1.05: Point of Origin

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 fifth episode of 9-1-1, titled “Point of Origin”.

The crew races to an emergency when disaster strikes at an Indian wedding; Abby enlists the help of Buck to try and find her mother.

Content warnings for episode 1.05: Building collapse involving multiple injuries (none shown), building fire and discussion of death by fire, flashbacks to a character at the height of alcoholism and addiction, death by electrocution, child at threat.

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Episode Transcript

Bex: [00:00:00] Welcome back to That WeeWoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show 9-1-1. I’m Bex.

Alice: I’m Alice.

Ellen: And I’m Ellen.

Bex: Thank you to everyone who’s listened to our first four episodes and shared our social media posts and rated us on Spotify and Apple podcasts.

Ellen: Yes! We have to say a big thank you to Hanne who has left us a comment on our Spotify.

So now, if you go into an episode’s entry on Spotify, it’s got a little Q and A section there, and it’ll ask you a question, I think at the moment it just says, “What do you think of this episode?” but you can leave a little review there. And so if you listen to this episode or any of our episodes and you enjoy it, then you can let us know on Spotify, if that’s the way that you listen.

I didn’t even know that you could do that until we got this comment. [00:01:00] So thank you, Hanne. And yeah, please leave us a note. That’s awesome.

Alice: So cool.

Bex: In this episode, we’re going to discuss the Season 1, Episode 5 titled “Point of Origin”, which aired on January 31st of 2018. Alice, would you like to remind us what happened in Episode 4?

Alice: A lot happened in episode four.

Bex: It did, didn’t it?

Alice: So last week on 9-1-1, the 118 deal with a deadly plane crash while Athena makes an unethical arrest, but fights against capitalism. Abby delivers a tragic goodbye to a newly widowed woman and then loses her mother to an unlocked door. Meanwhile, Bobby spirals into a bender, breaking his sobriety and breaking down to ask Hen and Buck for help.

Ellen: Yeah, it was an action packed episode last time, wasn’t it? Well, action packed and or emotionally packed.

Alice: [00:02:00] Yeah, bit of both, bit of both.

Ellen: And it’s not about to end with this episode we’ll find. The official summary for “Point of Origin” is:

The crew races to an emergency where disaster strikes at an Indian wedding. Abby enlists the help of Buck to try and find her mother…

That’s right, her mum went missing at the end of the last episode…

And for the first time meets Athena face to face. Meanwhile, Bobby has a difficult time confronting his past and Hen struggles to make the right decision.

And the content warnings for this particular episode, we have a building collapse, which involves multiple injuries, but none of them are shown, none of the serious injuries are shown. We have a building fire and discussion of death by fire. We have flashbacks to a character at the height of alcoholism and addiction. And we have death by electrocution and we have a child at threat. So this, I mean, we’ve already had four episodes. I don’t keep saying this. [00:03:00] We only have a few episodes, but this episode, what has to be like one of the heaviest so far that we have covered.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: So. Just a heads up, on top of all the content warnings I’ve just mentioned, there is quite heavy subject material in this episode particularly. Well, shall we get straight into it?

Bex: Yes, let’s get into it.

Alice: Let’s go.

Bex: So the episode opens with a wedding, everybody loves a wedding, except apparently when you are the bride and the groom and you have never met before.

This is apparently an arranged wedding and while the bride and groom seem to be okay with the arrangement, their friends, the groomsmen and the bridesmaid are definitely not on the side of going through with this wedding.

Alice: Yeah, one of the bridesmaids even says “Hope you know a good divorce lawyer.”

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: [00:04:00] Not exactly the energy you want going into your marriage.

Ellen: Yeah. They do sound like they’re okay with it though. They’re like, “Oh, I, you know, we’ll get to know each other. It’s going to be okay.” But they, they do go ahead with it. They say it’s a good match. They go ahead with it. And at the end of the ceremony, they’re all dolled up in all their beautiful you know, saris and everything that, that Indian weddings involve.

The guests cheer and then they start dancing and we get some great kind of, you know, Hindi Bollywood style music and dancing going on for a bit until they jump a bit too hard and the floor collapses underneath them and they all fall through the floor. So we go straight to the 9-1-1 call where a guy is, he says he’s at a wedding downtown and the floor collapsed, send help.

Alice: So the 118 arrive alongside other units. Buck reports that 16 are DOA so far, mostly crushed by falling debris [00:05:00] and one impaled. Bobby says he’s not surprised from a fall of two stories and assumes there will be additional casualties.

Ellen: And the groom is extremely distraught, wandering around looking for the bride, calling out her name, trying to find where she’s gone and Bobby tells him to back off and let them do their job. And so they start looking then. But he sends Buck up, up to, up to a higher floor to go in from above kind of thing because they’re not going to be able to reach the second floor by stairs or whatever.

Alice: Buck hears someone calling for help and he finds an injured man with a broken leg. So, he works on that.

Ellen: Yeah, there’s a lot going on in this scene.

Alice: There’s a lot going on, yeah.

Ellen: Like, everyone’s sort of screaming out for help and like you know, they’re trying to clear some rubble out of the way to find people.

Yeah, it’s pretty tense. But Bobby actually does find the bride underneath some rubble and calls Buck over to help him move it out of the way so that they can get her out. [00:06:00] And she’s okay, she’s conscious and moving okay. And then when they pull her out she just flies straight into the groom’s arms and gives him a big hug and they, they seem to be okay after that.

Alice: What a start to a marriage.

Ellen: Yeah. Well, especially since 16, at least 16 of their guests have been killed in the, in the process. Wow.

Bex: So Bobby is examining some of the debris that has fallen. He picks up a piece of what looks like corrugated metal and immediately asks if the owner of the premises is there and Hen points him out and Bobby goes on the attack.

He starts going in on the owner, asking him when he put on the third floor, which was the floor that the reception was being held at, or held on. He says, you don’t think I know what this is? He shows him the piece of corrugated metal that he’s found. He said, “That’s Kal-Pal. That stuff’s been banned.”

[00:07:00] And so Kal-Pal is a very cheap, very easy and very quick way of reinforcing floors. So what they do is instead of using steel rods, they get like corrugated galvanized iron. They make these little boxes like little planter boxes. They set those up and then they pour the concrete around them.

And unfortunately, the boxes can move, the boxes can weaken under the weight of the concrete, and they are not stable. And in 2001, there was a wedding in Jerusalem where the building used Kal-Pal. 23 people died when that collapsed. And so that particular building process, which was never approved to begin with, has pretty much been banned worldwide, which is why Bobby is asking, when did you put on the third floor? [00:08:00] Obviously this guy has done that after the collapse in the Jerusalem wedding hall, knowing that it is. unstable, but needing it to be cheap and quick because that’s how he makes his money by adding in an extra room on top of his building.

Ellen: I am all for the abolishment of like rebar in general. Like we’ve, we’ve said in a previous episode, we have problems with rebar, but it does have its uses.

Bex: Rebar works!

Ellen: It does make things actually structurally sound. Except when they’re sticking out of the side of a barn. Anyway…

Bex: he does, he has a very, Bobby has a very, very strong reaction to this particular incident, like above and beyond just poor building practices to the point where Hen has to pull him away from the owner of the building.

He’s got this guy in a scruff. He’s yelling in his face. And when Hen pulls him away, she’s like, “what is wrong with you?” And he just turns around and snaps “back off, Hen”. Of course, Hen doesn’t back off. [00:09:00] She’s like, “you know, back off. Not 24 hours ago, you were asking for help. What has happened?” And he just walks away.

Alice: Then Buck comes in as he does. And just starts talking about how, like, the marriage was arranged and, you know, could you imagine committing to someone you don’t even know? And she just goes, “does anyone really know anyone?”

Ellen: Yeah. And she watches, she watches Bobby leave. Like it’s obvious that she knows something’s going on, like she, but how do they get through to him?

They, they’ve been trying, but he’s not, not biting.

Bex: No. Let me cut to title card. After the title card, we are in a very fancy bar and Hen and Athena are having drinks.

Ellen: Yes, it’s a really pretty bar, actually. I like it.

Bex: So we get a little bit of update on Athena. She’s still chained to the desk after her actions against [00:10:00] Laila Creedy in the previous episode.

Apparently Laila’s parents are ready to drop the complaint against the department if the department will drop the charges against Laila. Athena is not willing to do that, so I think everybody’s in a little bit of a stalemate.

