Welcome to That Weewoo Show: a podcast where Ellen, Bex and Alice watch and discuss every episode of ABC’s TV show, 9-1-1.
In this episode we discuss episode 2 of the second season of 9-1-1, titled “7.1”.
When a massive earthquake rocks Los Angeles, the responders rush to rescue victims in a crumbling high-rise hotel.
Content warnings for episode 2.02:
An earthquake and aftershocks resulting in injuries and fatalities, including a crushed limb, a man trapped in a burning car, and a wannabe Harvey Weinstein who gets what’s coming to him.
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Episode Transcript
Ellen: [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 Ellen.
Alice: I’m Alice.
Bex: And I’m Bex.
Ellen: Thanks to everyone who’s listened to our first episode of this season. We’re in season two. It’s very exciting. We met Eddie and everything is great so far.
But we also have to say a big thank you to people who responded on Twitter to us you know, to our last episode. Especially I, I want to just do especially shout out the comment from Lyra. Thank you for responding to our Twitter post and saying that it was so nice to see Bobby in a better mood, like more at ease than he had been in the first season.
And I think we kind [00:01:00] of mentioned that in the last episode a little bit, that he was happy because, you know, he’d obviously…
Bex: He’s getting some?
Ellen: He’s hooked up with Athena and he’s happy. But yeah, he’s almost like a different guy in this beginning of this season. But anyway, we can get into that a bit more later on.
Before we get into this second episode, let’s find out what happened last time on 9-1-1.
Alice: Yeah. So last week on 9-1-1, Pressure burst around the city as we met Buck’s sister Maddie, who has joined him in LA to escape her abusive marriage. And also his new love interest, Eddie, an army veteran who struggles to get dressed.
Oh, and Athena and Bobby are banging.
Bex: This week’s episode is the part two of the two-part season premiere to season two. [00:02:00] This one is entitled “7.1” and it aired September 24th, which was the day after the first episode of the season. And the official summary that Fox released for this one says:
“When a massive earthquake rocks Los Angeles, the first responders rush to rescue victims from a crumbling high rise hotel, both under the rubble and high above the ground. Athena must deal with wreckage from a collapsed freeway overpass, and Maddie is thrown into the fire as she faces her first crisis as a 9-1-1 dispatcher.
And if anyone wants to know what they’re getting themselves into with this episode your content warnings are that there is going to be an earthquake and there are going to be injuries and fatalities that go along with the earthquake and the aftershocks, including a crushed limb, a man trapped in a burning car, and a wannabe Harvey Weinstein who gets what’s coming to him.
Alice: Thank God
Ellen: He does. Yeah.
Bex: [00:03:00] So we left the first episode of the season with the earthquake. I think the very last shot of the episode was Athena standing on the overpass of the 710 that had literally disappeared right in front of her. This episode, however, there’s no sign of the earthquake.
Ellen: Yeah, it does start before the earthquake, right?
Bex: We’re doing that weird thing where we’re jumping around in time.
Ellen: Love it when they do that.
Bex: But they’re not telling us how far we’ve jumped. We’ve just, at some point in the past, I guess.
Alice: Yeah, like, nothing’s damaged and nothing’s shaking yet.
Bex: And everybody’s happy.
Ellen: Yeah, they are happy, aren’t they?
They do like a very… I didn’t really notice how much of it was one shot, but they sort of pan around in the foyer of this high rise hotel in the middle of LA.
Bex: [00:04:00] There was a lot of cutting backwards and forwards, but I think the intention was that it would have been nice if it could have been one shot, but
Ellen: There was a, there was a lot of dialogue, I think, and a lot of speaking, kind of It would have been difficult to get it all in one shot.
Bex: Imagine how long it would have taken them to do all in one shot. And they’re, like, this is a network, weekly television. They have very limited time on sets. They’ve got to crank these out fast.
Alice: And with all the different moving parts, like, yeah.
Ellen: Yes. So they do pan around and, well, cut around, I guess, and meet all of the people who are going to be involved with all of the emergencies in the hotel in this episode.
So we’ve got a family who are arriving at the hotel to stay, sightseeing, to, to base their sightseeing trip. We have a lady who is like credited as “entitled woman”. And she has a cute little dog.
Bex: So many of these characters don’t have names. [00:05:00] They’re just like, we’ve got dad and mom and entitled woman.
Yeah. The dog gets a name. The woman doesn’t.
Alice: I love that the dog gets a name. Yeah.
Ellen: What is the dog’s name? I’ve forgotten.
Alice: Paisley.
Ellen: Paisley, that’s right.
Bex: We also have a high school basketball team and their coach who have been in Los Angeles for a championship and were knocked out in the first round. So they’re obviously not that good.
Ellen: Yeah, but now they get to eat all the pancakes they want. So, I mean, win. That’s a win.
Bex: And our fourth contestant is Ali, who is a businesswoman who is hanging out in the lobby waiting for a meeting.
Ellen: So before we get to any earthquake-y stuff, we have to set up each of those groups of people, what they’re doing before the earthquake hits.
Bex: Yes, we have to establish the emotional connection so that we feel for them when they are inevitably placed in peril.
Alice: [00:06:00] Yeah, there’s a lot jam packed into this, like, section before the title card.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yeah, a lot of moving parts, a lot of characters. Like, we get a lot of names. Only one of the basketballers gets named which is Pickens.
Ellen: Even the coach doesn’t get a name, he’s just called coach,
Bex: coach is just coach. No, nobody in the family gets a name except for the little girl who’s Kat.
Alice: Ali gets a name. But I don’t think her boss does.
Bex: Her boss gets a name if you look him up on IMDB, but nowhere in the episode does he actually have a name mentioned.
Alice: Yeah, it’s never mentioned. But yeah, so the entitled woman She’s going in and she’s got this little dog, and she says by denying her entry it’s a violation of federal law because the dog’s an emotional support dog.
Which isn’t actually a thing.
Bex: [00:07:00] No. Dogs that can help calm panic attacks absolutely are a thing. But they are trained service animals.
Alice: Trained service animals are absolutely a thing and they wouldn’t be being carried and barking.
Bex: Yeah, a little shih tzu that you’re carrying in your arms that is barking at everything that’s going on is not a trained service animal, that is a pet and the hotel is 100 percent within its rights to deny the pet entry.
Alice: Yeah, so she’s literally got like a certificate online so that she can take this little prissy dog everywhere. Meanwhile the minivan family, They’re, like, clearly on holiday, because they were talking about Disneyland and that sort of stuff. There’s a mother, a father, a teenage son, and a, like, young girl.
And their room’s not ready, so they’re, they’re like, okay, we’ll just go up to the restaurant. Which is also where the basketball team have gone to eat all the pancakes. [00:08:00] And that’s when they pass Ali, who’s all business-y, and she just gets a text. saying, like, you can tell she’s there for work, but the text just says, “stuck on a call, just come up, room 1101”.
And she looks like so exasperated,
Bex: but she grabs her business portfolio that she had resting by the chair next to her and heads up to the 11th floor where she is met by the person that she is having a business meeting with. Now at this point Allie is dressed very professionally. She’s in a nice tailored suit.
She’s in a silk looking blouse. She looks very put together. Her meeting partner is in a dressing gown and an undershirt. And that’s it.
Alice: Just quickly, because I know that this was a Point of contention. A dressing gown is a bathrobe for all our American followers.
Bex: [00:09:00] He’s not wearing any clothing. He’s severely underdressed for a business meeting.
Alice: Yeah, he’s just in a bathrobe and like when he sits on the couch, he immediately just spreads his legs. So like he’s just wearing underwear. It’s gross.
Bex: And I hate That he sits down and spreads, and my eyes immediately go to the V between his legs to try and work out if he’s actually wearing underwear or not.
Yep. I just, ugh.
Alice: It’s so sleazy. Yep.
Bex: I love that we we were sharing our notes the other day, was we were compiling them, and Alice, you had him as, like, “gross sleazy guy”, and I had him as “pervert”. All through the notes. Anyway, so gross, sleazy, pervert guy starts waffling on about how important he is, how busy he is, how much money he’s making and invites Ali to show him what she’s got, which is just a [00:10:00] really, really gross way to kick off the meeting.
And Ali kind of braces herself. goes over and starts pulling out all of these drawings. It’s some kind of architect presentation, I think.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s like townhouses or something.
Bex: Well gross sleazy pervert dude has, probably has no idea either because his eyes are firmly on her ass.
Alice: And like the noises he makes while he’s looking at, or apparently looking at the mock ups are gross.
Bex: Yeah. We find out that he is married because his phone starts ringing and Ali asks, should you get that? And he says, no, it’s just my wife. So already his, you know, the bar is plummeted even lower than it already was.
Alice: Yeah. Like we firmly hate this guy. Everyone’s just like, yeah. Everyone wants him to die.
Bex: And he hasn’t even, he hasn’t even shown his full colours yet. [00:11:00] Doesn’t take him long though, because he kind of shuffles a little bit closer to Ali on the couch. She’s sitting right on the edge, her body firmly turned away from him. He’s turned toward her, arm across the back of the couch.
He says to her, “Would you like coffee?” She’s like, no. Would you like a mimosa? It’s early in the morning, but okay, no. “Would you like a mimosa? in the shower?” and his hand creeps up her inner thigh and there we go. The red flags are flying and she just there’s a whole fucking parade.
Ellen: She gets up and goes, what the hell?
Alice: Yeah, like she cracks it as she should. And he’s like, no, you know, you’re really blowing things out of proportion. And she’s like, there is no proportional response to being asked to shower with your boss. But when she threatens to report him to HR and the board, Because they’re a publicly traded company, which I’m not sure if that has to do with sexual harassment.
[00:12:00] You shouldn’t be sexually harassed whether or not it’s a publicly traded company, Ali. But he just goes, “HR’s terrified of me, and I handpicked every member of the board, so they’ll destroy you”. So yeah, he’s literally blackmailing her into not saying anything.
Bex: Yeah. We do have to go back down to the restaurant just quickly.
Alice: Yeah, back downstairs.
Bex: Because while all this has been happening up on the 11th floor, the the basketball dude bros are destroying the breakfast buffet. Kat and her family have found a table and are eating their breakfast, but cat needs to go to the bathroom. And apparently she’s all about being independent, so she gets up to go by herself.
