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 episode 10 of the second season of 9-1-1, titled “Merry Ex-Mas”.
The first responders deal with a man trapped in a present, a mistletoe stunt gone awry and a Christmas-light showdown; Bobby contemplates his future with Athena.
Content warnings for episode 2.10:
Car accident, claustrophobia, flashbacks to domestic violence, blood, gore, (tissues warning) returning veteran.
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Our intro music is “Tensions” by Northern Points.
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: Thank you to everyone who’s listened to all our episodes so far. We are almost, no, we are halfway through season two, amazing. And thank you to everyone who’s been sharing our social media posts and those who’ve replied to us on social media, um, in the last couple of weeks.
So we’re recording, we can record like a week ahead. So we’ve had a few, replies in response to the previous episode, not last week, but the week before, like, this is so confusing for me. Okay. So it’s the episode eight that, that was replied to. So we have to say a big thank you to Rex, Lyra and Leah, who have [00:01:00] all replied to us in various formats to, to help us out with finding out about the Celine Dion Sanders food platter that they ordered at the bar when they’re having their boys night.
Um, this is like a combination of Celine Dion and. Deion Sanders, who is a sports person. So that’s good to know, thank you.
Bex: Still want to know what’s on that platter.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, who knows? It could be anything. It could be poutine. Could be like,
Bex: chicken wings and poutine.
Ellen: Maybe. Yeah, if anyone knows about such, I think this is a made up thing.
Anyway, we also had, uh, Lyra helped us with the. The accident with the handbrake where,
Bex: Either Thomas or Mitchell, I never remember which one is which.
Ellen: No, I can’t remember either. But yeah, the way where the handbrake failed and he was crushed by the car, that’s actually based on a real accident that happened and it was a mechanical fault with the car.[00:02:00]
So that is very tragic. Especially based on a real story. So damn. Uh, so, but we have had one episode since then anyway, um, Alice, you want to remind us what happened last time?
Alice: Uh, yeah. So last week on 9-1-1, we learned how Hen got her start as a first responder. That was it. That was the episode. Um, however, because, uh, we’ve actually got some stuff looping back in this episode from the episode before that, um, we saw Chim and Maddie’s blossoming relationship and, uh, in Eddie’s life, Christopher’s mother returned.
So we’ll be following that up a bit this week.
Bex: So this week is the Christmas episode, which aired November 26th, because for whatever reasons, they weren’t actually going to be airing episodes during the holiday [00:03:00] season. So the summary says, the holidays are naughty and nice for the first responders who must deal with a stampede at a toy store, which did not happen in this episode.
I guess we’ve, we’ve had a storyline cut again, guys. We did get the mistletoe stunt go awry and neighbors competing in a Christmas light showdown. Meanwhile, Bobby contemplates his future with Athena, Chimney and Buck attempt to lift Maddie’s spirits, and Eddie must decide if he wants to give his son what he really wants for Christmas, a visit with his mother.
I really want to know what happened with the toy store.
Alice: Yeah, right? What the hell? Yeah. I’m trying to, from, I feel like all these things like we get later.
Bex: They do revisit a toy store at Christmas, but I would not especially call that a stampede.
Alice: No, that’s what I’m trying to.
Bex: [00:04:00] Yeah. I, uh, interesting. There was so many,
Ellen: They had a lot else happening.
Bex: They had so much happening. I’m, I’m not surprised that a storyline got cut in order to pay more attention to other things. Um,
Alice: It’s very interesting how, yeah, how often these summaries are wrong.
Bex: They’re keeping us on our toes. Speaking of staying on toes, let’s discuss the triggers that are going to come up in this episode.
We have car accident. If you are particularly prone to claustrophobia, you probably don’t want to watch this episode. We have flashbacks to domestic violence. There is quite a lot of blood in this episode. And if you, like Buck, tend to tear up at those returning veteran videos on YouTube, have your tissues handy, cause we’re going to get that in this episode too.
Alice: We [00:05:00] sure are.
Bex: So we’re going to start the episode with the neighbors locked in a Christmas light showdown.
Alice: No stampeding and no toy stores.
Bex: Not this time. No, I love Christmas lights. I wish that more people did Christmas lights around where I lived, the way they do in the States, because we have some people do Christmas lights, but we, like, if I want to take my kids to see the Christmas lights, we literally have to get in a car and drive from house to house.
There is no like entire neighborhoods that do it.
Alice: Oh, we have that whole street just up the road from me that do it. Like you can just walk through the street and every house. Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. We don’t have that here. It’s like one house in this neighborhood and then there’ll be another one, like five blocks down.
Alice: Oh, that sucks.
Bex: We definitely don’t have houses where people are standing outside, handing out like hot cider and cookies and all that kind of jazz.
Alice: We have a few here. [00:06:00] I think the other States just suck.
Bex: I think I’m spending Christmas with you then Alice.
Alice: I think so.
Yeah. Um, although I’ll be, I’ll have moved by then, so we’ll have to go for a drive to the street, but still,
Bex: As long as you’re driving.
Alice: There’s um, yeah, there’s a street literally like within walking distance from me who all go out. And then there’s a couple where friends of mine live and they’ve got little kids. So they go every year and they’ve actually made friends with the family who do it and they deck out their entire house.
Bex: Oh, wow.
Alice: And like, you walk through the entire house and into the backyard and everything like that.
Bex: Wow. It’s like a Christmas version of a haunted house.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Do they have giant, uh, nutcracker statues like these guys do?
Alice: I don’t know. I haven’t been to that one. But, um, but we do have like the big inflatables.
Ellen: We have them around here.
Yeah. There was one, [00:07:00] not like, it was a drive from my place, but. Nearby, um, and they had like this Santa, which I reckon was like 10 meters high. It was so tall. It was like
Bex: I hope they didn’t try to set it up on their roof.
Ellen: It was taller than their house. It was ridiculous. Maybe not 10 meters high, that’s pretty high. Maybe, maybe 5 meters high.
It was like really tall.
Bex: Well that’s The snowman in this episode is what, 20 feet? So,
Ellen: it’s huge.
Bex: Yeah, it’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Ellen: So this dude is like, there’s two houses across the road from each other that are all lit up and the yard is just like full of lights and this guy is like complaining to his wife that no one is coming to see their lights and what do they have that we don’t have?
And she’s just like, come on, like, well, let’s just be happy with what we’ve got.
Bex: I do love, she’s like, “It’s Christmas time. Let’s just be grateful for what we’ve got.” And he’s like, [00:08:00] “No, no, I refuse to be grateful. I have a better idea.” Um, which brings up the, the 20 foot tall inflatable snowman, which in his infinite wisdom, he decides that the perfect place to set that up is right on top of the roof.
So, uh, so he climbs up. onto the roof. He’s got the snowman in a bag over his shoulder, uh, gets it into position. Everybody’s watching him. And so everybody sees the moment when he plugs the snowman in, which activates the inflation. And the inflation is instantaneous. The snowman just pops into existence and it’s so fast that this guy, John, cannot get out of the way in time and it throws him off the roof.
He goes rolling down and then slams into an inflatable nativity scene, uh, on the ground underneath.
Alice: So then we go to the [00:09:00] classic 9-1-1 call and John’s wife is, like, just says, “I think Christmas killed my husband.”
Bex: Yes, we are back to the 9-1-1 calls being purely transitional and not, not at all informative.
Alice: Not at all helpful. Yeah. No. Uh, so the 118 are deployed just for a change.
Ellen: Well, it wouldn’t be much of a show if it was different people every time, would it?
Bex: It could have been the other members of the 118, come on.
Ellen: Uh, it’s not about them. Eddie takes one look at him and he just like, he just rolls him over a little bit and looks at his, the back of his head and goes, “No spinal damage.”
It’s like, I don’t think that’s how that works.
Bex: They’ve infected Eddie with their x ray vision.
Ellen: You need to keep him carefully still until he gets imaging.
Alice: This was, this was another episode I watched with my mother who, again, Is a member of the state emergency services.
Bex: [00:10:00] Oh, what did your mom say about this?
Alice: And an ex nurse and they’re just like, no apparent spinal damage.
And she’s like, how did they, do they have x ray vision? Like, I’m like, mom, shh, they’re just that good.
Bex: Oh, I think. I think what we need to do is we need to like compile a clip show of their best looking at a patient and immediately diagnosing them and just show the clip show to your mother and have her like react to them.
I think that’d be hilarious.
Alice: Absolutely horrified. Um, but yeah, Bobby also asks how, like how, how it happened. And John just says, “Snowman pushed me off the roof,”
Bex: but it was okay because the baby Jesus broke his fall.
Alice: Yeah, which Buck helpfully says it was a Christmas miracle. And oh my God, I, like, after watching “Hen Begins” last week, like I love “Hen Begins”, don’t get me wrong.
It’s a great, like, great episode of like going back to, you know, [00:11:00] where Hen Begins, but I miss the rest of them so much. Yes. And I was just like, yes, I miss Buck’s idiot, like idiot sayings so much. And he has some really good ones this episode. Yeah.
Ellen: We’ll also mention that at, for a Christmas episode, like I think a lot of Christmas things, um, will take on like religious overtones, but this episode, this is the only time that Jesus is mentioned in any way, like there is no other religious connotation.
Bex: It’s a very, it’s a very secular episode. Yes,
Ellen: it is. Yes. Yeah.
Alice: Um, so yeah, so they carry John to the ambulance and all the, like the crowd that were there for the. Christmas displays are taking photos of him and the wife’s like, “Look, John, you finally got your wish. Everyone’s taking pictures.” He’s like, “This is the best Christmas ever!”
And it’s like, dude, that’s so weird to get excited about. But
Ellen: yeah. When you might have some spinal damage going on. [00:12:00]
Bex: Eddie’s sure he doesn’t have any spinal damage.
Alice: Eddie said he has no spinal damage.
Bex: He’s good.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: Uh, and we know that this is going to be a Christmas episode because once they get John into the ambulance and slam the doors, somebody has hung a wreath from the back of the rescue ambulance’s doors.
Just in case we hadn’t figured it out from the entire first scene being Christmas themed. That kind of really just nails, just really drives it home. Christmas.
Alice: Really does.
Ellen: Uh, we’re off to the Grant household now and Athena is, has a, a massive box that she’s got brought, bringing into the room while Bobby is there trying to untangle Christmas lights, which I swear to God have some mind of their own when it comes to being like, no matter how well you can like [00:13:00] bundle those things up in a neat way, they will always get entangled during the year.
Bex: It’s like they move inside their boxes.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah. It’s almost impossible. They sit inside a box completely still. And somehow over the 12 months between Christmases, they’re like, Nope, not staying.
Ellen: Yeah. By the time I get to, get around to taking down Christmas lights, it’s usually like a lot less than 12 months.
Alice: Yeah. True.
Athena says that, uh, you know, are you, you’re fighting a losing battle there or something? And Bobby’s like, yeah. But Athena goes, “Maybe you’ll have more luck with the next project.” And then hands over whatever the boxes that she got. I thought it was like a bike or something.
Bex: It looks like a go kart. Yeah. But that seems to be like a really weird. gift to just randomly have a go kart for your, like, backyard or up and down the street. But what do I know? Apparently it’s something that Harry has been talking [00:14:00] about for months since he saw it on a YouTube video. As you do, yeah. And Bobby is just, uh, reminiscing, you know, “Remember when, you know, Christmas presents and toys were simple things like lawn darts?”
Um, which Athena has no idea what he’s talking about, and I think the only reason I know what he’s talking about is because I saw a TikTok video about like the, the worst toys in America that got banned and the lawn darts were one of them. Um, and if nobody else knows what they, what I’m talking about they’re these metal spikes with, uh, plastic feathering, uh, material at the end of them.
Ellen: Oh my God. So they’re literally like a dart.
Bex: They are a dart. And they, the whole point of the game was you would like stand out in your backyard with a hoop and you’d try to throw them to land into the hoop. Um, but they were light enough that they could get picked up by the wind, but they were also heavy enough that if you got struck by them, they would cause quite [00:15:00] significant damage.
And there’s a lot of There’s many, many instances of children being impaled in the head and getting serious brain damage or losing eyes from these things, um, until the, the government finally banned them.
Alice: Oh my God. I just looked up a photo of them. They literally are just darts that you… what the hell?
Bex: And Bobby’s telling this story about how his brother would like throw them straight up in the air so that they would come plummeting back down.
And Bobby would be running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to avoid.
Alice: I’m just looking now, it looks like they’ve re released lawn darts, but they’ve got like a blunt, like weighted end now,
Bex: as Bobby would say, that’s going to take all the fun out of them,
Alice: Apparently. I mean, if I’ve learned anything from How I Met Your Mother, the, um, games in Minnesota are like pretty dangerous as it is, so.
Bex: I mean, they strap knives [00:16:00] to their kids feet from very early ages. So I’m not
Ellen: What?
Bex: Like ice skates. I’m talking ice skates.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Alice: Yeah. Ellen’s just like, what?
Ellen: I was like, what new torture is this? I mean, I come from a very hot place. Ice skating is not high on my list of things to do as a kid.
