong, quiet screen persona he’s been described as, so he looks
Alice: While we’re talking about Bobby’s looks, like, I swear I could not pick him out of a lineup at all. I don’t know if it’s just because he looks like generic handsome man.
Bex: He’s generic white, midwestern, American man.
Alice: Yeah. Like, if there was a lineup with people, like, and Bobby was just with people that looked similar to him, could not tell you who he was. Every episode, I’m like, who is this? Oh, it’s Bobby.
Ellen: He’s just so, he’s got an unassuming kind of manner as well. Like you, he’s just quiet and like yeah, stoic, like I said earlier.
Yeah, he wouldn’t, doesn’t, wouldn’t stand out in a, in a lineup. But yeah but he tries to convince her to come to the hospital to help Chim wake up from his coma. [00:41:00] And she just says she doesn’t want to do that because she’s going to look like if she doesn’t play Florence Nightingale, everyone’s going to think she’s a bad person and she doesn’t want to look like a bad person.
It’s like, oh.
Bex: I kind of get her point because she spells it out and goes, “okay, so I go to the hospital bed and I hold his hand and he wakes up. I can’t break up with him then. When do I break up with him? Do I break up with him when he leaves the hospital? Do I break up with him when he gets home? Do I break up with him after he’s learned how to walk? What happens if he never wakes up? What happens if he never gets the ability to talk or walk? Am I just, am I going to be pretending to be in love with him for the rest of my life?” And she, I understand where she’s coming from. It’s brutal to do it now, but it’s better to do it now than to draw it out.
Alice: Yeah. She says, I’m not a bad person. I’m just not in love with him.
Bex: I think Bobby understands that, but he’s also advocating for Chim and he says the only, the only thing he can do for Chim is pray [00:42:00] and hope that if Tatiana is there, the Chim will sense that she is there and it will give him a reason to fight to come back.
And Tatiana just says, “I’m sorry, but no.”
Ellen: Yeah. And he says Bobby says that “He loves you,” and I really wanted to say, God knows why, afterwards, but he didn’t. I mean, that sounds really brutal. I’m sorry, Tatiana.
Alice: They just don’t know each other.
Ellen: No.
Bex: We don’t know anything about her, except that she has a thing for men in uniform.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Literally, that’s it. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, she, she doesn’t want to go though but that’s okay because, no, well, that happens later. We’ve got something else first.
Bex: We’ve got a couple of quick scenes to get to before we, to, we finish this episode off. So the next scene we get is Abby and Carla. [00:43:00] Abby is doing the handover to Carla before she goes to work and Carla has noticed the memory care facility brochure and asks if she’s about to be out of a job.
She seems to approve of the facility, said that it’s got a good reputation that vacancies are rare and does recommend it if that’s what Abby wants to do and kind of asks, is that what you (want to) do? And Abby says that she’s been considering it for a minute, but as long as her mum is here, she wants her to be here.
I know that doesn’t make sense when you just hear the words, but in context it made sense. As long as her mum is lucid and kind of remembers who Abby is and who she is, Abby wants her to be with her.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah, she wants, I think she wants as much time before the disease fully takes her. Then we cut to Athena staking out her daughter’s school and she’s So, looking at the yearbook, at the photo of the girl who has been bullying Mae.
Ellen: [00:44:00] Yeah, and she sees the girl and she walks, as she walks past and kind of, you know, narrows her eyes at her. And I’m like, oh no. What’s she gonna do?
Alice: Yeah. Full mama bear mode.
Bex: Nothing good can come of this. But before we can find out what Athena is going to do, we cut back to the hospital. Chim has been…
Ellen: he’s in, he’s in the ICU after surgery and they’re allowed to go and visit him for a little while. Yeah,
Alice: they’ve taken his intubate, intubation tube out. Yeah. And they’ve woken him up from his coma. They ask if Chim can hear and the nurse or the doctor says that she always acts like they can.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So Bobby goes in, sits next to Chim on the bed and takes hold of his hand. Hen sort of settles on the side of the bed and takes his other hand and [00:45:00] Buck perches on the third chair and the look on his face as he looks at Buck and looks at Chim, sorry, and says, “you know, I was thinking when you come back to work, you should do The Manoeuvre instead of me.”
And it’s so very much like a toddler handing you their favorite stuffed animal because they see that you’re upset and they’re hoping that it’ll cheer you up.
Alice: Buck looks so young in this scene as well.
Bex: Yes. He did a really good job of just showing how young Buck is and how completely overwhelmed he is with being faced with his friend being in this condition.
Alice: Yeah. And like Hen just looks at him in horror and Buck just says quietly, “to motivate him to get better!” And then she goes, “he can’t do the Manoeuvre.”
Bex: Hen’s going, no, you can’t do the Manoeuvre and Buck’s like, “sure you can, Chim, you can do The Manoeuvre.” [00:46:00] And then the hand that Bobby is holding, just the fingers flex and the hand rolls and Chim gives them a thumbs up. He’s awake.