And as she’s walking towards the bathroom, she passes the entitled woman who is complaining about her eggs being glutened. And now she can’t eat them.
Ellen: They’re touching their toast. Yeah.
Bex: [00:13:00] Which, as somebody who, like, cannot eat gluten, you tell them that shit before you order your food.
Alice: But also it’s a buffet, so I don’t know why she’s…
Bex: I don’t think she was going for the buffet. I think she was ordering a la carte.
Alice: Apparently the dog is also gluten intolerant. (laughs)
Bex: But as Kat walks past, Paisley jumps off the couch and runs.
Alice: Yeah. Cause of course she’s not on a leash. Leash. Which I think, yeah. Leash your fucking pets, people.
Bex: I mean, the fucking pet should not be in the restaurant in the first place. But the entitled lady says that the waiter has upset Paisley by glutening her food, but I think this is a… Paisley runs and hides under the corner of the bar.
And I think this is meant to be that, that thing where animals can sense when something bad is going to happen. [00:14:00] Because no sooner than Kat crawls under the bar to try and get Paisley out, than the earthquake strikes. And the entire room starts to shake.
Alice: We first get a very, like, cliche shot of a close up of a glass of water.
Oh yeah. Which is great. Like, it’s, it’s like, oh, how do we show that there’s an earthquake? Got it, glass of water.
Ellen: How do we show that there’s a T Rex coming?
Alice: Yeah, that’s it, exactly.
Bex: It’s very Jurassic Park.
Ellen: Oh man, that would have been a different episode.
Alice: Hey, we’re only at season two, we’ve still got time. (laughs) So we get the, the very great water shaking in a glass and the earthquake starts. Yeah. Good guy Dad gets up to immediately go find the daughter, like that’s his first thought, which is great. and the entire hotel is shaking, like we’ve got people screaming.
We’ve got cutlery and plates going, flying.
Ellen: [00:15:00] Yeah, everything falls off the shelves and smashes on the ground.
Alice: Yeah, like it’s very chaotic. Everyone’s running everywhere. Dad’s trying to get to Kat. But like there’s people running literally everywhere. So it’s a struggle for him to get there. And when he finally gets to her, the floor falls out from underneath.
So he’s sort of like thrown sideways. And while we’re like, while that’s happening, we go back up to Allie and the sleaze bag and the whole room that they’re in shifts sideways.
Bex: It’s like Leaning Tower of Pisa. It was perfectly vertical and then suddenly it just starts to tip to the side.
Alice: Yeah. Allie manages to grab a pillar but the sleazebag gets knocked into the window and is trapped there, like he can’t move.
Bex: Yeah, cause all of the furniture that’s succumbing to the pull of gravity as the building is tipping sideways [00:16:00] is just slamming against him. pinning him to that window.
Alice: Yep, couldn’t happen to a nicer guy. So we go back downstairs and the ceiling collapses, which traps the coach and Pickens.
Bex: Yes, because when the earthquake hit I don’t know what happened to the other dude bro basketballers, but Pickens was running around trying to help people, pulling them out of the way.
Alice: Yeah, good guy Pickens.
Bex: Well, he has to be the good guy. That’s it. We’re not going to root for him if we don’t like him, a la sleaze guy up on the 11th floor.
Alice: So yeah, the ceiling collapses and they’re trapped. The dust starts to clear and the dad’s managed to hold on to the side of where the floor’s collapsed.
And he sort of crawls his way over to where Kat and the dog were, but there’s a big hole in the floor and they’re gone. So then we get this huge, like, zoom out of the hotel and [00:17:00] a big part, like, a third of the hotel has just peeled itself away and is hanging over the street at, like, a 25 degree angle.
Bex: It really, it does look like someone has just got a knife and has just sliced down the edge. And so the one part of it’s perfectly standing still and the other part’s just “Nyeow!”
Ellen: like, I think that I think I worked out why, because I was looking at the, at it before and after kind of screenshots kind of thing going, why would it just peel away like that?
But I, I think part of the reason why it looked so weird to me is that there are no other buildings that have got damaged. or fallen down around it. It’s just this one building.
Bex: It’s very interesting that that hotel is the only one in that block that has suffered any structural damage.
Alice: Yeah, like they show more later, but in this?
Ellen: it could happen.
Alice: [00:18:00] Yeah, like in this like pan away, it’s just like the cars are all still like driving down the street.
Ellen: I mean, I think that in a normal earth, like a “normal earthquake,” like a lesser earthquake, damage could happen to one building fine. But in a 7.1 magnitude earthquake, which is apparently the largest in LA in 20 years, I feel like there would be more stuff damaged and cracks in the ground.
Alice: And they, they do show more later, it’s just that in this one shot, it’s just that building and it looks so weird.
Ellen: Yeah, yeah. Anyway, we finally get the title card. It took us a while to get there again in this episode, but, but then we do another time jump because apparently while they were showing the hotel earthquake stuff, we now have to go and set up what’s happening to the 118 as well.
Bex: Although, why they couldn’t have told us the time, the, like, given us a time reference for the hotel stuff?
Ellen: [00:19:00] Well, it was like right before that.
Alice: It was pretty quick. Yeah,
Ellen: But anyway, we do, we’re at, we’re at school. We’re with Eddie. Eddie’s walking next to a boy who has some crutches who, that he’s using to walk, and he’s calling him dad.
So, Eddie’s a dad. Which I already knew, but now I know for sure. (laughs)
Alice: And it’s teeny tiny baby Christopher!
Bex: This is Christopher.
Alice: He’s like seven, but he’s still a baby!
Bex: Yeah. He’s such a baby. So, I think it’s going to be a while before we get a decent Christopher episode, so I’m going to do a little bit of an info dump for you about Christopher.
Ellen: Okay.
Bex: So So Christopher is played by Gavin McHugh who has cerebral palsy. So that means that Christopher also has cerebral palsy. And I did a little bit of a, a deep dive to see if I could work out [00:20:00] which came first, Gavin or Christopher. And it turns out that Christopher was always intended to have a disability.
The casting was specifically for child actors with a disability. They didn’t specify what the disability was, but everybody loved Gavin when he auditioned. This is his first TV role. So when he got cast as Christopher, immediately Christopher then had cerebral palsy. But I love that with this scene with Eddie walking Chris to school, nothing is said about Chris having CP.
The only reason that you would suspect that there is something different about Chris is that he’s wearing, he’s using the crutches. There’s nothing in the dialogue where they’re talking about it. If you didn’t see the scene, if you just read the script of what was happening you would just think it’s a dad walking his kid to school.
[00:21:00] There’s no kind of overt or explicit mention of Chris having a disability. And I think we mentioned in the last season about how 9-1-1 does a really good job with just low level disability rep. It’s just people are in episodes with disabilities and it doesn’t get made a big deal out of it. And that very definitely goes for Christopher.
He is disabled. There are storylines that are going to come up that talk about his disability, but it’s not a big deal. It’s just, this is who Chris is.
Alice: I am, I’d say a fair bit of 9-1-1 before I actually watched it. Like I knew that Eddie had a son, I knew that his name was Christopher like I knew some of the storylines going in.
I had no idea he had CP. And then the first episode I was like, Oh, I had no idea. Cause yeah, his storylines don’t revolve around that. Like there’s so much of his character.
Bex: Like Eddie doesn’t have, Eddie doesn’t have a son who, who doesn’t have a disabled son. [00:22:00] It’s not this like big, Oh, I have a disabled son.
The way some parents are all about their kids disabilities. It’s just, “this is Christopher. He’s my son. Oh, by the way, he needs to use crutches cause he’s got CP.”
Alice: Yeah. Oh yeah. Love Christopher. He’s so cute. He’s doing just the classic kid thing as well.
Bex: Oh, I love this.
Alice: Like the first thing he says is, “Hey dad, do you think dogs know their dogs?”
And Eddie’s like, “what do you mean?” He goes, “well, like I’m a person. Do dogs know that they’re dogs and that we’re people, or do they think we’re less hairier, smarter dogs that walk funny?”
Bex: It’s just such a, classic kid thing.
Alice: And Eddie’s just like, what the fuck is wrong with this child?
Ellen: And he’s like, okay kid, go to school.
Bex: Which, can I just say, he sent Christopher off to school without a backpack.
[00:23:00] Because they make a big deal of him watching Christopher walk into the school and all the other kids have got backpacks on, and Chris does not have a bag.
Alice: Christopher doesn’t need a backpack, clearly.
Bex: Christopher doesn’t need to eat?
Alice: He doesn’t need to eat. He needs no school supplies, no books.
Bex: No medications? Okay.
Alice: No, no, nothing. That’s fine, I’m sure they’ve got a canteen.
Ellen: Maybe they have school lunches.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: I still think he should have a backpack.
Alice: He definitely has a backpack in later episodes, too.
Bex: He does, they just, I guess they needed the, the shot of him walking away unencumbered by a backpack. I don’t know.
Alice: But yeah, Eddie looks a bit nervous as Christopher goes in. So like,
Bex: yeah,
Alice: you know, we, we did learn last time that Eddie is relatively new to the city.
Bex: Maybe it’s Chris’s first day.
Ellen: Like, yeah, I got the impression that it was his first day, but then I was like, well, wouldn’t he walk him all the way in if it was his first day?
Like, I don’t know. Maybe it’s not the first day, but an early day.
Alice: [00:24:00] Eddie also had to do, like, had to pass his exams and like, his firefighting exams, so like, whether or not he did this, that in LA or
Bex: That’s a good point. When did Chris come to LA?
Alice: Yeah, right? Who knows?
Bex: Oh, good lord. Okay, I’m not going to think about that, otherwise I’m going to get angry. So we’ve, we’ve soft launched Christopher, we’ve soft launched Eddie as a father, not just a daddy. (laughs) Let’s head to the
Let’s head back to the 118 to see what everyone else is up to.
Alice: They’re eating.
Bex: Cap’s making omelettes.
Ellen: And they, and Chim asked him if he ever feels like he’s missed his calling because he’s like, he thinks he should be a TV chef.
Alice: Yeah, I love this exchange and like, Chim’s like, cause this is performance art watching you cooking and Hen just says it’s cause they never get to taste anything cause by the time it hits the table, the bell goes off.
And I’m just like, yes, thank you for being self aware. [00:25:00]
Ellen: But this time they do get to eat.