Alice: Yeah, I ice skated a lot as a kid. Not on like actual ice, just in a rink.
Bex: That is still actual ice, but you’re not talking about like out on a lake.
Alice: Yeah. Like not on a pond.
Bex: Yeah.
All right. Back to the episode.
Ellen: Bobby does say, he does say that this is going to take more than, that it’s a minimum two hour assembly. So he doesn’t know if he’s going to be able to do it.
And Athena’s like, “Maybe you could just sleep over,” gives him like the bedroom eyes.
Alice: They can make a night out of it. Hot chocolate, a little Nat King Cole. [00:17:00]
Bex: Oh, is that why Nat King Cole is playing at the end of the episode? Sorry, penny just dropped. Okay.
Alice: Um, so Bobby likes the sound of that, but Athena says, “You know what would be even better? If you didn’t have to sleep over at all, cause you already lived here.”
Ellen: And Bobby’s just like, “What?”
Bex: Yeah, she’s all flirty. Bobby looks like he’s just been sucker punched.
Alice: Yeah. So like Athena even says, “You look like you’re praying for a 9-1-1 call.” And he’s like, “No, no, I’m not. Well, maybe, maybe just a little one, like a cat in a tree.”
Bex: It took, it took Bobby by surprise.
Alice: Yeah. Clearly they haven’t discussed this at all.
Bex: Oh no, she’s apparently just sprung this on him. Um, and she does reassure Bobby that she’s not trying to give him an ultimatum, she just, she’s letting him know that she is ready to take the next step. Although it’s clear that he might not be.
Alice: Yeah, she even says that she knows the [00:18:00] idea of a, like an instant family probably rings a lot of bells. After, you know, what happened with Bobby. Which, just to recap, he burnt his apartment building down and killed his family.
Ellen: By accident.
Alice: He didn’t mean it.
Bex: You make it sound like he did it on purpose. And if the, if the, if the building had been up to code, it wouldn’t have burned as badly as it did. So it’s not all his fault.
Alice: It’s not entirely Bobby’s fault.
He just has a lot of blame for himself.
Bex: Yes. So, But we’re not, we’re not allowed, or Bobby’s not allowed, we’re not allowed to linger too long on this proposition because we are going to look at what happens when two other people move in together.
We’re off to Chim’s apartment the next morning and it doesn’t look like it’s going well for Chim. [00:19:00] Uh, because we’ve seen Chim’s apartment a couple of times and he looks like he’s very neat. He’s very tidy. Um, there is shit everywhere.
Alice: So much shit. There’s like, there’s clothes, there’s shoes, there’s a towel.
Bex: On the wooden floor. Oh my God. Buck.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: But yeah, so Buck is just doing pushups in the middle of the lounge room, blaring music.
Bex: He’s very clearly, he’s the morning person. He’s like, get up at the crack of dawn, throw open the windows, ready to greet the day. Um, whereas Chim’s like, he’s going to leave it to the very last second.
And he needs like, two liters of black coffee and stillness and darkness and quietness in order to start his day. They’re not very compatible, which is why, no, Buck’s doing his pushups and he looks up and sees Chim and he’s like, “Morning, roomie!” And Chim’s like, “Yeah, about that.”
Alice: And immediately we go to [00:20:00] Maddie’s house.
Ellen: I mean, props to, to, Chim I guess for like protecting his space and just booting him out.
Alice: Well, to be fair, the, the last episode. Well, the one before Hen begins, like Buck came over to watch the football, I think, and then just didn’t leave. And didn’t leave. So like, don’t really blame Chim. Um, but yeah, we immediately go to Maddie’s, uh, new house where Buck has a bag and says, “Yeah, it looks like you’re stuck with me again.”
And Maddie’s like, “It’s okay. I have a new air mattress waiting for you.” And Buck’s like, “You saw this coming?” And Maddie just goes, “You didn’t?” Like, clearly Chim has been messaging Maddie this whole time. Just like, Oh my fucking God, I can’t stand him. Like, I don’t know what to do. Like, he’s doing my head in.
Bex: And when Buck walks in, there is a box with the air mattress and new sheets on the floor, on the, in the entranceway, just waiting for him.
Alice: Yep.
Ellen: [00:21:00] So. And he looks down at the, at the mattress and then immediately we cut to another bed with Shannon and Eddie, like getting it on.
Bex: Oh, I think it’s post getting it on. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. It’s post getting it on.
Um, but yeah, I totally forgot about like this and I’m watching this with my mother and I’m like, Oh, even though I’m in my thirties, like, In my thirties and I’m still just like, Oh my God, I can’t watch sex scenes with my mother.
She’ll know that I know what sex is.
Bex: Pretty sure she knows that you know what sex is.
Alice: Oh, she absolutely knows that I know what sex is, but it’s still really awkward to her. Cause I’m like, Oh, I wonder what they do. Gee mum. Wow. They must’ve been doing pushups in bed. Yeah.
Ellen: But Shannon says, “Oh, we suck at this.”
I’m like, Oh, geez. Must be pretty bad.[00:22:00]
And Eddie
disagrees. “I feel pretty good about how that went down.”
Alice: It reminds me of, um, I have this mod on the Sims that I know like Sims is totally off topic, but I have this mod on the Sims that like gives them like sexual preferences and I had this married couple and whenever they’d have sex, the guy would always get this moodlet about how great the sex was and the woman would just be like, yeah, it was okay.
And it just, every time, and I just like, yeah, like, it was okay. Like, it scratched the itch. And the guy’s like strutting around, just like, yeah, that was the best sex of our lives.
Bex: To be fair, Shannon’s not talking about Eddie’s performance in bed. She’s more talking about the fact that she has obviously come over to talk about things and work things out, and they’ve just ended up in bed together. Which Eddie thinks is a completely acceptable way to work things out.
Ellen: [00:23:00] Oh dear, Eddie.
Is this another one of those people who don’t know how to use words?
Bex: Yes. Okay. He is very Dean Winchester coded.
Ellen: Mm hmm.
Bex: They do, they do talk a little bit. Shannon asks whether Eddie is going to get a Christmas tree. And Eddie says that yes, it is the day of the annual tradition of convincing Christopher that no, a 16 foot tree does not fit inside the house.
Shannon tells the story of the year, the Christmas before Eddie came back, she caved and she bought the 16 foot Christmas tree, um, and ended up setting it up in the backyard because of course it wasn’t going to fit in the house. So they loaded it up with lights and ribbons, and she got sleeping bags out, and they just lay under the tree, staring up the branches, because it would have been Texas.
So even though it’s Christmas time, it probably wouldn’t have been that [00:24:00] cold, I’m guessing.
Ellen: Yep.
Bex: So then, uh, Eddie kisses her and gets up, and I have no idea what happens in the rest of the scene. ’cause Eddie is shirtless and he’s got these gray sweatpants on that are riding very, very low on his hips. And he’s got that, like that v on his hips and the, and
Alice: they’re putting the T-shirt on.
And literally I was like, why don’t I remember the rest of this scene? And then as you just, I’m like, oh, that’s right, because he was, he’s half naked. I’m like trying to perv with my mother next to me and I’m like, this is fine. Um, yeah.
Ellen: No, he, she’s asking whether he took him, um, Christopher to see Santa yet. And, uh, Eddie says, “You mean the creepy guy at the mall with the fake beard? No, we haven’t been yet.” And Shannon’s like, “You haven’t let that go. Because you got scared and threw up all over Santa [00:25:00] just because you did that doesn’t mean that he’s going to do” And, Eddie was like, “That was very wrong of my abuela to tell you that story. And I wasn’t scared. The old guy smelled bad and I had a stomach flu.”
And Shannon’s just like, “Really? Two years in a row you had a stomach flu?” Like, oh, this is so cute.
Bex: I do. I do love their chemistry. They’re, it’s very clearly, It’s very clear that they’ve known each other for a long time and that they’re very close.
The way they, they banter backwards and forwards. It’s, it’s very cute.
Ellen: But no sooner do they start smooching again, but, um, we hear people coming into the apartment and Chris calls out, “Daddy!”
Bex: Yes. Uh, because Eddie’s abuela has brought Christopher back early. And Eddie goes to full panic stations and tells Shannon that he will distract them and she will sneak out the back.
Ellen: Yes, she does not like this idea.
Bex: [00:26:00] It’s very much giving like a 15 year old being caught in their bedroom by their parents and trying to kick their boyfriend out the window so that their parents don’t know. Um, except these two are married and they’re grown adults.
Alice: Yeah, they’re married and that’s their son. Yes! Like, yeah. So Shannon says, you know, “Maybe this is the moment. That we tell him,” and Eddie’s like, “Nope, not the moment. Get out, out, get out.”
Bex: Christopher realizes that he’s in the bedroom and he’s like trying the door and shaking the door and he’s like, “daddy, dad, daddy,” very Stewie Griffin. Um, Christopher eventually sort of, uh, Eddie cracks the door open, which is like even more suspicious. Then just like calling through the door saying, you know, I’ll be there in a minute, but sort of cracks the door open, peeks his head out, and then he’s waving at Shannon behind his back like, get, go!
Alice: I’m just, what happens here and [00:27:00] what happens like the rest of the episode, his grandmother totally thinks that he had Buck over.
Ellen: Well, he goes out there and then she goes, “Have you got company?” And he’s like, “what are you talking about?” And she’s like, gesturing down at the, um, you know, the coffee table where there’s a bottle of wine and two glasses that had clearly had wine in them. And, um, he’s just like, “Oh yeah, I’m not the best housekeeper.”
It’s like, dude,
Bex: your house is immaculate. I highly doubt that you would leave two glasses out like that. Yeah. He’s so busted.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: So yeah, his abuela’s like, yep, cool. He had someone over and then, yep.
Bex: He tries to distract his abuela and Christopher, um, by asking them like what they bought and asking about their shopping trip and Shannon sort of peering around the door to watch them.
And Eddie sees her and just like, makes [00:28:00] a face at her, like, get the hell out of here. And she has to like, slink back and head out the back without being noticed.
Alice: Cause yeah, like she’s not some girlfriend that like, it’s too soon to meet the son. Like that’s her son.
Bex: Yes. But Eddie’s got issues and we, we already know that his abuela does not approve of Shannon.
Ellen: Yeah.
Alice: Cause she spilled all of it to Buck.
Bex: So we’re going to go to another medical emergency, which is the stupidest, absolutely illogical medical emergency. Um, I’m not going to say to date, because that would require me to think about some of the other things, but just. It, I really don’t think that the people who wrote this episode have ever been in a packing factory before, and they don’t quite understand how it works because I don’t, [00:29:00] I, like I Googled, I thought, okay, this, this is ridiculous, but maybe it was one of those ripped from the headlines.
Maybe this really happened. Um, could not find anything. I think they just thought, Hey, wouldn’t it be funny if a guy fell into a box and got put into a plane and just did not stop to think the logic through.
Ellen: I don’t know.
Bex: Yeah. So that’s what happens. That’s literally what happens. That’s literally what happens is it is a packing factory, a distribution center where there are boxes on a conveyor belt that these people are just dumping random items into.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Which I don’t know where the item is coming from there. They don’t seem to be wrapped. They seem to be just being dumped into boxes. Um, and then packing peanuts get put on top of them. They get label slapped on them, sent out down a chute. Well, the, there is a robot arm up on one of the other levels that are supposed to be pushing the boxes down the chute itself.
It’s jammed, I think one of the boxes is stuck, so, um, is his name Brandon?
Alice: He, yes.
Bex: Our [00:30:00] poor victim. Brandon, yes. Brandon goes up to check on the arm, pushes it out of the way so he can get the box moving. Meanwhile, on the conveyor belt on the level below him, even though every other box has been a normal sized delivery box, suddenly a human sized box shows up.
And when Brandon gets the Obstruction free, the robot arm swings back into the place and it must swing with so much force, for since it’s such a tiny little arm, I don’t understand this, that it literally throws Brandon off the conveyor belt into the box, which is coincidentally directly underneath him at the time that he fell.
At some point he hit his head, I think, I don’t know how, um, because he lands on a giant teddy bear. So that would have broken his fall.
Ellen: Unless the robot arm thing hit him on his way down?
Bex: I don’t know, but anyway, but he gets packing peanuts dumped on top of him. [00:31:00] He gets, uh, taped up a label slapped on him and off he goes to destinations unknown, although he thinks it’s Milwaukee.
Ellen: It’s like something out of a cartoon.
Bex: It, it really, it really is.
Ellen: But then. He, we get a 9-1-1 call, which Maddie answers and it’s Brandon. And he says, “I think I’m being shipped to Milwaukee.”
Bex: Yes. He’s trapped inside a Christmas present.
Ellen: Yeah. And Maddie’s just like, “You’re, you’re what now?” Um, and then he thinks he’s on the way to the airport.
And so she’s, you know, trying to, Josh is listening in and he, he asks if he can kick or punch his way out of the box. That was my first thought too. I’m like, can’t you, it’s just a cardboard box. Can’t you just. It’s, you know, get out of it. Like how well is it taped up that you can’t actually punch your way out?