Alice: but at least Mae’s back home. Athena sort of says it feels like solid ground, but she feels like she doesn’t know the people she’s supposed to be the closest to.

Bex: And then Hen mutters like, “oh, there’s a lot of that going around.”

Ellen: And Athena sort of gives her a side eye and goes, he said, “are you having trouble at home?” She’s like, “no, no, no, no, it’s Bobby.” And, and Athena calls him Clark Kent, which I thought was really cute. I think later on she refers to him as like Bruce Wayne as well. It’s like,

Bex: yeah, she goes through pretty much all of the, the strong and silent superheroes,

Alice: all the DC characters.

Bex: Yeah. I do find it interesting, which is ironic seeing that Angela Bassett was in the Marvel cinematic universe.

Alice: [00:11:00] I do just want to point out that Athena calls him Clark Kent and then later Bobby refers to himself as Superman.

Ellen: Oh yeah.

Bex: That’s very true.

Alice: So Hen talks about how Bobby went on his, on a bender for two days in his empty apartment. And he’s been their captain for over a year and never opened up. So Athena, Athena sort of says like, Oh, so like the wife took the kids and left? but Hen says, Didn’t look like people have moved out more like he never really moved in.

Like, he wasn’t really there.

Bex: Athena must be incredibly bored at work because she offers to run a background check on him. Hen says no, that he’s there. Bobby’s got trust issues. She, she doesn’t really want to go there. He’s not a bad captain. He’s just, he, he’s worrying her. So, Athena changes the subject because when she asked Hen was trouble at home, Hen had said, no, not yet, and Athena didn’t let that go.

[00:12:00] So she’s asking, what is the potential trouble at home? And Athena, Hen says, she got a call from Palmar Women’s Correctional Facility, and Athena immediately asks, “What does she want?” And I liked in this scene that we get a sense of how close these two women are, because Athena immediately knows what Hen is talking about.

There’s no need for Hen to explain why she was possibly getting a call from a women’s correctional facility, Athena already knew and already understood the implications of that.

Alice: I also like when they don’t actually explain things straight away, like they let it happen, because like in a lot of scenes you get like exposition where it’s just like, oh, like you know, they’ll talk about who’s calling at the correctional facility, like, immediately.

And it’s like, yeah, they, they know, like.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. They managed to pack a lot of information into this one scene, like.

Alice: Yeah, but it doesn’t feel like jamming it down your throat.

Ellen: [00:13:00] It just feels like a natural conversation.

Alice: Yeah. It’s like when you watch movies and it’s like, you know, a brother sees the sister for the first time and it’s just like, Oh, how are you?

You’ve never been the same since our parents died when you were five. And it’s like, yeah, they like, she, she knows that your parents died when you were five. Like it’s fine. You don’t need to tell her.

Ellen: Yeah. No, it felt like a very natural conversation. Yes. As natural as TV conversations are, I guess, but yeah.

Yeah. And she says that. This woman who she doesn’t identify yet wants to see her and says it’s urgent. And she feels like she owes her, but Athena’s not having that. She’s like, you don’t owe her anything. And then she says “she didn’t fight us when we wanted to adopt Denny.”

I’m like, who the hell’s Denny? Like I was so confused for a while in this scene. And then Athena says, what does your wife have to say about you going to visit your ex? I’m like, whoa, okay, more information about him now. She has a wife.

Bex: [00:14:00] Hen is queer!

Alice: Hen has a wife. Hen apparently adopted Denny. And Hen also hasn’t told her wife. So Athena brings up her second DC reference and says, sounds like Bruce Wayne isn’t the only one with a few secrets.

Bex: Then we cut to Buck. Looks like he’s coming home after a shift perhaps, and I’m not surprised that he walks into what essentially looks like a frat house.

Alice: I totally forgot that Buck had roommates at one point. (laughs) Like, don’t want to spoil too much for Ellen, but yeah, totally forgot that he had roommates.

I was like, who the hell are these people in his house? I actually had to replay the scene, even though they like, they’re like, oh yeah, this is our roommate. I was like, who the fuck are these people?

Bex: Like,

Alice: where did you come from?

Bex: I have no idea. So he walks in there’s a game [00:15:00] playing on the big screen, his roommates are sitting on the couch, they’re entertaining a girl, they introduce Buck by, “Hey, this is Buck, he’s a fireman.”

They’re very proud of the fact that he’s a fireman. But there are like reddish red Solo cups everywhere. There are pizza boxes.

Ellen: Yeah, it looks like a stereotypical frat house.

Bex: It’s such a frat house. Buck is investigating the pizza that’s been left all over the table rather than, you know, cooking himself something. Although I don’t think you could even cook in that kitchen from what we see of it.

Ellen: He never needs to eat at home, surely. He just waits until he goes into the firehouse and Bobby will cook him up something.

Bex: His phone dings and he has a text from Abby, which is a Missing Persons poster for Patricia Clark. And he immediately calls Abby.

Alice: Look at him getting on board with the phone calls.

Ellen: Yeah, and he asks her if she’s okay and she just breaks down. She says, [00:16:00] no, I’m having a nervous breakdown. Bless her.

But he says he’s going to come over and help her look and then they can go back to never seeing each other. And Abby’s just standing there quietly going, Okay.

Alice: So yeah, her mum’s been missing for nine hours at this point.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: And then we go straight to, back to Hen. Who is visiting prison. Without telling her wife again.

Bex: So she’s let into the visiting area where there is a white woman with long blonde hair that’s been braided back in a very bright orange jumpsuit sitting at one of the tables waiting for her. And she looks very excited to see Hen, calls her “baby”. So there’s, there’s a, a history between these two.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. But, but but Hannah’s very cold to her. And she says [00:17:00] that she’s sorry she hadn’t come to visit her for a while. And, um, and this, the, the lady asks after Denny, but she calls him something else.

Alice: Diesel.

Bex: She calls him Diesel. Yeah.

Alice: No wonder they changed it to Denny. Like, that sounds like a Rottweiler, not a kid.

Ellen: And she said she wants to check in with her girl and Hen immediately is like, “you’re not my girl.”

Bex: It very much gives the energy of when you’re about to ask something really, really big of somebody and you try and do that, like small talk to try and break them.

Ellen: Yeah. She’s trying to butter them up.

Bex: Yeah, How are you? How’s your wife? How’s your kid? How you doing? You look good. Hen’s not having any of it. And she just tells Eva to get to the point. And so Eva gets to the point: she’s up for parole. Her lawyer thinks she’s got a really good shot because she hasn’t gotten into any, she hasn’t got into any fights in the past two years. She’s been taking a bunch of accounting courses.

[00:18:00] She starts kind of talking about how good she’s been. And again, Hen cut straight to the point. “What do you need from me?” And what Eva needs is for Hen to come to her parole hearing and possibly in her uniform and say good things about Eva to get her on parole. And Hen is nodding like, ah, yeah, there it is.

The other shoe has dropped. Yep.

Ellen: Yeah, but then we go back to Buck knocking on Abby’s door. And it’s so cute this scene, like, he, Carla answers and he, he’s like staring at her and she can’t say anything when she sees him. And Buck’s like, “Abby?”

Alice: She gives him a big look up and down. It’s great.

Ellen: And then, and then Abby comes to the door and he’s like, “ah, Abby.”

Bex: She literally pops up. It’s so cute. She like, hears Buck and she’s like, Oh,

Alice: I’m here. And they just stare at each other. L then like walk inside and Carla’s just like, I’m, I’m Carla by the way. completely blown off

Ellen: [00:19:00] Carla’s like giving him, giving him a, “hmm” look

Bex: Buck immediately goes into work mode.

And starts asking what they know so far. And then Abby switches into work mode as much of a work mode as she can go into when it’s her mother that she’s looking for. Yeah.

Ellen: I’ve tried to work out how far she could have got in the time. And Carla says that she’s an annoyingly fast walker. So she’s probably got farther than they think.

Bex: yeah. She says she walks at about three miles an hour, which is about, for those of us who don’t work in freedom units, it’s about five kilometers an hour, which is kind of what I do on the treadmill. That’s a, that’s a brisk walk for a woman in her seventies.

That’s pretty impressive.

Ellen: And Abby’s freaking out, but Buck does reassure her and says, you know, Abby’s sort of like, “how are we going to do this?” And Buck just says “one mile at a time”.

Bex: [00:20:00] Which is very sweet. Yeah.

Alice: He’s such a good, calming presence. Which is so not like him at work, but you know.