Alice: Yeah, they eat a fair bit. They do. Need their energy.
Bex: I do. I do like that Hen is eating Chim’s food, though. She’s not waiting for Bobby to finish with whatever he’s cooking. Chim’s got food on his plate, so she’s gonna help herself to that, and Chim seems quite happy to let her.
Ellen: Yeah, he didn’t make a fuss, so whatever. That’s probably how it happens. They all have to eat from one plate, because they never get to eat their own food.
Bex: Bobby’s making a little bit of small talk, and he says, If you weren’t being a firefighter, what would you be doing? Chim doesn’t hesitate.
He’s just like, “Fighter pilot, top gun, call sign, Shogun.” He’s, he’s had that, he’s been thinking about that.
Alice: Yeah, he’s, he’s had this loaded. I do just want to note that, so Bobby’s cooking, Hen and Chim are the only ones in the kitchen, like they’re eating at the counter. Like there’s like a filing counter. [00:26:00] But in the background, we can see the bigger table where they all like, usually sit down to eat dinner and never actually eat. And there’s two men and a woman on the table, and then you can see the couches with the TV, and there’s at least five other, like, unnamed members of the 118 behind as well.
Ellen: So they are allowed up there!
Bex: Yeah, they’re allowed up there. They’re not allowed to eat though.
Ellen: No, Bobby’s not cooking for them.
Alice: They’re not allowed to eat, and they’re clearly not allowed in the kitchen, because
Bex: They have to wait for Bobby and the A shift to finish, and then they’re allowed to have access to the kitchen.
Ellen: They have to sit there and smell the omelettes made by the TV chef.
Bex: And the TV’s not on though. That’s the thing that really got me, was they’re all lounging around on these couches. The TV’s not on. What are they doing?
Ellen: They’re waiting for their turn in the kitchen, I guess.
Alice: Yeah, they’re waiting, they’re waiting to get the scraps. It’s like the, the ends of the chives and what, like the, the stale eggs yeah. [00:27:00] So Chim wants to be a fighter pilot. Hen says editorial cartoonist for the New Yorker, and like they were all
Bex: Both men just give her the weirdest look.
Alice: Yeah. Bobby’s like, “You draw?” and. Hen says she has a lot to say and it isn’t supposed to be attainable. And then points to Chim and says, “Top Gun? You can barely drive, you rebar head.” (laughs)
Bex: Well, this is when Buck enters the conversation and Chim wants to know if he wasn’t a member of the LAFD, what would he be doing? And Buck just goes, “I’m not getting fired, am I?” Yeah, He looks over at Bobby very worriedly.
Ellen: Wouldn’t be the first time.
Alice: Bobby doesn’t even give him like a like a reassuring glance either. He’s like maybe. Chim’s like, yeah, that’s inevitable. But, you know.
Bex: Aww.
Alice: Poor buck. And then Hen’s answer is that he would be a golden retriever.
Bex: [00:28:00] Is that a demotion or a promotion from being the Dalmatian? (laughs)
Ellen: Either way, he’s both of those things.
Bex: But they go backwards and forwards between themselves trying to work out what Buck’s perfect job would be, starting from bartender and working their way through bouncer and ending up at bouncer of strip club, which they’re pretty pleased with themselves about and they high five.
Me, having watched the entire season a couple of times, I’m just like here laughing at them.
Alice: Right. Cause, And yet Buck’s not even like, giving them answers. Like, normally Buck would be like, hey, like, yeah, I’d do this.
Bex: Yeah, he’s not paying them any attention. He looks a little bit preoccupied.
Alice: Yeah, he’s preoccupied. He’s frazzled. Bobby asks what’s going on with him and Buck immediately just starts complaining about the LA traffic. So yeah, he says it took him almost two hours to get from Abby’s place to the dispatch center, then to the firehouse.
Bex: [00:29:00] Can I just note that he, even, even Buck is still calling it Abby’s. We had the discussion last week about are we calling it Buck’s place, are we calling it Abby’s place?
Alice: He’s still calling it Abby’s place.
Ellen: Yeah. Like he’s not even calling it home. Yeah.
Bex: Nope. It’s still Abby’s.
Alice: Or my place. It’s just Abby’s place.
Bex: It’s Abby’s place.
Ellen: But yeah, he took, he said Maddie’s going to have to start Ubering because it took him two hours to get all the way there and back.
And so Bobby asks how she’s settling in at the call center. And Buck says, “well, she’s a Buckley. Practically running the place,” and Chim and Hen look at each other and then leave.
Alice: Yeah, immediately just leave. And Buck’s like, what? It’s like, it’s her, like, first or second day, let’s mention.
Yes. Like, I’m pretty sure she’s had her intro shift and then this is her first actual shift. So I’m pretty sure this is like her second day.
Ellen: Practically running the place.
Alice: Yeah. Practically running the place.
Bex: [00:30:00] Practically running. Definitely. She’s trying to keep up with her dispatch mentor who I don’t think we actually get his name in this episode, but just for
Alice: I was waiting for it, and I was like, ooh, we don’t find it out.
Bex: This is Josh. Just for the ease of talking about him through the episode, this is Josh, everybody. Hi, Josh. He is going to be mentoring Maddie for this shift. And he is hilarious because he just does not let her get a word in edgewise. He tells her that she is going to shadow him and how it works is he talks, she listens, and hopefully she will learn something about being a dispatcher.
If she’s got any questions, she has to save them for after his state mandated 10 minute break, which will be in three hours and 12 minutes.
Alice: Not that he’s counting.
Bex: Oh, he’s very much counting. [00:31:00] Maddie’s got this giant notebook at this stage and she’s frantically writing everything down. Yeah.
Everything. As if Josh is delivering her the gospel of being a dispatcher.
Alice: The first, then like they sit down at the desk. And he goes, first thing, everybody lies. And I was like, that’s literally just out of House. And then he goes, Dr. Gregory House was right. And I’m like, okay, good. It’s, it’s literally out of House.
Bex: But then Maddie says, who’s Dr. House? And I wasn’t sure, was she like trying to poke fun at Josh? Or is this like a Buckley family trait that they have no idea about pop culture references?
Alice: That they just don’t know anything about pop culture. Yeah. Yeah, so he doesn’t know. She doesn’t know who Dr. House is. He, Josh also like, when he’s talking about like how everybody lies, he’s like, you know, many people are so panicked in the moment. They think they’re telling the truth, but others are lying on purpose. Like, “I just slipped and fell on that cucumber.”
Bex: “I had no idea that would happen.”
Alice: [00:32:00] Like Maddie looks very briefly concerned considering she used to be a nurse. I’m sure she knew this already, but
Bex: I’m sure she’s seen worse.
Alice: I think she was just, she was more put out with Josh’s like…
Bex: The delivery of it? Yeah. He’s very just, like, he has not stopped talking.
Alice: Yeah, literally just has not stopped.
Bex: Since they walked into the dispatch room.
Alice: Which, like, she’s been living with Buck for at least two days now, so you’d think she’d be used to, but, you know.
Bex: Uh, no. So they jump onto a call and we get a couple of shots of Josh getting calls. And what I love about this is that he’s incredibly professional on the phone with the people calling in. But then he will mute the call to make snarky comments to Maddie. Like doing this running commentary.
Like a guy will call who he has a knife impaled in his hand. And he asks Josh, should I take it out? And Josh is like, “No. Don’t take it out,” then he mutes the call and leans over to Maddie and says, [00:33:00] “you’d think after 14 years of Grey’s Anatomy people would know this stuff.” And then goes back to the call as if nothing has happened.
Alice: That cracked me up so much because I regularly ask if this is the same universe as Grey’s Anatomy because the whole city falls apart and then two days later it’s fine again.
Bex: Apparently not. Although I will say that I’ve had that conversation with my kids about if you have been impaled with something, do not pull it out, leave it in.
I don’t care where it is. You leave it in and you get a professional to take it out for you. They kind of looked at me a little bit strange. I’m like, just, just don’t, just don’t pull it out.
Alice: Just don’t stab yourself.
Bex: Like, but what if it’s a splinter? I don’t care. Leave it in, get someone else to pull it out for you.
Anyway, so, Josh does a couple of calls, then he, he turns to Maddie and says, “so, questions?” And Maddie is like, okay, yes, I have a million questions. He goes, “Great. Then it’s your turn.”
Alice: Yeah. “No? Good. Your turn.”
Bex: [00:34:00] And so this is apparently the, the see one, do one, teach one method of training. And they’re in the middle part. She’s seen one. She’s now going to do one.
Ellen: Yep. Chuck her in the deep end.
Alice: That’s it.
Ellen: And she answers the phone and the caller says he can’t breathe, he’s outside a sushi restaurant. And so Maddie goes through her little checklist and she asks, you know, questions about, sounds like he’s having an allergic reaction and can he elevate his legs and the guy says no.
But Josh just like takes over, like, pushes her out of the way, and asks if he’s in his car, and he says yeah. And so he, you know, sends the paramedics to, after him. And he tells Maddie that he, he, she was too busy looking at her notes to listen to hear that the guy was in a car. And that the paramedics wouldn’t know where to look for him.
Bex: I love the way he does that though. Cause he turns to Maddie and he’s seems so genuine. [00:35:00] And he’s like, “can I see that?” And points at her notebook. And so she hands it over. He’s like, “great, thanks.” Picks up the waste paper bin from under his, under their desk and just drops the notebook straight into it.
Yep. And then the face just goes cold.
Alice: Josh is so sassy. I love him so much.
Ellen: But he, but she, it was like, she knew that he was outside a sushi restaurant. Cause that’s what he said, where he said his location was. So. Like, I don’t know if they, if he needed, I guess all the detail they get, they can get is what they need for, for the paramedics to find him, but like.
Bex: I think the problem would have been that the paramedics would have shown up to the sushi restaurant and not seen their victim. And who knows how many cars are parked in the parking lot outside the front. Would they have had enough time to search each and every car to find it? Whereas with Josh’s call, they’ve known, they’ve known to go to that sushi restaurant and go straight to that specific make and model of a car. To find the guy.
Alice: That’s it. You want to get it as easy as possible for their first responders.
Bex: [00:36:00] Yeah. So, like, Maddie’s got the medical know how down, she just needs to learn the logistics of getting your first responders there as quickly as possible.