Bex: Apparently pretty well because we do see the box a little bit later from the outside and it’s been shrink wrapped.
Ellen: That’s right. Yeah. So, which means he can’t [00:32:00] also breathe. He’s not getting any air.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Josh tries to contact the warehouse to find out where the truck is and Brandon suggests that he maybe should call his mum and tell her that.
You know, just in case they don’t find him. Um, but Maddie says, “No, stay with me because we need to find out where you are.” So,
Bex: and he’s, he’s correct because he reports to Maddie that he thinks that he’s stopped and we see the box from the outside, it’s been wrapped with a whole heap of other boxes. It’s being, uh, forklifted.
Forklifted? Is that the correct word? Lifted out of the truck by a forklift, um, and being loaded onto an airplane. And so the reason that no one can hear Brandon screaming and kicking is because A, the guy, the forklift driver’s obviously got noise protection, earphones, earmuffs on, and it’s just loud [00:33:00] on an airfield anyway.
But it’s all good because somehow they find him, they manage to work out which airport he went to, they manage to work out which plane he was on, and they got that plane to land at SoCal airport so that they can rescue Brandon.
Ellen: Yeah, when When this guy was, when we were first doing the kind of intro to him, um, to, when he was talking to Maddie on the phone, that’s right.
It was after the intro, when we’re trying to connect with him to make, make us worry about his wellbeing. Um, and he was saying that he
Bex: I care, I care not for his wellbeing.
Ellen: No, I don’t. It wasn’t enough to make me actually give a shit about this guy, but he did say that, um, she was saying, “Oh, we’re going to get you home for Christmas.”
And he’s like, “Oh, that’s unlikely. Um, My home is in Seattle” or whatever he says. And then I was fully expecting this plane to actually take him to [00:34:00] Seattle. Like, you know, that was the logical conclusion of this story to me.
Bex: I would not have put it past him. Unfortunately. Um, I don’t think he would have
Ellen: He doesn’t make it out of LA.
Bex: Survived because, uh, as the 118 are racing to SoCal airport to get this guy, they, um, Bobby says, you know, No, Buck asks, how long was he in the air?
And Eddie says that they were flying for 18 minutes. That was almost long enough to reach altitude. And the cargo hold where Brandon and his boxes were, are not pressurized. So I mean, we, they eventually, eventually find him, he’s unconscious. He definitely would have been dead by the time the plane got to Seattle.
Alice: So I have thoughts about this though, because when we transport dogs, which we do like, semi regularly, they’re just put in with luggage.
Ellen: And so Don’t they keep them in, like, a, a, a pressurized area, though? I don’t know. They probably do, because otherwise [00:35:00] Maybe there’s a difference they’d be
Bex: But, like, your dogs go onto a, a passenger plane that just has luggage and cargo underneath, right?
Yeah. Maybe Brandon got loaded onto a cargo plane. And so they don’t pressure, I mean, they’d have to pressurize the section where the pilots sit, but maybe they don’t pressurize
Ellen: Yeah, but the hold doesn’t need to be necessarily.
Bex: Yeah. Maybe?
Alice: Because like, I’ve seen the dogs get loaded on and they literally just get loaded on with the luggage.
Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. But
Alice: then you’ve
Bex: got to, I mean, Oh no.
Alice: But I think he,
Bex: Oh, damn it. Yeah. Cause like how, it’s, have you ever seen that episode of How I Met Your Mother with the glass breaking?
Alice: Yeah, I’ve seen every episode of How I Met Your Mother.
Bex: Okay, continue. Ellen, have you ever seen the episode of How I Met Your Mother?
The whole conceit is that somebody has an annoying habit and you just never notice it until somebody points it out to you and then all of a sudden it’s like the glass is [00:36:00] broken and you just cannot unsee or unhear that habit. Um, this is, this is the situation. I was perfectly okay with, oh yeah, yeah, that’s fine.
He’s in the cargo hold. And now it’s like, no, this, this doesn’t make sense at all. I mean, it never made sense to start with and now the entire thing is nonsensical.
Alice: Like it made sense that he passed out because he was shrink wrapped, right?
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. Maybe. It was a big box though. Like It would have taken a while for him to use up all that air.
Bex: Oh, damn it. All right. Let’s just keep going.
Alice: No, I have to Google now.
Bex: We’ll keep going. You join us at the end with the results of your search. Okay.
Alice: Because like the dogs don’t freeze.
Bex: But then you’d go this guy’s in a box with a giant teddy bear and packing peanuts.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, they find him, the way they find him is because his phone starts ringing and they pull out a stethoscope and listen to the presents, um, [00:37:00] until he finds the one,
Bex: they listen to one.
Ellen: They listen to one large present.
Bex: To one large box. Okay. Yeah, I know. It’s that one.
Alice: So, Cargo planes, even commercial cargo planes are pressurized because the temperature of the cargo is controlled because otherwise, like, the things can get damaged.
Bex: That makes sense. So just nobody, once again, nobody put the tiniest bit of research. We need some, we need fanfic writers in the writer’s room because fanfic writers will research everything to the nth degree because they are terrified of that well actually comment.
Ellen: Okay. So Brandon, when they pull him out, he’s not breathing.
Bex: And he’s very cold. For some reason. He’s cold. So he gets the sexy space blanket on him.
Ellen: Chim starts doing compressions. Um, cause apparently he doesn’t have a pulse either.
Bex: And then he gets Buck to switch doing [00:38:00] compressions because Chim needs to be free to move around in order to do the next part of the scene.
So we go from, we go from sort of semi normal compressions to Buck’s thrasher technique, which apparently is what Brandon needed because that brings him back. Did we mention that they found him because the phone was ringing? Yeah. Okay. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. Sorry, my dog was climbing up a wall at the time.
Bex: Um, but then the phone, well, uh, Brandon comes back and Eddie’s checking him out.
Um, the phone rings again and Chimney goes looking for it and finds it in the pile of packing peanuts. And he mentions to Brandon that somebody really wants to talk to him. And Brandon said, “She told me not to answer.” And apparently Maddie instructed him that she was just going to keep ringing the phone.
And hopefully the sound of the ring would guide the 118 to him.
Ellen: Yeah, [00:39:00] that’s a pretty good idea.
Bex: So when it rings again, yeah, when it rings again, Chimney answers it by saying, “Maddie?” And when she’s like, “Oh, Chim,” he’s like, “Oh, fancy meeting you here.” Uh, we’ve got Santa Claus is coming to town.
Ellen: Oh, yes.
Bex: And the 118 are hosting their annual toy drive.
Ellen: And Buck is just like, kids! I am in my element.
Bex: He’s so excited. There are kids everywhere. He’s got a Santa hat on. Um, and, uh, They, so they are accepting donations of toys for the toy drive. Um, the kids are getting to climb supervised over the trucks, Chimney’s, handing out, you know, Cider, I guess hot cider.
Ellen: Yeah. I dunno.
Bex: Is hot cider non-alcoholic? ’cause I don’t see them handing out like mulled wine.
Ellen: Um, [00:40:00] uh, if you boil it for long enough, it’ll be non-alcoholic . I’m not really sure.
Bex: Yeah. Let’s go with that. Oh, I saw a clip of one of the contestants on the Bachelor who was talking about mulled wine. Mm-Hmm.
But because it’s American, he’s like, and “it was mold wine,” and he literally thought it was mouldy wine. And he was so surprised that it was delicious, and they had to explain to him the different spellings that it was mulled, not mold.
Ellen: Oh, jeez. That’s a bit sad.
Bex: Well, bless his heart.
Ellen: I mean, if I hadn’t actually been to a cold place where they had mulled wine, I probably wouldn’t have known what it was either, but, you know, it is very delicious.
Bex: Yes, it is. Um, Eddie steps forward to take a present from someone who is donating a giant toy fire truck and then looks up and looks like a deer in headlights because it’s Shannon. And she has decided that since Eddie is not answering her texts or returning her calls, she is going [00:41:00] to buttonhole him in his place of work because he can’t ignore her now.
Ellen: Maybe they can actually have a conversation that doesn’t end up with them in bed. And as soon as she says that, in the background, Buck and Chim like, both turn to look and just go, what was that?
Bex: Chim does that great thing where he’s like, he’s got the ladle here, he’s pouring the cider and he’s just mid pour.
just freezes. I can imagine if he’d actually had a jug of something, the cup would be overflowing because he is not paying any attention to what is happening.
Alice: Or he’d be pouring next to the cup.
Bex: Yeah. Yeah. There’s a soap opera going on, like a, it’s almost like a telenovela going on in front of him and he is far more invested in what’s going on there.
So Eddie takes Shannon to the locker room. Which, if you’ve not seen the show before, sounds like a really good idea. Yes, let’s take her somewhere private, except [00:42:00] the locker room is a fucking fishbowl. Edmundo, everyone can see you. I’m really hoping that the glass is soundproof so that everyone might be able to see them, but they still can’t hear them.
But Eddie, honey, baby, that was not a smart move. At least take her into the depths of the locker room where no one can see her. Because I was really surprised that we didn’t end this scene with Chim and Buck just pressed against the glass.
Alice: Oh, Chim would be there with like the stethoscope.
Bex: Yeah. But the conversation they have is quite serious. Yeah, they do. Despite all of my, my talk about it.
Ellen: He, he says that he can’t, he can’t do this here at the, at, like at work. And she’s like, “Well, where are we going to, when are we going to have this conversation? Because it’s been almost two months. And are you ever going to let me see him?”
Alice: Yeah. So we’ve had quite a big, like, time jump.
Ellen: Yeah. Two months. Yeah.
Bex: Well, [00:43:00] flashbacks take a long time.
Alice: Apparently, yeah.
Bex: It really affects the flow of time in this.
Alice: Hen was thinking real hard about her start at the 118.
Ellen: So Eddie says he didn’t want to confuse Chris. And “not until I was sure.” whatever that means.
Alice: Yeah, and Shannon’s like, “Of me? Because you seemed pretty sure when we started having sex again.” Um, but Eddie asks if that’s how she sees it, like as a transaction. So like, Shannon sleeps with Eddie, so Eddie lets her see Christopher.
Ellen: Yeah, and she’s like, “no, I thought this was a reconciliation. I thought we were gonna, you know, come back into each other’s lives kind of thing.”
And he’s like, “No. I didn’t know what else to do.” And then he’s like, okay, no shouting. “I didn’t know what else to do. And I’m not keeping you from him, like some kind of punishment.”
Bex: It ends with Shannon pretty much begging [00:44:00] Eddie, when are you going to be able to forgive me? And Eddie says that “I can forgive you. I’m just not sure that I can trust you.” And then he exits stage left, leaving Shannon. Who then has to walk out of the firehouse past everybody.
Alice: I know, right? Real walk of shame.
Bex: Real walk of shame. So that’s a bit of an emotional scene. And we’re going to continue with the, uh, the emotional scenes because we’re going back to the Grant household where Athena and Michael are wrapping presents for the kids, and they’re going to have a bit of a heart to heart about, um, Athena’s reaction to Bobby’s reaction to her asking him to move in.
I love that these two are like
Ellen: This makes a lot more sense now, because I, because my Disney isn’t working at the moment, I had to watch through other means, and um, the stream I was watching didn’t have subtitles, like, you couldn’t put subtitles on, and so [00:45:00] I couldn’t hear it all that well, and I’m like, watching this bit going, why is she just telling Michael that she asked him to move in?
Like, it just seemed really a weird kind of thing to bring up randomly. But yeah, it makes, like, seeing the whole conversation in writing makes a lot more sense. Uh,
Bex: so you did, uh, okay, okay, okay.
Ellen: I was just like, wow, this is very forward of you, Athena. Just like, oh, by the way! I mean, you know how you said that he could come in the house. Well, I just invited him to stay.
Bex: We’ve had, we’ve had scenes where characters have just randomly brought up, like, conversate, topics of conversation that they want to talk about. I’m thinking of Michael just sitting at the picnic table going, I really, like, just suddenly burst out talking about Bobby and about how he feels inferior to Bobby.
So it would not have surprised me if Athena’s just sitting there and randomly goes, “You know, I asked Bobby to move in. And he said, no, Or he freaked out?” But no, there was an actual scene leading up to this. But I do, I do [00:46:00] enjoy that these two are now friends and that they can quite easily discuss their romantic partners with each other.
Yeah. It’s very healthy. Yeah. Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. So Michael does ask, like, if she needs help with Christmas dinner and Athena does seem a bit distracted. But she’s like, Oh, no, no. And Michael says, “Is Bobby working that day?” She’s like, “Oh, I don’t know. I did a thing the other night. Maybe it was, it was stupid or foolish.”
And then Michael’s like, Okay, what happened? Like, lay it down. What happened?
Bex: She’s like, I asked Bobby to move in. And then the face that Michael makes looks almost like the face that Bobby made.
Because he kind of goes, well, Oh, moving here. How did he take it? And Athena’s just like, pretty much how you’re taking it right now. Yeah.
Ellen: But yeah, [00:47:00] Michael knows that, you know, they, you know, they love each other and they’re moving forward. And Athena says “things have been going so well lately and, you know, When he’s here, I’m joyful. When he’s not, I’m lonely.” Blah blah. She goes on. But Michael does tell her that maybe he just needs a bit of time to figure it out.
