2.18: This Life We Choose

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 18 of the second season of 9-1-1, titled “This life We Choose”.

The first responders suspect a serial bomber is on the loose after two mail bombs go off; Buck faces a life or death situation.

Content warnings for episode 2.18:

a vehicle accident due to an explosion, gore in the way of partial scalping, a maggot in someone’s face, children at threat due to serial bomber, clueless fashion analysis.

Listen here:

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Our intro music is “Tensions” by Northern Points.

As mentioned in the episode:

• icecream before dinner by cloudydaisies (58k words, rated T, post-season 7)
• Fire Dept Chronicles for this episode (via Tiktok)

Episode Transcript

Maddie: [00:00:00] 9-1-1, what’s your emergency?

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

Alice: I’m Alice.

Ellen: And I’m Ellen.

Bex: And a special welcome to the discussion of the season two finale. We finally made it to the end of season two.

Ellen: Oh my god, it’s been so long and also so little.

Alice: Chim bled out for weeks.

Ellen: Yeah, we made it though.

Alice: There was an earthquake at one stage.

Bex: That feels like so long ago.

Thank you to everyone who has been listening to our season two episodes, um, and who have shared our episodes, [00:01:00] shared our social media posts, done everything that they could to get word about our little podcast out. We do appreciate it. If you’re listening to this episode, um, and you have thoughts on season two, I believe that we will have already recorded our season two wrap up episode.

However, we would still love to hear your thoughts on 9-1-1’s season two. So please get in touch with us in the myriad of different ways that you can get in touch with us and let us know what you thought of Season 2. Did you like it compared to Season 1? Did it make you laugh? Did it make you cry? What were your favourite parts?

And also, if you’re feeling in a sharing mood, um, let us know your thoughts about That Wee Woo show’s Season 2. Did we make you laugh? Did we make you cry? Did we make you want to punch something uncontrollably? We’d love to know what you think [00:02:00] about us and the podcast that we are sending to your ears every week.

So same, you can reach out to us on any of our social media platforms, or you can email us, or you can use the contact page on our website. We will go through all the ways that you can do that at the end of the episode, but we’d love to hear your thoughts both on ABC’s 9-1-1 Season 2 and That Wee Woo Show’s Season 2.

So let’s get into it. Alice, what happened last week on 9-1-1?

Alice: Ah, so last week on 9-1-1, the 118 responded to a call about a mail bomb. But then Shannon died and everything sucked.

Bex: Yeah, that’s accurate.

Ellen: That’s pretty much it, yeah.

Alice: Yes.

Ellen: Yeah, as we, as we, as I started watching this episode, I was fully expecting like there to be a bit more sadness about that, but we don’t really get much at all.

Alice: Yeah, no, they, they move on from Shannon very [00:03:00] quickly and I’m still mad about it.

Ellen: Yeah, poor Shannon. Justice for Shannon.

Bex: Hashtag justice for Shannon.

Alice: We know we’re several years late, but justice for Shannon.

Bex: Justice never dies. Yes.

Ellen: Okay, so this episode is episode 18, the season two finale titled “This Life We Choose”, which aired on May 13th, uh, 2019.

The 118 responds to calls from a stunt driver caught in a hairy situation. You were right about the puns in this, uh, this summary. A teenage social influencer who is bugging out and the city is on high alert after two mail bombs go off. Meanwhile, Eddie’s family comes to town and Buck faces a life or death situation.

And the triggers included for this episode are a vehicle, a car accident due to a bomb. We have [00:04:00] gore in the way of partial scalping. Actually, this episode just brings all the disgusting gore. There were multiple times when I was like, okay, I’m not watching. I. covering my eyes. Uh, we have a maggot in someone’s face.

Like, seriously, this is gross. And we have, um, children who are at threat due to the serial bomber. So, where do we begin with this?

Alice: Uh, we start with a news broadcast.

Ellen: Yeah, and it’s not Taylor.

Bex: Well, no, Taylor’s not the anchor. She’s just the, um, the roving reporter, although she doesn’t appear to be doing much reporting much at all.

It’s always Dwight on the, on the, um, the couch, table, chair, wherever he is. Desk! I would have got through every other piece of furniture in my room before I got there, but yes, desk. It is always Dwight [00:05:00] behind the desk when it comes to reporting. But yes, Dwight is telling us that Angelinos are waking up, um, a little bit on edge after a second package bomb has exploded.

And we get a little bit of exposition about the previous victims. The, the woman that we saw in the previous episode, we actually get her name now. She was Miranda, and she was a criminal defense attorney. And the second victim is a retired insurance adjuster.

Alice: Yeah, and he’s clinging to life.

Bex: And Dwight tells us, Dwight says that the authorities are urging the public to stay vigilant, and if you see something, say something.

Which triggers

Alice: Come on and party tonight.

Bex: Which triggers a cascade of idiotic calls to 9-1-1 that Maddie and [00:06:00] Josh and Linda have to handle.

Ellen: Oh, yeah, they do a great shot panning across the dispatch center. First, Linda is on the phone and she says, “If the truck’s parked in a driveway with the hazards on, it’s probably just making a delivery.”

And then we kind of pull back and Josh is at the next station, And he says, “No, having a foreign sounding name is not reason enough to send the police out to investigate your neighbors,” which is slightly a little bit topical after, anyway, let’s not go into that.

Bex: It was very much something that you would expect that, Oh my God, explosions are going off, let’s be racist about it. Yeah.

Alice: Of course. Yeah.

Bex: And then poor old Maddie, I think Maddie gets the best call of them. She has a woman who claims that she has the bomber pinned down because she caught him trying to put a package on her doorstep.

Alice: [00:07:00] Yeah, there’s a dog barking the entire like time in the background here, and Maddie’s like, “Are you being attacked by a dog?”

And the lady’s like, “no, that’s my dog. We’ve got the bomber pinned down.” Um, yeah, no, it’s the mailman.

Bex: That’s not her mailman!

Ellen: Yeah, the guy’s like, “I’m the mailman!”

Alice: Um, her mailman is apparently out with, uh, was it foot surgery?

Bex: Yeah, he had foot surgery. I love that she’s immediately just switched from, um, not only is this guy the, the mad bomber, but he also did something to Larry.

Ellen: Yeah. I, I don’t know, she must have, like, the phone on, um, on speaker or something, because we can hear clearly the conversation that she’s having with this man.

Bex: I think that the people of Los Angeles just have amazing phones that no matter what, you can pick up everything through the phones.

Alice: Yeah, I think that’s actually the opposite of, I think they’re really terrible phones, because like, [00:08:00] phones these days have, um, like, background, you know, Noise.

Ellen: Yeah, noise cancellation type thing?

Alice: Yeah, that’s it. Um, so yeah, I think they’ve all just got really bad phones that have no Yeah, you can just hear everything.

Bex: Regardless, um, Maddie ends that call and gets the next

Ellen: Not before she gives Josh a look, like, what the hell.

Bex: Um, the next call sounds a little bit more serious though, because there is a backpack outside the Brookside Elementary.

Alice: But like, it is a school, so.

Ellen: Oh, this whole call, I was just like, why did no one check to see if it was, belonged to any of the kids?

Bex: This entire scene is one that you literally, not just like switch off your brain, you need to remove it and place it in another room.

Because any stray thought that you have about this [00:09:00] scene is, is just, you can’t think about this scene at all because none of it makes sense.

Ellen: No. Not at all.

Bex: So yeah, so there’s a, a plain red backpack in the middle of the playground, which first of all, um, Like my kids, the school that they go to, they have a, like a standard issue backpack.

Everybody has the same backpack. So if there is a random backpack out in the playground, you’re not going to be able to tell whose it is because they all look the same. This school, however, it looks like the kids get to pick their own backpacks. So surely somebody must remember which kid has the bright red backpack.

Alice: I guess like. Because in Australia, all the schools have, um, like, dress codes as well, whereas American schools just seem to not.

Ellen: Yeah, well, they don’t have uniforms.

Bex: Yeah, they don’t have uniforms. Not for their public schools, but I think their private schools and their charter schools do. But their public schools, [00:10:00] no.

So yeah, so fallacy number one, there should have been at least one teacher in the school who knew whose backpack that was.

Alice: They’re underfunded, leave them alone.

Bex: Fallacy number two, the backpack is in the playground and yet they herd all of the kids out of the building

Ellen: into the playground, not

Bex: behind the playground, exactly in the line of fire.

Ellen: And then the, uh, the fire trucks come screaming in, along with the bomb squad, as the kids And this, it reminded me of that scene in Kindergarten Cop when the, the alarms go off and they all run out of the building screaming. That was kind of what happened in this scene as well.

The, the alarms kind of

Bex: Oh yeah, everyone’s screaming, everyone’s

Ellen: They’re all screaming as they run. It’s not organized at all.

Bex: No.

Ellen: So they pull into, so the, the 118 are there. And the bomb squad. I like how you have called them the “bob squad”.

Bex: [00:11:00] I just saw that. I just saw that.

Ellen: I assume you didn’t really mean to.

Bex: No, I did not.

Ellen: It’s the bomb squad, but that’s cool. They can be the bob squad.

Alice: Go the bob squad.

Ellen: So the kids get, they, okay, so Buck tells them, “Okay, everyone get behind the trucks.” So, not like, away from where the bomb is. Just, just hide behind the truck and you’ll be fine.

Bex: And I, I love that you were like, you were live reacting in the group chat as you were watching this and you made a comment about the kids and the firetruck and both Alice and I in the other chat are just like, Oh my God.

Ellen: Yeah, cause I was like, you, they’re hiding behind the firetruck so that. If the bomb actually goes off, they will all be nice and squashed by the firetruck. Later that came back to bite.

Alice: So, yeah, so we have like a normal chat to just discuss like podcast things and then Bex and I have our own. [00:12:00] literally just to react to whatever Ellen’s talking about.

Bex: I mean, technically,

Ellen: I’m not allowed in there.

Bex: It’s called, it’s called spoiler screaming. So it’s so that we can talk about things sort of happening that Ellen can’t know about yet. Yes.

But it was just so perfectly like, Oh yes, let’s put the kids behind the firetruck so they don’t get squished.

And we’re all like, ope. Just wait, just wait!

Ellen: Oh dear. Yes, they, so the bomb, the Bob squad, um, roll in and sort of, they, they send their little robot, right? No, no, it’s the guy.

Bex: No, we actually have Carlos in his full protective suit goes out to scan the backpack for this one. Um, but he can’t work out if there is anything dangerous in the backpack because there is something metallic interfering with the image.

Alice: Yeah, it’s very like thermos shaped, which is interesting [00:13:00] in a backpack, who would have thought? Yeah.

Bex: So they just, they decide that since the, the kids are literally right behind them, that they’re not going to bring the backpack to the bomb squad truck, um, they’re just going to remote detonate it. Yeah.

Yeah. Which they do. Carlos puts a little explosive charge on it, um, and then they blow it up. Um, but it’s kind of anticlimactic because all that happens is the backpack gets ripped to shreds and this paste thing just gets splattered all over the bomb squad truck and the trees and the playground.

There’s no actual explosion. That’s because it wasn’t a bomb.

Ellen: No, it was just some kids.

Alice: Yeah, like Carlos the bomb, um, the bomb defuser is like looking at it and he’s like, the substance appears to be some kind of greyish paste. And then there’s just this little voice going, “It’s tuna fish.”

Bex: Apparently Emily does not like tuna fish.[00:14:00]

Ellen: And that’s why she didn’t speak up, even when all of the emergency services were rolling in. She didn’t tell anybody. Well, maybe she told her friends, but she didn’t tell the teacher.

Bex: Yep, she did not own up that that was her backpack because then she would have been made to eat the tuna fish sandwich and she didn’t want to do that.

Ellen: I mean, it’s something that kids would do, I’m sure. I believe it.

Alice: Listeners, if your child has blown up their backpack to avoid eating tuna fish

Ellen: Have you ever blown up your lunch because you didn’t like it?

I used to hate when my mum would give me Vegemite sandwiches. Anyway, um, tuna in, in, in an Australian, like Queensland summer, tuna sandwiches is not a good idea. Not at all.

These days you can send little ice packs or whatever with your [00:15:00] lunch, or they can um, take them inside the air conditioned classroom, but in the olden days we didn’t use to have that.

Alice: Do schools have fridges these days to like

Ellen: Yeah they do, but I don’t think

Bex: Not for the kids.

Ellen: Not for the kids, no. They, they just, there are other things they put in the fridges, but like school-related things.

Alice: We used to have um, did you guys ever do the milk thing, where you’d like get milk at lunchtime?

Ellen: No. No, no we didn’t.

Alice: We had like this full, like six months where every lunchtime we’d get like a bottle of milk to drink, like a little bottle of milk to drink. And like every week it’d change who like, which student was the milk monitor. And they’d be in charge of like handing out the milk, but it was literally just like plain milk.

It wasn’t even flavored.

Ellen: Yeah,

Alice: it was just plain. And thinking about, I’m like, this is the most random. Why did we have.

Ellen: Because they decided that the children of Victoria needed more calcium in their diets, I’m guessing. No, I don’t think we ever had that.

Alice: But only for like [00:16:00] six months.

Bex: Hmm. That’s so random.

Alice: So random. So weird when you think back to things like that you experienced as a kid and you’re like, why? Yeah.

Ellen: I mean, I remember not too long ago that we used to sing like God Save the Queen on parades. Um, this is when I was in, like, in primary school. I’m probably dating myself here by saying this, but it was for a while before we actually, and, and the Australian National Anthem.