Alice: And the, like, learn how to listen to the context clues. So then we get “Dammit” by Blink 182 playing, because apparently we’re in the 90s.
Bex: Which the 9-1-1 wiki told me was possibly intentional because song also played in a movie that Jennifer Love Hewitt was in in the 90s, but I think that this song was so ubiquitous that you could say that about any actor.
Alice: Literally. This movie, this song like this song has been in everything. So like, I’m not mad. I love the song, but it’s just funny because I’m like, what year is this?
Bex: we went back two hours and two decades,
Alice: like two hours before, but it’s like 20 years before I’m like, Oh, okay. Yeah. Cool. So there’s a police chase happening down some like suburban streets.
[00:37:00] I’m fairly sure I was down that street in GTA. Like they’re chasing like a sports car.
Bex: The shiny red, I think it’s a Chevy?
Alice: Probably. I didn’t pay that much attention, but the guy who shoves out of the car has like this bright pink hair, which is super conspicuous. So he’s like jumping fences and, you know, sprinting through.
He also looks quite young.
Bex: This is hilarious because he’s doing parkour style across everybody’s front gardens.
Ellen: Yeah he’s really good at jumping fences.
Alice: Yeah, like there’s people watching in their hat, like in their front.
Ellen: They’ve got their phones out.
Bex: And the cops are just sprinting up the sidewalk next to him.
Alice: Yeah. And then he jumps this like really tall fence and they’re like, oh, it’s too much effort.
Ellen: Yeah. And then he gets away, gets on a bus and goes somewhere else. But when he gets home. Guess who’s waiting for him? [00:38:00] Athena is parked out the front of his house, leaning against the car. And she says that if you if you want to do, you know, steal cars, you should probably get a new haircut.
Alice: Yeah, you might want to consider a less memorable hair colour.
Ellen: Yeah, and this is the third time I’ve had to arrest you this year.
Bex: But that hair is his signature!
Alice: Yeah, all badasses have a signature. Yeah. So I also didn’t realize until I read the wiki, was that the, yes, this kid is actually a main character. Like the actor ends up as a main character on 9-1-1 Lone Star.
And the character he plays on Lone Star is canon the cousin.
Bex: So you’ve seen more of Lone Star than I have, so you’ll remember this guy’s name in Lone Star.
Alice: Yeah, Mateo, he’s in Lone Star.
Bex: Mateo. [00:39:00] Okay, so yeah, canonically, there is a crossover between 9-1-1 and 9-1-1 Lone Star, and Mateo, when meeting the 118 for the first time, does that thing where he assumes that if you’re from a city, you know everybody in that city, and says, “oh, you’re from Los Angeles, do you know my cousin Marvin?” Referring to this character.
Ellen: Ah, there you go.
Bex: So that’s a nice little kind of in joke. Anyway, back to Marvin.
Ellen: Yeah. Well, speaking of Marvin. Marvin, who’s getting all his stealing done before he turns 18.
Bex: Which probably would have worked for him, except he’s now Grand Theft Auto, evading police. That’s not kiddie crimes anymore.
He’s, he’s He’s going to, he’s going to grown up court. There’s going to be jail time involved. He’s going to big boy jail.
Ellen: Yeah. Which he seems a bit concerned about. But he’s like, I’m not going to make it to jail cause my mum’s going to kill me first.
Bex: [00:40:00] And Athena’s like, well, “I wouldn’t blame ‘er, boy.”
Alice: So Athena has him in the back of the, of her car and we like drives onto the freeway and we go, we catch up with the end of last episode, where Athena gets out like her mints, and then the ground starts shaking, so she throws them everywhere as the earthquake starts.
Bex: We get a few more details with this perspective though, because we can see the freeway cracking in front of Athena’s car as she’s driving along.
Ellen: Yeah, we hear Marvin like, you know, screaming in the back, basically.
Bex: Yeah, which he probably was in the last episode, but they had Aretha Franklin up so loud that we didn’t hear any of it. And now not only does the earthquake hit for Athena, but it hits for everyone. So we see that the 118 firehouse, the lights are swinging as the earthquake hits [00:41:00] And we also see that it’s hitting the 9-1-1 Dispatch Headquarters.
Alice: The firehouse, like, scene is really cool, the way they do it. Yes. Like, Chim immediately is like, it’s at least a 6, Hen thinks it’s a 7, so Hen was right. But shit’s going everywhere. So, like, the like, all the, like, oxygen tanks and the, like, fire extinguishers fall off the wall and start going everywhere, so there’s, like, fog everywhere.
The camera literally, like, turns around. So, it’s all super chaotic, the trucks are shaking, Eddie’s, like, under one of the fire trucks. on one of those, like,
Bex: He was on a creeper.
Alice: yeah. And so he just starts like rolling across the floor and can’t stop. Hen manages to grab him and stops him just as shit like falls down, down from the ceiling.
[00:42:00] But yeah, the camera’s literally like on the side and upside down and it’s all super chaotic. Like it was really hard to keep track of where everyone was.
Bex: They do a lot of fancy camera work in this episode to really sort of get across to the audience how chaotic these situations are. It’s really interesting, especially later on in the episode.
Ellen: Yeah there’s glass smashed everywhere.
Bex: Yeah, yeah, the entire locker room suddenly, those glass walls that we were admiring Eddie through last week, they’re gone, they’re shattered.
Alice: I still don’t know why the locker room, like, you’d think you’d want somewhere private to change but no, let’s just make it a nice, clear…
Bex: It’s so we can ogle Eddie as he takes 15 minutes to pull his t shirt down every morning.
Alice: Right. My bad.
It wasn’t even glass until like until Buck joined and then Bobby’s just like, Hmm.
Bex: Ew! (laughs
Alice: Buck’s finally learned how to put on a t shirt and now Eddie’s learning.
Ellen: [00:43:00] The earthquake calms down and in the 9-1-1 dispatch, it’s silent. All the monitors are off and the lights are off, but then they start, flicking back on and Josh kind of looks at Maddie and he says, “Brace for impact.”
And then all the phones start ringing.
Alice: Completely blowing up.
Ellen: Yep. So yeah. Time for Maddie to jump in that deep end.
Alice: Yep. And you just hear like scattered “9-1-1, What’s your emergency?” From everywhere. So the 118 are in the engine driving down the streets. I’m taking note of that now. (laughs)
Bex: We don’t actually see the ladder truck. I know that they use the ladder truck, but we don’t see anybody driving it.
Alice: We don’t see them driving it. We do see it in the background later.
Bex: [00:44:00] Yes, but nobody’s driving it. Everyone’s in…
Ellen: They do climb a ladder at some point.
Bex: Yeah. They use the ladder truck. So somebody else from the 118 has driven it to the scene, but they’re just in the engine truck and it’s Bobby, someone else is driving, Buck and Eddie, and Random from the 118.
Alice: Literally, my notes are like, so they’re driving down the streets, buildings have collapsed, power lines are down, and Buck’s sitting next to a 118 member we don’t know, so the whole thing’s in chaos.
Bex: I think his name is Taylor.
Alice: I think we, yeah, we get it later.
Bex: Cause there’s a shot much later on where this guy is bald and there is a shot later on where there is a bald guy pulling stuff out of the one 18 engine truck. And he’s got “Taylor” across the back of his turnout. Yeah. So I’m saying this is Taylor.
Alice: He’s at the ladder truck later too. Yeah.
Bex: So yeah, I told you I’m collecting them all. I’m gonna have the full set by the end of the season.
Alice: [00:45:00] Yeah, once, once we get to our fanfic episode.
Ellen: I was looking at all the randoms going, oh, who’s this one? Who’s this one? But I didn’t see any names. Um, but Eddie is texting or, you know, trying to get through on his phone, but there’s no, like, Buck sort of notices and asks him if everything’s okay.
Alice: Yeah, because they’re besties now.
Ellen: Yeah. Oh, he’s so concerned. It’s really sweet. But he’s wondering who he’s trying to get a hold of. And Eddie just sort of looks at him and then he goes, “My son.”
Bex: There’s a long moment where Eddie considers how he’s going to answer Buck. Yeah. I, I feel like Eddie’s run the gamut in reactions that he gets to him being a father and people finding out about Christopher and he’s sort of, he’s wondering if he’s got the capacity or he’s wondering how, where Buck is going to fall on the spectrum of the responses that he’s going to get.
Alice: I don’t think he expected Buck’s reaction at all.
Bex: No.
Alice: After like how cold Buck was last time, like he’s like, [00:46:00] Yeah, I’m trying to reach my son. And Buck’s immediately like, kid, kid, you got a kid?
Let me see the kid. Kid, kid, kid, kid, kid. I love kids. I love kids.
Bex: He’s so excited.
Alice: Like, give me a kid, give me a kid. Like, Buck is ready to kidnap this child.
Ellen: Especially when he shows him a photo and says he’s seven. And Buck’s like, oh, he’s adorable
Bex: And again, he’s, he’s watching Buck so carefully as he hands over his phone.
And Buck’s only “He’s super adorable. I love kids.” And you can tell that Buck’s immediately passed Eddie’s test. Cause he has not made one comment about Christopher. He’s not made one comment about Eddie. He’s just immediately on board with Chris being adorable.
Alice: Yeah. Chris has his crutches on in the photo as well.
And there’s nothing, like just “super adorable. Give me the child. Like I’m planning to kidnap this child. This child will be my stepchild by the end of this episode.” [00:47:00] Like Buck is trying to stepfather trap himself. (laughs)
Bex: Baby trap himself?
Alice: But yeah, so Buck’s like, “I love kids!” And Eddie just goes, “yeah, I love this one.” (laughs)
Which like but we do find out that. Eddie’s. All Chris has, the mother’s not in the picture.
Ellen: Interesting. I feel like there’s more to this story.
Alice: Yeah. So we learned a little bit more. Yeah. Buck immediately starts to reassure that like, Christopher’s at school. He’s going to be fine. And then they pull up to the hotel.
Bex: And I love that Bobby’s first reaction is to cross himself before he gets out of the truck.
Alice: Yeah. Cause like, holy shit. Yeah.
Bex: Chim and Hen have beaten them there.
Ellen: I feel like all the, all the emergency services and like the triage and all that stuff is very close to the building, like, I [00:48:00] feel like maybe they should be a little further away. Because the building is about to collapse.