Bex: But if this is meant to be, he’ll find his way home.
Ellen: Yeah, he says home isn’t a place, it’s people. That’s a really sweet sentiment, isn’t it?
Bex: They do give Michael some good lines.
Yeah. So while Michael is counseling Athena, Hen is counseling Bobby, because their shift is over and apparently when their shift is over, nobody else works at the 118, like they just completely shut down the firehouse because it’s literally black except for the locker room. That’s right. Um, I would have thought that firehouses would be like 24 hours, that there would always be someone in there, like the B shift or the C shift.
But. [00:48:00] Maybe because it’s Christmas, I don’t know. But she’s getting ready to leave. She’s literally walking out and sort of throws a have a good night cap over her shoulder. Except she sees that Bobby’s just sort of sitting in the locker room. It doesn’t look like he’s going anywhere.
Alice: Is this the only time we see Hen this episode?
Ellen: Uh, yeah. She would have been Was she in the box scene?
Bex: Nope, she’s not in the box scene.
Alice: She’s busy reminiscing.
Bex: She, she shows up at the end with Karen.
Alice: Oh, she does. Yeah.
Bex: And she’s there at the, she’s rough. She’s very briefly there at the, the bus accident. But I mean, she had the whole last episode.
Alice: Yeah, she had a whole last episode. So I knew that she
Bex: So she doesn’t get a lot of airtime this week.
Alice: Yeah. She needs a, a, um, week off.
Bex: Aisha needed a break from like carrying the entire episode last week. Exactly. Yeah. Um, She’s, she’s, so she checks in with Bobby and asks if he’s all [00:49:00] right and when he tells her “Yes, I’m fine You have a good night. You go home,” She doesn’t believe him for a second and sort of sits down and it’s like “Come on, tell me all about it,” and he confesses that he doesn’t know where to go.
Normally he would finish his shift He’d check in with Athena And pretty much he would go to Athena’s house but he feels like since she asked him to move in, if he just shows up, that’s going to be an, she’s going to want an answer to that question.
And if he doesn’t show up, then that is an answer and he doesn’t know what to do.
Alice: He’s sort of in this weird limbo, Schrodinger’s moving in.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. Hen says they deserve to be happy. Um, and she’s like, she’s like, “If you don’t see a future with her, then you can’t pretend that you do. You just have to tell her the truth.”
And he says, [00:50:00] “The truth is that I panicked.” Hen says, “Well, maybe that’s your answer.” And I’m like, that’s not terribly helpful, Hen.
Bex: I guess if you’re panicking about it, then he’s not ready. If he was ready, he would not be panicking.
Ellen: Yeah, but that’s not the decision that he, that’s not the message that he takes from this.
Maybe he decided in the end that the panic wasn’t necessary.
Bex: Nobody in this show ever gets the correct message though. Somebody always sits them down, gives them the heart to heart, it goes through their internal trans. I’m mostly thinking about Buck here, but apparently Bobby does the same. The message goes through and then comes out…
Alice: It’s genetic.
Bex: I think this is more a nature versus nurture argument, though.
Speaking of Buck, um, while Bobby is grappling with his future, Buck is Christmas tree shopping with [00:51:00] Chim and gossiping about Eddie at the same time. Cause of course he is
Ellen: so invested in
Bex: this. So obviously either Eddie has spilled his guts or these two tracked him down after Shannon left and forced him to spill his guts.
Ellen: Yeah, cause they didn’t know who she is. They had to find out from him one way or another.
Bex: Yes. Although I wonder whether, It was both of them, or whether it was just Buck. I think it was just Buck. Because Because Buck is, like, saying, like, “Eddie is sleeping with her, but he’s lying about it. It’s like he’s having an affair with his own wife. You don’t think that’s weird?”
Ellen: Yeah, and Chim’s like, that’s none of our business. Like he’s not nearly quite so interested in that. But he might be interested in it, but he’s like, I don’t need to know about this. He’s preoccupied. Yeah.
Bex: He wants to buy a apology Christmas tree for Maddie. to apologize for kicking her brother out of his house and back into [00:52:00] onto her couch.
And Buck’s response is just like, “It’s an air mattress, not a couch, but it’s fine. If anything, I’m the one who should be holding a grudge. You should be buying me a Christmas tree.”
Ellen: Yeah, and you should be hurrying up about it.
Bex: But Chim is, he’s doing that thing that you, when you, when you’re having to make a purchase, it has to be the perfect purchase. So he’s Googling Christmas trees as he’s wandering around the farm. And I, I respect that so much. I identify with that so much.
Alice: I would be doing the same thing.
Bex: Yeah, exactly. It’s the, um, the like the purchase paralyzation, because you can’t buy anything until you’re absolutely 100 percent sure that it’s the correct one.
Alice: Like I would absolutely go to a Christmas tree farm and be like, what do you mean? There’s different types of pine trees. Like they’re just pine trees.
I just want a Christmas tree.
Bex: Yeah. There are apparently different varieties of Christmas trees.
Alice: So yeah, I’d be standing there Googling what’s the best type of pine [00:53:00] tree.
Bex: Buck disappears to go find someone to help. And Chim looks up at the sky looking for his own help and asks the big man up in the sky.
He’s like, “I need your help here.” And it starts snowing, which,
Ellen: I’m pretty sure that never happens in LA,
Bex: But it’s like, it’s a Christmas miracle. It’s a sign. It’s not, it’s, he’s standing in front of the snowblower and they’ve just turned it on. Which he thinks is hilarious, but he does get help in the form of, uh, a man appearing and asking him whether the big man refers to God or was Chim praying to Santa?
Well, the big man in the red suit. Yes. Santa Haraboji. It was apparently the Korean, it translates to grandfather Santa. It’s the Korean version of Santa.
Ellen: He wears a blue suit.
Bex: He does. He’s got like this [00:54:00] green hanbok on and a black kind of pilgrim’s hat.
Ellen: Yeah. So this Jason guy, he’s really tall. I don’t know if Chim’s just short, but he looks like way taller than him.
So he’s the big man. He asks, is it an important purchase? And Chim says it’s for a friend and she really loves Christmas and I want to surprise her. And, uh, he just wants it to be special because she’s had a rough couple of years. So, and Jason tells him that he’d go with the noble fir. It’s a classic. So, but, but when Chim turns around to say, thank you, uh, this guy has vanished.
Alice: Yeah, literally just vanished.
Bex: Just adding in here. Yeah. That, um, Kenneth is 5’6 he’s 168. Brian, who plays Jason is 188, which is like what, 6’1 or something. [00:55:00] So yeah, Brian is quite a bit taller than Kenneth. Back to what we were talking about.
Ellen: He just, he actually looks like a giant when he appears and Chim just looks up at him and is like, “Whoa, hi.”
Alice: Uh, very intimidating. But yeah, when I first watched this, I was like, okay, there’s something going on with Jason Bailey, clearly.
Bex: So you got this spoiled for you, didn’t you, Ellen?
Ellen: I did. Yeah, I was, well, I thought, oh, this guy’s helping him out. That’s nice. And then. Yeah. I got spoiled for it in my,
Alice: yeah, that sucks.
Cause I, cause yeah, like the twist, but yeah, I was like, is Chim having like visions? Like, cause like this guy like appears and then just vanishes.
Ellen: I’m like, is this ghosts now? Like, do we need some salt? Like what is going on here?
Bex: It’s a Christmas story. Christmas spirit, the Christmas miracle, that Chim needs,
Ellen: the ghost of Christmas present
Bex: no, it’s the ghost of Christmas past.
Alice: Yeah. Yeah. Anyway. Yeah. So [00:56:00] Chim gets the, um, the noble fir and they go back to Maddie’s apartment with a giant tree and Maddie kind of flips out a little bit.
Bex: Yeah. She is not at all happy to see the Christmas tree. It’s the. Chimney immediately picks up that she’s not happy and when he’s asking her, like, is this okay?
And Maddie’s like, “No, it’s, I love that you did this.” Not that she loves the tree. She loves that he was thinking of her and like red flags are going up. This, this is, this is not something that she wants. And bless Chim, he’s on board with this. It’s like, ah, Right, Roger, you didn’t want this, that’s okay. And Maddie’s trying to explain going, you know, I just, she’s making excuses, trying to cover herself.
Like, all my Christmas decorations are in Pennsylvania and Buck’s like, [00:57:00] that’s okay, I bought them all here.
Alice: So Buck sort of mentions that, like, Maddie always loved Christmas. Like she did ornaments, stockings, cookies, made her own bows. And Maddie’s like, “Oh, I’m just not really feeling it this year.” And Buck’s like, “no, that’s not okay. This is, this is what you’ve always done.”
Ellen: Yeah, he pushes, he pushes it a little too far.
Bex: Chimney just takes his tree and exits. He’s like, I’m, okay, I’m, I’m not getting in the middle of this. I’m just going to take my tree and go while the Buckley siblings hash this out.
Alice: Yeah, but Buck just snaps. “So you hate Christmas now. Something else I can thank Doug for, huh?” And it’s like, oof.
Bex: And Maddie says, Maddie says, “No, I don’t hate Christmas, but I’m starting not to like you very much. You can’t just come into my house and act this way.” And Buck’s like, “Come into your house? I’m your brother.”
Alice: Yeah. Like I live here too.
Bex: We don’t hear the rest of their argument, but we just hear raised voices and Chim is [00:58:00] dragging the tree back out to the street where he puts this pathetic little handwritten sign that just says free tree on it.
Ellen: Where did he get the sign from?
Bex: Just don’t think about it.
Alice: It was in the random, unpressurized cabin.
Bex: But yeah, the, the whole point of this scene is that, that Christmas is a sort of a trigger for Maddie and she was really hoping to avoid it. Um, we can also take from this scene that Chim is incredibly perceptive when it comes to Maddie’s emotions and reads her incredibly well, while Buck is rather self centered and cannot see beyond the end of his nose and just does not realize that even though he wants Christmas, the other people around him might not.
Ellen: Yeah, I don’t, it feels like [00:59:00] he’s just forget, forgetting that Doug is like a big trigger for her as well. Like he actually mentions like this, something else I’ve got, Doug, I can thank Doug for this. And it’s like, well, that’s a bit mean for you to mention it.
Bex: To be fair, I don’t think Buck knew the full extent of what was going on with Maddie and Doug.
All he knows is that Maddie left him.
Alice: And that Doug was a piece of shit and that’s about it.
Bex: Yes.
Alice: Um, cause yeah, when you’re the older sister, like you don’t burden your baby brother with that.
Bex: We, the audience have seen the flashbacks. We know how badly Doug treated Maddie. Um, Buck doesn’t know that.
Alice: And like, Buck also has the history that Chim doesn’t have.
Like, Buck would have been like, “Yeah, yeah, Maddie loves Christmas!” Because he would have grown up with Maddie making this big deal over Christmas every year. And so he just thinks that it’s the same. [01:00:00] Like, it’s going to be the same. And it’s like, no, no, Maddie’s actually a different person now.
Bex: I’m sorry, that just, that just, that just hit me.
Alice: Um, whereas Chim never knew Maddie.
Ellen: And he’s trying, maybe he thinks that cheering her up would like, if she put the effort into this, it would make her feel better, but it’s just making her feel worse.
Alice: Yeah. So I don’t, I don’t know if I’d call Buck self, like he’s well meaning.
Bex: I don’t think it’s selfish coming from a bad place.
But he’s very, but it, it’s, I think it’s sometimes it comes off as charming, sometimes it works, but he’s very much, this is what I want. And he can’t see, especially in this situation, that that’s not going to work for everybody else.
Alice: It’s very much the Dean Winchester thing where it’s like, well, I know what’s going to be better for everyone, so I’m just going to do that, whether or not [01:01:00] the other people wanna do that.
Ellen: Yeah. I’m doing this for your benefit because I think it’s the best thing.
Alice: Yeah. Like I don’t care that you don’t think it’s the best thing. I think it’s the best thing. So I’m just gonna do it. Yeah. Plus I really want those cookies, .
Bex: Yeah. So after some, um, very emotionally weighty scenes, we are going to go for a little bit of, um, lightheartedness because we’re headed off to Terry’s Tiki Room.
where you can have a kiss under the mistle-drone. And it’s literally a drone with a piece of mistletoe hanging underneath it, that a guy is driving around this, uh, Hawaiian themed, although that sounds a little bit racist to call it that, um, restaurant and he’s hovering the drone over the tables. It’s kind of like kiss cam [01:02:00] at the sports ball events.
And if the drone hovers over your table, the, uh, underneath the mistletoe, so you have to kiss and then the drone has a camera. So it’s taking the angle that we see from the drone camera. Those photos would not be flattering, but they are available from purchase. You just need to ask your server. Um, just don’t ask Travis and Jenna.
They’re too busy fighting.
Ellen: Yeah. They are having an argument. Very loudly, too. Well, they’re, they’re, they kind of whisper to each other at first, and then later they’re actually having a full-on argument.