Bex: I think this is, well, I think it’s one of, it’s that thing where when you are the one that has to be in charge, you are in charge, but when there are other people that you know that you can fall back on, you kind of let yourself fall back a bit.

Alice: Yeah, like Abby’s freaking out and so Buck’s like, “nope, it’s fine, I’m taking control of this. We’re good.” Whereas when Bobby’s taking control, Buck doesn’t think and yeah, he jumps in and asks questions later.

Bex: Yes. Speaking of Bobby. We cut to the church that he frequents and he is back in confession with the cute young priest.

Ellen: Yeah, this is a sad, very sad scene. This one. Bobby says that he’s lost. He wanted to shield the crew from his own personal damage, he says, [00:21:00] and the priest says, you just have to have a conversation. But Bobby says, it’s not that simple. There are things they just can’t know. And the priest is “like, what do you mean? Like, it can’t be that bad.” And Bobby says, “how about that I murdered my own family?” And. I’m pretty sure there was a commercial break right there.  

Bex: I want to know, I want to know, Ellen, what you thought after Bobby said that line.

Ellen: Well, I mean, I, I hadn’t been spoiled for this. I didn’t know what had actually happened to them, but I assumed that he was… like, he couldn’t possibly be an actual murderer.

I knew that it had to have been an accident that he was blaming himself for. That was my initial thought. And thankfully I was correct.

Bex: [00:22:00] Yeah. Which is every single person that I have kind of watched, watch this show for the first time, they get to this episode and the immediate gut reaction from them is he’s like, over exaggerating, right?

He’s, he’s just blaming himself for something that wasn’t actually his fault. There, there’s no way that this guy is an actual murderer. So, I mean, we got to give props to the writers and to Peter Krause for his portrayal of Bobby, that none of us for a single second believe that this man is a cold blooded murderer.

We’re all convinced that something happened and he is just blaming himself for it. And it, while he might have something to do with it, it’s not entirely his fault.

Alice: I wonder if it if we would have had a different reaction, if we hadn’t seen the binge drinking scene in the previous episode though, like, cause obviously we saw him in the kitchen drunk and like, you hear him having that fake conversation with his family and then he admits that he was like, you know, 200 and something days sober.

[00:23:00] And so when he says he murdered his own family, I’m like, drink driving? Like there’s something that the addictions done?

Ellen: Yeah, I thought it might have been an accident. Yeah.

Alice: Whereas if we hadn’t had the foreshadowing, it’s like, Oh God, is this guy a serial killer?

Bex: Yeah. Like if episode one season one, episode one, Bobby walks out and tells Buck you know, “I killed my entire family”, there would be that “What do you mean you killed your entire family?” But yeah, the way they’ve set it up, the way they’ve kind of drip fed us information about this character over the last couple of episodes, we’re all 100 percent on Bobby’s side, convinced that it’s not as bad as, I mean, it’s bad, it’s really bad, but it’s not as bad as he is making it out to be.

[00:24:00] And then we get a flashback to St. Paul, Minnesota, which is us watching the story unfold as he is talking the priest through what happened.

Ellen: Yeah, so it’s a snowy night, he’s actually having a drink in his car to start with, I think, right?

Bex: Yeah, he’s taking a pull of his flask. He also takes a handful of something, which I wondered. I mean, I was watching it on a small screen, so I couldn’t tell whether he was popping pills.

Ellen: Yeah, I think so.

Bex: But then, when he gets upstairs, his daughter says that he smells really minty, so I don’t know whether he was popping pills or whether he was popping mints to cover the smell of booze on his breath.

Alice: Yeah, I think he was trying to cover the smell of booze, because when his wife says that, like, oh, he missed dinner and everything, but he’s in time for teeth brushing and bed, she gives him a hug, but like you can, she wrinkles her nose and pulls away.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: Like you can tell she knows something.

Bex: Yeah. So, okay. So he is drinking and then trying to cover it up with mints.

Ellen: Yep.

Bex: [00:25:00] So there, there are two kids. He has two kids. Yeah. They’re really cute. He has a daughter who he calls Brookie.

Bex: And a slightly older boy who we don’t get the name of yet, but I will spoil it for him. He’s Bobby Junior.

Ellen: Oh, okay. Of course he is.

Alice: He is Bobby Junior. I actually didn’t catch it until, like, this watch though. And I was like, oh!

Ellen: And he does like the, the bedtime routine with them. So they’re brushing their teeth or whatever. And he’s like falling asleep in the bathroom. His daughter has to,

Alice: he’s literally falling asleep on the toilet.

Ellen: Yeah. She has to say, “Daddy, daddy!” And he says, he’s just, he’s just wiped out from work. It’s been a tough day.

Bex: Work. Hmm.

Ellen: Yeah. His daughter tells him this, like oddly funny story about how the best place to catch on fire is in the firehouse and the best place to get I can’t remember the other thing she said.

Alice: [00:26:00] The best car, the best car to get hit by is an ambulance. Yeah.

Bex: No, not in this series.

Ellen: Damn, this is morbid.

Alice: And the best place to get robbed is is in a police station. It’s like okay, go to bed, child.

Ellen: Kids do come out with the weirdest crap like that though, like they will, they will come out with weird shit like that.

Alice: So he asks her where she got such a beautiful brain and she says, probably Target.

Bex: Can we just talk about the difference between the Australian Target and the US Target?

Alice: Yeah, Australian Target is terrible.

Bex: US Target blows my mind. It is like Coles and Kmart and Priceline Pharmacy all smooshed into one building, but you can also get booze and Starbucks, like all within the same room.

Yeah. It’s just

Alice: That’s crazy.

Bex: It’s crazy.

Alice: The Target near me is big and they had a cafe for like 0. 2 of a second and then COVID happened.

Bex: [00:27:00] But it’s still, it’s just, it’s like fancy homewares and overpriced clothing that, you know, no normal person is ever going to wear.

Alice: It’s all just Kmart stuff now.

Ellen: Yeah, it is a little cheaper now.

Bex: So it just, it blows my mind when people in the US say, Oh, I’m going to go to Target and get my groceries. I’m like, wait. Groceries? At Target?

Alice: Like, no one here goes to Target.

Ellen: Oh, I’ve got lots of clothes from Target, just because they, they have they used to be the only place I could get jeans that fit me properly, but,

Alice: Target did actually used to have good jeans, but I don’t know about now.

Ellen: It’s changed now, yeah. Now, now they’re a bit different.

Alice: But, yeah.

Ellen: I don’t go there as much anymore.

Bex: Anyway, that was a bit of a tangent.

Alice: Big tangent. I do need to go to Kmart and get new jeans this weekend, actually.

Ellen: We don’t have a Kmart near us, so it’s a bit of a journey to get to one.

Alice: It’s all a target anyway. There’s one literally less than a kilometre from my house, and I’m still like, oh, it’s so far. I can’t be bothered going down there.

[00:28:00] Anyway. The son, who is a bit more serious, a bit more reserved,

Ellen: Like his dad.

Alice: …asks Bobby if he’s okay and is his back hurting again? So it sounds like he often, like, blames things on his back.

Ellen: Yeah. But he says “everything’s gonna be alright. Don’t worry.” And says goodnight to them and leaves.

Alice: And then they say sweet dreams.

Bex: Very sweet. And in that television way of these kids are too cute, they’re being too nice, something terrible is going to happen to them, you just know it.

Ellen: Because if I say goodnight to my kids like that and left the room, they’d be out in two seconds saying they were thirsty or something. You know, kids don’t just do that.

Alice: Which my friend’s five-year-old tonight was like, “I can’t sleep. I’m thinking of something funny.” And they’re like, “what is it?” And he laughed and went back to bed and they’re like,

Ellen: okay, don’t tell anyone else what it is.

Alice: It’s fine.

Bex: [00:29:00] Anyway so Bobby comes out into the main room and tells his wife that he is going to go for his walk, not a walk, his walk.

It seems like this is a very common occurrence. Because He, if he doesn’t go for this walk, his back will tighten up and we get a little bit of exposition where it seems that five years ago, Bobby was in some kind of accident on the job and broke his back. But it is still hurting. Bobby tries to brush it off with the whole, you know, he’s lucky that he’s even up and walking and broken backs never really heal.

His wife thinks that they need to go and see somebody to get it fixed so that he’s not in pain anymore. He just says he’s gonna go for his walk and leaves it at that.