Alice: Um, yeah, we did the National Anthem, like, every, was it every morning or just like once a week, I think?

Ellen: Yeah, it was just on assembly type thing when we did it.

Alice: Yeah, um, but we were a school of 50, like 40 to 50 children.

Alright. Like, in the entire school, so I’m like, why? Weird primary school things.

Bex: Anyway. Back to 9-1-1. The, uh, the crew were discussing that they feel that, um, the [00:17:00] false alarms that they are responding to are more nerve wracking the real thing, and as they’re talking and as dispatch and LAPD and the ATF are talking over their radio, we get a shot of our mad bomber, who appears to be putting together another mail bomb.

So, even though Buck is hoping that backpacks with false alarms means that the serial bombing is over, I don’t think it is. I think there is at least one more coming.

Ellen: Hmm.

Bex: And it is clearly the, the same serial bomber because the box that he puts the, the thing that he’s welding and soldering together has that little sticker on it that says a gift for you, which we saw, um, in the scene last episode with Miranda.

Alice: But, um, now we’re at the Grant household.

Ellen: Yeah, all that happens before the title card. [00:18:00] It’s a long cold open this time.

Bex: It was.

Ellen: Yeah, they basically have an entire call before we get the title card or anything.

Alice: They do. Yeah, they do. Yeah. So we’re at the Grant household. Um, Bobby, Athena and May and Harry are tasting cakes. And

Bex: it’s a smart idea that they’re doing.

Alice: It is, but it’s a weird, like weird thing that they’re kind of dropping us in because Bobby says, “This is our final contestant, puts three slices of cake down.” And then we get the exposition, so once again, it’s like, I don’t know, maybe the kids just got home from school?

Bex: But it’s evening, so it’s

Alice: Yeah,

Ellen: I thought they were having dinner to start with until they started talking about venues.

Bex: I’m assuming that this is dessert, so they’ve had dinner and dessert is the cake testing.

Ellen: You mean they’re not having their ice cream before?

Bex: It’s not Tuesday. [00:19:00]

Alice: Yeah, it’s not Tuesday.

Bex: I have been indoctrinated into the Ice Cream Before Dinner, um, fandom, so.

Alice: Thank God. Finally.

Bex: Because Alice very kindly found somebody who had reformatted the fic so that it was in a format that I could read. So I was able to read it. And I’m very happy.

Alice: I feel like we need to give them a shout out. Hang on, who was it? Um, so she goes by _themadsbuckley on Twitter.

Ellen: Mm hmm.

Alice: Um, very much appreciate you, Mads, for reformatting the fic, because Bex is now officially part of the cheer squad.

Bex: I’m in love with this fic, so thank you very much for allowing me to be able to experience it and understand the, uh, the hype over it.

Alice: And Tuesday, we will be having ice cream before dinner together.

Mm

Ellen: I’ll do um, I’ll put a link to the, maybe the fic and the, if you want the, a copy of the [00:20:00] reformatted one, let us know and we’ll hook you up.

Bex: We will. So no, no ice cream before dinner, cake after dinner.

Ellen: Yes.

Bex: Yeah. Um, and the, the technique they’re using is that Bobby and Athena are going to pick their wedding venue based on the caterers rather than picking the wedding venue and then having to find out a caterer that works with them. So they’ve settled on restaurants that can do weddings and the cake is the litmus test. If they like the cake from the restaurant, then that’s the restaurant that they’re going to have the wedding at.

Alice: Yeah, it’s a very smart idea because honestly, the cake’s the most important thing.

Bex: Yeah. The food is the most important part. It’s the most expensive part. So, you know, you want to make sure that you’re going to enjoy what you’re eating. Um, so we get a little bit of a discussion about the upcoming Grant Nash nuptials, where uh, May is all into the organization and [00:21:00] she wants to know if her mother has finalized the guest list yet, um, and Bobby says that they haven’t because he wants to invite Chief Alonzo, but Athena is holding a grudge and won’t let Bobby invite him until Bobby has been unsuspended.

Alice: Um, meanwhile, Harry’s just pouting because he doesn’t want them to do a stupid wedding. Um, Athena’s immediately worried. She’s just like, I thought you were fine with us getting married? Um, but if you need more time, like, we can postpone it. But Harry wants them to get married, he just doesn’t want to wear a tux.

Or dance with his sister.

Bex: Because his sister, I actually really like this scene because this is Athena’s second wedding. So she’s very sort of blasé about the actual details. What’s important to Athena is that she ends up married to Bobby at the end of it. The rest of it is just gravy, but May being so young, she’s still very much in the, a wedding has to [00:22:00] be A, B, C, D, and E, and one of those is Harry has to wear a tuxedo and he has to have a dance with May at some point at the reception.

Otherwise, it’s not a proper wedding. And Harrow’s like, I do not want to wear a tux and I do not want to dance with my sister.

Alice: Which is, it’s such classic, like, ten or however old Harry is.

Bex: And if I have to dance with my sister, then I do not want you to get married at all. Yeah.

Ellen: But they manage to talk him into it.

Bex: And we get the first of the, um, of the episode title references. Yeah. So, the The title of this episode is “This Life We Choose”, so all of the characters are going to talk about the life that they choose throughout. So here, Athena says that a wedding isn’t just about her and Bobby. It’s about the three of them choosing to make Bobby a part of their life.[00:23:00]

Ellen: Yeah, and we’re all going to walk down the aisle together.

Bex: Which sounds really nice.

Ellen: It does, yeah.

Bex: And then Harry just gets this cheeky smile on his face and he goes, okay, but no tux.

Ellen: We’ll see how that plays out.

Bex: Speaking of families. Yeah, yeah. We’re going to go to another family. Um, we’re going to go to the Diaz family where they’re having, I would call it a barbecue. I think. It’s not quite a cookout. Maybe it’s just people grilling. I’m not entirely sure of how the Americans would describe it.

Ellen: In Australia, it would be a barbecue.

Bex: They’re having a barbecue out in the backyard of, I think

Alice: They’re having a barbie, mate.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Yeah. They’re putting some snags on the barbie. I think it’s Abuela’s house, just because it’s yellow, and we know that Abuela’s house is yellow.

Ellen: Eddie probably [00:24:00] doesn’t have a lot of room for having all these people over at his place.

Bex: Well, considering we don’t even know if his place is an apartment or a house. Yeah. Yeah, so they’re all at Abuela’s house, hanging out in the backyard.

Alice: And we get to meet his lovely parents for the first time.

Bex: Oh, his parents. They’re so charming.

Alice: Um, his the lady who plays his mother plays a drug dealer in the show Euphoria.

So like, she showed up and my hackles immediately raised. I’m just like, why are you here? Like, what are you doing?

Ellen: So I had no clue that these people were his immediate family until until his father… okay, so, the woman makes a comment that Christopher is growing up way too fast, and he was brave at the funeral yesterday, so we don’t actually get to see Shannon’s funeral at all.

Bex: I’m surprised they had a funeral for her.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Poor Shannon.

Ellen: They’ve just brushed over this so badly in this episode, but anyway. [00:25:00] She says that he’s brave like his father, and Eddie says his mum was pretty brave too, and then The guy who turns out to be his dad says, “How, by running out on him?” And I’m like, Oh my God, she’s just passed away.

Alice: Literally, she just died.

Ellen: Eddie is obviously, you know, extremely grieving at this point. And you’re saying this, like, what the fuck? Anyway,

Bex: I love that he’s, I love that, um, Eddie’s abuela, who is his father’s mother, just like snaps at him. She overhears this and she’s just like, “Ramon!”

Ellen: Yeah, and then Eddie calls him Papi and I’m like, oh, this is his father who’s saying this.

I’m like, oh my God. Uh, so Yeah, so

Alice: Eddie’s parents are charmers.

Ellen: He did apologize.

Alice: Um, they don’t get better.

Ellen: Hmm. Great. No wonder Eddie left. I’m sure we’ll get to that.

Alice: They immediately [00:26:00] launch into, “Oh, we know Shannon loved Christopher. But now she’s gone. And you’re a single father, again, and you know, the hours you work, like, just come home. And, you know, because Texas has fires too.” Um, Eddie mentions that he’s still a probationary firefighter.

Bex: Put your hand up if you forgot that Eddie was a probationary firefighter.

Ellen: Yeah, I just assumed she was one of them.

Alice: He does not act like a probie.

Bex: They don’t treat him like a probie. We’ve seen how various captains treat probies on this show.

And Eddie is not treated like that. I mean, granted, we saw the way Gerrard treated probies. But, I mean, even Bobby made a mention in the last ep, uh, in the “Bobby Begins Again” episode where he was commenting to Hen about how clean the trucks were looking. And he asked whether she had done it or whether she got one of the probies to do it.

So, even under Bobby, probies are given, like, the shit jobs, and we’ve never seen Eddie do any of the shit jobs, [00:27:00] he’s just immediately been a fully fledged member of the A team.

Ellen: He’s allowed to eat at the table with them.

Alice: Yes! Yeah, literally, like, is it because he was in the army, and, like, because obviously he got that medal as well, so are they immediately like, yep, okay, he deserves our respect?

Or is it because Buck was just like, this is my bestie, don’t be mean to him.

Ellen: I don’t think they’ve thought about it that hard, like, he was just part of the team.

Bex: Yeah, they needed a fourth for that team, and they needed him to be a fully fledged member of that team, so they put in the exposition like, this is Eddie Diaz, he’s just graduated from the Academy, and then they dropped that story like, like a hot potato.

And they’ve only just picked it up now.

Ellen: Until now, yeah.

Alice: Because like, it should be mentioned, we get more probies later. And they’re treated like probies.

Ellen: Oh, yes.

Alice: So this is just an Eddie thing. Like, this is just like, yep, Eddie’s special.

Bex: Eddie is very special. Um, but yes, so he is still technically a probationary firefighter.

And even though I am pretty sure that if [00:28:00] he went down to, um, Texas Fire and said, look, I’m a former Army medic, I’ve trained at LAFD. I’ve nearly finished my probationary period. There would be some kind of reciprocal learning or reciprocal, um, recognition of his prior learning and that he could fast track in Texas.

But Maybe he doesn’t know that, but he’s just thinking, if I leave, I have to start all over again, and I don’t want to do that.

Alice: Texas does have different, um, like, I don’t know how much Eddie’s looked into it, though, but Texas does have a different way of doing it. So like, Eddie’s probably done no research into it, however

Bex: Well, he hadn’t, he had not even considered it. This was Ramon’s idea.

Alice: Yeah. Um, but Texas, because like, obviously Lone Star comes after this, um, by like two seasons, but Texas, the medical and, like, the paramedic side of it and the, um, fire side of it are totally different.

Bex: Oh, I’m not saying that he could walk onto a crew, but I’m [00:29:00] just saying that if there’s like a syllabus of all the different units that he needs to tick off competency on in order to graduate from their training course, he could probably skip three quarters of that.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. He’s got experience.

Bex: It wouldn’t be having to start from scratch again. But that’s neither here nor there because he doesn’t want to do that. He has a life here in LA. And he’s suddenly realizing that his father and his mother and his sisters, who I believe are at this gathering, although we don’t actually get any recognition or introduction to them.

He’s suddenly realizing that the master plan was an intervention. Not.

Alice: Yeah, like they didn’t come for the funeral. They came, yeah. kidnap Eddie and Christopher.

Bex: Pretty much, yeah.

Alice: Like Eddie’s mum’s just like, yeah, ” Christopher would be close to family,” and Eddie’s like, “We have family here.” And his auntie is [00:30:00] literally sitting there, just like we’re right, she literally says “We are sitting right here.”

Bex: Yeah, his, his aunt and his abuela are sitting right there.

Alice: Yeah, Tia Pepa is sitting right at the table.

Bex: But that’s, but that’s not what Helena meant. She didn’t mean family, she meant her and Ramon. Them. Yeah. Um, so Eddie pushes back and says he chose this life in LA for a reason and Ramon just dismisses him and goes “You can choose another life.”

And I want to punch him.

Alice: Yep. Fuck Eddie’s parents.

Bex: What is really interesting with this scene though is that it obviously, it sets up, reminds us that, um, that Eddie is still a probationary firefighter, which sets up the end of the episode where he graduates and gets his shield. Um, but nothing comes out of this scene.

There is no, like

Ellen: No, they just go home, don’t they?

Bex: [00:31:00] Yeah, they just go home. There’s no sort of future tension at the end of the episode with the is Eddie actually going to leave? Is there any risk of them trying to take Christopher away? It’s just they bring this up, and then they play happy families, and then they’re gone.

And I really am struggling to remember how long it takes us within the rest of the series to see if they pick this storyline back up again. So it’s just, I don’t understand why you’re gonna like drop this bombshell if you’re not gonna do anything with it.

Ellen: Yeah, I mean, I, I understand that they’ve are concerned for him and want him to, you know, now that he’s alone again, but it’s like You know, give him some space.

He’s just lost his wife again.

Alice: Yeah, like I wonder if it’s just there to be like, oh look, he does actually have parents. And he would have more support if he went to Texas, but he doesn’t want to.

Bex: [00:32:00] It fleshes out that scene in Eddie’s first, first episode, second episode, where he’s talking to Buck about Christopher and his life and the fact that he didn’t get support from his parents.

And then now you meet his parents and you think about that scene and you’re like, Oh yeah, I understand kind of what was going on there.

Ellen: Yeah. Well now they’re offering to support him again. It’s like. But, you want him to come home, but are you actually going to do anything when he gets there? Like, he sort of left because you weren’t supporting him in the first place.