Bex: I do like the way they’re kind of weaving their arguments and they’re sniping at each other around their job.
So apparently Travis cheated on Jenna. He hooked up with some person named Stacy. Um, and Jenna is quite disgusted by this. Travis says at least she knew what she wanted and he stops at his table and he’s like, so do you guys know what you want? And when [01:03:00] Jenna is finished taking her order, she tells her table that she’ll be right back with their apps.
Travis is heading to the kitchen to place his order. And she says, you like apps, Tinder, Bumble, Match. You’re all, you’re still on all of them. So I thought that was a little bit clever writing the way that they, they welded those two things together, but it must’ve been so confusing for the people like at the table.
Well, maybe they were entertained. Maybe they thought they were getting dinner and a show.
Ellen: Anyway, it turns out that Jenna, uh, says that it was too soon for Christmas with your family. And the, and what’s the guy’s name? Travis?
Bex: I’m calling him Travis. I don’t know if it’s correct. Yeah. It’s correct.
Ellen: Um, he says that he accuses her of being a commitment phobe and you’re looking for an excuse to check out.
And then they, they managed to dodge the drone, which is flying around like crazy. Like it’s going very quickly around the restaurant.
Alice: It is. And right at eye [01:04:00] level too. Yes.
Ellen: Yes. And she says that things were moving too fast.
Alice: And she’s not phobic, she’s afraid.
Ellen: He goes, “That, that, that means the same thing.” And then just as she’s turns around, the drone like flies right into her face.
Bex: And I did like look up, I was thinking after everything else we’ve seen in this episode, I was going to like, okay. Is this just the writers making shit up again? But no, apparently the propellers on those drones are dangerous.
Ellen: Oh my gosh.
Bex: And they’re, uh, like, I just dived into Reddit and And while those little drones that you can probably pick up at, I don’t know, Radio Shack, wherever they’ve picked this one up from, probably couldn’t cut your entire finger off, it could cut it quite deeply down to the bone. And a [01:05:00] lot of the drone handlers have, you know, their hands are covered with, and their fingers are covered with cuts from where they’ve accidentally touched the propellers. So I’m going to say that drone in the face, slicing off the, the tip of your nose is probably not outside the realm of possibility.
Alice: Why are they touching the drones so much?
Like we’ve got a drone and we just put it on the ground and launch it. Like we don’t.
Bex: I’m guessing they’re like catching it or something, or when it’s coming into land. I don’t know,
Alice: ours just like lands back when it, where it took off.
Bex: I will go out on a limb here and say that most of the people in the Reddit forums are men, so take from that what you will.
Alice: Um, anyway, I did laugh at the 9-1-1 call. Uh, oh, it’s so professional because Travis calls and goes, “It’s about my girlfriend’s nose.” And Jenna in the background just goes, “I’m not [01:06:00] your girlfriend.”
Ellen: Um, he’s like, “What about her nose?” And he goes, “We can’t find it.”
Bex: So we cut back to Terri’s Tiki Room where Buck and Eddie are on their knees searching under the table for Jenna’s nose.
Alice: Oh, right. That’s what they’re doing.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Okay.
Bex: Although I really wonder is like, I know when you have amputations, when like you lose, a tooth or if you lose like a finger or something, they do try to save the, the part that’s been amputated or lost so that they can put it back on. Would it be that important? The tip of your nose? Well, I guess
Ellen: it depends how much of it was lopped off, I suppose.
Like, like a lot of your nose is cartilage, right? Like,
Bex: like the end of it’s not
Ellen: like I’m sitting here, I don’t know about you, I’m sitting here wiggling my nose right now.
Alice: I was going to say, is anyone else poking their nose yet?
Ellen: [01:07:00] I am wiggling my nose.
Bex: Yeah, I’m so poking my own nose right now. So there’s an image for you listeners, your esteemed hosts are all sitting there poking at their noses, trying to work out how much of their nose is cartilage and how much of it is just like meat.
Alice: I guess it’s just easier to stick. I don’t know. To stitch it back. It’d be, it’d be a cosmetic thing surely. If you’re a plastic surgeon,
Ellen: you don’t need the end of your nose for anything. It’s just to make it look more normal again.
Alice: Yeah. But yeah, Jenna’s, uh, like Bobby’s sort of, um, reassuring them while Chim’s trying to like keep
Bex: her
Alice: from breathing too much.
Yeah, I
Bex: think he’s putting pressure on it.
Alice: End. Genna sort of says, “It’s not that bad, right?” And Travis is like, “Yeah, they can reattach it, right?” And Bobby’s like, “Yeah, the cut’s pretty clean. Um, there’s an excellent chance you’re going to be good as new.” And Travis is like, “and even if they couldn’t, I wouldn’t care.”
And Chim [01:08:00] just goes, “Might need to up your comfort game a little bit, Romeo.”
Bex: So even though these two are surrounded by first responders, they decide they’re going to have like a deep and meaningful conversation. They’re still bickering. I guess that’s kind of payback for the 118. Normally they’re the ones discussing their personal lives over their patients this time, but it’s the other way around.
Except. The conversation that Jenna and Travis have kind of strikes a nerve with Bobby and Athena who has suddenly shown up for, I don’t know why, what reason, but she’s just, boom, and she’s appeared behind Bobby’s shoulder and she’s listening.
Alice: What’s that? There’s storylines happening?
Bex: So Travis apologizes for, um, Moving too fast. But he says, I figured if when you know something, you, you know, you double down, you go for it, but then Jenna backed off. And when she backed off, he ran [01:09:00] away and Travis says, “No, I didn’t run, you pushed me away.” Jenna said, “Yeah, because I got scared.”” And Travis says, yeah, because you didn’t want to be with me. Doesn’t that mean I’m supposed to let you go?”
And, and Bobby sort of chimes in at this point and says, “Well, maybe she didn’t want you to move on. You know, she just probably needed a minute.” And Athena says, “Well, how was she supposed to know that?”
And I’m like, oh, and thank God for Hen, who immediately knows where this is going and shuts it down. Cause apparently she’s the only one that’s allowed to discuss her personal life.
Ellen: Yeah. She like counsels both of the couples at the same time. Yes. “People aren’t afraid of what they know. They’re afraid of what they don’t know.” Um, and it’s a hard thing to hand someone else the keys to your heart and your happiness.
Alice: Just stares at Athena and Bobby.
Bex: Are you two listening? This is for your benefit. [01:10:00]
Ellen: But then you realize that losing would mean losing a part of yourself. And then they’re all sort of thinking, they’re all thinking about how, how much that’s affecting them. And then Buck like pops up in the back and goes, “Hey, I found it.”
Alice: So we go to a DVD store.
Ellen: Yeah. They still have those in, not in 2018, apparently.
Bex: Well, I thought at first that this was like a blockbuster. Yeah. But I think he’s actually buying this outright. Because I think, I thought it was a blockbust, but then you would get a wider shot and there are like CDs. There’s a music section and
Ellen: Okay, so it’s kind of like a Sanity or something.
Bex: Yeah, I’m guessing that’s kind of more
Alice: Sanities still exist?
Ellen: I doubt it.
Bex: Uh, online only, I think.
Alice: The one in my hometown is now a gelati shop.
Ellen: Oh, well there you go.
Bex: Mine’s like a dollar store. [01:11:00] Yeah.
Alice: Um, anyway. Anyway, so Chim’s in a DVD store and he’s in line when someone body slams him from behind.
Bex: Yeah, and I didn’t realize that that was intentional.
Alice: Mmm.
Bex: I really, when I was watching this episode for the very first time I thought that this guy was just clumsy. And it was actually an accident. It wasn’t until we got to the end of the episode that I went, Oh, that wasn’t an accident. That was Jason intentionally body slamming Chim so he could pick his pocket.
Um, anyway, yeah. So, cause yeah, cause it’s Jason. It’s Jason. They turn around, they apologize to each other for a bit. Jason running into him. Um, and Jason looks down at the DVD, the Chim’s holding, which is Die Hard. And he kind of calls him out on it. It’s like, that’s your idea of a Christmas movie. And yes, [01:12:00] Die Hard is a Christmas movie.
I will die on that hill. Die Hard’s a holiday. I don’t care what Bruce Willis says. It’s a Christmas movie.
Alice: Um, so, okay. I, I do just want to say how sad this scene is later. Because Chim’s finally like, Oh my God, I found someone who’s actually seen the movies I’ve seen.
Ellen: He’s bonding.
Alice: He’s bonding. Um, anyway, so they start talking about Die Hard and in retrospect.
This scene is creepy as fuck.
Bex: The movie, because it’s about a guy trying to keep his marriage together? Yeah. With terrorists. I guess I
Alice: always saw it as a guy trying to keep his marriage together with terrorists. And I was watching like with mum, couldn’t say anything because she hasn’t seen it. And I’m just like, Oh shit.
Yeah. Like he even says, I’m just trying to find a gift for my special someone. And I’m just like, Oh shit.
Bex: Yeah. And when, um, Chim says that he thinks he’s screwed things up, talking about the fiasco [01:13:00] with the Christmas tree, um, Jason says, “Your boy, McLean screwed things up with Holly, right? More than once, but he won her back in the end, didn’t he?”
And yeah, now I’m seeing the suspicious overtones and oh, wow. Yeah.
Alice: I’m like, oh shit. But when Chim gets to the front of the line and goes to buy the DVD, his wallet’s gone.
Bex: Hmm. And he does that thing where he like pats all his pockets and he’s just spinning around to look to see if it’s on the floor. Um, Jason is still sort of lurking and watching this and sort of steps up and pays for Chim’s DVD.
Alice: Yeah, probably with Chim’s money.
Bex: Do you think that actually was Chim’s money or did he use his own money?
Alice: No, I guarantee it was Chim’s money. It was Chim’s money? I reckon it was Chim’s money.
Ellen: Did he have time to get into Chim’s wallet and get it out without Chim noticing?
Alice: Was like, Oh wow, we have the same wallet.
Chim was like, wow, yeah, that’s [01:14:00] so cool. We both know Die Hard. We both have the same wallet. We both want to sleep with Maddie. Um,
Bex: but yeah, so he pays for the DVD. He offers Chim money to get out of the parking garage. And Chim says, you know, “I will, I will come back to the Christmas tree lot and I will pay you back. Um, it’s kind of a, kind of a miracle that I ran into you.” And then Jason does the worst Alan Rickman impersonation. It did. I took me until kind of the end of the sentence until I realized what the fuck he was trying to do, but he was trying to be Alan Rickman and says, “It’s Christmas. It’s the time of miracles,” which is a line from Die Hard
Ellen: that the bad guy says.
Alice: So yeah, poor Chim. Is like, yes, Buck has his bromance with Eddie. I’m finally getting a bromance with someone who’s seen Die Hard. This is the best Christmas ever.
Bex: Ah,
Poor [01:15:00] Chim.
Ellen: All right. Let’s go. Let’s leave the creepiness behind.
Bex: Speaking of bromances,
Alice: we get to the best scene of the episode.
Bex: And it is, it is the scene.
This one lives right free in my brain. Cause it’s just that I don’t understand it, but I love it so much. And when I say I don’t understand it, it’s just the why of it.
Alice: Um, so for this episode, well, the first time I saw this episode, I was like, okay, so Chim’s trying to deal with Christmas. And meanwhile, Eddie and Buck are taking their son to see Santa.
Ellen: Yes.
Bex: Because they’re, they are in some kind of outdoor plaza where there’s like a Santa’s grotto set up, um, they’re sitting on the side of a fountain because Christopher is a big kid now, he doesn’t need his father, going with him to see Santa. I think there are also privacy issues. He didn’t want his father overhearing his wish.
[01:16:00] Um, and there’s possibly also that Christopher has come to understand that Eddie is terrified of Santa and he was sparing his father’s feelings. “No, no, no, dad, it’s fine. You just wait over there with your boyfriend and I will go and do this by myself.” Yes. I love that. I love that you pointed out that this is possibly Buck being Eddie’s support person.
Alice: Yeah. Like most army vets have a support dog. No, no. Eddie has a support Buck. Who is a golden retriever
Bex: we keep joking. Um. Their conversation is kind of adorable. They sort of, they go back and forth where, um, Eddie sort of says to Buck, “You’re not going to say anything?” And Buck’s like, “No, what’s there to talk about?” And he’s like, “You know what I’m talking about.”
And Buck goes, “Oh, I figured it was none of my business.” “It’s not.” “Yeah, that’s what I’m saying.” But Eddie has this intense need to talk about it. So even though Buck’s like, we don’t need to talk about it. And he’s [01:17:00] like, no, please let me talk about it. I want to talk about it with you.
Alice: It’s the best scene ever because normally Buck’s the one that does not shut up.
Like even when Buck met Eddie and was just like, I hate this guy. He did not stop talking his ear off. He’s like, I have a problem with you. That’s who I have a problem with. Yeah. Why is your name Eddie? Why? Can I baby-trap you?
Bex: Every sentence out of Eddie’s mouth is just like a one or two word response. It’s like, yeah, it’s totally understandable. Yeah. These things happen. It’s fine.