Alice: Yeah. Cause like, the building’s going to come down. What are they doing?
Bex: I mean, I guess if you look at that screenshot of where all the buildings are in relation and how, like, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of free space for them to set up, but you are correct. It does seem to be rather close.
Ellen: I mean, they get outta the truck and they look up and the building is above them.
Alice: It’s right there. Yeah. Like if it collapses, like…
Ellen: They’re all gonna get smushed.
Alice: they’re all gonna get covered in it, even if they’re not underneath it. Yeah. So yeah, the parents that we saw from the open are being escorted out and they’re screaming and trying to get back inside because their daughter’s inside still.
They say her name’s Kat and Hen like just stares at them the whole time. So Hen already has an interest in this kid. Bobby says he hasn’t been able to get a hold of Athena. Hen hasn’t been able to get a hold of Karen or Denny. The cell phone towers are just… [00:49:00] They’re overloaded. They’re stuffed. So they go and find the incident commander who gives them a rundown.
So they were between check out and check in when the earthquake hit. So they were fairly light on guests. Most of the guests have made contact with them and evac, evac operations are underway. Most of the staff have also made it out, but it’s really chaotic.
And “the building pancaked at an angle” was the phrase that they used. Because there was a fault in the underground parking structure. So, yeah.
Bex: I pretty much understood none of that.
Alice: So basically building is sideways.
Bex: Oh, I got the building was sideways, but the whole, she’s walking and talking and
Alice: Cause the underground parking structure cracked and the building fell into it, but not all the way into it.
But basically it’s, it’s,
Ellen: the steel is keeping it upright.
Alice: [00:50:00] Yeah. Like it’s like, it’s not in a good position and one good aftershock and the whole thing will come down. This is also where we find out that the earthquake was a 7.1 magnitude which is the largest in SoCal in 20 years. And Chim says the last one was in Joshua Tree, which I had no idea what it was.
So apparently it’s a national park that’s outside Palm Springs. So it’s much more inland.
Ellen: It’s up in the mountains.
Bex: Hen also references the Northridge earthquake, which was in 1994. And that was a 6. 7. On the Richter scale. And as of the nineties, that was the deadliest earthquake that Los Angeles had seen, or California had seen.
Alice: Interestingly, there was literally today an earthquake in like off the coast of the Philippines, today, that was a 7.1. I’m like, oh, the timing.
Ellen: Yep. Excellent timing.
Alice: [00:51:00] But it was off the coast, so I don’t think it was as catastrophic,
Ellen: Might have been a bit of a tsunami or something, which is a bit of a worry for those island nations. They, they’re very densely populated and close to the coast.
Alice: Yeah. It did say there wasn’t a tsunami warning, but so I think it was just like off the coast and like a, they probably only felt a little bit, but yeah, it was just interesting that it was also a 7.1.
Bex: As we were watching this. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. So they’ve put in a request for heavy rescue but they’re on their way to the, to a freeway collapse, which obviously we already know about, but the 118 having no access to cell service has no idea that Athena’s in.
Ellen: Yeah. And Buck’s, Buck says that he thought a high rise was supposed to be the safest place to be when an earthquake hits.
And they do a little bit of exposition about that. [00:52:00] That was when they were talking about how it’s the strongest in SoCal in 20 years blah blah blah. So we get all that explanation.
Bex: But the answer was a high rise is the safest place unless you literally build the high rise on top of a fault line.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And then like all bets are off.
Ellen: And apparently you have dodgy, like, carpark.
Alice: Underground structures. Yeah.
Ellen: Structures. Yeah. So Bobby turns to the others and he says, look, you don’t have to go into that building. I won’t. Force you to do that, but you know,
Alice: yeah, I won’t force like I can’t force you to and I won’t judge them if you Decide not to go in.
Ellen: Yeah, but they they all say that they’re gonna do what they can so in they go.
Alice: It’s actually really nice like the so Chim like immediately looks at Hen and goes, you know, you’ve got a kid and Hen says that she would hope that whoever’s job it was to save him was willing to do it And Eddie immediately, like, Chim doesn’t know yet that Eddie has a kid, but Eddie immediately goes, where do you want us?
Bex: [00:53:00] Yep. And they get led over to the leaning tower of the hotel, the Palm Hotel to observe a gross sleazy guy being pinned to the window like Han Solo in carbonite. From up on the 11th floor, which is slightly lower than it used to be about an hour ago.
Alice: Eddie and Buck’s planning is super cute, too. They’re like finishing each other’s thoughts.
Bex: It’s very much, “Are you thinking what I’m thinking, B1? I think I am, B2.”
Alice: So yeah, so they make a plan…
Bex: That’s Bananas in Pajamas for any of the Americans who are listening.
Alice: Oh yeah, that’s Australian, isn’t it?
Bex: I think they do get Bananas in Pajamas over there.
Alice: They’re all about Bluey these days anyway.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Don’t, don’t look up Bananas in Pajamas or you might have nightmares because they’re kind of freaky. But anyway,
Alice: [00:54:00] They’re gonna, they’re gonna ladder up to the fourth floor. Oh yeah. So it’s It’s floor 11, which we found out earlier in the episode.
So they, Buck and Eddie make a plan to ladder up to the fourth floor and then climb the rest of the way up to the 11th to smash the time.
Bex: But then I love that they’re making this plan with each other and it’s only afterwards that they go, “Oh, we should probably check. Is this okay, boss?”
Ellen: Yeah, they just look over at Bobby and he goes, off you go.
Alice: Yeah. Okay. Bye.
Bex: Have fun, boys.
Alice: Enjoy the hotel room, boys. Cause Bobby is the number one Buddie shipper.
Bex: He so is.
Alice: So yeah, so they climb up the ladder. It’s a really big ladder. They smash the window to gain access to inside and Buck’s just nonstop. “Like, so last time there was an earthquake, they reinforced all the schools and like, there’s all this and that, and it’s the safest place that he, like, it’s safest place you can be now.”
And Eddie’s like, “I thought you said a high rise was the safest place.”
Ellen: Yeah. And look at this one. So,
Alice: [00:55:00] but it’s really cute that Buck’s just like, Chris is going to be fine. Like he just found out about the existence of this kid and he’s just like, nope, it’s my duty to protect him and to reassure Eddie that he’s going to be fine.
Bex: But it is somewhat ironic that Buck is spending all this time. telling Eddie that school’s the safest place we could, that Chris could be. And yet after the commercial break, we cut to Michael and May racing to Harry’s school, which has been destroyed. Like, why is Harry’s school, why wasn’t that, why, where did the FEMA money go for that one?
Ellen: It wasn’t, it wasn’t reinforced. Oh dear. But they find him in the park, which is, I guess, is the evacuation point.
Alice: Yeah, I think it’s like the playground of the school.
Bex: [00:56:00] Yeah, because they said round by the gymnasium, so I think it’s, it must be play equipment out by the, the gym. And May and Michael are absolutely frantic because they’ve, can’t reach Athena.
So they don’t know if she’s okay. They’ve got word that, you know, Harry’s school is destroyed. They need to come pick him up. Harry’s sitting on the playground with his phone or his
Ellen: It looks like a DS or something, yeah.
Bex: handheld game device. And he thinks it’s super awesome because he doesn’t have to go back to school for a month.
Alice: Yeah, he’s super upbeat. Doesn’t care. So Michael does level with him and say it’s, it’s not awesome. A lot of people got hurt. And then they try Athena again and can’t get her and Harry’s like, “where’s Mum?” And Michael’s like, “Ah, she’s working.”
Bex: And then we cut to Athena working, which was a nice little transition, a little bit clunky, but I’ll give it to her.
Alice: Yeah. We go school’s the safest place to a destroyed school. And then mum’s working to mum working,
Bex: mum being working and she’s very much working. She’s taken control. She is the incident commander of the freeway overpass. [00:57:00] And she is telling all of the drivers… She’s, she was up on the overpass, she’s now kind of under on the, the underpass, I guess you would call it.
Yeah, I don’t know how she got down
Alice: there, because she got her car down there too, but
Ellen: Oh yeah, she drove down
Bex: she, like, backed up and drove it down, but again, this is, like, don’t think about it too hard, like, you’re not gonna… You’re not going to be able to, to get through it. But yeah, she’s telling everyone, if you can drive, get your vehicles off to the side of the road.
I do love the way that Angela Bassett says that it’s vehicles. Ve-hic-les. Yeah. “You get your vehicles off to the side to clear away for the emergency vehicles.”
Alice: They’re also trying to move people away from underneath the overpass because they’re worried that the [00:58:00] rest of it’s going to come down. There’s some sort of construction worker helping her as well. So there was like construction going on.
Bex: There’s always, every single time they have anything to do with the 710 in 9-1-1, there’s always a construction crew nearby.
Alice: I just assume like, it’s like our big freeway in Melbourne in that there’s always construction going on.
Bex: Really?
Alice: Yeah. Literally like our, the Monash freeway. It’s, it’s supposed to be a hundred, but it’s usually 80 because there’s some sort of roadwork going on. What are they doing? Who knows? Don’t know. But they’ve been doing it for about 20 years now and it still hasn’t finished.
Ellen: So yes, our road up to the Sunshine Coast is the same. Yeah. Always, always roadworks.
Alice: Always roadworks. Meanwhile, I think Tasmania just doesn’t have any roads, so.
Bex: No, we just have to like dodge around the kangaroos. Right. We’re up to Athena has, is [00:59:00] searching all of the vehicles under the collapsed part of the overpass.
The vehicles, yes. And she finds Dean, who is trapped underneath his overturned car.
Alice: Where’s Sam?
Ellen: He’s not there.
Alice: Why isn’t he driving Baby? Oh, this is season seven. Right, never mind. Got it. (laughs)
Bex: So, Dean’s freaking out a little bit because he’s trapped inside the car and Athena tells him to “enhance his calm”, which is the most bat shit weird phrase I’ve ever heard. And I thought I was mishearing it, but no, the transcript says “enhance your calm.”
Alice: Enhance your calm, Dean. Okay. Yep. I’m like what?
Bex: Yep. So weird. That’s, that’s weird. Dean does not enhance his calm. In fact, he starts to double down because now he can smell gas.
Ellen: Her phone starts ringing. She tries to answer it, but all she can hear is static. There’s no reception still. So she’s sort of shouting at it going, Michael, Michael, you’re breaking up.