Bex: I feel like it was, I feel like this is, they wanted Eddie to do things their way, so he threw a tantrum and took Chris and came to LA, and this is the first time that Eddie is acted out. And so they gave him his space, and they’re like, Okay, now it’s time for you to come home and be the good son again, and be the good father, and let us have our [00:33:00] grandchild.

And he’s, they are unprepared for him to keep pushing back against them. I love the psychology of Eddie Diaz, it’s so much fun to delve into.

Alice: Oh, so much fun.

Ellen: And this is the only, I know I keep banging on about Shannon, but this is the only scene that we hear anything about her in this episode. She’s not mentioned at all, apart from this.

Bex: And even then, it’s still just a reference of, no, we get a, we get a reference, we get a name drop. It’s like, we know Shannon loved Christopher.

Ellen: Oh yeah, we did get that.

Bex: And we get that he was so brave yesterday at the funeral.

Alice: So it’s like, we didn’t even get to see the funeral. We didn’t like, ah, ah, Justice for Shannon.

Bex: I would also like to just put a pin in this episode in the, on the Henley that, um, Eddie is wearing because it comes back later and it’s hilarious. So. [00:34:00] Just gonna drop that.

Ellen: In the episode or?

Bex: No, no, it’s, it’s like late. I think it is sometime next season, I think.

Ellen: Is this like the red shirt of bad decisions that we have in Supernatural?

Bex: No.

Wait, what? That’s not a theory I’ve heard before.

Ellen: Um, it’s when

Alice: All I can think is Demon Dean. Yeah, please continue.

Ellen: Yeah, Dean, like, Demon Dean, like, a few different times he wears this red shirt and then he’s always screwing up, basically, when he’s wearing it. You haven’t heard of that before?

Bex: I know, I know that like the red shirt is associated with Demon Dean, but I didn’t realize that it was associated with like Dean’s bad decisions when he wasn’t just being possessed.

Ellen: Yeah, there’s multiple other times. I’ll have to see if I can dig, like, I, I hate searching for things on Tumblr, so I may not be able to find anything.

Bex: No, that’s fine. The only thing I know about red shirts is with Star Trek, which is like the red shirts and cannon fodder.

Alice: Yes.

Bex: But no, there’s, [00:35:00] there’s no deeper meaning to Eddie’s shirt.

It’s just, it comes back later. And it’s one of those things that, um, somebody pointed out to me and I cannot unsee it. So I am flagging so that when it happens, I will point it out to you and then you will never be able to unsee it again.

Alice: To be fair, the amount of theories in this show, um, like I’m surprised that there’s not an Eddie’s Henley one because Um, yeah, like we have couch theory, we have color theory.

What else do we have?

Bex: There’s lasagna theory, but I don’t think that that one holds weight.

Ellen: Fandoms love to come up with random shit like this.

Alice: What do you think? So like we’ve, to put this in like, um, Oh my God, date context. We just finished, uh, episode six of season eight. And color theory came through again.

So it’s a thing, it’s a thing guys.

Bex: What is, no, you don’t have to explain to me. Now you can explain it to me offline. Cause [00:36:00] we’re,

Alice: I won’t explain it in front of, um, in front of Ellen.

Ellen: No, don’t tell me, I won’t be able to unsee it if you do watching the next episode and I’ll be like, Oh, the color theory.

Bex: So we are going to leave the Diaz and their slightly uncomfortable family cookout.

Um, and we’re going to go to the speedway. Um, this scene is gross. This scene is fun. This scene has no place in this episode.

Ellen: Yeah, you’re right.

Alice: Yeah. This scene’s fucking weird, but it’s great.

Ellen: It’s a choose. It’s a, it’s a life choosing thing. It is on theme,

Bex: no, but, but is it though?

Ellen: Yeah. The guy’s choosing to you know,

Alice: be a dickhead?

Bex: Yeah, that’s the only thing I can think because like, if it is a, you know, the life he chooses so then he’s going to choose, uh, we’re jumping way ahead, but like he’s going to choose his wife [00:37:00] over his career. He then does a complete 180. Yeah, yeah. Changes his mind and goes back to his original choice.

Ellen: Yeah. Well, he’s chosen to keep going in his career.

Bex: So, I mean, yes, it is on the theme, but then, I mean, when you think about all of the other storylines in this episode and the other choices people make, it doesn’t really, it’s, one of these things is not like the other. . But anyway, um, so let’s, we’re at the speedway.

Um, there’s cars doing laps, there are monster trucks lined up inside of a ramp ready to be jumped. We have a, an aging man with beautiful, flowing, long grey hair in a, like a star spangled jumpsuit. Um, comes out from under, uh, some kind of car. I don’t know.

Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know either.

Bex: And there’s obviously the, the car is having some kind of mechanical problems, and he’s trying to [00:38:00] fix them.

The only thing I can ever really remember about this scene is it’s got Cordelia Chase in it.

Ellen: Yes, I was looking at her for ages going, She looks so familiar.

Bex: Oh my god. I was like “It’s Cordelia” immediately.

Ellen: She’s got to be in Supernatural or something. And then I looked it up, and it was like, oh, it’s freaking Charisma Carpenter.

Alice: Yeah.

Ellen: Because she actually was in Supernatural.

Alice: I was gonna say, like, to be fair, she was in Supernatural.

Ellen: Yeah, she was in one episode. You’re right. And it must have been around a similar time to this because, oh, maybe a couple years later, but yeah.

Bex: She will always be Cordelia to me.

Ellen: Yes. Uh, so she’s helping him out. Like, he’s asked how the crowd’s doing and she’s like, “Um, maybe 50 people, tops. Most of them are looking at the phone.”

And, uh, the guy’s like, “Ah, you know, it’s, we used to have so many more.” And she says, “Yeah, folks [00:39:00] have the internet now. They want to see dumb people doing stupid things, they just get it for free online.” So that’s what YouTube’s for.

Bex: He’s going to jump the monster trucks, right? Is that, what is that the, I think stupid thing he’s gonna do. He’s try. He’s going to try and jump.

Alice: I think that’s the thing. I think he’s a stunt man. It’s like, um, oh my God, what’s his name?

Bex: Because they, we never actually see what this guy does. They never actually say what the stupid things is he’s going to do ’cause they get, you know, well distracted. But I mean, that’s the only thing I can think of that he’s gonna do. He’s going to try and jump the monster trucks.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. Well they’re all lined up there ready for him to do it.

Bex: Yeah. Um, but the car still needs a little bit of work.

Ellen: They have some great, like, banter, these two, though.

Like he’s sort of telling her, like, yeah, he’s hyped for this stunt or whatever. He’s like, “me and this car have got a lot of miles left on us” and I love how you’ve just written her down as [00:40:00] Cordelia. Um, she’s like, “This is dangerous.”

Bex: It’s one of those things where, like, we do find out the character’s name? But not until right at the very end of the scene.

And the transcript was giving me her name, and I’m just like, no, no, she is Cordelia.

Ellen: She’s Cordie.

Bex: She’s Cordelia. Um, yeah, but they’re, they’re acting like they kind of hate each other.

Alice: Oh my god, Evil Knievel!

Ellen: Oh!

Alice: Sorry, it took me way too long to find. He’s a play on Evil Knievel, I think.

Ellen: Yeah, okay.

Alice: But, um, I think Evil Knievel did like motorcycle stuff, whereas this guy does car stuff.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Because like Evel Knievel had the, um, jumpsuit with the stars on it as well.

Bex: Okay.

Ellen: Thank you. Thank you for your research.

Alice: Got there, Jesus.

Ellen: So yeah, he’s helping, uh, so Cordelia is helping him with like tuning up the car or whatever. So he’s leaning over the bot, [00:41:00] like the engine, and he tells, he tells her to try it now, and she, um, turns the car on and like, I don’t know, I think she’s outside of the car when she does this, so she can’t, she’s not, she doesn’t even step on the pedal or anything.

Bex: She’s sitting behind the wheel.

Ellen: Oh, she is.

Bex: So he tells her to, to try it now, but she doesn’t hear him. So he leans right into the engine cavity so that he can peer under the bonnet at her through the windshield and yells at her to try it now. And so because he’s leaning in so far, his hair is dangling.

When she turns the engine over, his hair gets caught in something. I don’t even know.

Alice: It’s one of the belts, yeah.

Bex: They say a belt. I have no idea. I have no idea about car engines. But his hair gets caught and as the, the belt thingy spins, it’s pulling his hair more and more until it literally scalps him.

Ellen: Ugh.

Alice: Like Eddie specifically [00:42:00] calls it the engine belt later.

Bex: I don’t think Edmundo knows what he’s talking about either. I mean, the man is pretty, but I don’t think he knows cars.

Ellen: He says a, he sounds like he knows what he’s talking about.

Bex: There is a reason that Hen is the,

Alice: he says alternator. I’m sure he’s fine.

Bex: There’s a reason that Hen is the one that goes under the car to, to undo it. And the boys are up top dealing with the patient.

Alice: Yeah. Eddie Eddie’s like, yeah, this is ’cause there’s no blinker fluid. Um, looks like the, the motor is shot.

Bex: Yeah. They need to get the lesbian to deal with it because the others have no clue.

Alice: pretty much

Ellen: yeah. Yeah. So this guy’s hair is like ripped. Like, his skin is just ripped off his scalp. It’s just disgusting.

Bex: But it’s so neatly. Like, it’s this neat little circle.

Ellen: Yeah. It looks like a toupee.

Bex: It does look like a toupee has come off. Um, I don’t think that it would rip that neatly in reality if you were actually scalping.

Ellen: Yeah, I think chunks of hair would have come Like, I don’t even want to think about it, but also, I think it would be extremely painful, and this guy doesn’t really seem Oh, this

Alice: If you’ve [00:43:00] ever been scalped…

Ellen: he doesn’t seem to be, like, bothered by it. Like he knows his hair’s stuck.

Bex: We’ll say that he’s in shock or that he was slightly drunk before they did this so the alcohol is, like, kicked in.

Alice: Yeah, but he’s more worried about the car.

Bex: He’s very worried about the car.

Ellen: So, Cordie calls 9-1-1, and she says that his car, “My husband, his car, it’s eating him alive!” I’m like, what is it with things eating people alive around here? First the palm trees, now cars? What the hell? Oh. L. A. It’s more dangerous than Australia.

Alice: L. A. ‘s inanimate objects are hungry.

Ellen: Apparently.

Bex: So of course the 118 are dispatched.

Ellen: Of course they are.

Bex: Of course they are. And Roy is concerned one for his car and B for his hair. And he would really like them to be able to get him out without cutting his hair because it’s his trademark. Yeah, there’s no way that they’re going to be able to [00:44:00] untangle your hair and get you out.

So they, um, they very carefully, probably not as carefully as Roy would like, but they very carefully dismantle the, the front of the car and the engine of the car, pulling it to pieces until they can get Roy free. And as I said, Hen is the one underneath with the socket wrench.

Ellen: When, so as they’re trying to get him out, he, he manages to like, You know, flinch a little bit, and he bumps his head, and all this blood starts pouring out, because apparently he managed to hit an artery or something.

Bex: Yeah, because Cordelia, Cordelia hits him. Because Roy is starting, Roy is complaining, because he can see in his peripheral vision them pulling all the pieces of car apart, um, to pieces.

Ellen: Yeah, he’s getting upset about it.

Bex: And Cordie says that She thought that he wanted to go out in a blaze of glory, and he snaps at her “Setting you on fire. That would be a glorious blaze.” So she hits him, [00:45:00] and that jostles him, which, yes, apparently, um, pulls the occipital vein. Naturally. And I would like someone to fact check Eddie on that. Because I don’t think that’s accurate.

Ellen: No, I don’t know. Don’t know enough about it.

Bex: I did look it up slightly, but I mean, I have no medical knowledge, so I’m not really going to trust what Google tells me, but there is a vein and it goes across the scalp, but it’s down in the neck and it’s more the tributaries to the occipital vein that would be kind of where this guy starts bleeding.

Um, it’s also, Eddie has picked up on the 118’s ability to be able to diagnose just by looking at you. So how he knows it’s specifically the occipital vein and not any of the other veins on the guy’s head that has been the one that is quote unquote first, I don’t

Alice: know.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: I think because the occipital vein is the only vein [00:46:00] in the scalp. Like that’s just what they call.

Bex: I don’t know.

Alice: Yeah, but like if it’s a vein as well, he shouldn’t be bleeding out because it’s arteries that do that. Yeah. Yeah.

Ellen: Anyway, I really thought that all this blood that was pouring out was just going to go all in Hen’s face and she wouldn’t be able to unscrew whatever she was unscrewing.

Bex: Because I mean, she’s under there and you can see that it’s dripping onto her hand. So yeah, it’s, I’m surprised that she didn’t catch it in the, on the face or in the mouth or something while she’s under there.

Ellen: Oh God. Yeah. This episode, seriously, it’s like, Oh, okay. They managed to get the, the, the part of the engine that he’s caught in free.

And he gets out and Cordie’s like, “Don’t let him die, you guys, I love the bastard.”

 But, and then Roy says, “If I get out of this alive, I’ll never do a reckless thing ever. I’m done with this, [00:47:00] with that life.” And then, um, later, Hen says, I think it’s Hen, says “He’s going to live.” And then Roy immediately says, “I’m going to live. Keep the parts safe. I’ll be back. Comeback tour next week!”

Bex: A decent toupee. We can do this.