Alice: Never said you didn’t. Totally understandable. Um, it’s, it’s great. And I just love that like with Eddie, Buck can flip the script. This. Um, the script, cause like with Maddie earlier, he was like, no, I’m going to dig for information and push all your buttons like an annoying little brother.
And this, he’s just like, yep, yep, you can say what you want.
Bex: You do you boo.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: I gotcha. [01:18:00] We do get a little bit of, um, a little bit of further information about Eddie and Shannon’s history. Um, because. Shannon has kind of implied up to this point that Eddie was kind of just as guilty in this as she was.
And here Eddie confirms it because he was saying that when Chris, he tells Buck, uh, that when Christopher was first diagnosed, he was in Afghanistan and instead of going back home, he reenlisted for a second tour. So as Buck said, he ran away. But while Eddie running away, everyone called him a hero. When Shannon ran away, everyone just called her evil.
Alice: And Buck’s actually really mature here. Buck’s like, “So now she wants back in his life. So why don’t you let her? Because it seems like she’s already back in yours.” But Eddie [01:19:00] says that’s what’s got him confused. He doesn’t know if he’d be doing it for Christopher or for him.
Bex: And Buck very knowingly says, “Sex complicates everything.”
And this point, Christopher, uh, is coming back. Buck’s the first one that notices. Um, so they get up and they go down to the bottom of the ramp where Christopher is being guided down by, um, she’s like, uh, Santa’s a little helper, kind of an elf creature, um, who’s providing assistance and Eddie sort of scoops Christopher up.
Ask him how it went, ask him what he wishes for, uh, and they sort of head off and Buck kind of watches them go. But before he can walk away, the Santa’s little elf helper says, um, “You two have an adorable son.”
Alice: And Buck looks confused for like 0. 2 of a second. And then [01:20:00] just says, “Thank you.” And bounces away.
And I’m like Ahhhh!,
Bex: I’ve said this before and I’m. I’m going to keep saying it. I’m sure that the intention was, it’s going to be too complicated to explain it. I’m going to embarrass her if I try and correct her. So I’m just going to be polite and I’m going to roll with it. But the Oliver Stark acting choices, that is not how it comes across.
He 100 percent accepts that, see, this is the other thing that makes me feral about this scene. So these two are sitting there.
Alice: On a fountain!
Bex: Talking about Eddie’s sex life with his wife, but to everybody else who’s looking at them, they immediately clock them as a queer couple. Yep. As married. As having a kid.
Yep.
Ellen: And are completely Very close together with their knees touching.
Bex: Yep. Yes. The body language. Buck is [01:21:00] all turned into Eddie.
Alice: And like, okay, so we didn’t actually mention, but like, why is Buck there once again? This is again, this is, Eddie has taken Buck to a random family event that like normally would be a family thing.
Like Eddie has, so we’ve already established Eddie has his aunt living in LA, he has his abuela living in LA. Okay.
Bex: He does have his own vehicle, so he is capable of driving himself. But again, we mentioned this sort of, when we were talking, uh, in the group chat before we recorded, did he take Buck or did Buck invite himself?
Alice: Like I can totally be like, Oh, like, “Oh, what, like what’s happening this weekend?” “Oh yeah. I’m taking Christopher to see Santa.” “Oh my God. What time should I be there? Do you want a lift?” Like, and Eddie’s like, “yeah, okay. Yep. Sure.”
Bex: It’s just, it’s very interesting that in this sort of episode, which is all about families and all about Christmas and going to [01:22:00] see Santa, which is a very family orientated event.
Eddie takes Buck! He takes Buck.
Alice: But yeah, like why? So Eddie met Buck like, okay, over two months ago, because we know that Shannon’s been back for two months. Eddie meets Buck and is like, yes, excellent. I never have to drive again because this guy has offered to drive me everywhere. So Eddie is just living his best passenger princess life.
Bex: And Christopher seems to have completely accepted Buck’s sudden, um, place in their family. And Eddie’s scared
Alice: of Santa, so he just took Buck as his emotional support garden retriever.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, it makes perfect sense.
Alice: Like, I just, And then like later, Chris will be talking to like Eddie’s abuela and be like, “Oh yeah, Buck and I went to see Santa. Like Buck took me to see Santa,” and his abuela’s like, yep, I bet he [01:23:00] did. Yep, that makes sense. She walked in earlier, there were two wine glasses on the table. Eddie wouldn’t let her see who was in the bedroom.
Bex: Don’t take Buck to be a red wine drinker though.
Ellen: He drinks red wine with Maddie though.
Alice: Yeah. Abby got him onto it, okay?
Ellen: Buck 2. 0 drinks red wine.
Bex: Okay. Buck 2. 0 drinks red wine. Fine.
Alice: Like Eddie’s whole family is like, poor Eddie is so closeted. Like it’s fine. We’ll just let him come out when he needs to. And then all of a sudden Shannon’s back in his life and they’re like, Oh, that’s. Oh, that’s not what I expected. Yeah. No, that’s.
Yep. Oh, Yeah, it’s just like, why? Like it makes sense that Chim and Buck go and get Maddie’s Christmas tree together because Chim is seeing Maddie. Like they are friends right now. They both want something more when Maddie’s ready. [01:24:00] And then Eddie immediately takes Buck on a family thing and it’s like, ah.
Bex: And like, yeah, I get that they needed, they needed like. they needed this conversation, they needed the exposition of Eddie’s history with Shannon. Um, it makes sense that he has that conversation with Buck. It was probably, it’s just one of those things where I don’t think they thought through the optics of it.
They’ve just gone, okay, we can have a scene where Eddie, Like we have, we need this thing where Christopher needs to go see Santa so that he can tell Eddie what he wishes for so that Eddie can make that wish come true. Let’s just have Buck in that scene so they can have that conversation.
Alice: But then they obviously do think about it because they have the, you two have an adorable sun converse, like, scene.
But that just, I mean, so even the writers were like, yeah, this is fucking weird. But you know what? Let’s just roll with it.
Ellen: I mean, he, he could have taken, um, he could have taken Carla with him or someone.
Alice: Literally! [01:25:00] He could have taken anyone with him and had that conversation!
Bex: But the whole, you two have an adorable son, is that like in Supernatural where people just assumed Dean and Sam were together?
And it was just
Ellen: No! That’s totally different. Yeah. I, I, I don’t know.
Alice: It’s just hilarious. It’s adorable. Buck being at random family events will never not be funny. Yes. Um, and it just keeps getting worse. Um, I had seen the, you two have an adorable son scene before I’d seen the episode. And so I was so excited when I saw it, cause it’s just, it’s so cute.
Like his little face, he’s like, thank you. Like, yeah, he is my kid. I’m just going to take credit for him.
Bex: I mentioned when, um, when I was talking to Nell and Lucia about Buddie, that, um, this is the scene that convinced me that Buddie was real, because when I started watching 9-1-1 for the first time, I knew that everyone [01:26:00] shipped Buddie, but I went into it skeptical.
Like, I’m not just going to start shipping these two idiots. I want to see what the show is doing that made y’all come to this conclusion. And then. They got to this episode and I’m just like, yeah, okay, I’m a hundred percent on board with this show. Yeah, I see it now.
Ellen: Yeah, they, like, I was not a shipper, but they grabbed my face and went, look at this!
Bex: It’s what, it’s like that thing, like, I don’t ship them, but I have eyes.
Alice: You mean like everyone with Cockles? Yeah.
Bex: Exactly.
Alice: Like, I don’t do,
Bex: don’t do RPF, but in this, in this case, yeah.
Alice: Yeah. Like came back into Destiel and I’m just like, RPF is weird. I don’t know what everyone’s doing. Oh, okay. No, they ship each other.
Yeah. Okay. Good. Yep. Right.
Bex: Okay. Yeah. The payoff for the Santa scene is not, um, [01:27:00] everyone’s squealing and kicking their heels because like Buck and Eddie forever, um, is because Eddie manages to wheedle out of Christopher what he wished for, what he asked Santa for. He says that, um, Chris asks if Santa is real, um, which is a little bit of a, a weird, um, segue, but we’ll go with it.
Um, and Christopher’s kind of doubting Santa’s abilities. Cause he said that when Eddie was in Afghanistan, he wished, um, That he told, he wished on Santa, like he told Santa that what he wanted for Christmas was for Eddie to come home. And he did. So he’s made a similar wish this year. He’s asked Santa, he’s wished for his mother to come home.
And I guess he’s wanting to make sure that Santa is real so that, um, that wish will come true. And Eddie’s just like, uh, shit. “Okay, I’m sure, Santa will try, I’m sure that he [01:28:00] will try.” And that sign that he was talking about, the, the, the sign that it was time for him to let Shannon back into their life, I think this is it.
Ellen: Mm hmm. Yes, okay, well, everyone get their tissues ready because the next scene is
Bex: Oh my god.
Ellen: tugs at the heartstrings.
Bex: Uh, this would be a miracle if I, if I can get through this without crying just talking about it. Okay, here we go
Ellen: So there’s a girl who is like a young girl who’s on a phone like facetiming her dad who is deployed to somewhere where it is looks like it’s daylight, but he’s actually Anyway, he’s on the other end of the phone at the moment. Um, and she says, she’s sounds like they’re about to have a performance at school. And she says, it’s okay for him to FaceTime during the performance so he can see it.
And what time will it be over there in half an hour? [01:29:00] Um, and dad’s like, Oh, I don’t care what time it is. I won’t be missing out on the, on my little girl’s first solo. So. The girl says that “I miss you daddy. It’s been so long.” It’s like, Oh my God. Um, so the dad is actually standing in a bus on his phone. Um, the bus is in America.
Um, he’s not, he’s on his way home and he’s on his way to see her in person. And one of there’s a, like a lady sitting on the bus behind him and she leans over and ask him if he’s going to surprise his daughter.
Bex: Yeah. Cause he’s had this FaceTime conversation without earbuds in. Um, he’s just standing in the middle of the bus talking to his phone.
So of course everybody in the bus knows about it now. Like,
Alice: he’s also in uniform. I’m pretty sure.
Bex: Yeah. Yeah. He’s in, um, oh, which uniform? He’s in his service uniform. So, he’s, he kind of stands out.
Ellen: So he tells this lady that he’s been traveling for [01:30:00] 30 hours straight to get here. Jeep, Humvee, APV, helicopter, 737, and now a bus.
Bex: And my first question was, dude, why didn’t you just take a taxi from the airport? Yeah. Cause like the, the Jeep, the Humvee, the APV, the helicopter, that’s all sort of like just to get him from wherever he was stationed to an airport so that he could fly back to the States. But then yeah, you get in a cab.
And you take a cab directly to the school, you don’t worry about getting on a bus because he’s worried about missing a connection. I’m like, sir, if you’re that worried about missing a connection, you just take a direct cab. But then for the drama, like it wouldn’t have, we needed him to be on a bus for the next part to happen.
Um, because the next part that happens is that our, um, our Marine sees one of the fellow passengers, uh, steal a wallet. And he confronts the pickpocket. This part was weird. Like
Ellen: we, why did we need this pickpocket [01:31:00] part?
Bex: Just to really remind everyone that pickpocketing exists. I think it’s also just to show what a standup is.
I don’t know what kind of guy this Marine was, because, you know, this guy is a thief, and by virtue of that he’s not a good person, yet this Marine goes out of his way to keep him alive, and is concerned for his well being.
Ellen: Oh, the guy who got hurt was, okay, that makes more sense. Yeah! Alright, okay, I didn’t realize it was the same guy.
Bex: Yeah, the same guy. Um, we do get, we do get a fun exchange where he confronts the thief and the thief just sort of turns around and goes like, “Piss off, Top Gun.” And in my head I’ve going, Top Gun is Navy. This guy’s a Marine. And then the, the Marine goes, um, “That’s the Navy, son. I’m a Marine.” Like, yes. Okay.
Alice: So I’ve never actually seen Top Gun.
Like I’ve heard a lot about Top Gun, but I’ve never seen Top Gun. I thought Top Gun was Air Force this entire time.
Bex: No, they’re Navy pilots. Cause they’re the pilots on the, The ships. [01:32:00]
Alice: Had no idea. Like my best friend was in the Navy. I had no idea that Top Gun was Navy. So now I’m going to have to call her tomorrow and be like, so have you seen Top Gun?
And she’ll probably give me a whole rundown on it.
Bex: I was forced to sit through Top Gun. It’s like an hour or something that I need of my life back, but at least now I can, I can get the references. Although I was capable of getting the references without having seen the movie. I just don’t like Tom Cruise.
Alice: Yeah, no, um, I just know that I’ve got a friend that’s always talking about the gay undertones, so.
Bex: Yeah, no, that tracks. Um, but to continue this scene, um, the Marine tells our thief, “Just give that man his wallet back and I won’t call the cops.” And as they’re struggling, um, the bus goes through an intersection, a truck blows through the cross intersection and slams into the side of the bus.
Alice: So I, [01:33:00] I’m watching this episode and while they’re like bickering about the wallet. No, I think even before that, I think like when they were. When he was doing the FaceTiming. Mom’s like, Oh, this bus is going to crash. And I’m like, yes, I see you’re already well versed in the let’s make us, let’s make you love this character before we attempt to kill them.