Ellen: He’s been squeezing Bobby’s hand before that too so they’re all. So relieved that he’s, he can hear them.
Bex: Han tells Chim that she tried to get ahold of his parents, but there is a 16 hour time difference between Los Angeles and Seoul. So she was unable to get in touch with them. And Bobby takes hold of Chim’s hand again and says, “that’s all right. His family is right here.”
This isn’t a family, Bobby? It lasted what, two episodes? Before that whole, this isn’t a family, got completely crushed.
Alice: It lasted like half an episode.
Ellen: It took one of them nearly dying for you to actually realise. No.
Alice: I do love that before it ends, Hen just goes, “Please don’t ever let him do The Manoeuvre.”
Bex: I think Chim would do great doing The Manoeuvre.
Ellen: [00:47:00] No, this scene, this scene was great. I mean, it was… It really captured, like, I had a family member who had emergency surgery and had, was in ICU for a few days and they did say to us when we went to visit, like, even if you don’t think that he can hear you, like, just talk to him like he can and that, you know, they can, they can often can hear you and when they wake up, they’ll remember.
And just seeing someone in a hospital bed like that, unconscious, it’s just so, so confronting, I remember that. So this, this scene really hit quite hard. But yeah, they capture the, the kind of somber kind of feeling to it, the whole thing really well. And but yeah, the relief when they get that response is, is really, is worth it.
It’s good.
Alice: Yeah. Even knowing that Chim was in the later seasons. I was still like stressed about it.
Ellen: Yeah. I knew. Yeah. [00:48:00] Exactly. I mean, I know he’s going to survive. And in a way that may be irrationally angry because, you know, Dean Winchester did not get to survive something like that. Spoilers.
But you know, it was it was a relief and but also like, you know, the stakes were still high, you know, like I mean, I, you’re pretty much going to guess that they’re not going to kill off like one of the main cast in the first, in the third episode anyway, even if you were watching from the beginning.
Bex: This isn’t Game of Thrones.
But yeah, what a, what a rollercoaster this episode was from start to finish. My God, I was on the edge of my seat the whole time.
Alice: It was very frantic the entire episode.
Ellen: Yeah. We don’t have a cliffhanger at the end of this one, thank goodness. But… apart from the fact that Athena is about to, you know, go and lay some smack down on these kids apparently.
I don’t know. I have no idea what to expect next episode. [00:49:00] But yeah. Interesting.
Alice: Yeah, it’s a good episode. Like, we’re learning more about Chim. We’re learning more about Hen. The characters are becoming more developed. It wasn’t just like, we’ve had a few Buck-centered episodes. which I don’t mind because I love Buck, but it’s nice to see getting to know the rest of the crew.
Ellen: We would love to know what you thought about this episode. This is like, I don’t know if we, if you’re ranking these episodes, We’ve only had three, but I think I’ve loved this one most of all so far, even though we did have some major traumas involved in this one.
But yeah, please tell us what you thought about it. You can like, you can find all the ways to get in touch with us on our website thatweewooshow.com. And you can leave a comment directly there. Make sure you subscribe to the podcast to find out when new episodes drop.
Bex: [00:50:00] The next episode is called “Worst Day Ever.” That sounds a bit ominous.
Ellen: Oh god! (laughing)
Alice: I was going to say that sounds lovely and cheery. I don’t know what you’re talking about.
Bex: Would you like to know what the summary is for that one?
Ellen: Sure. Why not?
Bex: So, yeah, that’s it. The summary for episode four, “Worst Day Ever”, is in the aftermath of a deadly plane crash, Bobby and the team race to help survivors, Athena deals with the panic and chaos at the airport.
Ellen: Wow. Okay. Great.
Bex: This one’s a doozy.
Ellen: I love a plane crash. I mean, in a way that I’m actually quite scared of flying. Excellent. More trauma. Hey. You know, I was thinking actually that maybe we should, at the end of the episode, we should maybe cover the triggers for the next episode, just if people are watching, like in between.
Bex: Aviation accident.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Major aviation accident.
Ellen: That’s the only one?
Bex: Oh no, there’s, there’s plenty, but all right, let’s have a look. Trigger warnings for season (episode) four, [00:51:00] “Worst Day Ever”: aviation accident resulting in mass casualties, people and children at threat, alcoholic character relapses. So actually, yeah, aviation accident is pretty much it.
Alice: Yeah, that’s, that’s a surprisingly short list of triggers.
Ellen: I mean, it is kind of like a spoiler list for each episode really, isn’t it? To read it ahead of time, but you know, it’s good to know.
Bex: Honestly, I wish I’d known what some of these things were going into it beforehand.
Alice: Yeah, definitely.
Ellen: All right then that’s the episode.
Thank you very much for listening, and we will talk to you next time when we will discuss episode four. Worst day ever! Looking forward to it! Bye!
Alice: Bye!
Bex: Bye!
[outro music, overlaid with Ellen speaking: 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.]
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