Ellen: Yeah, and she says don’t, you know, “wait, don’t go”. And he just leaves. And I just, yeah, wondered if she suspects that something’s going on with him already.

Bex: [00:30:00] She was acting a little squirrely.

Ellen: And at this point, as he’s walking down the hallway and getting in the elevator, the dread is just mounting. I’m just like, “what’s going to happen?” But he goes down the elevator and he gets out on the sixth floor and he goes to another apartment and opens the door and there’s no power on.

And so he lights a lantern, like a, an actual storm lantern, like a, flame one.

Alice: It’s like a gas lantern. Yeah.

Bex: A little, like, kerosene camping lantern.

Ellen: And the only other thing in the apartment is a gas space heater and a sleeping bag and a bottle of booze.

Alice: And a bottle of booze. Can I just, like, he’s got the keys to the, the empty apartment too. So it’s not like it’s, like, just one that he’s like squatting in. Like, who has the money to rent two apartments in this economy?

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, this was like, you know, eight years ago or whatever, no, six years ago, getting ahead of myself there.

Alice: It was some amount of years ago, but yeah.

Ellen: [00:31:00] He wraps himself up in his sleeping bag and leans back against the wall.

Alice: So first he, he takes some pills. Definitely takes some pills this time.

These are definitely pills. Yeah. And he fills a flask with whatever alcohol he’s got. But then drinks straight from the bottle.

Bex: Yeah, because it’s spilling. He can’t get it in the flask. He’s getting frustrated. So he’s just like, fuck it. I’m just going to drink straight from the bottle. Although I did, the position that he is sitting in, I’ve never had back problems, but eurely that position that he is sitting in is not going to be good for his back. Cause he’s not sitting straight up. He’s kind of… like his butt’s scooched a little bit forward and he’s kind of slumping back against the wall. That can’t be good for him.

Alice: No wonder his back’s always in pain.

Ellen: Yeah. Maybe that’s what’s causing the pain.

Bex: [00:32:00] So the combination of the pills and the booze and he was already falling asleep anyway. He drifts off in his little den of iniquity. And he, I don’t know whether he expected to fall asleep, but he kind of wakes up and it looks like there’s this, oh shit moment. Where he just gets up and immediately bolts out of the apartment, leaving the space heater on, leaving the lantern on.

And can I just note that that sleeping bag is not one metre from the heater?

Alice: Absolutely not one metre from the heater

Ellen: This is when I realized what was going to happen. Because I was like…

Alice: Fire safety, come on.

Bex: You’re a fireman, surely, I mean, that got drilled into us from school.

Alice: Yeah. I wasn’t even allowed to leave the room if the gas heater was on.

Ellen: For someone who deals with fires, he, he’s pretty bad at it. In this case, in this case.

Bex: Although to talk ahead is he does say that, you know, he’s mostly high and drunk at this point. [00:33:00] So sober Bobby would probably be aware that the hitter is too close to the sleeping bag and be aware of the fire hazard. Drunk and high Bobby has no clue.

Alice: Drunk and high Bobby doesn’t care.

Bex: No. So drunk and high Bobby goes back up to his apartment on the 11th floor. where his wife is on the couch waiting for him to come back from his quote unquote walk. And they have a little bit of a confrontation.

Ellen: Yeah. She says, “I’m losing you. You’ve been lying to me for months.”

Alice: The scary part is how sober he sounds as well. Like they don’t try and get him to slur. They don’t try and get him to act high on anything, like he just makes an excuse. He’s like, no, I just forgot my phone. I lost track of time. And that’s what high functioning addicts are like. So I really like the realism.

Ellen: Yeah. [00:34:00] Apparently he’s already been to rehab last year. And after that he told her there would be no relapses. But she asked him, “is it pills, heroin?” And he just says “anything to make the pain go away.”

Bex: Apparently he had another workplace accident a few months ago. Re injured his back or exacerbated the existing injury.

And whichever doctor was seeing him through that injury did not do their due diligence, did not check Bobby’s medical history. And Bobby apparently did not disclose his medical history as an addict because he got prescribed oxycodone for the pain. And he took to it like a duck to water. To the point where he was taking it 24 hours a day.

And when he built up a tolerance to the oxy He started taking anything he could [00:35:00] just to make the pain stop. Which absolutely horrifies his wife because she realizes that if he’s taking Oxy 24/7, he’s driving the kids to school high. He’s going to work high.

Alice: Yeah, he goes, this isn’t me. I’m Superman. I go into buildings and rescue people. And she just, she can’t deal with it. She tells him he needs to leave. Because she doesn’t want him there tonight. But she does say, she’s like, “I’ll forgive you for this, just not tonight.”

Bex: She’s so tired. Yeah, so he So Bobby attempts to go back to his den of iniquity, but he’s left his keys in the apartment, and so rather than try to go back for them, he just goes up to the roof.

Huddles into his little coat. He’s sitting there on the rooftop. It’s December in Minnesota. It’s snowing and yet He’s just going to sit on the roof and take his pills and try to forget

Ellen: Yeah, that’s how people freeze to death.

Bex: [00:36:00] Yeah, the hypothermia risk is real. I’m really surprised that when the fire trucks roll up and the engines start honking, that he actually wakes up and is able to get up very quickly.

Ellen: He doesn’t have like frost on his eyelashes.

Bex: His entire body isn’t frozen. I mean, maybe they breathe them hardier in Minnesota. I don’t know.

Ellen: But it can be like a lot of degrees below zero there. I don’t know about December, but yeah.

Bex: Well, that snow was packed up pretty high, so it had to be pretty cold for it to have maintained that, like, structural integrity.

Ellen: But we do get a little glimpse of the apartment where the heater sparks for some reason. I don’t know, they don’t normally do that. But, unfortunately, the sleeping bag happens to be right next to it, and it catches fire, funnily enough. So

Bex: (sarcastically) Gee, whoever would have thought that would happen?

Ellen: Yes! So Bobby does wake up

Alice: (sarcastically) Totally didn’t expect it.

Ellen: [00:37:00] He hears sirens coming and does look over the side of the building and sees fire below him. But he races back inside, but the hallway is on fire. A man burst out of an apartment on fire, but…

Bex: Like fully on fire, fully engulfed. I don’t understand how someone would get to that state

Alice: I guess he was probably asleep.

Ellen: there weren’t any alarms or sprinklers or whatever inside the building, so

Alice: yeah, the man that’s, you know, Bobby puts out says that the sprinklers didn’t go off

Bex: and the alarms didn’t go off. So, okay. Yeah. If he was asleep and woke up on fire. All right. I’ll give that one to them.

So Bobby puts him out, asks him if he can move, he can’t. Bobby says, “stay put and I will come back for you if I can.” At which point fire explodes out of the wall next to them. This place is really burning.

Alice: [00:38:00] Yeah. Like badly. So he gets to his family’s apartment and tries to like kick in the door, but the floor pretty much immediately gives way and he falls down.

So he’s calling for his family and that’s where we learn Bobby Jr.’s name, because he’s just screaming “Marcy, Bobby, Brooke.”

Bex: Marcy, Bobby, Brooke. He tries to jump, like he jumps, he jumps and grabs hold of the edge of where the floor is pulled through, so either this apartment building had incredibly low ceilings, or Bobby Nash is one very tall son of a bitch. He’s trying to pull himself up when fire rescue literally yank him down to try and get him out of the building.

At which point he turns on them and he’s just yelling at them, give me your gear, give me your gear. But he doesn’t identify himself as a firefighter.

Alice: No, he’s just fully panicking at this stage.

Ellen: Don’t they call him Bobby? Don’t they call him by his name?

Bex: No, they don’t. [00:39:00] No, they don’t know him. They just, he’s just this crazy guy yelling at them to give them his gear. So they manhandle him, haul him out of the building.

Ellen: Maybe I’m, I’m getting confused with him calling out Bobby because I was like, I didn’t realize that that was his kid’s name. So, yeah.

Alice: There’s a lot of yelling of Bobby. It’s interesting the like, the parallel with the husband at the start who was trying to find his wife and Bobby’s like, “You need to get out of here and let us do your job, do our job.”

Bex: At this point you kind of understand now why Bobby had such a severe reaction to the floor collapsing at the wedding. Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah, so much trauma involved in that. So that’s the end of the that’s the end of the flashback and we cut back to the church where the priest is sitting there wiping the tears away, as, as is for a lot of us.