Um, that is 9-1-1. Because mom is, yeah, immediate, like she wasn’t even watching. She’s like half watching the show while I’m trying to like take notes and she’s just like, Oh, this bus is going to crash. Um, and then as soon as the bus crashed, she’s just like, I told you this bus was going to crash. I’m like, yeah, mom, I’ve seen it before.
Like, um, but also, yeah, like.
Bex: Fortunately for our Marine, um, he was not injured in this crash. Um, but he has for some reason, probably just cause he’s a really good guy, hauled the pick pocket out of the wreckage quite a ways away from the bus. [01:34:00] Um, and. His carotid artery has been clipped. And so this guy’s like field medic training has taught him to stick his finger in and hold the carotid artery closed.
So the guy doesn’t bleed out.
Ellen: He’s covered in this guy’s blood. Like it’s all over him.
Alice: Like one half of him is just, yeah, it’s just red.
Bex: As the 118 show up, the, um, the LAPD officer who’s in charge of the scene says that it’s mostly minor injuries, except for that guy.
Like, everybody else is fine, but this, this poor guy managed to get glass in the neck because they need to hold the Marine up a little bit longer.
Ellen: I’m surprised everyone is okay. Cause the bus is like on its side, like, and buses don’t have seatbelts, so.
Bex: They were both standing. They both were thrown around. They both should be, you know, pretty banged up at this point.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: But that doesn’t work for the story.
Ellen: No, everyone else is okay.
Bex: Yeah. Yes. So they can focus on [01:35:00] the Marine and the, um, the pickpocket and Eddie immediately connects with this guy, you know, veteran to veteran.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. They have a little, um, “Oh, where were you?” You know, “Leatherneck”. Uh, Eddie says he was at Bagram, which was in Afghanistan and he goes “Army?” And he’s like, “Uh huh”. And then the other guy goes, “Nobody’s perfect.”
But they put, they sort of do switcheroo and put pressure on the, on the guy’s neck. Um, and he’s going to be okay. And then they say, “Thanks for your service. See you around.” And the guy runs back to the bus to get his bag.
Bex: Which is literally the, which, why are they letting him back onto the bus? Why is nobody stopping him?
Um, and his pack is like very conveniently right [01:36:00] near the window of, of where he, um, he leans in to grab his pack. Um, He goes to check his phone and his phone is smashed. So A, he apparently can’t check what time it is. And B, he’s kind of, I guess, concluded at this point that he’s not going to make it in time.
So he was hanging out for that FaceTime and now that’s not even going to be a possibility. But the, there was a woman on the bus who has sort of stuck around after this and she’s clued the 118 into what’s going on. I guess, kind of asked them, like, this guy needs to get to. That needs to get somewhere.
Can you help him? And Bobby and Eddie are like, yes. We’re on it. We got him.
Ellen: Yeah, so they call him over and, uh, he gets in the truck with them.
Bex: Which truck, Bex? Uh, they’re in an, they’re in an engine truck. Um, but I was more, uh, more concentrating on the fact that Eddie is literally helping this guy get undressed and [01:37:00] dressed again.
Ellen: And Eddie’s helping him get changed.
Bex: Yes,
Ellen: absolutely. He even holds his boot for him.
Bex: Yes. Which I guess it’s because, you know, it’s a, it’s a small space in the back. So the guy’s got to like, get his boot up and he’s got to put it somewhere. So Eddie’s just like, “Just put it in my lap. That’s fine.”
Alice: I mean, to be fair, like in the army, you don’t like, there’s no privacy.
Ellen: I, he just seems unusually invested in this.
Bex: So like, Buck’s, Buck’s going to cry and, and I’m going to cry and everyone’s going to cry.
Alice: Buck’s, like those soldier reunion videos on YouTube always get me.
Bex: Yeah. Um, so the, um, in the auditorium, the, the Sergeant’s daughter has come out on stage and has started, she has the solo for, “I’ll be home for Christmas”, which, you know, just,
Ellen: that’s a sad one to start with.
Bex: But it, it makes. [01:38:00] Perfect sense in this scene. And so she’s singing this beautifully and in the, we’re cutting back and forth between her singing this and the engine trucks screaming through intersections, lights and sirens going, horn blaring, doing their utmost to get.
Ellen: Yeah, they’re, they’re not allowed to do that, if it’s not an emergency.
Alice: Um, it’s clearly an emergency.
Bex: It’s very much an emergency.
Alice: A marine needs to get to his daughter.
Ellen: I mean, Bobby is there, so he’s probably allowed to give the authorization, I guess, but
Bex: I don’t know. But they, they find, they arrive and the sergeant literally flies out of the truck and just bolts towards the school and,
Alice: but so do Eddie and Buck and Bobby.
It’s so cute!
Bex: Buck and Eddie sort of clamber out of the truck and they’re like, yeah guys, come on, let’s go. Um, and then just bouncing after them. It’s so cute. The poor drivers, just like I, I guess I’ll stay here then. Yeah, I don’t get to come. Okay. Fine. ,
Alice: Not part of the cool kids, I’ll just,
Bex: Nope. [01:39:00] And so we keep cutting backwards and forwards between them sort of sprinting down the school hallway and his daughter, uh, the sergeant’s daughter on stage singing.
They kind of burst into the auditorium and it really is a burst. You see the doors like fly open. They’re not trying to be subtle at all, which would have been so damn disruptive. If that had happened in real life, it
Alice: would have been so funny if his daughter wasn’t on stage as well. Like it was someone else’s daughter.
Like she, they, they just missed her. Yeah.
Bex: But that’s not the show that we’re watching. The show that we’re watching, they get there, even though they, um, just tumble into the auditorium, nobody is paying them any attention. Everyone is focused on the little girl on stage who sees her father stops singing and immediately runs off stage into his arms.
And his wife is in the audience and she sees her daughter, uh, stop singing. And she looks to see [01:40:00] what’s going on and then she’s running and everyone’s hugging and the choir keeps singing, choir keeps singing the, I’ll be home for Christmas and Buck is sobbing. And I’m sobbing.
Ellen: And even Eddie’s crying.
He’s got tears, big tears in his eyes.
Alice: Buck’s the cutest thing ever.
Bex: But I think Eddie’s crying for other reasons. Cause he’s, he’s kind of, focused a lot more on the sergeant and his wife. And I think he’s kind of thinking about him being in that position and coming home to, to Shannon and Christopher.
It’s so, Hey, I’m not crying. Yay.
Alice: Proud of you.
Bex: It was a very sweet scene.
Alice: It was, it was that proper, like Christmas miracle scene.
Bex: Yes. So we get a commercial to, um, to compose ourselves. And when we return, we’re at the Grant house and Nat King Cole is playing. [01:41:00] So Athena gets her Nat King Cole.
Ellen: And she’s a bit surprised to see Bobby there.
Uh, she thought she’d scared him off, but Bobby says, “You were speaking from your heart, just something I love about you. And brings me to this. Merry Christmas.” And he hands her a box. Um, And she says, “You don’t want to wait till morning?” And Bobby’s like, “I don’t want to wait another minute.” And he looks really weirdly intense.
She’s like, okay.
Bex: It’s a, it’s a, it’s a square box, uh, with one of those, um, sticky bows on top, but it’s very jewelry box looking, even though it’s perfectly square. It’s, it’s still screams kind of jewelry box. Yeah. But not like it’s big square. It’s not like one of those tiny ring sized box. It’s like, I don’t know, maybe bracelet size.
Alice: Yeah,
Bex: but it’s not jewelry. It’s, well, it’s kind of, I don’t know. He, he gave her a key, he gave her a fancy key.
Alice: I don’t know what the key is for
Bex: Yeah. And, but [01:42:00] it’s, I don’t think that’s a functional key though.
Ellen: It’s a pretty key.
Bex: It’s a, it’s a very decorative key on a key ring. But I don’t think it, it’s not like he gave her a literal key to his apartment or something.
But it doesn’t matter because that’s not the real present. Because while Athena is kind of cooing over this shiny silver key, Bobby gets down on one knee and whips out a diamond ring.
Ellen: Yeah. And I’m like, wait a minute, didn’t they only just get together?
Alice: I don’t want to take the next step. Well, it’s been more than two months.
Ellen: It’s been a few months now, but it feels like it’s just the other day.
Bex: But yeah, but this goes back to, you know, Hens, Hens, kind of words of wisdoms earlier, Bobby’s taken that and interpreted it well, you know, I’m just going to skip the whole moving in thing. We’re just going to go straight to getting married.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Like if I’m going to move in, I’m going to move in properly.
Alice: So yeah, “I don’t want to take the next step. I want to take every step with you for the rest of our lives. [01:43:00] Marry me, Athena.” It’s just kind of, that’s kind of sweet.
Ellen: It is sweet. And Athena’s just like, kind of shocked. She’s like, what? I’m just thinking of that meme with the minion where it’s like, what?
Anyway, um, “life’s fleeting and it’s precious. And when you find happiness and you find somebody who fills your heart and gives you hope for the future,” and Athena’s just like, “Bobby, Bobby, shut up.”
Bex: yeah, Ellen is not exaggerating just to get through this. That is literally how fast Bobby is talking in his like panic to try and get this speech out.
Um, But Athena eventually just slaps her hand over his mouth to shut him up. So she can answer the question, which is with a resounding yes.
Ellen: You and Bobby’s like a bit, a little bit shocked about this. He’s like, Oh, you really said yes. It’s a christmas miracle.
Bex: Maybe he thought if he kept talking he would talk her into it.
Ellen: Yeah, maybe. [01:44:00] He was just having a full on panic attack and couldn’t stop.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: That’s so sweet though. It is.
Ellen: So, it’s Christmas morning. Uh, Christopher wakes up.
Bex: No, no, no, Christopher’s been awake.
Ellen: He’s ready. Christopher’s awake. He’s ready for it to be Christmas.
Bex: Cause I, I started typing the notes and like Christopher wakes up, has like the camera pans up Christopher, he’s asleep in his bed and like the camera pans up and then Christopher’s eyes are wide open.
And they’re just fixed on his alarm clock, which is at five 59. And as soon as it gets to six, he’s up. He’s like, dad, wake up. It’s Christmas.
Alice: Yeah. Like mom was watching this and she’s like, clearly mom was like full of nostalgia from when we were kids. Yes. Cause she was just like, yeah, clearly someone told that kid that he, like, it’s not morning until 6am.
Bex: You cannot get, I, I, I empathize with this scene so much. Like last Christmas I literally bought my [01:45:00] kids digital clocks as like their Christmas Eve present. And it was like, Merry Christmas Eve. Here’s a digital alarm clock. You are not allowed to come in and get me until it is 6 a. m.
Alice: Yeah,
Bex: it didn’t work.
So bless Christopher for actually listening to Eddie, but yes, I think that’s something that every parent has, um, has lived through,
but the irony of Christopher waiting until 6 a. m. is that. Eddie is obviously, clearly has been up for hours beforehand because when Christopher comes out, the living room is empty, but there is a wrapping paper arrow taped to the floor pointing to, I’m guessing, the front door.
And so when Christopher goes out the front door to the front yard, there is a giant, I’m going to say 16 foot, 20 foot, 16 foot tree, fully decorated on the front yard, massive boxes around it. Um, [01:46:00] and Shannon.
Alice: Yeah. Shannon appears from behind the tree
Bex: and Christopher loses his shit.
Ellen: And this is where I cry.
Alice: “Mommy, mommy, mommy.”
Ellen: i, I, I didn’t, wasn’t full on sobbing at the other one, but this is the one that made me spill over.
Bex: Um, Shannon’s also crying.
Ellen: Along with Eddie, yeah.
Bex: And Eddie’s in the background, and he’s also like, trying not to cry. Trying really hard to fight back those tears. But he, I think he gives in in the end, and he goes and joins the family hug.
Yeah.
Alice: And Christopher goes, I knew Santa could do it again.
Bex: Aww. So it’s obviously Christmas. So then we’re going to go back to the Grant household, um, where they’re having Christmas lunch and Hen and Karen have been invited over for Christmas lunch. Not sure where Denny is. I’m sure he’s running around with Harry somewhere.
Maybe they’re out with the go the go [01:47:00] cart. Probably down the street. Yeah. Yep. Um, while Karen is cooing over Athena’s ring and the size of the diamond. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. She offers to help carry it.
Cause that thing looks heavy. Yeah. But, um,
Alice: Bobby comes. Yeah. It’s a promise to Athena and her family for a lifetime of happiness, love, and all the home cooked meals you can eat.
Bex: And Athena’s are like, yeah, that’s sweet, but it’s also a big damn diamond.
Ellen: Uh,
Bex: and then doorbell rings.
Ellen: Yeah. And it’s Buck. I think they just invited all of their workmates over for Christmas lunch, which is very sweet.
No other friends.
Alice: And, um, Buck says he brought Christmas and he brought congratulations and he’s got a carton of eggnog and a bottle of champagne.