Bex: [01:00:00] She is rummaging in the back of the cruiser for something. I’m assuming she’s trying to get some kind of tools that she could use to help. leave her, Dean, out of the car. Meanwhile, Marvin’s in the backseat yapping at her saying, you know, “you’re treating me worse than a dog. You wouldn’t leave a dog chained up in the backseat in this situation, would you?”
And Athena just says, “well, a dog would be more helpful at this situation.” And that’s when she looks back at Dean and his car, which is now a light and he is screaming because it’s, it’s getting pretty hot in there.
Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know how his car just suddenly caught on fire. I like. It wasn’t on fire before and there’s been no more aftershocks or anything.
Bex: Shh, just don’t, don’t, don’t think.
Ellen: The car’s on fire. It’s fine, okay then. She grabs a fire extinguisher from the back of the car and the construction worker already, [01:01:00] also finds another extinguisher and they spray them at the car but it does absolutely nothing and that the fire is still burning. And the construction guy Yeah, he says that he thinks an underground gas line must have been ruptured when the car when, you know, the earthquake hit, I’m guessing.
Right? So now I guess, the fire can’t be put out like that.
Bex: Apparently the car hit the pavement when it fell down from the overpass and that ruptured the underground gas line. And the gas is now feeding up through the car, and I’m assuming that there must be sparks or something happening because the car is upside down and so that’s igniting the gas.
He’s basically a living bunsen burner at this point.
Alice: Yeah.
Ellen: And all this time he’s, Dean is still just screaming.
Alice: Yeah, upside down screaming.
Bex: I don’t blame him.
Ellen: I’m not surprised. Yeah, I would be.
Bex: [01:02:00] Yeah. So now we come to Ellen’s favorite part of the episode. (laughs)
Ellen: Oh God. I’m just watching this going, “what?!”.
Bex: Set it up for us. What happens?
Ellen: The extinguisher is not working. So they need to find some other way to cool the fire down. So she sees a cement truck. And apparently the construction dude’s friend has the keys, but he’s too far away. But Athena happens to have. someone who knows how to steal cars in her car.
Bex: Convenient, that!
Ellen: So she gives Marvin the opportunity to be a hero and ask him if he can hotwire the cement truck.
So as she says to him like if you take off like I’m going to rain the fire of hell down on you. Like you need to help me with this. Like, let’s do it. And he’s like, okay, okay. So…
Alice: [01:03:00] he starts listing like the specs of the cement truck too, which is amusing.
Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know. He’s he’s been playing way too much real life GTA and he, but he does, he gets some tools from a toolbox nearby.
I don’t know why there are tools just lying around but there are
Bex: Because it’s a construction site?
Alice: Yeah, because it’s a construction site.
Ellen: Okay, okay. Like, obviously I was too busy going, what the hell is he doing with this cement truck? He, the fire’s getting bigger and the cement truck, he’s trying to hotwire it and it’s all a bit tense.
And eventually he brings the truck over and they like pour cement onto the top of this car. And I’m like, this is a like the road is unstable. Like, I know they’re under, they’re not, they’re underneath the, the overpass that collapsed. They’re not, you know, I mean, there has just been an earthquake. Like we don’t know what’s going on with the road.
He’s pouring concrete onto a car that is on top of a guy. You know, I just, the whole thing is just like, I couldn’t wrap my head around it, but anyway, it works. So somehow, yeah, I guess it’s okay. The fire goes out and they, there’s a you know, a chopper flying overhead. So…
Bex: And once again, somebody’s, somebody does something batshit insane and mere seconds later, help is on help is there.
Ellen: Like the heavy lifting equipment arrives and they can extract people from the, the car wreckage or whatever.
Bex: The paramedics that come running over, I imagine they just get to the car and they’re like, what the fuck is going on here?
Ellen: Why is there a load of concrete on top of this? Like wet concrete on top of this car?
Alice: Like where did this come from and how? Anyway, so Marvin, that’s his name, right? Marvin. I keep thinking of like, Marvin the Martian, and I’m like, that’s not his name.
Bex: [01:05:00] Yeah, Marvin the Martian. Yep
Ellen: Marvin says, “okay, so I can go now?”
And Athena’s like, “no, you’re going to jail, boy. You think you’re getting away with this? You had a go at being the hero? But you’re still gonna pay for all the cars that you stole,”
Bex: I do love her line, which was, “that good deeds may get you into heaven, but the law is the law, honey, and once I put you in the back of my squad car, there’s no getting out.”
Yeah. Ah. “But thank you for helping me, and, you know, helping me save that guy. That was really sweet of you. And I might write a letter to the judge, you know, see if I can get you some leniency.”
Alice: Yeah. But you’re still getting tried.
Bex: Yeah, yeah. So she like cuffs him again and throws him in the car.
Ellen: Yeah, and he looks so sad. It was good to be a hero for just a few minutes.
Bex: But back to the Hotel California.
Ellen: This is where it starts to get really tense.
Bex: Yeah. So, Bobby and Hen and Chim are [01:06:00] exploring the ruins to see if they can find anybody that needs help. Hen does see a pair of feet sticking out from under the rubble, but she can’t find a pulse, so that gets marked with a red X.
Alice: I do just want to mention, because I didn’t find out till after I watched the episode the deceased person that they checked the pulse of, that’s Snooty Lady.
Bex: It was her feet? I thought it was.
Ellen: I wondered if it was her feet.
Alice: Yep. Yep. It’s snooty, gluten free lady.
Bex: I think I made in my notes a reference that it was very Wicked Witch of the West imagery.
Alice: Yeah!
Bex: The hotel crashing down and just her feet sticking out, but then I wasn’t 100 percent sure if it was that character, so I wasn’t going to bring it up. Yep. No. Definitely her. We do get in from this point forwards with a lot of the the action sequences is they put it looks like body cams on the actors so we get to see what’s happening from their point of views like their hands the camera shaking as they’re running around just to like up the tension of the scene.
So that’s a very interesting technique that they put in. I don’t think it’s like issued body cams They’re not at that stage yet, but it’s just like a you know, Hey Peter, we’re just going to strap a GoPro to your chest for you do this and we’ll use the footage later.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. The other, the other thing that made it really effective, not so much for the tension, but for the making you feel unsettled and weird about the whole thing is that how the set is so like, obviously the building is on an angle, but the whole weirdness of, especially Eddie and Buck, like, making their way down a corridor that is on a huge angle.
[01:08:00] And like, even when they like, break the glass of the window and the glass falls in a way that you wouldn’t expect because the window is on such a huge angle, like, it’s really unsettling. And I guess that’s part of the, like, what I was saying last week about how the, you expect the ground to be there all the time.
And when. it’s not where you expect it to be, then that’s really off putting. It’s really, it’s very, it makes it a bit more scary. But I guess when they’re, when they’re underneath the building, like when the others are underneath trying to save the people who are trapped down there, you don’t get quite as much of a sense, like even though it must be, you know, that the building has fallen into the, the parking garage on an angle.
So even the lower floors must be on an angle too, right?
Bex: No, I think that they’re just, they’ve just gone down. So they’ve just dropped and everything’s kind of pancaking and piling up on top. It’s just that section of the tower that’s tipping sideways. [01:09:00] So only Buck and Eddie have to worry about everything being at an angle and gravity pulling them down.
Everyone else just has to worry about gravity pulling the roof down. The ceilings down over their heads.
Alice: Yeah. Like everything above them is super unstable, but
Bex: Yes. We are with Bobby and Chim and Hen and they are searching through the wreckage and they are looking for Pickens and the coach.
Alice: Yeah, so Hen’s still looking for the little girl, Kat, that she heard from earlier, heard about earlier. And They pass someone from the 125, who’s escorting out a hotel member, a hotel staff member, and says that there’s a kid 50 feet back, and it’s a young African American kid, and they need a paramedic.
Bex: Yeah, Hen hears “kid” and she thinks that it’s cat, but it’s not. [01:10:00] It’s Pickens who has been pinned by a giant concrete beam for that’s come down onto his lake.
Alice: And it’s really like, so they have to climb across the bar of the hotel to get there.
Bex: I thought that was kind of cool, because the floor is out, but the concrete, I think it’s like a concrete pillar or something, it’s made this little bridge, they’ve got to like, shuffle their way across this bridge to get to where Jeff and Pickens are. Where Jeff and the coach are.
Alice: Yeah, it’s really like, it gives them that like, sense of being isolated, Because they have to cross the bar to get in and out. So like once they’re there, like it’s a pain to get back out again. Yeah. But yeah. So like they introduced themselves. Jeff is the kid and he has his leg trapped under a whole bunch of debris.
And the second that they tried to touch… Oh, it’s a beam that Jeff’s trapped under. And as soon as I started trying to touch it, the whole thing started shifting. [01:11:00] So they’re like, yeah, we’re not really willing to touch it. So the coach has been really supportive, but Bobby’s like, “you, you need to go. We have to focus everything we’ve got just on Jeff.” And like the coach argues a bit and it’s like, this kid’s a son to me.
I’m in charge of him.
Bex: Yeah, the coach was very much giving off he was going to be the pushy, overbearing parent, going to be questioning everything that Bobby said, he was going to be pushing Bobby to make decisions he didn’t want to make, and Bobby sensed this within a second, just like, okay, dude, you are out of here.
He puts it in a nice way, it’s like, we can’t focus on Jeff if we’re worrying about you, so if you want what’s best for him, you need to get out.
Alice: Yeah, and the coach actually goes. But you gotta get out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like Jeff’s like, no, I’m okay. Like, it’s fine. You can go. And the coach is like, okay, like, if you’re sure, and he goes, so they, they have a look and see sort of what’s going on with it.
[01:12:00] And Bobby explains to Jeff that they have two ways of doing this. Option a is that they cut him free from his leg.
Bex: Jeff was like “Free from what? Free from my leg?”
Alice: Jeff, who, like, so again, this is the kid who has scouts coming to see him play, like, when they get back, which obviously won’t be happening now, but.
Bex: Yeah, I don’t, I don’t think we mentioned earlier, but like, his basketball team had lost, and they were out of the champions, but apparently Jeff is the best player on the team, and he has a lot of college scouts who are after him. He’s, you know, heading for a full ride scholarship to one of the, a, one of the Division One schools.