Which is why I was saying that if it’s about the life that he chooses, like he only chose his life for like 30 seconds, and then immediately went back on his choice.

Ellen: No, he’s chosen the life of Comeback Tour.

Bex: So that’s the life he chose. Yeah. Um, I do like the way they end this scene, which is Cordelia, who’s, her character is Maud, but that’s just that her name does not fit her, so we’re gonna stick with Cordelia.

Um She goes from, you know, elated relief that Roy is going to survive to, um, murderous rage when he tells her that he’s going to go back to stunt work. [00:48:00] And she just screams at him, “Roy, you son of a…” and I’m guessing that Fox didn’t want to have to pay for, you know, profanity or they didn’t want to use up their swear words or they didn’t want to increase the rating on this episode because before she can finish her last word the ambulance doors slam shut and we go to commercial.

Ellen: Do they have a swear word allowance, do they? They’re only allowed to say it.

Bex: I think I remember the CW.

Alice: They would, yeah.

Bex: The CW used to, they could only have bitch a couple of times so they had to be very careful how often the actors said it.

Ellen: Oh my god, that’s so weird.

Bex: I remember, I think I remember Jensen saying something about that, and I don’t know whether FOX would be different because CW was a youth network and whether FOX being more a grown up network, it would be different, but possibly if they use certain language they would have to increase the, like, the rating of the episode.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: But whatever, for whatever reason, they decided they [00:49:00] didn’t want to actually have her say son of a bitch, so it became son of a… commercial. Yeah.

Ellen: Son of a commercial. Son of a commercial. Damn, that’s a swear word.

Alice: And then after the commercial, we get the first look of Buck’s loft.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: It’s a beautiful apartment.

Bex: It’s beautiful.

Ellen: It’s very small, but.

Bex: Well, I mean, it’s just for him.

Alice: It’s a loft. Yeah.

Bex: He doesn’t really need a lot of space. Cause he, like most of the time he’s at the station house or at Eddie’s house.

Um, so, you know, a bedroom and a bathroom and a place to store his shit’s really all he needs.

Alice: Yeah. A place to put his couch.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: So he keeps this place for a while, does he? Just to spoil me on that.

Bex: Uh, this is a, this is going to be a standard set from now on. Yeah.

Ellen: Right. Oh, that’s good. ‘Cause that’s quite nice, yeah.

Alice: He still has it in season eight. Let’s [00:50:00] just,

Ellen: wow. Okay.

Alice: Yeah, like it’s, it’s Buck’s house.

Bex: His very first grown up house, and I love how bashful he is when he tells the Realtor that um, it’s his first place all on his own, like baby’s first apartment.

Ellen: Yeah, because, uh, because Ali is there with him looking at it, and the Realtor assumes that they’re moving in together.

Alice: Yeah, so Ali is the girl from the, the girl from the earthquake.

Ellen: Yeah, the earthquake girl,

Alice: yeah. Because we haven’t seen her in a few episodes. Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. No, she was out of town last time they were talking about her.

Alice: Yeah, so, um, she’s the girl that Eddie and Buck saved during the earthquake. She then asked Buck out after he slept with Taylor Kelly.

And apparently they’ve been in a relationship, but she’s out of town a lot for work.

Bex: And with Maddie, I’m assuming, leaving her apartment, um, I don’t know. Buck has come to the realisation that he needs somewhere to live of his own, so he’s gone apartment [00:51:00] hunting, and Ali being, is she an architect or an interior designer?

Ellen: Yeah, something like that. She had samples for that guy.

Alice: Yeah, he calls her an interior designer.

Bex: Yeah, so she has knowledge of real estate and spaces, so he’s brought her along, I guess, to help him pick an apartment, but she also has a vested interest in the apartment that he picks, because Um, she travels a lot for work and Buck is better than a hotel when she is back in L. A. Um, which makes me wonder, where has she been staying while Buck’s been sleeping on Maddie’s floor?

Ellen: A hotel, I guess.

Alice: Yeah, I guess they’ve been going to a hotel together?

Ellen: Yeah, or just to the fire trucks, I don’t know. Like, Buck’s not picky.

Alice: Aww. News van, rental car, that’s fine.

Bex: But I, the, the, the sad thing about this apartment is that it is a lofted apartment, so there is a set of [00:52:00] stairs that go up to the bedroom.

Um, and the timing of Buck buying this apartment is just, it’s so sad.

Ellen: Yes.

Alice: Renting, renting. He does say it’s leased.

Bex: It’s a lease? Oh, okay.

Alice: Yeah. It’s a lease.

Bex: All right. So we’ve met, we’ve just, Buck’s found his apartment. Let’s move to our next, our next victim and our next 9-1-1 call. This is Becca. Becca is a beauty influencer who’s just come back from Belize and she’s doing a live stream.

Ellen: And she talks exactly like how those YouTube girls do.

Bex: Hey guys, it’s Becca! Oh my god. Um,

Ellen: I just got back from Belize and I found so many products to show you guys.

Bex: She’s like totally reeling from all that travel, but you know, that’s the life that I chose, take a shot. Um, and she, [00:53:00] she apparently, her trip to Belize was sponsored by a makeup company. But

Alice: Yep, Pouty Gal Lipwear.

Bex: Thank God it wasn’t a skincare company because she’s come back from Belize with this massive pimple. Which is like, “so gross you guys, but you know, it’s, it’s real life and she’s always gonna keep it a hundred.” So for today’s live stream, Becca’s gonna show us how to pop a pimple.

Alice: The proper way.

Bex: Which, no, the proper way would be number one, Becca goes and washes her hands. Which she does not do.

Alice: Also, I’m pretty sure the proper way is to not pop a pimple.

Bex: Do you guys watch, like, Dr. Pimple Popper?

Ellen: No.

Alice: Yes, all the time.

Bex: You do?

Alice: Absolutely. Like, oh my god, I’m addicted to popping pimples, but I’m pretty sure you’re not supposed to pop pimples.

Bex: I don’t think you are.

Ellen: I, I cannot, I cannot watch that. I’m like, no. No, thank you. So this scene I’m mostly. [00:54:00] Did not look at the screen until, um, it was, she was still like, she started like, um, you know, doing like, she’s like, “Oh, you got to start back from the pimple and like, push away. Oh, it’s just, there’s a lot coming out here.”

And I’m like, what is she doing? I look back at the screen just in time to see this little worm coming out of her face and I was Like, what the fuck?

The thing that I love about it is, um, the fact this scene is so disgusting, but it’s really well done because the chat is like scrolling up the bottom of the screen.

Alice: We’re watching this a lot via the live screen. So we can see like the live comments going through.

Ellen: The live comment, like the chat is there and they’re, they’re all like, Oh my God, so disgusting.

What is that? Is that, is that a worm?

Alice: And then they’re just like, I think it’s a maggot because yeah, sure enough, which as she squeezes, a maggot comes out, followed by a trail of like a goop. It’s, it’s so gross.

Ellen: It’s so disgusting. And then she, she freaks out and like [00:55:00] flails basically, and then ends up on the floor.

Alice: She starts like screaming for her mummy too.

Bex: And she uses Siri to call 9-1-1, which I think that’s pretty cool. Um, so of course the 118 get dispatched. And. Just like we saw, we were watching Becca through the livestream, this scene where the 118 arrive, we see it both through normal camera and through the livestream.

Which is fun because

Ellen: Which is still watching what’s going on.

Bex: Oh yeah, the livestream is still live.

Hen and Chim mostly dealing with Becca. Um. Buck and Eddie work on clearing the space so they’ve got more room to work, which means they’re pushing the vanity away. So they end up front and center on the live stream.

Alice: Yeah, they’re getting a lot of comments.

Bex: Yeah, the comments that come up in the chat.

Alice: They can put out my fire any time.

Bex: This is like, it goes from like, oh my god, Becca, I hope you’re okay. [00:56:00] Okay, thoughts and prayers, Becca. Like, you’re the best, Becca. And then, hello, Mr. Firefighter.

Ellen: Those two can put me in a sling anytime. Oh no.

Alice: So meanwhile, um, Chim’s asking, because Dispatch said something about an animal and Becca says it came out of my face.

Bex: Yeah, because the first thing, Becca, um, she’s, they’re pretty sure she’s fractured her clavicle.

Alice: Yeah, like they’ve actually called 9-1-1 for her arm.

Bex: Yeah. Which they, it’s, that’s not much they can do with on site, they just need to, um, not isolate.

Whatever it means to, like, hold it in position so that it’s not going to

Alice: Immobilize.

Bex: Thank you!

Ellen: That’s the one.

Bex: They need to immobilize the, the arm and the shoulder so they can get her to hospital for x rays and, and yada yada yada. But yes, dispatch did mention an animal.

Alice: Yeah. So, Eddie asks what they’re looking for exactly, and Becca’s like, “oh, it was a little, like, worm or grub.”

And Hen’s like, “Like a maggot?” [00:57:00] And Becca goes, “Don’t say maggot,” as Buck, oh my god, he’s so happy, just goes, “MAGGOT!” Oh, it’s the best, I’ve watched this part so many times that I had, I forgot that it was the last, um, like the last episode of season two.

Because he’s just so happy. “Maggot!”

Bex: I don’t think we’ve, I don’t think we’ve seen Buck this happy since he was pulling the tapeworm out of that guy’s ass.

Alice: Yeah, literally since tapeworm.

Ellen: Yes.

Bex: He just loves insects, especially insects that have come out of people.

Alice: Look, you’ve got to have a special interest. Um, it’s fine. Good for him. Anyway. So Hen asks if, if Becca has been out of the country lately and whether, whether she’s been to Central and South America. And she’s like, “No, but like, I did just get back from Belize.” And Eddie is just like, “Yep, Belize is in Central America.”

And [00:58:00] she’s like, “Are you sure?”

Bex: Yeah, yeah.

Alice: Yes.

Bex: He, I guess he’s very pretty. He may only have one brain cell, but he does know his geography. He is correct.

Alice: Which is good, because I don’t. Yeah, I had no fucking idea where Belize is.

Bex: I had to look it up. It is in Central America. It is south of Mexico and bordered by Guatemala.

Alice: So this is a bot fly maggot?

Bex: It’s, well, the, the maggot, like maggots is just the larval form of a fly. Yeah. So it’s, it’s a botfly larva, so, and, um, Hen

Alice: Maggot!

Bex: Hen explains that botflies, uh, reproduce by trapping mosquitoes, laying their eggs on the mosquitoes, and then when the mosquito lands on you and bites you, it’s like, Stings you, whatever it is, mosquitoes do to you,

Alice: stabs you in the face.

Bex: They, the eggs transfer from the proboscis of the mosquito into your skin and the, and the, uh, [00:59:00] the eggs grow and hatch, and then the fly, and then the, the little laval form of the, the butterfly, it just comes out of your skin. And I love that Becca is pulling like an “ew” face, Chim is also pulling an “ew” face at the same time.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. And Buck is like, “Luckily, it looks like he got it all out in one piece,” and Hen goes, “They’ll be able to extract the rest at the hospital,” and she’s like, “The rest?”

Bex: Just think of them as new followers.

Ellen: Ugh.

Bex: Blech. I will say that, um, as I was watching this scene and writing the notes, I was gagging because it’s just so gross.

Ellen: Oh, it’s so horrific.

Bex: Uh, so Buck has got the maggot in a specimen jar and he’s looking at it like it is the best thing he’s ever seen in the world. [01:00:00]

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: He’s fascinated with it. It’s so cute. I don’t know who decided that Buck was going to become fascinated by insects and creepy crawlies.

Ellen: I hope it was Oliver.

Bex: I really do hope that Oliver just decided, you know what, this is gonna be Buck’s special interest. Because it’s just so much fun.

Ellen: And the chat’s still going, like the live stream’s still going, um, but, and she realizes she’s like, “wait, wait, wait, can someone grab my phone?” As they’re trying to take her out of the room.

And Buck and Eddie, like looking at the phone and they’re like, Buck like just waves to the camera.

Bex: I do like this simultaneous wave, but, um, Buck just like lights up when he sees himself on camera. And Eddie’s just like, uh, what is this? I don’t know about this.

And then in the chat, we’ve got, um, [01:01:00] KinyayWest5679 guys like, Oh my God, those two are so cute together. Ah. We’re getting a little bit of fan service happening in the chat on the live stream.

Ellen: I didn’t see that one.

Bex: Before Eddie turns it off.

We’re So, uh, we’re at the Grant household. Michael is dropping off Harry and May after school and they find a package on the front doorstep, which Harry immediately wants to pick up, um, but The audience, we can, we can see that it’s got that red fragile tape and that little gold sticker that says a gift for you.

So we know that it’s a little bit sus. Thankfully, Michael, I don’t think can see it, but he just knows package bombs, unexpected package on Athena’s front doorstep. Let’s proceed with caution. And

Alice: oh, yeah, like Athena’s absolutely like Been like, yeah, there’s mail bombs, don’t touch [01:02:00] any packages.

Bex: Maybe Athena is not so much of an online shopper that packages are just showing up on her doorstep every single day.

Maybe they’ve got a postbox because I don’t know. Obviously, there is a reason that Michael realizes that this is something wrong. So they call I’m guessing they call 9-1-1. Um, funnily enough, the 118 did not get called, it’s the 122 that respond to this one.

Alice: Yeah, Athena also doesn’t get called. Well, she gets Isn’t she in civvies?

Bex: Yeah, she’s in civvies, so she’s off duty. Yeah.