Bex: Athena says, Oh, you’re always welcome. And I am just [01:48:00] flashed back to that scene with Glenn and I’m going, is that your, yes, you are actually always welcome?
Or are you just saying that because that’s the polite thing to say?
Alice: She’s got to be nice to her stepson.
Bex: Yeah, apparently, but she doesn’t look like she’s happy about it. Or maybe that’s just me reading into it.
Ellen: She’s got to be careful saying that kind of thing to Buck because he will show up and then not leave.
Like she’s got a much bigger house. She could probably. give him a room to stay in, I guess, but you know, he will do that.
Alice: The next morning he’s asleep on the couch and she’s just like, what the fuck? Bobby’s like, I told you not to tell him he was always welcome.
Bex: He’s like a vampire. You invited him once.
He’s always going to come in. Uh, but apparently Buck was not the only Buckley invited. Maddie was also invited, but
Alice: Does this mean Chim wasn’t invited? Because Athena asks about Maddie but she doesn’t ask about Chim.
Bex: I guess, why would she ask Buck about Chim? I’m assuming that he was also [01:49:00] invited, but it’s just, they’re, they’re dealing, he’s already, um, regretfully declined.
Yeah. Um, because he has gone over to Maddie’s house. with Die Hard and Chinese food. And tidings of great joy, as he tells her.
Alice: So Maddie apologizes about the tree and Chim says Christmas is supposed to be about feeling safe and warm with the people you care about. That’s the gift. What it’s wrapped in doesn’t matter, who needs a tree.
And Maddie’s like, um, turns out, I do. and yeah the the noble fir that Chim picked out is in the corner of Maddie’s living room and it’s covered in lights and decorations. And Maddie’s like, “I didn’t steal it. Someone left it on the sidewalk.”
Bex: Like, who does that? Who just leaves trees on sidewalks? So yeah, it’s the same one.
And she, she, she, [01:50:00] um, She starts apologizing. She’s like, I didn’t have a lot of time. It’s not perfect and Chim’s just immediately “It doesn’t need to be perfect. It’s beautiful,” and you can just see her start to relax a little bit
Ellen: And he ain’t looking at the tree when he says that
Bex: No, I know, but she doesn’t know that because she’s standing in front of him slightly.
She just thinks that he’s talking about the tree and, um, we, we understand why in a second because she talks about how Christmas with Doug was always about, it was performance. Everything had to be perfect with him. Um, so for Chim to say that. It doesn’t have to be perfect and it’s beautiful just the way it is.
That’s so diametrically opposed to what she’s been used to for the last couple of years that I think that’s like, it’s no wonder she’s falls in love with him.
Alice: Um, and she says last year was her worst Christmas ever, but maybe also her best, cause [01:51:00] that’s the day she decided to leave and then we,
Bex: We get a flashback to last Christmas and not last Christmas in the fun Wham way, but last Christmas.
Ellen: In the un fun Wham way.
Bex: In the un, yeah, the um, so
Ellen: The whump way.
Alice: Wham ageddon way.
Bex: Um, so the Christmas tree is on the ground. And there are ornaments scattered around it and they’re all smashed and broken. And Maddie is on her hands and knees, I guess, trying to find what she can salvage and she has blood on her face.
Alice: The angel on the top of the tree is completely broken, but there is a photo card of Buck at the 118 in a Santa hat. And it’s got happy holidays across the top.
Bex: And she was pretty composed up until then, [01:52:00] but she starts crying when she sees Buck’s face.
Ellen: Maybe that’s when she decided to leave. She’s like, no, I need to go and see my bro.
Bex: Yeah. I think I definitely think that that was a seminal moment for her. Um, then we hear footsteps coming and she immediately shoves the photocard away. And starts looking very afraid. And a hand sort of reaches into frame and cups Maddie’s face. And She says, “Doug,” so we’ve identified that this is Doug.
He says, “I know you tried so hard, it just wasn’t right.” And then the camera cuts, so we get to see Doug. And dun dun dun, it’s Jason Bailey. Or, Doug. Jason is Doug, however you want to look at it.
Ellen: I just really wish that had been a surprise. It was a great reveal.
Bex: I was like, holy shit. It was so, it was, it was, it was a holy shit moment.
It really was. [01:53:00] Yeah. Watching that live. But, um, the, he tells her it wasn’t perfect. But you’ll get it right someday. You will get it right. And then we just to, just to like hammer in the message that Jason is Doug and Doug is Jason.
Alice: Um, yeah, we cut to like the front of Maddie’s apartment and we pan down to a car that’s parked out the front and, and Doug is in the car, the driver is staring at the entrance.
And it’s Doug,
Bex: and then just, just, just to, you know, really make sure that everyone on the, everyone on the audience is in the same page. Um, he pulls out a wallet from like the center console and flips it open and it’s Chim’s wallet.
Alice: Yeah. Um, so we, we were like, how, how did he get Maddie’s address from Chimney’s wallet?
Bex: But then he’s just been following Chim.
Alice: So [01:54:00] he, yeah, he has literally just gone to Chimney’s address. On the, like, on his license and then fo like the stalking is creepy as fuck.
Bex: Mm. So I understand that he, like his, he followed Chim from like either the video store or he got his wallet and then followed, found his address and followed him from his house to Maddie’s.
But why was he at the Christmas tree farm? Yeah. How did he know, know Chim was, who was he following to get to the Christmas tree farm? Like, because he, he probably. Like, did he know who Chim was beforehand?
Ellen: He might have been following Buck, because Buck’s kind of famous.
Alice: But why wouldn’t he just keep following Buck?
Ellen: To find where Maddie is.
Alice: No, no, why wouldn’t he just keep, like,
Bex: why did he have to insert himself into Chim’s life?
Alice: Oh, because Buck knows what he looks like, because Buck knows Doug.
Ellen: Ah. And also, maybe if he’d been following them [01:55:00] closely enough, he might have worked out that Chim was. Well, he just, Chim doesn’t really talk about Maddie to Buck at all.
Alice: But, but, but Buck lives with Maddie, so like, why didn’t he just follow Buck from a distance? I, see,
Ellen: it’s more dramatic if he follows Chim.
Bex: Yeah, it, the drama, the drama of the, the Christmas Miracle Good Samaritan turning out to be the evil husband, um, for the, the drama is, is much, is a much better story.
But yeah, you really can’t think about how Doug got to be that Christmas miracle at the Christmas farm, because it does not make sense. And if he’s following Chim, why does he need Chim’s wallet? Why can’t he just literally keep following him? Yeah. Or like stick a tracker on his car or something.
Ellen: Well if he’s managed to follow him all the way from his house to Maddie’s house
Bex: Yeah.
Then he’s following him from the Christmas tree [01:56:00] farm to the video store.
Ellen: Oh, I don’t know.
Bex: It’s, I know. Really? No, it’s very dramatic. It’s very effective. It’s very nonsensical. But yeah, that, that is where the episode ends with Doug sitting outside Maddie’s apartment, clearly knowing that that is Maddie’s apartment and that Chim is in there with Maddie.
And then the show goes on hiatus for four months.
Ellen: It’s just so rough.
Bex: Yeah. It’s like,
Merry Christmas, everyone. We’re going to let you just stew on the fact that Maddie’s abusive husband has found her. Yeah.
Alice: And, um, speaking of making everyone stew on the fact, uh, we are also taking a break, um, only for a week though, not for four months.
Okay.
Ellen: Yes. Yes. I’m going on holidays. But no, we’re not going to make everyone wait for four months.
Alice: We’re not that mean. No.
Ellen: Uh, but I thought this episode was great. Like it had, I mean, now that we’ve scrutinized it a bit more closely, [01:57:00] some of the stuff in it was kind of ridiculous, but it was very,
Bex: some of it was still really, really sweet.
And I’m perfectly willing with this episode. So just, I still think I’m. Not, I’m, I’m going to laugh at the, the packing center scene cause that particular emergency cause that one is just ridiculous. But the rest of the episode is really sweet and I’m perfectly willing to switch my brain off and just enjoy it.
It is one of my favorite episodes.
Alice: It was also interesting watching this episode with mum who, like, this is literally the second episode she’s watched of the show ever. Um, cause she notices, like, she’s not watching it through the Buddie lens, so she doesn’t really care. So, like, she loves Athena, and, like, we were talking about Athena’s house, cause she’s like, oh, Athena’s house is beautiful, and I’m like, yeah, like, the set design’s actually awesome, because Michael’s an architect.
Yeah. Mm hmm. [01:58:00]
And so, they actually have her house, like, gorgeous, because it was clearly designed by an architect.
But yeah, it’s just funny how like people who aren’t just watching it through a Buddie lens are noticing like other parts of the show.
Ellen: We’re not just not that interested in some of the other stuff.
It’s like, hurry up, get to the part of the fountain.
Bex: Yes. Let me screech about my boys.
Alice: That’s it. Like we all know why we’re here.
Ellen: All right. Well, what do we have to look forward to next time?
Bex: Uh, next time, Bobby meets Athena’s parents.
Ellen: Oh. Yes. Yeah, that’s probably important if they’re gonna get hitched.
Bex: So, uh, the summary.
Let’s see how truthful this is. Bobby meets Athena’s parents for the first time, and Maddie attempts to end her marriage for good, causing Doug, guest star Brian [01:59:00] Hallisey, who, as we’ve mentioned previously, is Jennifer Love Hewitt’s real life husband, to insinuate himself even deeper into Chimney’s life.
Oh, that’s not a good way to describe it. Meanwhile, a tanker carrying a tiger shark crashes on the freeway and a gas leak in a plastic surgeon’s office happens mid surgery.
Ellen: Oh God.
Bex: That one’s actually pretty funny.
Um, triggers for that episode, we’ve got children at threat, we have domestic violence, um, we have plastic surgery. We have, it’s described as gore, but I, I would not specifically call it gore because I think when I’m saying gore, I’m talking about like femoral arteries, carotid arteries, blood gushing like a fountain.
This is more just like medical procedure that was interrupted mid procedure and we see the results of the procedure that was. [02:00:00] Oh, okay. Paused. Um, we have kidnapping, we have stabbing, which is where we’re going to get some gore. Um, we have, they didn’t include it in this list, but I’m going to add it. We have a shark attack.
Alice: We do have a shark attack.
Bex: Yeah. But not kind of in the way that you’re thinking about it, but it technically, it is a shark attack. Okay. Yeah.
Ellen: Excellent. Well, um, What can we say about this episode?
Bex: Merry Christmas?
Alice: Merry Christmas. We’re, we’re it’s September.
Bex: Um, maybe we should have timed this. So we did it in July.
So it could have been Christmas in July.
Ellen: Well, the funny thing is that as we were watching this particular episode, it’s like, I know this is going to be very antipodean, um, sentiment here, but it was, it’s really hot here at the moment. It’s freaking winter.
Bex: Yeah. It’s really hot where you are. It’s not really hot where I am.
Alice: Yeah. I’ve got like wind and rain.
Ellen: Well, I’m [02:01:00] watching this and all the Christmas music is playing. And I’m like, this feels way too much like Christmas. And it is August. Like, this is weird what’s going on here. But yeah, if you, um, if you enjoyed this episode as much as we did, or, you know, have any comments,
Bex: less than we did?
Ellen: Less than if you hated this episode,
Alice: the same as we did, if you enjoyed, didn’t enjoy, or
Bex: have any thoughts about this episode.
Alice: Like I, if you also screamed at the fountain scene and yeah, yeah. Um, if you’re also a passenger princess, uh, right.
Ellen: Uh, yeah. Leave us a comment on, on thatweewooshow. com or on Spotify, or you can get in touch with us through our social medias, which are all at thatweewooshow. Um, and you can, and don’t forget, you can subscribe to our podcast on YouTube now as well. If that’s the way that you listen to [02:02:00] podcasts, thanks everyone for listening and we’ll catch up with you in two weeks time for episode 11, which is called “New Beginnings”.
See you then.
Bex: Bye.
Alice: Bye.
Ellen: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real 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]
Ellen: Before anyone turns off their recording. Um, I’m just going to say this for the outtakes. Um, if I want to know if anyone actually listens to the outtakes. So if you are [02:03:00] listening to this, just, just put, go on social media on our, on our Twitter or whatever, and just say, I’m listening or something, just say something really like vague,
Bex: If you are listening to this, go find us on Twitter, Instagram, TikTok at ThatWeWooShow, and leave us a comment of a fire engine emoji.
Ellen: A fire engine emoji, I like that.
Bex: Let’s see how many fire engine emojis we can get on our feed to see who is listening. All the way to the end of the episode.
Ellen: Because if you’re not like, obviously you’re not hearing this, but you’re also missing out on some of our best stuff, you know,
Alice: like how Hugh Jackman is actually uncle coded
Bex: or my Capybara song.
Ellen: Yeah. I mean, you know, it’s all good fun. Um,
Alice: I’m sure the random barking from my dogs.
Ellen: I don’t know if I’ve got any random barking on there yet, but you know, this time.
Alice: Oh, this episode, [02:04:00] well, Jesus Christ. Fenix literally tried to crawl, climb a wall.
Ellen: Oh dear.
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