Bobby reveals that he would later learn that the building was constructed with highly flammable [00:40:00] subpar materials which served as an accelerant and the sprinklers weren’t hooked up, which and he didn’t notice.

Bex: and the priest asks him, And you didn’t notice. I’m like, way to lay the blame on this guy.

Ellen: Yeah, that’s a bit of a mean thing to say.

Bex: He’s already very much blaming himself for the death. And now you’re piling it onto him saying, why didn’t you notice that the building wasn’t up to code? So I think this priest needs a little bit more training in our sensitivity when it comes to talking to people with trauma.

But then we get Bobby saying, you know, maybe now, maybe sober Bobby would have noticed, but drunken high Bobby definitely didn’t notice.

Alice: So after that, he disappeared and lived off pills and vodka for two years, and 148 people died in that fire.

Bex: Which is why Bobby’s little book has 148 spaces in it, because he’s trying to balance the cosmic books. [00:41:00] Saving 148 people that he killed, in his mind.

Alice: Yeah. He absolutely feels responsible. Like, he even chokes up saying that he killed them. And like, that he burnt his family in their sleep.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s really rough.

Bex: Yeah, he gets pretty graphic about that.

Ellen: You can tell he’s been going over this many nights since then.

But, the priest says that he should share the story with, you know, with his friends. And Bobby just says, “Oh, no, I can’t. God forgives more than people do. I don’t need them to know about this.” And the priest just tells him, “you don’t trust your friends to see you and love you for who you are, then you don’t really have any friends.”

Bex: And Bobby breaks down sobbing that he just misses them.

Alice: It’s so sad.

Ellen: It’s a very heartbreaking scene, the whole thing. But it’s good to [00:42:00] finally find out what actually happened and why Bobby is the way that he is, I guess.

Bex: Yeah, we finally understand Bobby Nash a little bit better.

So from that heartbreak, we cut to a park where Hen is sitting on a park bench, Watching children play on a playground. And there is a woman sitting next to her and this is the elusive wife, Karen.

Karen asks if Hen is ready to tell her what is bothering her. And eventually Hen fesses up that Eva called her and wants Hen to speak at the parole hearing. And Karen is not impressed.

Alice: So yeah, Karen says that that Hen should speak at the parole hearing so that she can say that Eva belongs behind bars still. Yeah, Karen wants Eva to stay out of their life and Denny’s life. [00:43:00] But Hen says she thinks she’s made an effort this time.

She’s been doing accounting classes.

Bex: It’s very much… the dynamic mirrored the dynamic between Hen and Eva, except this time Hen is in Eva’s role, trying to talk, talk Eva up to Karen. And Karen is in Hen’s role being very unimpressed by it all.

Alice: Yeah. Hen even says, she’s not as bad as you think, and Karen says she’s worse because she’ll always be Hen’s first great love.

Bex: And Hen has no argument to that. She knows that Karen’s right. Karen is a very wise woman. I love Karen.

Alice: I love Karen.

Ellen: Yeah, it makes you think, like, there must have been some interesting story backstory here, and maybe we’ll find out one day. But I’m sure it’s going to end in a heartbreak, so maybe I don’t want to know.

But anyway we go back to Buck and Abby, who are now driving around [00:44:00] Are they in a fire truck? I’m trying to remember.

Alice: No, they’re in, they’re in Buck’s truck. They’re in Buck’s Jeep, yeah.

Ellen: But they have a police radio.

Alice: Is this the first time we see Buck’s Jeep?

Ellen: Yes?

Bex: Yes, because most of the time when he’s with people he’s hooking up with fire engines.

Alice: He’s in the fire truck, yeah! So yeah, Buck’s Jeep. And he is on the phone with Athena. And, yeah. Athena says that she’ll keep her eyes open. She’s still chained to the desk, but she’s, you know, got an alert out. So they turn on the emergency radio so that they can listen as well.

Bex: Which, why does Buck have a police scanner in his personal truck?

Alice: To be fair, a lot of people have scanners, especially since like, if you’re on the job or on the way to a job, like on the way to the shift.

Bex: Okay.

Alice: But yeah, like my dad, my dad does not drive a truck, but he has a truck CB in his car just so he can hear about the traffic.

Ellen: Oh, okay.

Bex: Yeah. Okay.

Alice: [00:45:00] So Abby says it’s a bummer they had to meet under these circumstances, and Buck says it’s the worst first date ever.

Ellen: This whole scene is just so cringe worthy.

Alice: It’s so funny.

Ellen: It’s funny, but it’s like, what?

Alice: It’s so like, Buck is definitely 26. And Abby is definitely a mature woman who’s got other shit going on.

Ellen: The age difference has never been clearer in this scene.

Bex: Yeah, Abby says that it possibly is a bad date, but it’s been a while since she’s been  on a date. So it’s a little bit fuzzy and Buck guesses, “Oh, what? So it’s been a couple of weeks?” And Abby is just like, “no, Buck, it’s, it’s been over a year” which blows Buck’s mind because For him, dates are sex. So it’s like, “but if you haven’t been on going on any dates, who have you been having sex with?”

And Abby just laughs. And that blows his mind even more. [00:46:00] And he’s like, “you haven’t had sex in over a year?” That’s just incomprehensible to him. Yeah.

Ellen: And then he goes, “not even with yourself?” and Abby’s like, “Well!”

Alice: “I didn’t say that!” (laughs)

Ellen: This is not a very gentlemanly conversation here, Buck. but like, really.

Alice: Buck, adults have other things to do.

Ellen: And they don’t really speak about it to other people. But, anyway.

Bex: So, Abby tries to explain that she didn’t say that she’s not had sex, if you count having sex with herself, but that for her sex is human connection and that’s what she hasn’t had in over a year. But thankfully, a call comes over the police radio interrupting this conversation.

Alice: [00:47:00] Saved by the bell again.

Bex: Saved by the bell. I think I need a police scanner in my car or just like carried around with me to save me from awkward conversations. So we have a report of a traffic accident where a power pole has been downed and there are high voltage wires in a swimming pool with a three year old trapped in the pool.

Alice: Buck sort of brushes it off. He’s just like, “you know, like an engine will get out there. It’s fine.” But Abby’s like, “no, it’s going to take like eight to nine minutes. I know because this is my job.”

Bex: “We’re like two blocks away. We can do this.”

Ellen: So they do, they roll up at this traffic accident and then hear people screaming from around the back of, of a house.

So yeah, the power line’s down. There’s a guy in the pool and a kid on a floaty thing, like a

Bex: She’s on a floating pizza slice, which I just, hilarious.

Ellen: But apparently the woman who’s the kid’s mum is like screaming, and apparently the guy in the pool is the nanny who jumped in to try and rescue the kid, but got electrocuted.

Bex: [00:48:00] Not the smartest tool in the shed, that one.

Ellen: Well, maybe he didn’t realise what was happening, but a man comes out who turns out to be the kid’s dad, and he tries to run to rescue her, but Buck, like, fully tackles him to the ground to stop him from going near the pool.

Bex: Which again, Buck is in civilian clothes at this point.

So as far as this guy knows, his daughter is in danger and this random stranger has just tackled him. And he starts fighting Buck to like, get off me and Buck has to reassure him, “No, no, no, I’m a firefighter. It’s fine.” He says that you can’t see that the power lines are sending like thousands of volts through that water.

So the guy relents. And they try to keep their daughter calm while Buck and Abby work out what to do. And Buck’s first instinct I mean, the Manny might not have had the best idea of diving into the pool, [00:49:00] but Buck’s idea is, is on the same level of stupidity.

Ellen: It’s up there. He grabs the like an inflatable orca and goes, I’m gonna ride this out there and rescue her.

And Abby’s just like, “Are you crazy?”

Bex: which, how are you going to get out there Buckley without your hands or feet getting in the water?

Alice: Literally, like, what are you thinking, Buck? Like, like Abby’s like, “no, do not do that. Did you get that from the Macho Handbook?” And Buck just goes, “there’s no way that book actually exists.”

So Abby, thankfully has a brain and grabs a rubber hose, which Buck helpfully informs everyone is rubber, so won’t conduct electricity.

Ellen: Oh, good to know!

Bex: Thank you Buck.

Alice: So they stretch it across the pool so that the kid can grab it. And like, the downed power thingy is like, crackling and exploding. [00:50:00] But they get the kid to grab the hose, and they pull her to safety. Abby’s actually the one that like, reaches in and grabs her, which is really cool, because Abby’s usually like, not on scene.