Alice: Yeah, so I don’t know where she was, but um

Bex: I’m assuming that she must have been finishing work, but So Michael’s got the kids, he’s dropping them off and she’s on her way home to meet the kids. Um, anyway!

Ellen: That makes sense. Um, she does have her badge with her, so she

Bex: So they’ve cordoned off like the street and Athena’s property, um, but she’s [01:03:00] flashing her badge as she screeches up so that they’ll let her through the tape, um, to see the kids and, and Michael.

And we meet, um, Sean Boyd, who’s part of the ATF, who is running point on the serial bomber task force. Um, and we get a little bit of, discussion about the, the bombs as they send out the wheelbarrow, which is the little remote controlled vehicle that they’d send out when they don’t send out Carlos and his big suit to investigate the package.

Ellen: The wheelbarrow, that’s not a very good name for a robot.

Bex: That’s what it’s called, according to Wikipedia.

Alice: I know, right? What about WALL E?

Ellen: It looks a bit like WALL E.

Bex: Considering that the wheelbarrow was first kind of invented in the 70s, which like predates WALL E by several decades.

Alice: What about the Bob Squad?

Ellen: They could have called him Bob.

Bex: [01:04:00] They didn’t, it’s called the wheelbarrow. Um, so as

Alice: So Bob’s going up to the package and um

Bex: Um, and we’ve learned that there have now been three bombings. We had Miranda the lawyer, we had the insurance adjuster, and there was a third one this morning, who was a superior court judge, who unfortunately did not make it.

Ellen: But the, the, so Bob, um, picks up the package.

Bex: He’s got a little pincer hand.

Ellen: Um, does shake it around a fair bit on its way to the steel box. Um, and I’m like looking at it going,

Bex: He’s trying really hard.

Ellen: That other lady, like, all she did was just shake it a little bit and it blew up, and this thing’s just, like, wobbling around on its tracks.

But anyway, it puts it in the box, and closes the lid.

Bex: They’ve got, like, this giant reinforced metal box, and they’re hoping that if they put the package into that [01:05:00] box, they can take it away and examine it.

Alice: Yeah, they want some clues.

Bex: They’re hoping that it doesn’t blow up. Because they want the evidence from it.

Alice: But unfortunately, every package has gone off as soon as someone moves it.

Ellen: And then it immediately explodes.

Bex: Little explodes.

Alice: And immediately it explodes.

Bex: But it’s, because it’s inside the box and it’s like a little explosion. And then Harry does his best Marvin the Martian impersonation, like, “Where’s the kaboom? There’s supposed to be an earth shattering kaboom!”

No, what he says is like, “That’s it? That was it?” And I’m going. Yeah, that was it, but if your mother had been holding that box in her hands, you know, several inches away from her face, I’m pretty sure that she would not be upset that that was it.

Alice: Yeah, it’s also in a big reinforced, like, metal box at this point.

But yeah, then we go inside, um, and Bobby’s arrived.

Bex: Bobby gets escorted into the house.

Alice: Yeah, they wouldn’t let him in, so [01:06:00] he’s finally, um, made it.

Ellen: Oh, he looks pretty frantic, he runs in. Yeah. scoops her up in a hug and they talk about if, like, if they know who’s doing it, but.

Bex: And can we give a shout out to, um, to Boyd, who is the actual one doing the detective work in this episode for once.

It’s not Bobby and Athena doing it. Someone else has put the pieces together. Someone whose job it is to put the pieces together has put the pieces together. Because he asks them if they remember an arson case about three years ago at a restaurant.

Alice: Oh, you mean the arson case we just revisited, like two episodes later in “Bobby Begins Again?”

Yeah, so convenient.

Bex: Yes. Amazing. I wonder why, of all of the things that they had to show us about Bobby’s first days in Los Angeles, that was the episode, that was the case that they had to show us.

Ellen: Hmm.

Bex: But yes, Athena might not remember it, but it’s burned into Bobby’s brain because it was entry number [01:07:00] one in his little book of names. Guillermo’s. And Bobby remembers that the owner was Victor Costas, um, he burned down his restaurant for the insurance money, and he got six years for it, and he should still be in prison.

Boyd went, well, he got early release on account of that he’s dead, he died of cancer about three months ago. Bobby remembers how pissed off Victor’s son, Freddy was, when they arrested Victor, and says he was really angry when his father got arrested, and Athena goes, “Oh, okay, yeah, I know where you’re going with this. I wonder how angry he is now.”

Alice: Yeah, now that his father’s dead.

Bex: So we’ve got a prime suspect.

Ellen: Did um, did Boyd put this together himself? Like, did he already have the kid down as a suspect [01:08:00] or did Athena and Bobby just solve his case for him?

Bex: I’m pretty sure he knew.

Ellen: I, it would make sense that he would know if he knew that if he’s asking them about Victor Costas.

Bex: If he’s specifically asking them about Guillermo’s, I’m pretty sure that, um, he’s already got there. He was just invited. He was just like, updating them, like, Hey, we think it’s this particular case. And they’ve just picked it up and started running with it. Um, thankfully they’re running in the correct direction.

Because we then cut to, uh, our interrogation room where Romero, Hi Romero, it’s nice to see you back again, Um, is interrogating Dr. Rebecca Lauren Airey Slater Costas, whatever the hell her name is, I don’t think I ever learned it.

Ellen: She’s Ellie.

Bex: Freddie’s mother.

Ellen: That’s her name. That’s her name in the show, but

Bex: What’s her name in the show?

Ellen: Ellie.

Bex: Ellie? Alright. Ellie Costas. I’m just gonna call her Freddie’s mum. I don’t know.

Ellen: I just keep, I just look at her and see Rebecca, so I don’t know.

Bex: Yeah, yeah, I know. Same [01:09:00] here. I can’t unsee that now.

Ellen: She’s, she’s actually really great in this episode. She’s, like, in acting terms, she’s distraught the whole way through.

Bex: Distraught but angry.

Ellen: Yeah, really in, in tears and just furious with the whole thing.

Bex: Yeah, but she cannot help Romero because she doesn’t know where Freddie is. She hasn’t seen him since. her husband’s funeral three months ago, and She seems to blame the LAPD for her husband’s death.

Ellen: Well, she’s We lost everything like I don’t know if she blames them or she blames her husband Like he he was the one who burnt down the place.

Bex: Romero says that he’s sorry for her loss And she says “Are you? You’re the one that put him in prison.” Not Romero specifically Him as a representative for The LAPD and the LAFD and the whole system in general, but yeah I mean if they’re gonna be angry at anybody they [01:10:00] should be angry at Victor because he is the idiot who decided that it would be a good idea to burn down the restaurant for the insurance money and then was stupid enough to get caught.

Ellen: Yeah and Bobby and Athena are watching from behind the two, the one way glass and Bobby

Alice: Yeah, I think two way glass is just a window. Yeah.

Ellen: And Boyd comes in and tells, tells Bobby that there’s nothing in his house, so he should be okay. But, um, Athena says, well, you were there when he was arrested for some reason. We still don’t know why, but he was there. Um, but.

Bex: In order to make this storyline make sense.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah, I guess so.

Bex: They were playing the long game.

Alice: But yeah, Bobby’s just like, well, maybe you searched the wrong house. And then we immediately cut to the 118.

Ellen: And I was just like, Oh my God.

Bex: But it’s the, the 118 are being, have been dispatched on a call and I really hope [01:11:00] that it wasn’t like an emergency. Um, because they’re not going to get there.

Alice: I think all their calls are emergency.

Bex: No, but

Alice: That’s kind of why they’re called emergency services.

Ellen: But is it an urgent emergency.

Bex: But is it like a, an emergency emergency, or is it like a cat stuck up a tree emergency? Yeah. Because they’re not going to get there. So there we see them, we see the, the ladder truck rolling down the street, um, and then they get a call over their headsets from dispatch, um, because Bobby has not called their personal phones like Chim does when he’s trying to get in touch with them.

He has gone through proper channels and he has called dispatch who is then going to put a message through to them over the radio. But he doesn’t actually get to tell them I don’t even know what he’s going to tell them. All dispatch says is that we’ve got Bobby Nash on the phone and he says it’s important and before anybody can say anything else there is an [01:12:00] explosion and the ladder truck tips over, and when the dust settles from the explosion we see that several members of the 118 have been thrown free from the ladder truck and are lying on the street and then we find Buck.

Who was also thrown free, but not far enough because the ladder truck has landed on his ankle. It’s pinning him to the ground.

Ellen: He’s looking pretty beaten up. The rest of him as well, he’s got blood all over his face. Who is, who else was in the truck? Because Hen and Chim were in the ambulance, right?

They’re like, they’re not

Alice: Oh, just assorted, um

Ellen: And Eddie wasn’t in the truck either. Or was he and he was fine?

Bex: No, because he does not look like he’s got a scratch on him.

Ellen: No.

Bex: So, it looked like everything rolled out. It looked like the ladder truck, the engine truck and the ambulance. So, I’m going to say Eddie must have been [01:13:00] in the engine truck.

So, Chim and Hen were in the ambulance. Buck was in the ladder truck. Eddie was in the engine truck. I have a feeling John was in the ladder truck. Poor John.

Alice: Not John!

Bex: He’s really regretting that he lost in the drawing of straws and got bumped up to the A team. He thought he had it. He thought that he’d hit the payday, um, he’d hit paydirt and, and now he’s just like, fuck it, I should have just stayed with the B shift.

Ellen: Yeah, cause they keep going on all these weird cases, like people with flies in their face and like, just random shit.

Bex: And now he’s just got blown up.

Ellen: Yeah. Thrown out of the firetruck, god.

Bex: And it’s, it’s not even that he got blown up and thrown out a firetruck, it’s that nobody can come and help him because there’s a teenager with a suicide vest, uh, wandering around.

Ellen: Yes. So not content with being, blowing things up at a distance anymore, Freddie has decided to insert himself into the actual, the show. [01:14:00] He’s got a vest on. He looks down at Buck and goes, “You’re new.”

Bex: It’s like Dun dun dun! Yes. Well, like Bobby says, um, Buck wasn’t even a firefighter when Freddy’s father burnt down the restaurant.

So yeah, he’s new.

Ellen: So it’s a few years ago, but amazingly, Freddy doesn’t look a day older. None of them look any older.

Bex: Funny, that.

Ellen: Yeah, but when you’re a teenager, like three or four years is quite Quite a difference.

Bex: He should have grown quite a bit. Yeah.

Ellen: Anyway, we’re not supposed to, we’re not supposed to question that.

For some reason, I mean, I shouldn’t really question it because they always do this, but the news is there.

Bex: Quote unquote, for some reason, it’s a narrative device in order to tell the story.

Ellen: It is, but. They’re broadcasting this live, this, a traffic crash.

Alice: And it’s not Taylor Kelly again. Yeah.

Bex: But yeah, why is it [01:15:00] Dwight again?

Shouldn’t it be a reporter, like, reporting from the ground or in the helicopter? Why is it the anchor that is the one reporting the story? I mean, yes, I know why it is because they’ve got the set and they’ve got the setup and they don’t need to pay an extra person, yadda yadda yadda yadda, it’s just

Ellen: I like, I don’t know.

Like if there’s a person there with an explosive vest on, would they really be live broadcasting this whole thing on the TV?

Bex: Yes! Fuck yes. Can you imagine the ratings if their reporter gets blown up live on air?

Ellen: Yeah. So, this is, this is the reason that Maddie sees what’s happening.

Bex: Yeah, because it’s not just us watching this, this is being broadcast to the 9-1-1 Dispatch Center where Maddie has learned of her brother’s predicament and is watching it live.

She’s trying to diagnose Buck through this.

Alice: Yeah, she’s gone into full nurse mode.

Bex: Which I think is just her way of coping with it. Like, she’s [01:16:00] trying to switch herself off and just be professional. But then, she can’t keep up the act and all she can see is that her baby brother is all alone under the truck and nobody is helping him.

He’s like, why, Josh is going, like, “He’s not alone, he’s surrounded by people who want to help him.” And she’s like, “But why can’t they, why is no one helping him?” Josh is reassuring her, like, “You know that they can’t.” Because you’ve got Freddy, with his vest, standing right over Buck. And then Freddy starts demanding the captain.

Ellen: Yeah, Bobby and Athena have turned up.

Bex: Of course they have.

Ellen: I’m not sure where they were, but they have turned up on scene. Um.

Bex: I’m assuming that they were at the police station still. So they would have been at the police station, Bobby is frantically trying to call the 118 to warn them, then somebody’s called 9-1-1 and it’s got back to [01:17:00] the police that the 118 have…

There’s been an explosion. The 118 are down and Bobby’s gone. Oh fuck.

Ellen: Yeah,

Bex: let’s go.

Ellen: Running into danger.

Bex: But there is a lot with this scene in particular where everything kind of happens off camera and off screen and we don’t actually see what’s happening. We just see the end results, which is Bobby and Athena ending up on the scene.

Ellen: Yep. Yeah, so Freddy’s calling out for the captain. “Where’s the captain?” And Chim actually comes out saying, “I’m the captain. I’m the captain. Just let me help them.” And Freddie’s like “What? Who are you? You’re not the captain!”

Bex: Yeah, Chim is hiding behind the ambulance with Hen and Eddie, and it looks like he’s not going to move until one of the 118 members on the ground tries to crawl away.

And Freddie snaps at him and says, “I told you not to move,” and it looks like he’s about to do something to the dude. And Chim was like, no, I can’t let him hurt one of my [01:18:00] crew members. So he steps forward and says, “I’m the captain.” And it kind of feels like “I’m Spartacus” because Freddie doesn’t believe him at all.