Yeah, one, like, pretty much the very bright, yeah, NBA future ahead of him. So for him to have a crushed leg, [01:13:00] possibly having an amputated leg, That’s a big deal for him.
Alice: So like crushed leg at least has a, like, it has a chance. Amputated leg, there’s no chance. Like you don’t, like the leg’s not there to even try and rehab anymore.
Bex: But I think the, the, the choice that Bobby gave him is choice. Number one, you get out of here alive. Yeah. No questions asked. You’re just gonna be, like, down a leg.
Alice: Yeah, and like, everyone’s gonna love you regardless. Like, your family’s gonna love you regardless. Your girlfriend’s gonna love you regardless.
Bex: Your other option is, we try and save your leg, we try and get you out of here with both legs, but if we try and move you and this whole thing starts coming down, I’m getting my team out of here and we’re gonna survive. You probably won’t. Like, do you want to live with one leg or do you want to die with two legs?
Alice: [01:14:00] Yeah. So yeah, so the second way is to get airbags to lift up the debris. But yeah, that could mean that the entire, entire ceiling collapses. And Jeff says he doesn’t think he could live with himself if he didn’t at least try to save his leg. And so Bobby’s like, cool. Yep. We’re committed. We’re doing option B.
Yeah. It’s like. It’s definitely a really shit choice.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: But yeah, like it would be hard to be like, yeah, I didn’t even try. So I get the decision that he’s making, even if he is a teenager and they probably shouldn’t put that decision on him.
Ellen: Yeah. Well, I mean, they’ve got a very limited amount of time in which to make it as well.
So it’s like, yeah, tell us which way you want this to go. And. They get the airbags and stuff and start trying to save him.
Alice: So we go back to the dispatch center, Maddie’s in the break room and they’ve got the news on and it’s her and like the other newbies [01:15:00] and the news is all bright and cheery and discussing like, so the hotel’s on the news and they’re saying how one aftershock could bring the whole thing down and they’re like, yeah, so there’s all these first responders inside.
And you know, if the whole thing goes down, it’ll trap them. And we all remember how many died in 9/11 and Maddie’s just standing there like, yep, cool. It then zooms in on the 118 ladder truck.
Bex: Just to really drive home that yes, the 118 is there and like Maddie is standing there and she’s just silently crying. She’s got tears just rolling down her cheeks as she’s watching.
Alice: Cause like, I think like, obviously she knew that Buck was a firefighter. But this is her first time, like, actually seeing, like, the danger that he puts himself in.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Yes. Like, she wasn’t there for the aeroplane crash. Like, and she wasn’t even getting his calls and letters, so This is the first time that she’s seen her baby brother [01:16:00] literally putting himself in danger.
Bex: And she hasn’t heard from him, so she has no idea if he’s okay. It’s But she doesn’t have time to think about it because Josh comes up muttering to himself like so much for a training cruise. And tells all the newbies that it’s, their training is now done.
They’ve had all the training that they’re going to get for today, it’s, the rest of it is going to be a crash course. They’re going to start taking calls. Their one job is to keep the phone lines clear for the real emergencies. They are to roll the calls through, they are to handle the cranks, they are to handle the people who are calling, like, “I think I felt an earthquake.”
Alice: Yeah, the nuisance calls, they call them. So like,
Bex: Get, yeah, get them off the line. If you actually do get an emergency, if you think you can help, try, otherwise just send another chain to him and the other fully qualified dispatchers.
Alice: Yeah, but they’re playing triage.
Bex: Pretty much, yeah. Maddie is still preoccupied by the fact that Buck is in a hotel that could possibly be coming down at any second, and she goes up to Josh and she’s like, “I, I think my brother is in that hotel.”
And he’s like, “We all have people out there. Doing dangerous things. We just have to do our jobs.”
Alice: And what sort of capitalist…
Bex: Damn, Josh!
Ellen: Suck it up, Sunshine.
Bex: Pretty much, yeah!
Alice: His exact words are, “The best thing we can do for them right now is our job.” And it’s like, excuse me?
Ellen: It’s harsh.
Alice: Anyway, so we go back to Buck and his boyfriend climbing the Leaning Tower of LA.
Yes. Eddie, like they’ve apparently just got in again, even though we just saw them get in. Eddie mentions that it’s only six flights. It’s not exactly Everest. And Buck goes, yeah, except Everest might not tip over and [01:15:00] crush you like a bug. And it’s like, well
Ellen: Sometimes it does.
Alice: [01:18:00] Sometimes it does. Like that’s what like avalanches are.
Bex: And at exactly that point, another aftershock hits and the building rumbles, flinging Buck into a wall. He gets maybe 10 seconds and Eddie’s like, “you good? All right, let’s keep going.” He’s just like, what the fuck, dude?
Alice: So we go back to Bobby and the sports ball kid. There’s also rebar everywhere. I’m sure Chim was having some, flashbacks. So, yeah, so there. Like, getting the airbag into position and the kid’s, like, pumping himself up with the team motto. I can’t remember if we mentioned this earlier.
Bex: Oh, stupid motto.
Ellen: It’s so cheesy.
Alice: So the team motto is, “heart of a champion”. It’s like, one, what sort of motto is that?
Bex: I think. It’s like, we got the heart of a champion. We might not have the skills of a champion, we might not have the wings of a champion, [01:19:00] but we got the heart of a champion. Like we suck, but we got hearts.
Alice: Where did they get the heart from? Whose heart did they, anyway.
Ellen: We might not have the legs of a champion in a moment. (laughs)
Alice: Ouch. So they started inflating the airbag. And they’re like, They’re trying to pump him up too, like, Chim, Chim’s like, “Yeah! Heart of a champion! Don’t know what we’re talking about, but yeah, you got this.”
Ellen: Come on, Champ. Come on.
Alice: Yeah. It’s very much that, yeah. So they, like, it takes a couple tries, and, but they get him out.
Like, they manage to pull him across, they get him onto the backboard, slide him across the bar that they all had to climb across, and he’s free! He’s free. And I just wanted to mention that the song’s playing, the song that’s playing is called “Under Pressure”. That was last week. We already did that. (laughs)
Bex: Yes, but now it’s Jeff’s leg under pressure.
[01:20:00] So it’s still, it’s still applicable.
Alice:
Bex: Apparently quite a few.
Alice: Apparently all of them. And all of them are in 9-1-1.
Bex: So. Chim follows Jeff across the little bar, Hen goes next, but she stops as, because as she’s crawling across, her eye catches on something and she reaches into the, the cavity of the debris that is underneath the, the bridge that she’s crawling across and pulls out a shoe.
A small, child sized, pinky purply, glittery shoe. And she starts screaming for Cat, and starts shining her torch down into the, the hole below to see if she can see the little girl.
Alice: Yeah. So then we go to…
Bex: We go back to the Bobbsey twins.
Alice: They finally reach the floor that they need. Took almost as long as Eddie putting on his t shirt.
And,
Bex: I mean, [01:21:00] to be fair, it’s six flights, but the stairs are at an angle. So,
Alice: yeah, it’s six flights sideways.
Bex: I mean, yeah, I’ve. I’ll cut them a little slack, but yeah, they get there in the end. So they’re also apparently tools because apparently Buck’s been hauling a circular saw up with him the entire time
Alice: Which is also what took him so long.
So yeah, so this is where we find out like the subtitles say that the sleazy guy’s name’s Harlow, but he doesn’t deserve a name. So we’re just gonna call him sleaze.
Bex: Just gonna keep calling him “sleazy gross pervert dude”
Alice: so they open the door and like the room They have to go Literally down into the room. So like, they start like, getting ropes all ready. Tell them to sit tight. They sort of assess the situation. You can see Ali holding onto a pillar still. And Sleaze is like, pushed against the window. [01:22:00] And he immediately goes, “Oh, in this case women and children first may not apply. No offence.”
Bex: And Ali shoots back, like, no offense, everything about you is offensive.
And Buck’s trying to, like, defuse the situation, he’s like, “oh, first date?”
Alice: Ew. No. So she sort of explains the situation about how, like, that’s his, her boss, and he has a wife and like four or five kids, I think it was. Five kids. Five kids. Yeah. But that doesn’t, didn’t stop him to, from inviting her into the shower with him.
Ellen: Yeah, she just tells him all about it.
Alice: And like, Buck and Eddie shame him a little bit, but nowhere near enough, in my opinion. Like, I get that they’re trying to do a job, but Hen would have absolutely pushed him through the window. Yeah. “oh no, the glass cra- what a sh- oh no. Didn’t save him. All right, Ali, let’s go get drinks.”
So yeah, the whole time, like, the glass is, like, cracking ominously, and then we go back down to the street.
Ellen: [01:23:00] And Buck does say, like, have you been, haven’t you been watching the news lately? I’m like, wow, Buck knows something about what’s going on. In the world?
Bex: Yeah! Go buck! Okay. Only probably because he has had it thrown in his face a couple of times from some of the women that he’s hooked up with.
Alice: I was going to say Hen told him, but yeah.
Bex: I’m pretty sure he’s said something or done something appropriate and he has been schooled on the Me Too movement so he knows all about it.
Alice: Yeah, so we go back down to the street and the parents of Kat are still, like, waiting around. And they see Jeff come out and recognise him.
And they’re like, okay, he was on the same floor. Let’s ask if anyone saw Kat. So, they’re panicking, they’re explaining what she was wearing. And that’s when they confirm that the shoe…
Bex: Yeah, they want to ask Jeff. This kid is strapped to a body, strapped to a backboard. [01:24:00] He’s on a gurney.
Ellen: Yeah, I thought they were going to ask him.
Bex: He’s pumped full of morphine, and they’re like, let’s ask him if he’s seen our child. I get that you’re panicking, but this is not the correct time nor place.
Ellen: Whoever the paramedic who is, you know, taking him out, just when they come up to him and start asking questions, he just gives them this like disgusted look, like, go away.
But there is a nice, a nicer firefighter person who, you know, calm, tries to calm them down a little bit, asks what she’s wearing and you know, the details. So when we go back inside, Bobby says, “yes, that is her shoe.”
Bex: There’s a nice little transition where they’re like explained, like, tell me what cat was she’s wearing?