Bex: But almost as soon as Abby scoops the kid up off the pizza float and hands it to her parents a crew from Fire Station 10 walk in and go, “Don’t worry guys, Department of Power’s turned off the power. It’s all fine.” So, I mean, Abby’s argument for her and Buck attending the scene was it was going to take Fire Rescue 8 to 12 minutes to get there, and yet, they’re there now.

Alice: I mean to be fair, the dad may have also died because he probably would have jumped in the water. So yeah.

Ellen: [00:51:00] Yeah, the mum probably wouldn’t have spear tackled him to the ground. She would have just screamed. So maybe they did save at least one life.

Alice: and Abby got to, you know, flex her rescue chops, which is pretty cute.

Bex: Yeah, she, she actually makes a comment that she’s usually miles away on the other end of the phone and she’s really kind of enjoying to, like, be on the ground doing the rescuing. It’s a bit of a high. She and Buck have a high five and Buck kind of clasps her hand and then stares at it for a second.

And Abby’s sort of questioning where, “what are you looking at?” And he brushes it off. No, nothing.

Ellen: Yeah, I don’t know why he doesn’t just tell her now. There’s no reason to keep that.

Alice: So that they can have a cute conversation in the car.

Ellen: Yeah, I guess.

Bex: Bit of stretch to the episode.

Ellen: But they get back on the job looking for Patricia.

you know, suddenly they’re serious again. And then night falls. I think it was, the sun was reasonably high while they were saving this kid, but now it’s nighttime. So they must have been driving around for quite a while. So I don’t know. [00:52:00] Buck decides then to explain that the reason he was holding her hand was that he was surprised.

Usually after at least his first few rescues, he was shaking with so much adrenaline. But her hands were steady and she was like a full on Jedi.

Alice: Just full of the pop culture references, this episode.

Ellen: But she does say that she’s, she’s had some experience in dealing with stressful situations. So. That could be why.

Bex: But then she also adds that she feels calm around Buck,

Alice: which is so cute.

Bex: Which is cute.

Ellen: Yeah. But then they’re interrupted from their cute moment again by a phone call, which is Athena who says that a woman of Patricia’s description has been brought into the hospital. So they scoot off there.

[00:53:00] And Athena finally is introduced to Abby in person.

Alice: Yeah, Buck’s like, you’ve met, met before. Abby’s the 9-1-1 dispatcher from the home invasion. And Athena’s like, Oh!

Bex: It was really, it was an interesting interaction because when Buck finds Athena at the hospital, which can we just, why is Athena at the hospital?

Alice: Athena just, she’s chained to a desk. She’s bored.

Bex: Yep, okay. So, Buck brings Abby over, and Athena is in full, like, business professional mode, and she sort of very sharply says, like, “you’re the daughter.” And Buck says, no, no, no, this is Abby. You know her. And the code switch, Athena’s like, oh, this is one of us. I go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know you.

Her tone immediately goes to friendly. She softens. It was very interesting to see how Athena, like, Athena the sergeant and Athena the woman react to different people.

Ellen: Yeah, well, she says that she made it all the way to South LA and,

Bex: [00:54:00] which I think is where we as Australians have a slight disadvantage because Athena says, Oh, she made it to South… she made it all the way down to South LA and I just went, “Oh wow, she’s traveled quite far. That’s pretty impressive.” But I think that the American viewers would have gone, “Oh shit.” Because South LA is not the nice part of LA. It’s, it’s quite renowned for gang violence. It’s very, it’s got a high percentage of Black and Hispanic population very, very low socioeconomic area.

So it’s quite, a dangerous part of LA.

Alice: I just assumed it was basically like where Franklin lives in GTA 5.

Ellen: Right.

Bex: I don’t understand that reference.

Alice: It’s, yeah, basically like where all the shootouts go.

Ellen: The place where the cars gets stolen.

Alice: [00:55:00] I mean, you know, playing GTA 5, it’s usually me stealing the cars, but you know, yeah.

Ellen: Right. But that, that makes sense because they, they say that these are the guys who brought her in and they’re these three like huge tattooed Hispanic looking guys.

But they’re so sweet. Like they, you know, they say they’re glad she’s okay and one guy says that she was confused and he’s seen it before with his abuelita and it doesn’t get any better, you know, it’s like, Oh, this sweetheart. But but she’s okay. Patricia is there and she calls out for Abby and you know, they hug and she says, she’s so sorry.

Alice: Yeah. It’s a nice little reunion. And it’s always nice when Patricia remembers who Abby is.

Ellen: Oh, She stops remembering. Oh, that’s so sad.

Alice: yes. She forgets everything. Yeah.

Ellen: Okay. No more spoilers.

Bex: [00:56:00] I mean, like in the, in the, yeah, literally in the next, we cut to the next scene and Abby is getting Patricia ready for bed.

Buck is patiently waiting. And when Patricia comes out of the bathroom and sees Buck, she assumes that male Abby’s apartment, this must be Tommy. When Abby says, “no, no, no, this is Buck. He’s the one who helped me find you.” Patricia just goes, “Oh, where did I go?”

Alice: Yeah.

Bex: So, she doesn’t even remember that she was missing for almost a day.

I think if she, if she went out and got out around 1 a. m. The previous day. She’s probably been missing around 24 hours by this point.

Alice: Yep. And she has zero memory. Yes.

Ellen: Yeah. That’s rough.

Bex: And we, we get a quick cut to Buck and it’s, he finally understands what Abby’s dealing with. So I think he’s, he’s been hearing Abby talk about Patricia and her memory loss, but he didn’t really understand it until she, [00:57:00] after being missing for 24 hours, has no memory of that.

And it’s like, oh. This is serious.

Alice: Yeah, like it’s just, like, again, he’s mid-twenties. Like he, this is so far outside his scope. So he says “it was nice to meet you,” to Patricia, and she tells him to be kind to Abby. She’s really cute.

Ellen: Aw, she goes back into mom mode for a minute.

Alice: And Buck immediately ruins the cute by…(laughs) So they, go into the other room, and

Ellen: Well, it was funny because when she says like, “Be kind to her” and Abby’s just like, “okay, bye!” She’s like, let’s go.

Alice: Yeah, pushes him out of the room. And Buck goes, “That’s the most amount of time I’ve ever spent with a woman I wanted to have sex with, without having sex with her.”

Bex: Abby, Abby is so quick, she immediately shoots back and goes, “my mum?” [00:58:00] And give Buck his, his credit. He’s just as quick.

Cause he’s like, “yeah, it’s the nightgown. It’s just so hot.” Which, I mean, it’s, it’s Buck being Buck, but it also kind of shows that they’ve got this, this connection, this little chemistry, they can banter back and forth like this, they get each other.

Alice: They do, it’s so cute. But Abby says they should go back to being phone buddies, because if they keep hanging out, mistakes will be made.

And, but she does thank him for giving back a piece of herself. Because today she actually got to be Abby, and not just her mum’s carer.

Ellen: And they have a big hug. And it’s very nice.

Alice: Buck looks so soft.

Ellen: He does. It looks like a very comforting hug. In general.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: And then Abby looks at him and says to him, “Do not now go and have sex with some girl on Tinder to make yourself feel better.”

Bex: Which, I think, I think is a bit of a discredit to Buck at this point. [00:59:00] Because I think he’s finally kind of clicking that he doesn’t want sex. He wants sex with Abby and not because he wants the physical pleasure of having sex. He wants that connection with her. So he’s not going to go out and pick up some random woman.

He wants Abby for Abby.

Alice: I think Abby is definitely like, you know, trying to break the ice because she definitely feels the connection too.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Oh yeah. And so she’s just trying to brush it off.

Bex: she’s trying to keep, keep Buck at arm’s length. Yeah.

Alice: But Buck says he’ll call her.

Ellen: And then sort of shuts the door and does a really cute little lean against it like, oh.

Alice: He’s so cute.

Ellen: It’s so cute. But at the same time, my like… being of a similar age to Abby, just standing there going, “yeah, he’s just a kid.” I don’t know.

Alice: He’s a child.

Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know. [01:00:00] Maybe that’s like, you know, age difference is not, you know, you do what you want. That’s fine. You can’t help who you fall in love with and all that stuff, but yeah.

It’s not for me.

Bex: I don’t know that I’d want to be in a relationship with a 26 year old, but you know, it’s, it’s have a little bit of fun with him maybe?

Alice: I was going to say if the opportunity arises.

Bex: Especially if the 26 year old looks like that.