He’s like, “no, you’re not the captain.”

Ellen: I don’t want you. And

Alice: Hen steps out, “I am the captain.”

Bex: Eddie’s like, “No, I’m the captain.”

Alice: I am a probe captain.

Bex: But no, Freddie is very specific. He doesn’t just want the captain. He wants Captain Nash.

Alice: Which he really should have specified earlier.

Bex: At which point Bobby looks at Athena and then whispers to her, “I love you,” and just starts walking.

Ellen: And Athena’s just standing there like, well, I guess he’s going.

Bex: That’s my man.

Ellen: Throwing himself into danger again.

Bex: That’s the one I chose. Can I change my mind? Can I give him back?

Ellen: Well, he’s about to get blown up because he’s like

Bex: But the ATF and the FBI are trying to stop [01:19:00] him from walking out and he’s not even turning around, not even stopping.

Alice: I love this. Boyd’s like, “he wants you dead.” And Bobby’s like, “Yep, let’s give him what he wants. Shoot me if you have to.” It’s like, hang on.

Ellen: Suicidal idiot. Yeah. The, the news anchor is like, “oh, this is unexpected. A civilian!” It’s like, oh my God, why are they still filming?

Bex: Dwight, don’t you know him?

Ellen: we’ve got no details on this man’s identity.

Are you kidding? He’s like one of the heroes of, of L.A.!

Bex: Dwight. Didn’t your your channel just do a expose about them?

Ellen: Oh, yeah.

Bex: Like didn’t,

Alice: Literally!

Bex: Like Taylor ran a story on the 118. Everybody,

Ellen: he must, he must have not watched . .

Alice: He doesn’t watch those fluff pieces.

Bex: Yeah. I do like the way that they stage this scene with, with Bobby and Freddie, because when Bobby steps up, they have it set up so Bobby’s on one side, Freddie and Buck are in the middle and Chim and Hen [01:20:00] and Eddie are off to the other side, um, and as Bobby is talking, he starts to slowly circle around Freddie, um, so that he ends up.

With his back to Hen and Chim and Eddie, um, shielding them figuratively and literally putting himself between them and the bomber. I just thought that was a really nice touch.

Alice: Captain Dad at it again.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: But he’s trying to talk Freddie down.

Ellen: He’s sort of asking, like, this is what you wanted. And Freddie’s like, “I wanted you dead.”

Bobbie’s like, “I get that. But what about them? You what about him?” And he points at Buck who’s still under the truck, like bleeding out, gradually. He’s, you know, “he’s got parents, a sister, a girlfriend, he never did anything to you. He wasn’t even a firefighter.” This is that point where he says that. And Freddy just calls him collateral damage.

So, like, but this is [01:21:00] when Bobby’s trying to circle around him and Freddy’s like, “No stop, one more step and we all go boom,” and he’s holding onto the, the detonator for the And Bobby tries to talk him out of it. Um, you know, he says that he’s sorry about what happened to him, but he stopped being a victim the moment you left the first bomb.

Bex: But most importantly, Bobby tells Frodie that he got dealt a bad hand, but what he chose to do with that hand was his choice.

Ellen: This is the life that he chose.

Bex: This was what he chose. I mean, I have to give props. This is a Tim Minear written episode. Um, and it’s like he’s watched all season.

He’s watched all of his other writers in the writer’s room try to do these thematic episodes. And he’s gone like, no, let me show you how it’s done. And he’s just, he’s very elegantly weaved this theme of choice into [01:22:00] the storylines, into the dialogue. Um, it’s there, it’s noticeable, but it doesn’t feel like I’m being smacked over the head with it.

Ellen: Yeah, he says that his mum, he lost everything. And Bobby says,

“You’re just going to make it worse if she has to watch you die.” And then they brought his mum there.

Bex: Yeah, he Yeah, they literally just bring his mum there. So

Ellen: Why is she there?

Bex: He nods over Freddie’s shoulder, and Romero and Athena are leading, Freddie’s mother out into the street so that Freddy can see her and so that she can see Freddy.

Alice: Yeah, so Athena did pick up the phone, like, a little bit earlier and say, like, “How far away are you?” So that was clearly them bringing the mum out, like, the mum on the way.

Bex: But, yeah, yeah, it’s a, it’s one of those things that there’s lots of stuff happening off camera, off screen, that they just didn’t tell us was happening and they just, Ta da!

End result. Here’s your mother. [01:23:00]

Ellen: Yeah. This is your life. I feel like, I was sort of watching this thinking if this was real life, like if he’s threatening everyone with live explosives?

Bex: The issue is that, um, the detonator that Freddie has in his hand, we don’t find out until after, like toward the end of the scene, but it’s a dead man switch.

So if they shot him, he’d blow up.

Ellen: It would explode, yeah.

Bex: Yeah. Yeah. So they can’t risk that. They need him to remain conscious and holding on to that detonator. So I don’t, so they’re, I’m assuming that they brought his mother down to try and talk him down,

which doesn’t, I mean, Bobby doesn’t even give it a chance to work because as soon as Freddy sees his mother, Bobby tackles him. Gets one hand on Freddie’s hand to keep the pressure on the detonator.

Ellen: And then the SWAT team come in?

Bex: And then SWAT come in.

Ellen: Like, [01:24:00] there are people who are better trained at dealing with people with explosives surely than just Bobby jumping in.

Yes,

Bex: but this is Captain Nash. This is Captain Bobby Nash that we’re talking about here.

Ellen: Yeah. I mean, it’s very brave.

Bex: So this, now that Captain Hero Bobby Nash has, has done all the hard work, SWAT decide that they are now willing to step in.

They hurry Freddy off into custody and that frees Hen and Chim and Eddie to go in and check on Buck. Who’s kind of still under the truck and he’s kind of numb.

Which is probably a good thing. Really.

Ellen: Yeah, it depends how much he’s bleeding, I guess.

Alice: Yeah, like he’s, his body’s definitely going into shock at this point.

Bex: Yeah, Eddie presses a hand to his cheek and reports that his skin is cold and pale.

Alice: Um, so they run two lines, they push sodium bicarbonate, um, Chim calls him Buckaroo.

Bex: And then we get the most [01:25:00] ridiculous, it’s so ridiculous. It’s, and yet,

Alice: and yet I cry every time,

Bex: and yet I cry every time. I rationally I know how ridiculous this is, but it’s still, it still tugs at the heartstrings, so yeah. They need to get the truck off Buck. They can’t treat him until they can get him out of there.

But rather than using all of the tools available to them, including inflatable bags that they can stick under the truck and use pneumatic power to lift it, they decide they’re going to try and lift the truck with their bare hands to get Buck out.

Ellen: Yeah, four of them.

Alice: Like they literally go to car crashes all the time, but they’re like, no, no, we’ll just lift it off.

Bex: Yeah, we can do that.

Alice: Every time I cry.

Ellen: I mean, they’re in a hurry.

Bex: Because, like. But it’s not like they have to go, I mean, I’m sure that those pads are either on the ladder truck or on the engine truck, which probably is not going to be far away, or another, they would have [01:26:00] called another house to come. So, like, the 122 should be there, so they should have them as well.

Ellen: I mean, if this had been Eddie under the truck, Buck would have just jumped in the truck and, like, smashed it out of the way.

Bex: If this had been Eddie under the truck, Buck would have had that thing that mothers have, where, like, they suddenly get super powers, and he would have lifted it single handedly.

Alice: Buck would have dug through the ladder truck with his bare hands. Um, anyway, so they’re all trying to lift the firetruck off, except that Hen is still treating him. And, and Eddie’s just

Bex: Eddie has not let go of him.

Alice: Holding Buck’s hand. And I’m just crying because

Bex: I’m pretty sure that if you, if you’re thinking about it, like, no, no, he’s, he’s holding onto Buck, ready to pull him as soon as they get the ladder truck off him.

But it’s, it’s one hand on Buck’s arm and one hand holding his hand. [01:27:00]

Alice: Yeah. Like Eddie’s there for comfort.

Bex: Eddie is, yeah, he’s, I’m sure he’s telling himself it’s just so that he can help move Eddie, uh, move Buck. But it’s, it’s also that he just does not want to let go of Buck. Um, so, but Can I also add that it must have been fucking painful for them to keep lifting, like taking the pressure off Buck’s ankle and then having the pressure immediately just go back on his ankle when they lower the truck.

Alice: It’s not really on his ankle, it’s right underneath his knee.

Bex: Yeah. Like it’s further up than his ankle. It’s all of his leg.

Alice: Yeah, it’s all of his leg.

Bex: But yeah, could you imagine, like, they lift the pressure off just that little bit, and then probably the nerves start firing because suddenly he’s getting a little bit of blood flowing back through it, and then they drop the truck back on his leg.

Alice: Yeah, right? Because every time they lift it too, he screams, like, he

Ellen: But like, to be fair, with like three of them trying to lift, they’re probably not lifting it very far.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: So [01:28:00] maybe it’s not that bad. Yeah.

Bex: But funnily enough, no, they can’t lift the truck off. Um, so they, um, they

Alice: Look, Chim was able to lift all of Tommy above his head, so he might have been able to do it.

Bex: So they decide that, so they, Chim says that he will radio again for assistance, and I didn’t pick this up until our friend at Fire Department Chronicles pointed it out, but, um, Chim lifts the radio to his ear like it’s a cell phone.

Ellen: Ah!

Alice: Yeah. Oh, I love Chim so much.

Bex: But it doesn’t matter that he’s using the radio improperly, because even though they’re in the middle of the street and everybody else is It’s like cordoned off halfway down the block, they, everybody who is like gawking at this scene and filming it to go up on their YouTube channel and put up on social media, um, [01:29:00] have divined that they need more hands on deck.

So they break through the barricades, run through the tape, and just swarm the ladder truck. And they’re all going to help lift the truck and get it off Buck.

And “Sanctuary” by Welshly Arms starts, I’ve never heard this song outside of 9-1-1, um, but every single time the music starts and the people start running towards the truck, um, I start crying.

Ellen: Yeah, it’s very, it’s very touching.

Alice: Um, Back at Dispatch, Josh is comforting Maddie, um, have we mentioned that Ali is sitting in Buck’s loft watching?

Bex: Yeah, she’s also watching this on Channel 8 News, looking absolutely distraught.

Alice: Yeah, so she like, is also looking like she’s gonna cry with relief.

Bex: Because, yeah, all of the, the many hands do make light work and they are able to lift the truck high enough to drag a [01:30:00] screaming Buck out, get him onto a backboard and up onto a gurney, um, And I think it is completely implausible that this is the way it would happen in real life.

But Dwight does make a note, the anchor from Channel 8 News, makes a comment, sort of the, brings this season full circle, which is the incredible show of support and gratitude of the citizens of LA to the firefighters brings him back to the earthquake with all the expressions of love that LA had for its first responders.

Alice: Um, yeah, don’t need any brownies though, guys. No more brownies.

Bex: Don’t send the brownies.

Ellen: Yeah, and he does say like, what a great moment for this city. I’m like, settle down, buddy. It’s only like, you know, a firetruck that got blown up and then

Bex: No, but he’s watching this footage that’s coming in and he’s thinking they’re going to get a [01:31:00] Pulitzer for it.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: This is award winning television right now, right at this moment. Yes.

Alice: Taylor Kelly is gutted that she wasn’t there covering it.

Ellen: Bobby, he follows Buck to the ambulance, but then he kind of doesn’t go with him. You Even though I’m like, dude, that’s your son.

Alice: Yeah, Athena tackles him.

Ellen: Get in there. But no.

Bex: I don’t think there’s enough room because, um, Eddie climbs in after him. I think Hen climbs in after him as well. There’s not a lot of room in there.

Ellen: It’s like a clown car in there. They can fit heaps of people in.

Bex: Oh my god, the clown car.

Ellen: They can fit two people in. Two guys and a tape, like three guys and a tapeworm in there.

No, four. Four guys and a tapeworm in the back of the ambulance. Clown car.

Bex: That was before they, that was the ambulance that they blew up. I think the ones that they got after they blew that one up are smaller.

Ellen: Are they?.

Bex: But yes, he also can’t get into the ambulance because his fiancée tackles him. [01:32:00]

Ellen: Yeah. And tells him he’s a fool. But she loves him. And he wakes up, Buck wakes up in hospital. with his leg in a cast. Um, and Carla is there like some kind of guardian angel.

Bex: I was really surprised that Christopher wasn’t there.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah.

Alice: It’s okay, Eddie’s parents are still in town, so they’re babysitting.

Bex: That’s what it was. Someone, someone’s actually being responsible for Christopher at this point.

Ellen: Yeah, he doesn’t just have to wander around the hospital again. He does like to do that.

Bex: Carla is watching over Buck, which Buck is slightly surprised to see her.

She says of course that she’s going to be here, she sees her friend being crushed by a firetruck, she’s going to be there, and you can sort of, you can see Buck waking up and like the order of events clicking through in his brain, he’s like, hospital, firetruck, shit my [01:33:00] leg, and his leg is, he’s in like a full leg cast, and then it’s also being suspended, um, above the bed.

Ellen: Yeah, he’s having a bit of a panic attack, but Carla sort of calms him down and, and says that “You made it through the surgery and now you’re the proud owner of one titanium rod and four beautifully cobalt chrome screws.”

Bex: Doesn’t really calm Buck down though, much, um, because while the doctors were certain that he would be able to walk again, they weren’t sure that he was going to be able to work again.

Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. Buck’s pretty upset about that.

Bex: Yeah, Carla’s just like, “Let’s just take one day at a time. Let’s just be glad that you are alive.” And Buck kind of rolls his eyes and like, “well, if I’m not working, then there’s no point in me being alive.”

[01:34:00] I love this little scene is Carla decides to distract him by changing the subject. And she goes, “Ali seems nice.” And Buck’s like, “Oh, you meant Ali?” She’s like, “So we’re into brunettes now.” Buck’s sort of very sheepishly says, “Well, she was blonde when I met her.”

And Carla, despite, I don’t know how much she’s seen Buck since, um, she kind of started looking after Christopher, but she sort of looks at him and teases him a little bit and says, Oh, so we’re just going to cover the waterfront then. Which apparently means, um, we’re going to cover a wide range of experiences.

So, you know, he’s had the blonde. Now he’s got the brunettes. Buck must know what she thinks.

Ellen: I hadn’t heard of that one.

Bex: No, but Buck understands, understands it probably from context. He’s like slightly scandalized. It’s just like, “Carla!”

Alice: I love Carla. But then Ali and Maddie walk in.

Bex: Yeah.

Alice: Um, [01:35:00] Ali goes straight to Buck and gives him a kiss.

Buck thanks her for being there. And Maddie’s like, “he didn’t thank us, but this is fine.” And Carla’s like, “I don’t even think he knows we’re still in the room.” Um, but yeah, it’s a nice, um, nice difference from when Chim was in the hospital in Season 1.

Bex: Yeah, every time Chim wakes up in the hospital, he’s by himself.

Alice: Excuse me, Chris was there, I don’t know who else,

Bex: but like he doesn’t have a, like, a significant other there.

Alice: Yeah, um, Like, they, Buck and Ali just spoke about how they’re not ready for the next step, but Ali was still there to support him after his surgery, which is really nice.

Bex: For now.

Alice: Just noticed it was a,

Bex: it’s a much, it’s much nicer wake up than Chim’s had.

Alice: I actually had it in my, um, in my notes too. I’m just like, oh, it’s nice seeing someone other than Chim in hospital for once.

Bex: Poor Chim. [01:36:00]

Ellen: Poor Chim. We’ll have to, in your little tracking, um, spreadsheet thing, we’ll have to start adding hospital visits. Yeah.

Bex: So we’ve got two for Chim, one for Buck.

Ellen: Yeah. No, two, two for Buck. He got stabbed in the neck, remember? With the steak knife.

Bex: Yes, that’s true too. I say they’re, they’re tied for the hospital visits so far. Yeah.

Alice: Since Abby sucks at CPR.

Bex: To be fair, there’s, you can’t do CPR when the whole point of CPR is getting oxygen down into the lungs when there is an obstruction in his throat.

Alice: No, that’s what I’m saying. She tried to do mouth to mouth while he had an obstruction. Like that’s just going to push it further in.

Ellen: God, that was a long time ago.

Bex: It was. It really feels like it was.

Alice: Look, I have Abby thoughts today for no reason at all. Um, Anyway, so then we go to Karen [01:37:00] and Hen and Denny at a playground. And,

Bex: like, long story short, HenRen want to get pregnant. That’s literally the gist of this scene. They want to have a baby. Amen.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. It’s a, it’s a really nice scene though.

They’re just having a nice time at the park, having a chat about, wouldn’t it be nice if we had another kid?

Bex: Yeah. Because that’s it. Karen’s got a new job. She’s now working part time. Um, so she’s going to be home more. So she has the capacity to, you know, to be there to have another kid.

Alice: Oh, I do actually just want to mention, um, So Karen says that, like, she can, she’s working remotely.

And she mentions that she wishes that Hen could work from home. And Hen’s like, “Uh, the day I’m working from home, our house is on fire, so bite your tongue.”

Ellen: Yeah. And Hen also says, remember when working remotely wasn’t even a thing? And I’m like, this is 2019, like working from home is [01:38:00] about to be a thing, like a much bigger thing than you ever imagined.

Yes.

Bex: Although Hen still doesn’t get to work from home.

Ellen: No. Okay.

Bex: Even in the midst of a pandemic, the first responders still don’t get to work from home.

Alice: Hey, as a retail worker, I also didn’t get to work from home.

Ellen: No, you’re essential, I’m afraid. Sorry.

Alice: Apparently.

Bex: Puppies need their food. Um. Just like humans do.

Ellen: Yes.

Bex: So we’ve set up the HenRen trying to conceive storyline. Um. We’re going to. The rest of this episode is like, just quick little scenes, kind of setting up the rest of the characters.

Alice: Um. Yeah, it’s just like tying everything back up into a nice bow before the end of the, like the

Bex: Tying up the bow for the end of the season, also setting up the next season as well.

Yeah. Um, so we get back to the 118, who have a shiny new ladder truck. [01:39:00]

Alice: Um, they’re not allowed to flip, crash, or blow her up. Yeah.

Ellen: And Eddie’s like, aww.

Dammit! And then Bobby comes out.

Bex: Yes, Bobby made no promises that they would not flip, crash, or blow it up anytime soon.

Alice: Like as if it was their fault that it blew up.

Ellen: I don’t think any of that was their fault.

Bex: It has never been their fault. Can I just mention, um, Eddie Diaz, Eddie Daddy Issues Diaz, how quickly he just immediately goes for the hug.

Yeah. For Bobby.

Ellen: Yeah, I saw that. Like, everyone hugs him.

Bex: I know, but it’s just, it feels like Eddie and Bobby’s hug, like, Eddie is always trying to hug Bobby.

Alice: Uh, can you blame him? Have you seen Peter Krause?

Bex: He, he, he does look very, he’s very dad shaped. He’s very dad shaped. He seems like he gives good hugs.

He just gives really

Ellen: great hugs, yeah.

Bex: Yeah, and Eddie is, is, the daddy issues are [01:40:00] showing. Yeah. especially since he’s been reminded about his own father. Um, anyway, so yes, Bobby is back as captain of the 118, Interim Captain Han is stepping down.

Ellen: Much to everyone’s relief.

Bex: No one’s going to miss him.

Alice: Um, but yeah, so it’s kind of hard to fire the guy who was the hero of the six o’clock news.

Hen makes a very dated joke about a fiery tweet storm.

Ellen: Yep. But things are finally getting back to the way they should be.

Bex: Eddie says almost.

Alice: Almost. And um, because of course it’s Eddie who misses Buck. So we go to, back to Buck’s loft and Buck’s coming home from the hospital.

Bex: And poor dude, he’s like, he’s so glad to be out of the hospital.

He misses his own bed, which he won’t see for the next three months because he’s on crutches, and those stairs up [01:41:00] to his lofted bed are dangerous for a most able bodied person. They’re, they would be absolutely treacherous for someone on crutches.

Ellen: Yeah.

Bex: Yeah, like, I don’t even know how they got the bed up there.

I can, I would like to imagine some kind of pulley system.

Alice: Probably just several firefighters.

Bex: Because there’s a nice little, like, fancy thing that’s wire, they could like throw a rope over and it doesn’t matter. Buck’s not going up there for the next couple of months. He’s strictly sleeping on the couch in his own apartment.

So the irony, like the irony is that he bought his own apartment to get off Maddie’s couch and then he’s still on the couch.

Ellen: He’s back on his own couch.

Alice: Um, so yeah, Buck says, “Lesson learned, never sign a lease if you intend on being crushed by municipal equipment.” And Ali just goes, “How about not get crushed by municipal equipment?”

Bex: That’s a good thought. Yeah. But then they have a conversation about what’s next for Buck. [01:42:00]

Alice: Buck immediately panics too.

Ellen: Yeah, he’s having a bit of a, he reacts very strongly to this question. Yeah. Yeah. He’s like, “Why, did the doctor say something to you?” He’s like, clearly worried about this.

But um, he says there’ll probably be a lot of physical therapy. And um

Bex: And then he’ll go back to work.

Ellen: Yeah, of course.

Bex: Ali’s like, “You, you just want to go back to work.” And Buck’s answer is, “Well, what else would I do?”

Alice: Yeah. So yeah, Ali’s worried because she just watched him almost die and Buck’s like, “I didn’t.” She’s like, “well, you could have.”

Bex: “But I didn’t.”

Alice: He’s like, “but I didn’t.”

Ellen: And Ally’s like, it’s not you, it’s me. And she doesn’t acknowledge that it’s her problem, but kind of does at the same time.

Bex: Well, she kind of does.

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Yeah. So she’s like, “I, it’s not like I didn’t know you were in a dangerous line of work when I met you.” Um, [01:43:00] but that was one. day of her life. And it’s every day for Buck.

Bex: And she’s starting to understand what that means. And Buck immediately jumps to the worst possible, worst conclusion and says, wait, so you want me to quit my job for you?

And she’s, she tells him, no, she would never ask him to do that. She knows that being a firefighter is who he is. She’s just not sure if it’s who she is. Yet.

Ellen: What does that mean, Ali?

Bex: Uh, it sounds like it means that she’s not going to be treating him as a hotel when she comes back from New York next time.

Ellen: Hmm. Then we get another little sweet scene, um, with, well, a sweeter scene than the last one, I guess. Um, it’s like the opposite of the last one. Maddie comes to the station house. to see Chim [01:44:00] and, uh, she says, “Remember how I asked you if things were ever going to be the same again? And you said, no.”

And Chim’s like, “Yeah, I think maybe I was wrong about that.” And Maddie goes, “I think you were right.” And Chim’s face just like, he’s like, oh, okay. But she says, “No, that’s okay. We’re never going to be like that, but maybe we could have something else.” And then they, have a little smooch! So cute!

He says he

Alice: I love Madney so much.

Ellen: He says, “You were standing right there when you asked me out on a date, and I’m not sure I’d ever been so happy. Until right now.” Aww!

Alice: They’re so gross.

Bex: And this time, they don’t have an audience, um, cheering them on. Oh yeah. Which is probably nice. For them.

Ellen: And then we [01:45:00] have a bit of a time jump for this in this commercial break and we’re back with Maddie again, but now she’s at home.

Bex: No, she’s at Buck’s apartment.

Ellen: She’s at Buck’s place.

Bex: I don’t think we, I don’t think we know where Maddie’s living right now. I was thinking about this and now we’ve got the set of Buck’s apartment. I don’t know if we ever see Maddie’s apartment. Can you remember if we see Maddie’s apartment, Alice?

Alice: No, I don’t think so. Like we know, last time we heard in the heist episode they were trying to get out of the lease. Yeah. And then it’s been a while and now Buck’s signed his own lease.

Bex: Where’s Maddie?

Alice: But we have no idea what, yeah, we don’t know where Maddie’s staying.

Bex: Hmm. So yeah, so this, this is Buck’s apartment. Um. And Maddie is butchering a pair of Buck’s duty pants.

She’s like, ripping the leg off one of them. I guess so Buck can put them on over his cast. [01:46:00] Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah, and like, is he going back to work with his leg still broken? Like, what the hell?

Bex: Well he has to, he has to, he’s got an important, important ceremony to attend, he needs to be in uniform.

Ellen: Yeah, he’s, like, Maddie says, “I don’t even know why I’m taking you, you shouldn’t be on your feet.”

And Buck’s like, “This is more important.” So he, there’s no way he’s going to miss out on whatever this is.

Alice: He also mentions if he breaks anything else they can just fix that too, with the other stuff. And Maddie’s like, “What other stuff?” Um, so Buck, like, he reveals here that they want him to have another surgery.

Because the x rays weren’t right, so they’re gonna go in and replace the rod and do some bone grafts. And Maddie’s just like, oh, well, do they think it’s this or this or this or this? And Buck’s like, what? Um, And she’s just like, you know, if it’s healing slower than expected, just wait a few weeks. And Buck says that he’s not waiting.

The sooner that he has the surgery, the sooner he can go back to [01:47:00] work. And Maddie reads between the lines here. And says, sees that the doctor does want Buck to wait. And you know, they’re talking about his health, his ability to walk, and the rest of his life.

Bex: Buck counters that being a firefighter is his life.

The only thing he’s ever done that’s important, it’s the only thing that matters. And if he doesn’t have being a firefighter, he doesn’t have, um, Maddie interrupts him at this point, but the implication is if he can’t be a firefighter, he’s nothing. Which is really sad, because we had this kind of sentiment from Buck 1.

0, way back in the pilot, when Bobby tried to fire him, and Buck’s like, no, you can’t fire me, I need this job, because being a firefighter is all I have. But like, what are we, Buck 2. 0? So Buck 2. 0 is much, has a much fuller life than Buck 1. [01:48:00] 0, because Buck 1. 0 was living in a frat house. He didn’t have a relationship, he just had a series of hookups.

He didn’t have any family, he didn’t have any friends. Buck 2. 0 has an apartment, he has a sister back in his life, he has a best friend in Eddie, um

Alice: He has a kid.

Bex: He has a kid and Christopher, his life is He’s amazing. He’s had relationships. He’s in a relationship with Ali.

Alice: Well, as far as we know.

Bex: Yet he’s still

Ellen: Yeah, I just assumed they’d broken up at this point.

Bex: Yeah. But he still thinks that he has nothing in his life if he’s not a firefighter, or that nothing that

Alice: I guess his, like, I guess his worry that is if he, like, isn’t a firefighter, because it’s his most important relationships, right, that, like, Bobby, Eddie, Chim and Hen. and he spends so much time with them and if he’s not a firefighter they’ll just throw him away.