And he very specifically asks. What color are her shoes? And you get Mum saying they’re pink. You’ve got Dad immediately saying at the same time that they’re purple. Dad goes, okay, they’re pinky purple. And then we cut to Hen holding a pinky purple y shoe in her hand. Yeah, it’s
Alice: literally pink on one side, purple on the other. It’s great.
Bex: [01:25:00] Yep. So that’s when we get the, the firefighter has obviously radioed through to Bobby and gone, yeah, that’s, that’s the shoe that we’re looking for. I will give the writers. Kudos for this episode with their transitions, the way they’re sort of linking all the scenes together. They’re doing, they’re doing it quite nicely.
Alice: Yeah, it’s, it’s good.
Bex: And like, not always in the way that I would have thought, but like, yeah, it’s good.
Alice: This part as well is quite chaotic. Like it cuts back and forth a lot. So it’s like, like you can feel something’s going to happen. It’s building.
Ellen: It’s gradually and more tense.
Alice: Yeah. So like we’re back up to the hotel room and the glass is cracking a lot under the sleazy guy. They’ve secured Ali, and like they’ve got a rope to her and they’re telling Sleazy Guy not to talk or breathe too much and of course he cannot shut up.
Back downstairs they’re using, they’ve got thermal, thermal cams now to try and find Kat but haven’t found anything yet and then we go back up where Sleazy [01:26:00] Guy keeps talking even though he’s been told several times to stop even breathing and Eddie’s just got down to him.
So Buck’s towards the door with a rope like holding it. Ali’s halfway down the room, also holding the rope.
Bex: I think Buck is being like, the belay point.
Alice: Yeah, Buck’s the anchor at the moment.
Bex: Yeah, I don’t know how they’ve secured it behind Buck, but then Eddie is tied to Buck, and then Ali is also tied with another rope to Buck. So he’s holding everybody up at this point.
Alice: And Eddie’s just about to tie a rope around the sleazy guy, when an aftershock hits. And it’s a big one.
Bex: And so all of the glass just shatters into teeny tiny little pieces. And Sleazy Guy goes plummeting down. Although he seems to go forwards quite a bit as well.
It doesn’t appear to go straight down.
Ellen: [01:27:00] Yeah, and he doesn’t seem to land on anybody down there. Or any of the tents that are down there.
Bex: Because like, Eddie reaches for him. So we do get a shot of what Eddie sees, which is like the guy face down on the footpath, like, quite a distance from where he fell.
And then all of the furniture that was behind him has miraculously landed next to him. Not on him. So that we can get a full, we can get a nice clear shot of his body on the footpath. Very, very considerate.
Alice: Eddie and Buck also look sadder than they should, but I guess they didn’t know him too well.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, I was too busy cheering to notice any of that.
Bex: I just think they don’t like losing anybody on a call.
Alice: we also go back down to Hen, Bobby and Chim and they’re struggling to get to safety as like the roof’s caving in and, you know, the shock’s happening. And while this is all happening, [01:28:00] Hen falls down a large hole in the floor and vanishes.
Alice: And then.
Ellen: Bobby and Chim are calling for her, calling for her. But she’s…
Bex: yeah. And she’s still screaming for Kat. She is not worried about her own safety. She’s not worried about anybody else. She just feels the room shaking and she’s worried about that kid that’s still buried somewhere. Under all the rubble. God bless Hen.
Alice: So then Ali clearly wasn’t secured very well to the rope because she goes toppling past Eddie. Who, and then like grabs onto the window ledge. So she’s holding, like falling out the window. Eddie’s grabbing her with both hands. Buck’s at the doorway holding them both with a rope.
Bex: Yeah, he’s literally like, he’s got his feet up onto the, the little mini bar, wet bar area of the room. His entire body weight leaning back, holding the two of them up because he’s had Eddie’s weight and now he’s got Ali’s weight on top as well.
Alice: [01:29:00] Yeah. And that’s when we go to credits.
Ellen: Yeah. And this shot where they’re like, with Eddie’s dangling out the window, holding her is so effective. And that’s the end. I’m just like, what?
Alice: Like, you can tell that it’s a green screen, but it’s done really well.
Ellen: Yeah. I couldn’t imagine waiting for a whole week to see the next episode.
Bex: Yeah. So, yeah, we forgot to mention that even though Fox at this stage was making a big deal about the fact that it was a two-parter, it’s technically a three parter. Yeah. It’s just that there’s a, there’s a week gap between this episode and the third episode.
Ellen: Yeah. That’s just mean.
Bex: Which continues, and then you find out the title of the next episode, which is called “Help is Not Coming.” You are like, what the hell is that about?
Ellen: I can’t wait to see, I haven’t watched the next episode yet. [01:30:00] So I’m just like, I will be watching as soon as possible. Yeah maybe if help’s not coming, I don’t want to watch them. The tension in this episode just built up and up and by the end, I’m just sort of like watching through the cracks in my fingers, you know,
Alice: it does such a good job of building the tension and also just the chaos.
Ellen: Yeah, and splitting, even between like different parts of the city where things are going on, like it’s still, it doesn’t lose any tension as we switch between all those different scenes. I thought that was great.
Alice: Yeah, like, like when they’re trying to get like Jeff out, like they’re in this really small sort of area and it’s all dark and there’s rubble all around and it’s a bit claustrophobic.
And then yeah, really like the scene in the firehouse with the earthquake because just shit was going down.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: So yeah, Season 2 is off to a really, really good start.
Ellen: [01:31:00] It is, yeah, really. I liked this episode for… Well, not just the emergency itself and the tension, but the production value was brilliant.
Bex: I think this this season premiere really kind of set the bar for all the rest of the season. Which is why once you see this episode, you can kind of understand why ABC tried to do what it did with its, with its very first season. Season seven, which
Alice: We’ll get into later.
Bex: They, they did, they did not accomplish anywhere near as well as Fox did for the, for season two, but that is a conversation for a much, much later time.
Ellen: It’s going to take us a while to get to Season 7.
Alice: Yeah, today actually we also got an air date for Season 8, so that’s really exciting. Yeah.
Ellen: [01:32:00] I’ll have to avoid spoilers again, dammit! (laughs)
Alice: So yeah, we have until September to
Bex: Yeah. Yeah, we’re not going to make it.
Alice: We’re not going to make it.
Ellen: All right. Well, tell us about what’s happening in episode 3
Bex: Yes. Shall I tell you what’s going to happen in the all new episode “Help Is Not Coming”. Surprisingly, the first responders continue to deal with the fallout of the massive earthquake and its deadly aftershocks. Athena tries to keep the peace as Bobby and his team continue to rescue victims from the collapsed high rise hotel, both under the rubble and high above the ground. And Maddie’s first day on the job involves helping a pregnant couple deliver their baby safely.
That’s an, that’s an interesting way to summarize Maddie’s storyline. I don’t know that I particularly agree with that, but then again I’m not the summary writer, so.
Alice: We don’t want too many spoilers. No.
Ellen: [01:33:00] I’m intrigued.
Bex: Trigger warnings for help is not coming include threat of looting. questionable cop behavior and a pregnant woman at threat.
Ellen: Cool. Anything else about the episode that we want to say before we wrap up? I’m just keen to know what happens next, but we’re, we’ll do that, but we’ll have to, I’m sorry, listeners, you’ll have to wait a whole nother week before we, we go on with our chat about it.
Alice: Luckily, Ellen only has to wait a couple days.
Ellen: I won’t have to wait. I’m going to go watch it. Okay, so we would, we’d love it if you could, listeners, if you get in touch with us and tell us what you thought about this episode. Were you on the edge of your seat like me? You can get in touch with us. All of our contact details are on our website along with transcripts for episodes and other information about the podcast: thatweewooshow.com.
[01:34:00] You can leave us a comment. You can send us an email at contact (at) thatweewooshow.com. So thank you very much for listening this week and we will see you next time to discuss the episode, “Help Is Not Coming”. Talk to 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.]
[outtake]
Bex: I only have two tabs open.
Alice: Oh, wow. Look at you go. (laughs)
Ellen: [01:35:00] I put both of the important tabs in one window on their own. Does that count?
Alice: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. I have 11 on one and three on the other. And the three on the other just the documents for this episode.
Bex: Good lord, I don’t understand how people can do that. It drives my, it drives me batty, too much.
Alice: It’s because it’s all like the job stuff, so I need it there, so when I go back to the what have I learned in 12 months, it’s all just sitting there.
Ellen: I have 40 tabs open on one window.
Alice: 40?
Bex: No!
Ellen: Yeah. And then on my WeeWoo Show window, I have 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.
Bex: How?
Ellen: And then I have a new window that only has two.
[01:36:00] But the thing is, I open new tabs and then I just leave them there until I need to come back to them. So, yeah. And my phone has over a hundred tabs open. Because that’s all fics. That’s my marked for later.
Bex: That’s why you download them.
Ellen: Yeah, but when I download them and put them on my Kobo, I never, then they die, like that’s where they go to die. I never look at them.
Bex: That’s where they go to die, okay.
Ellen: And I never read them. But if they’re in my tabs, at least I will open and scroll through and have a look to see what there is to read.
Alice: Yeah. That’s my phone tabs. Like there are way too many to count because I can’t put them a mark for later or that’s where they’ll die forever.
Ellen: Yes. And when I went to see Inside Out 2 the other day with my kid, with, with my daughter and the little, the Anxiety emotion thing came up and I’m like, Ooh, I know that one. This is why I have so many tabs open in my brain. It’s fine. It’s all fine. [01:37:00] Let’s talk about this episode, which by the way, I had to keep pausing this episode because it was freaking me the fuck out.
It was, it was so, it was so, I was so nervous for everybody, but anyway, we can.
Bex: Oh, honey.
Ellen: We can mention that later.
Alice: This is only season two.
Bex: You think this one was bad?
Ellen: I’m sure it’s, it’ll get worse, but I was just, yeah, it was
Alice: like, there are children and there are people. And Eddie’s got a shirt on.
Ellen: Those parents don’t know where their children is! There’s an asshole with his face against the window!
Bex: (laughs) I love that it’s, there’s children in danger and there’s people, but, and, but Eddie’s wearing a shirt. That’s what’s freaking you out.
Alice: The horror, the horror of Eddie’s eight-pack being covered up.
Ellen: He was very clothed in this episode. Anyway.
Alice: It’s disappointing, honestly.
Ellen: Okay. Let’s actually start the podcast and then we can include this part.
Bex: Okay.
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