Ellen: Yep.

Bex: So we go back to the firehouse. Yes. Buck is in a spectacularly good mood and does not realize straight away that not everybody else is in a good mood.

Alice: It’s great. Comes in and says, “it’s a beautiful day, Henrietta, my love.”

Bex: which, which Hen just shoots back, like, “call me Henrietta again, you know, going over the balcony.”

Alice: “And Bobby, oh captain, my handsome captain!” Bobby’s just, “what, are you high? Like, what is happening right now?”

Bex: [01:01:00] And he hasn’t noticed that these two are dancing around each other, like trying very hard to keep out of each other’s space, not looking at each other, not talking to each other.

Alice: Yeah, but Buck met a woman and her mother and didn’t have sex with either of them. Very proud day for Buckley.

Bex: He’s so proud of himself. And there’s this moment where Hen wants to look at Bobby and like, share the, like, are you listening to this, can you believe him, but then remembers at the last second that she’s pissed at Bobby and she can’t have that moment of camaraderie with him. And Bobby is just like, what the fuck, Hen, you can’t even laugh with me at Buck right now?

Ellen: It is an icy moment and Buck does pick up on it.

Alice: Fine. Look, he’s slow but he gets there, okay?

Ellen: [01:02:00] But they’re, you know, they don’t get to eat the food that is cooking. Once again, we need to update the count here, again, which I haven’t done. I have to check back through the last couple of episodes and make sure we’ve got all of the counts.

Because the alarm goes, and the owner of a carwashing place has dialed 9-1-1 because one of his employees got stuck in a rotating brush. And when they arrive, the guy who is tied to the brush can hear them, but he looks pretty out of it.

Bex: Which, when you see what has happened to him, you kind of understand why he’s a little bit dizzy.

Ellen: At first I thought he was high or something. I’m like, what? What’s happening?

Bex: Oh, I thought he was, like, a stoner.

Alice: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I definitely thought he was high,

Ellen: But yeah, and then Hen, like, Bobby starts trying to move him, and Hen’s like, tells him to back off until she can assess him, and Bobby sort of says he’ll be glad when Chimney gets back.

It’s like, ooh.

Bex: Hen agrees.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: [01:03:00] And Buck’s just in the background going, Mum and Dad are fighting, what do I do?

Alice: so they get him down and put him in the ambulance and then they’re outside and Buck’s just pissing himself laughing inside and like you can hear, again, again, again. And so they go inside and they’re like, what is happening right now?

And Buck’s watching the security footage of the accident where the guy’s like hosing down something. And then the hose gets stuck in the roller. and pulls him in and then he’s just like being flung around.

Bex: (sarcastically) because you know, if, if I’m being pulled toward a rotating brush by the hose, I’m going to keep holding onto that hose with a death grip and let it pull me in and wrap me up and pin me to this. I’m not going to drop the hose.

Alice: Which again, maybe a bit of a stoner. (laughs)

Bex: Yeah, maybe. Maybe he was a bit of a stoner. [01:04:00] But the footage is hilarious because he’s being pulled in, the brush is spinning him around, at one point his legs are flying out horizontal, so like he looks like a doll that’s been tied up.

Bobby is trying really hard to be professional.

Alice: Yeah, he’s like, guys, this is a serious accident. Someone could have been injured. And Hens, like, Buck’s still pissing himself laughing. Hen starts laughing. And then Bobby also starts laughing. And so all three of them are just, like, crying with laughter, like, grabbing each other

Ellen: and, like, the owner guy, “Okay, it’s funny. Now I can see it’s funny.”

Bex: It was pretty funny.

Ellen: It was pretty funny. And then later they go outside and Hen says she’s never seen Bobby laugh like that. And Bobby admits that he wasn’t always like this, that he made some mistakes and he lost everything he cared about. And he moved forward from that by never letting anyone else get so close.

[01:05:00] But despite his efforts that Hen, Buck and Chimney have become that close and he has a new family now.

Bex: The rest of the 118 is going like, what are we, chopped liver?

Alice: Literally, every time they go out on a job and you see the rest of the 118 in the background, I’m like, those poor guys.

Ellen: They don’t get any of the love.

But Hen just says, “let us in, Bobby”. And Bobby says, they’ll go back to the house. He’ll cook them a delicious meal and then he’ll introduce them to someone. Me. So he’s going to open up and let them in.

Bex: Yeah. Which, I would have loved to have seen that conversation.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: I really, I really would have liked to have seen how that exactly went down and what everybody’s reactions were.

Alice: Probably Buck asking some insensitive questions.

Bex: Likely, yeah. Yeah, I think Buck would have taken a while to sort of click.

Alice: Like “you called your son Bobby Junior?” (laughs)

Bex: And Bobby would be sitting there going, “that’s what you took away from this conversation?”

Ellen: [01:06:00] I think that’s pretty standard for a lot of American families, right? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong here, listeners, but yeah. And I expect…

Alice: Like, Brooke and Bobby, really?

Ellen: Hen would have been in tears the entire time. And not from laughter. No. No.

Bex: Alas, dear listeners, we do not get to see that scene. Instead we cut back to Abby’s apartment.

Ellen: Yeah. And her mum’s asleep finally. So she goes over and takes her mum’s glasses off her. But then her phone rings and it’s Buck. And…

Bex: So Buck says, without any preamble, “Can I ask you a question? Did you want to have sex with me?” And we cut to him and he is in bed, I’m assuming in his pajamas, but we just see his, his shirtless reclined against the pillows.

[01:07:00] And Abby is completely incensed, like, “why, why are you asking me such a question?” And Buck is, asks that, she said that if they spent more time together face to face, they might’ve made a mistake. And he, he asks her, so you might’ve made the mistake too. Like it’s not just him wanting to have sex with her.

She wants to have sex with him. And he can’t, she kind of reluctantly admits like, “yeah, you’re, you’re muscly and you’re, you’re kind and you’re fun.” And, and Buck very leadingly says “you said we can only talk on the phone, right?” And Abby, Abby agrees. Yes. We’re just talking on the phone. She’s getting into bed at this stage and Buck just says “What are you wearing?”

Ellen: Oh my god they’re really gonna go there!

Bex: And Abby immediately understands where Buck is going with this. And she sort of like scolds him a little bit, like, I don’t think this is exactly what I meant when I said we could talk on the phone. But she’s laying down at this point in the bed and Buck through the phone just says, “Do you want me to stop?”

[01:08:00] And she takes a moment and says, “No.” And then we cut. To the end of the episode.

Ellen: So, yeah.

Bex: They’re about to get nasty with phone sex! Which I’m very curious as to whether Buck is good at phone sex or not.

Alice: Of course you’re curious about that.

Bex: No, but I’m, like, I’m sure he’s good at physical sex. But, like, phone sex is about understanding, sort of, the mentality.

Alice: Bex is like, scientifically, I want to know if he’s ever gonna write a book.

Ellen: For science, I need to know this.

Bex: Does he know what will turn a woman on? Does he know what words to say? Does he know how to use his words to turn Abby on? Yeah. I’m just, I don’t know. Do 26 year olds know how to do that?

Ellen: [01:09:00] Well, well, I guess we’ll find out next episode.

Alice: Look, speaking as someone who did a lot of it when they were a teenager, like teenage boys can do it. So I’m sure a 26 year old boy can do it.

Ellen: Okay. I’ll take your word for it.

But we’ll, I guess we’ll find out. In the next episode, maybe, or in the next few episodes.

Alice: We’ll find out in the next episode whether Buck is good at phone sex.

Ellen: Yeah, whether she was satisfied with that.

Bex: Ironically, the next episode is 9-1-1’s first Valentine’s Day episode.

Ellen: Oh, interesting.

Bex: Which is ominously called “Heartbreaker”.

Ellen: It sounds like tragedy, and who knows.

Bex: It does a little.

Alice: I wonder if the song “Heartbreaker” will play in the episode “Heartbreaker”.

Bex: Which song?

Alice: It’s a Pat Benatar song, but I’m not singing it because I cannot sing.

Bex: [01:10:00] I’ll look it up later.

Alice: I only know the song because we named a puppy after it.

Ellen: Oh, okay. You named a puppy Heartbreaker?

Bex: Spoiler alert. The “Heartbreaker” song does not play during the “Heartbreaker” episode. There are several other heart related songs that do play but not the Pat Benatar one.

Alice: Boo.

Ellen: Anything else we want to say about this particular episode though before we go into the next, what’s happening next time?

Alice: I don’t know, we’ve really gone off the rails.

Ellen: We have, we have a little bit of a tangent, but that’s okay. That’s okay, I enjoy a tangent. I

Bex: do think one one thing to mention would be: There’s a lot of attention at the moment, in the current season, Season 7, about the queer representation that Buck has brought to 9-1-1, and everybody is making a very big deal about Buck coming out as bi and the representation that that entails.

[01:11:00] But I think we’re, Season 1, we’re five episodes into Season 1, and we have a queer couple. who, spoiler alert, are going to stay for the rest of the show. So it just, it feels very sort of disingenuous that the show is being praised for its queer rep centered around Buck and Tommy when Hen and Karen have been there from the very beginning.

Alice: And not only that, but Athena’s ex husband, Michael and again, spoiler alert, is in a gay relationship in later seasons. And he’s very in the show too. Like, it’s not like it’s just background.

Bex: Yeah. It’s just very interesting. And I think it, there is a lot to unpack about why all of a sudden Buck coming out as bi is, “Oh my God, [01:14:00] diversity, queer representation,” like everything is being showered upon the show for that when we have. established queer couples in the show from the very beginning. Now, whether that’s a race thing, a misogyny thing, I don’t know.

Ellen: It’s not also because Buck is sort of discovering himself later in his life, perhaps? I mean, I guess the same goes for Michael, really.

Bex: It’s not as sexy to have established queer couples who are already fully okay with their sexuality?

I don’t know, maybe. There’s a lot of reasons maybe why everyone’s so gaga over Bi Buck when, you know, Queer Hen and, and Gay Michael have existed since the beginning. Just, it was a thought that I had when I was watching this episode again, in the midst of season seven.

Alice: Yeah definintely. As the show progresses too, there, like, are a lot of queer couples, like scattered in as well.

Bex: Yeah. This show has been diverse to some extent from the beginning. [01:13:00] It’s not something that they’ve just dropped in for shits and giggles in season seven.

Ellen: Yeah. Perhaps it’s just like a bit more surprising or shocking to people that they would have a character who has obviously been characterized as being, having sex with a lot of women, for example, at least in the early season.

And then all of a sudden, like, not all of a sudden, but you know, they have progressed his story in this way. And it’s a surprise

Alice: I think because he was originally brought on to be, you know, the macho sort of character. But like, he’s never really been that macho. Like he, even in episode one, he, like, holds the baby and wants to save it, and

Ellen: Yeah. Well, at least we’ve never seen that side of him so far. Yeah.

Bex: Just thoughts that I’m having.

Ellen: Thinky thoughts, yes. I, I thought, even though this episode was very sad [01:14:00] It was not, it was good to hear about, like, especially not just Bobby’s story, which was, you know, important, like good to know that what had happened to him so that we can understand a lot of the things that have been in the show already.

But also Hen’s backstory, it’s the first time we’ve heard a lot about, you know, who she is outside of work. So, Yeah. That was interesting.

Alice: yes. She has a kid. She has a wife. She she has an incarcerated ex.

Ellen: Yeah. The show so far is doing, you know, usually this is a proper ensemble cast show, right?

Like often in shows like this, they will have a person or a couple or whatever, who are the main focus of everything. But in this case, so far, they’re doing a great job of giving everybody a chance to be in the spotlight.

Bex: Yes. That is one of the things that I do love about 9-1-1 is that it is a true ensemble cast, you get to know all of the characters and while there will be episodes that focus on a particular character in their story arc, [01:15:00] by the next episode you’re on to another character. Nobody gets left behind. No, none of the characters are two dimensional background characters, just to fill the scene.

They’re all fully fleshed.

Alice: I mean, except for the rest of the 118.

Bex: Except for the rest of the 118 who, we still, I don’t think we’ve even seen their faces.

Ellen: No, they just rush around in the background when, when the alarms are ringing. Or they’re on, on scene if they all get caught, like in the plane crash one.

Alice: Like, are they, are they not allowed to eat Bobby’s dinners? Like, does he make dinner? And then he’s like, no, you’re just, like, get out of here.

Bex: I mean, we’ve seen that Bobby will cook and everybody sits down, but there’s separate tables? Yeah, there’s only room for them. There’s like, the A shift sits at one table.

Ellen: They have Athena come to visit them, to eat with them.

Bex: She gets to sit at the cool kids table.

Alice: It was also actually really nice watching season one again tonight. Because I’ve been sort of in a rut with Season 6, and I’ve been speaking to Bex a lot about it. And I’ll talk about it now, just because it’s gonna be a long time before we get to Season 6.

But, like, I’d heard that Season 6 wasn’t as well liked, and I was like, Oh, that’s okay, like, I’m binging through it, but I’m really struggling with it. And it was really nice coming back to Season 1 and being like, Oh, that’s right, that’s what this show’s about.

Bex: This show was actually good at one point.

Alice: Like, I’ll get through season six, but it’s

Bex: You’re nearly there.

Alice: Yeah. Dragging my feet right now.

Ellen: Yeah. Is this the first time you’ve seen season six, or?

Bex: Yeah, this is Alice’s first watch through.

Alice: Yeah and yeah, it’s just, I don’t know, it feels like it’s lost to me. The spark and I was like is it because I’m tired and then watching this tonight I was just like oh, that’s right. No that like this show is really good.

Ellen: Oh Okay

Bex: [01:17:00] But a spoiler alert Ellen there was a change of showrunner for season six,

Ellen: okay. that sounds familiar.

Bex: And from the Supernatural era. We kind of know what happens when they change showrunner

Alice: Yeah, it actually very much reminds me of season six of Supernatural

Ellen: Okay.

Yeah.

Alice: In that, like, they, I don’t know, there’s just a lot of stuff that I’m like, why did they bring that up again? Like, yeah. But Season 7 seems to be better from all the screaming I’ve heard, so. I’m persevering.

Ellen: Well, if and when we ever get to Season 6. I promise you we can tear it a new one.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: But so far I am really enjoying season one. So yeah, we’re halfway through it. Five more to go. Okay. So what have we got coming up next week? We already talked about it a little bit, but

Bex: [01:20:00] I have to tell you that I found a new source for the official summaries and it’s got like, it’s literally been ripped from Fox TV’s promo department. So I’m just going to read the whole thing with my, like my best broadcast voice cause I think it’s hilarious.

Valentine’s Day is a mix of romance and rescues on an all new 9-1-1, Wednesday, February 7th, on Fox. On Valentine’s Day, a surprise marriage proposal goes awry with dangerous consequences. Athena attempts to help a desperate woman and unintentionally joins the Lonely Hearts Club. Bobby and Chimney pull holiday duty and learn about the Casanova fracture, and Abby and Buck go on their first official date.

Ellen: Wow. Sounds like every Valentine’s Day. Excellent! Okay. Shall we mention the content warnings too?

Bex: This one is ironically rather light hearted for an episode called “Heartbreaker” in comparison to the previous episodes. We do have an incident in a, a small airplane that requires it to take an emergency landing. There is a, a choking incident and not like the fun kind of choking incident.

There is an amateur surgical procedure with blood. There is a. Mentally unstable woman. There is a off screen homicide and there is a police officer at threat.

Ellen: Cool. Okay. All right. Well please do let us know what you thought of this episode to your listeners you can either if you’re listening on Spotify, you can answer the Q and A if you click on the episode itself in the Spotify app, or you can leave us a comment on the, on the episode post on our website, which is thatweewooshow.com.

com and all of our other So Contact details can be found there as well. And thank you for listening and we’ll see you all again. When we talk about episode six, which is [01:23:00] called “Heartbreaker” – Unattached Drifter Christmas. Okay. No, it’s Valentine’s day. See you then.

Alice: Bye.

Bex: Bye.

[outro music with Ellen speaking over: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world too.

If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you’re not alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help. Just Google crisis support in your location to find out the number. If you enjoy our podcast, you can help us out by leaving us a review on Spotify or your preferred listening app and by sharing our social media posts.

Find out more at thatweewooshow.com.]

[first outtake]

Bex: But she does agree that Hen should speak at the parole healing – hearing… I cannot say that word.

(Alice and Ellen laugh)

Bex: She does agree that Hen should speak at the parole healing… Fuck!

Bex: (slower) She does agree that Hen should speak at the pal… Nope.

(laughing)

Bex: Nope, somebody else do it!

Alice: So Karen says that um…