Like that’s his worry.

Bex: Oh the psychology of what is going on in Buck’s head right now is fascinating [01:49:00] and completely understandable for why he is reacting the way that he is reacting.

Ellen: Yeah. I don’t know. He’s broken.

Alice: Maddie doesn’t really get it.

Ellen: So what will he do if he, if he doesn’t, if he can’t do what he knows how to do?

Bex: It goes deeper than that, but We can’t say anything. But yeah, he’s, he’s

Alice: He’s terrified that if he’s not a firefighter, like, he’ll lose all the, like, everything that he’s built in LA.

Bex: He has nothing if he’s not a firefighter because everything he has is built around being a firefighter.

Alice: Yeah, and like, you know, we

Bex: Yeah, Autumn agrees.

Alice: Do you want to be a firefighter? Come here.

Ellen: One thing I noticed about this scene that was kind of, uh, I thought was kind of funny, um, was that not just this scene, but the scene previously with, um, Ali, is that Oliver’s [01:50:00] eyes look really red, like he’s been crying, like, even at the start. And I’m like, did they do multiple takes of this? And he’s just been gradually getting more upset as they go on?

Bex: Possibly. Maybe. Maybe.

Ellen: Because he looked like really upset right from the start, like he had his eyes are all red. I’m like, have you already been crying in a different scene? Or, yeah, but it’s sad. Like obviously they’ve filmed both of these scenes back to back.

So he still looks the same as he did with the, in the other scene.

Bex: And I guess every time they, they do a take, if they’ve had to do multiple takes, they, they can’t kind of, he can’t reset his eyes.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. That’s right.

Bex: Like they can touch, they can touch up his makeup. They can like wipe away if he’s had any tears.

Come out but they kind of can’t take away the redness.

Ellen: If his eyes are red, then that’s it.

Bex: But it, it, it kind of works well. It just sort of looks like Buck’s just sort of been perpetually crying for the last couple of days. Which he probably has.

Ellen: Oh, bless him. When’s he going to find someone who’s not going to just break his heart into little [01:51:00] pieces?

Alice: What season are we on?

Ellen: No, don’t tell me. I’m sure it’s a secret.

Alice: Um, hang on. So we’re going to his graduation ceremony.

Bex: But we are going to a graduation ceremony. Well, yeah, going to a graduation ceremony. That’s what’s more important than buck resting. Um, because Eddie has finally hit his one year mark.

Um, and they’re starting their shift with a little party for Eddie. Um, they’ve got tables lined up in between the trucks. There is a cake that says “Congratulations Firefighter Diaz” on it.

Alice: Yeah, it’s not some weird, um, it’s not some weird cake. It’s just a normal cake

Bex: It’s just a sheet cake with the L A F D shield in the center and the wording on either side.

Ellen: It doesn’t have any snarky, snarky comments or anything.

Bex: No, you only get the snark if you die or get hurt.

Ellen: If you die.[01:52:00]

Bex: Um, and Bobby’s giving a speech where he says that, “people assume that we, i. e. firefighters,” and hang on, I gotta get my shot glass ready. “People assume that we choose this life.” Drink. “I’m not so sure. Sometimes I think this life chooses us.” Drink. Um,

“For those of us that answer the call, there can be no doubt, no equivocation, it’s not just the lives of those we serve that depend on us, but our own. And The lives of our fellow firefighters and first responders and today we welcome into those ranks a new brother after a year of hard work and dedication Firefighter Diaz’s probationary period is at an end Welcome Eddie.”

And everyone cheers and I didn’t realize this until I think the last time I watched this episode, [01:53:00] but the irony that Eddie’s life as a firefighter in the L. A. F. D. is just starting, as Buck’s is potentially ending.

Ellen: Oh. But he still wanted to be there.

Bex: He still wanted to be there, he needed to be there, but you can see on his face, he’s That this is so painful, both physically, like his leg, but also emotionally, that he’s watching Eddie, go on to, to work as a firefighter when Buck’s not sure that he’s going to be able to.

Ellen: Hmm. But Chris comes up and gives him his helmet.

Bex: That is so cute!

Ellen: It’s very cute. He goes, “I’ve got your helmet, Dad!”

Bex: He’s trying so hard because he doesn’t have his calipers with him, so he’s walking up with the, with his helmet.

Alice: And then he has his hat.

Bex: And he tells his father congratulations. I love Ryan and Gavin, they’re so cute together.

You can tell that Ryan really just does adore Gavin. It’s not Eddie and Chris, it’s Gavin and [01:54:00] Ryan. Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah, so we end on a We’re not finished yet, but

Bex: We end this scene.

Ellen: You might be confused into thinking we were ending because we get a voiceover, right? Like you’re thinking this is the end.

Bex: It’s like the Return of the King.

Like, we have an ending, and then you go, Oh wait, no, there’s another ending. Oh wait, no, there’s another ending.

Ellen: Ending part two. Yeah.

Alice: We, um, we do get a shot of Eddie and Buck hugging, too. And Chim feeding Maddie Cake.

Bex: It’s, yeah, there’s like a slow mo montage of all of the families, um, Like, being happy families.

Even the Diaz’s, um, they’re there and they seem to be supportive of, of Eddie. Apparently his sisters are there, but you wouldn’t know because they’re not acknowledged at all. I do like that there’s this little moment where Maddie and Karen meet for the first time and I didn’t realize that they had not met yet.[01:55:00]

Alice: It’s cute. And it’s like the besties other halves.

Bex: And then while, and while all of this is going on, Bobby is just standing back, um, watching over all of them fondly. And yes, we do get a voiceover from Athena who makes a few more pointed comments about choices.

Ellen: We choose each other.

Bex: Emergency is the absence of choice.

But we call out to the people we love and we steal back that choice and I’m picking up my shot glass because we choose each other, we choose friendship and family, we choose hope, we choose joy, we choose to live. And I am going to need to call 9-1-1 because I’m about to die of alcohol poisoning.

Ellen: There’s a lot of choosing going on.

Bex: There’s a lot of choosing.

Ellen: And the last choice in this episode is Bobby rushing in to drag Athena to the courthouse so that they can get married.

Bex: They’re choosing to get married [01:56:00] instead of doing laundry or grocery shopping or sleeping.

Ellen: Yeah. It’s like, “What are you doing tonight?” Oh, today.

Bex: Yeah. Cause I, I think, I know, I know 9-1-1 timelines are timey wimey, but I think that they did Eddie’s graduation ceremony at the start of their shift. And I think it must’ve been an overnight shift. So they did that, they’ve done their shift and then Bobby is coming home from that shift and it’s the morning and Athena’s got the day off.

Ellen: Oh yeah.

Bex: So yes, so they’re going to pick the kids up from school. I don’t know whether Bobby means I’m literally going to go and pull them out of school in order to do this or we’ll wait till the end of the day and we’ll pick them up from school. Um. And he tells her, I know that you don’t have a dress, but she goes, “Ah, no, no, I have a dress.”

Ellen: Yeah, she does. She does.

Bex: Okay. [01:57:00] I

Ellen: You don’t like the dress?

Bex: Here’s the thing, I don’t understand the dress.

Ellen: No, I don’t either.

Bex: Because I, I look at this dress and it’s, if you haven’t seen the episode or if you, it’s been a while and you can’t remember what Athena is wearing, she has this off the shoulder with one of those little sort of sleeves that aren’t actually sleeves, they just kind of wrap around your upper arms and it’s creamy and it’s tight fitting and Angela Bassett looks amazing in it, but it also has black straps and like these black cups coming out of the top of the, like, decolletage of the dress.

It just looks like.

Alice: Is that part of the dress?

Bex: See, this is what I’m not sure about.

Alice: I thought she was just wearing a bra because she hadn’t got like a good bra yet.

Ellen: Yeah, I was like she didn’t want to pop down to the, the sho like, Pop down to like David Jones and get like a, uh, some kind of a strapless bra.

Bex: I don’t [01:58:00] understand whether it was, it’s the design of the dress and it has like these, this black kind of color pop on top or whether she’s literally wearing a strapless, um, off the shoulder dress with a black bra.

Ellen: No, I’m guessing it must be part of the dress. It’s just like a really odd design.

Bex: And it’s like, I’m old enough that those old fashioned, um, fashion etiquette rules still have got drilled into me. So the fact that like, you can see the bra and the straps are showing and it’s the wrong color. It’s just like, no, you can’t go out like that.

Alice: Hang on. No, I need to watch this to work out if it’s part of the dress.

Bex: If anybody has watched this episode and, like, recognises the designer of this dress or can tell us who is more fashion literate than apparently the three of us are and can say to us, no, this is deliberately designed like this, or

Ellen: No, it must be deliberately designed. Why would she wouldn’t

Alice: It just looks like she’s wearing a bra!

Ellen: They wouldn’t have her at her wedding ceremony in a [01:59:00] bra sticking out of her dress, surely.

Bex: I don’t know! I mean, she looks amazing, it’s just odd.

Ellen: She always does look amazing. It’s just like,

Bex: yeah,

Ellen: the dress is a really strange choice, I think.

Alice: It looks like she’s just got a bra on underneath, like surely it’s not part of the dress.

Bex: I don’t know, but then why? I don’t know.

Alice: Harry’s also just in a suit, he’s not in a tux.

Bex: No, but he looks cute and he didn’t want to wear a tux anyway.

Alice: No, that’s what I mean.

Like he’s, he’s happily just like in a suit, he walks her down the aisle, which is super cute.

Bex: With May on her, on Athena’s other arm.

Alice: It just looks like a bra.

Bex: See, I could not concentrate on the rest of this scene because I’m trying to figure out what the hell Athena is wearing.

Ellen: Well, there’s not much else to tell. They just get married.

Bex: They get married.

Ellen: Yeah. And that’s it. Basically.

Alice: Yeah. In front of a judge at a courthouse. Yeah. Um, that’s also not how marriage licenses work. [02:00:00] You can’t just get it the same day except for like in Vegas, so maybe they went to a courthouse in Vegas.

Bex: I’m assuming that they’ve got the license already and they were just holding on to it in, until they got the, the details of the restaurant.

Alice: I think, I’m pretty sure you’ve got to like name the date though.

Bex: I don’t know how marriage licenses work in LA. I do know that Bobby could probably have just married them himself.

Alice: No, I don’t. I think you’ve still got to have another person. I don’t think you can be a celebrant to yourself.

Bex: Wouldn’t that be cool if you could though?

I don’t know. I’ve just written in a fic that Bobby marries everybody. Like Bobby marries everybody in my fics.

Alice: I have a, uh, one of my best friends is a celebrant. So, um, if you’re in Melbourne and you need a celebrant.

Ellen: Well, that’s good to know just in case.

Bex: If any of our four listeners are in Melbourne and they need some kind of [02:01:00] celebrant,

Alice: and if you need a celebrant for, um, ’cause you’re getting married

Bex: You need a, a very inclusive, very, uh, very inclusive celebrant, then, uh, hit Alice up for her details. Her details? Their details?

Alice: Her details.

Bex: But yeah, that’s how, that’s how the episode ends.

Ellen: Yeah. This, this is very neat…

Alice: Yeah, Bathena are now married!

Ellen: A neat wrap up to this season.

Bex: Did we, we started, did we start with them kissing in Season 2?

Alice: Pretty much, yeah.

Ellen: Yes.

Bex: Was that the first episode of Season 2 where, like, Peter Krause was trying to do the splits so that he could kiss Athena?

Alice: Yeah! Between the engines.

Bex: And we end on them kissing as well, so, alright, snaps to Tim Minear for all of this nice circular imagery.

You know, bring it back.

Ellen: It has circled back very neatly.

Bex: Yes.

Ellen: It’s, it’s a weird kind of, like, it feels like, almost like [02:02:00] they didn’t know if they were, like, I, I know that at this point they did know they were coming back for season three, but it almost feels like the ending where they weren’t sure. Like everything is quite neatly, apart from the fact that Buck is, like, still recovering from his injury.

Um, everyone else is in a place where

Bex: There’s no, there’s no cliffhangers.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. They’re at rest, I guess you might say. Yeah. They’re not. in the middle of anything too outrageous. And I think we didn’t, did we have a cliffhanger at the end of season one? I don’t remember what happened at the end of season one.

Alice: Abby left.

Ellen: Oh yeah, so there was a sad kind of component to season one. And it feels like after the last episode there should be a sad component to this, but there just isn’t.

Bex: Abby walked through the doors and we ended the episode on Bobby and Athena on their date, right?

Ellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Bex: So then we end with them, the end of the next season with them getting [02:03:00] married.

Yeah. Now I need to go back and check how Season 3 ends to see if, to see if the pattern continues. Did Bobby and Athena, is there a progression in Bobby and Athena’s relationship at the end of every season? Stay tuned.

Alice: God, I don’t even remember the end of Season 3.

Bex: Like I said, the perils of streaming services, I don’t know where seasons start and seasons end.

Alice: Literally, yeah, that’s all roll into one watched it all in one go. Which is why it’s been really nice just watching it, like, one at a time.

Bex: One at a time, and being forced to stop.

Ellen: That’s good, I’m glad I’m not holding you back.

Bex: No, and to recognize what happens in future seasons so we don’t talk about them.

Yeah. Like, okay, that is very definitely a Season 4 thing, so we cannot talk about that yet. No, no, not holding us back. It’s, it’s an interesting exercise.

Alice: It is, yeah.

Ellen: Yeah, so now we need to go back and have a think [02:04:00] about all the episodes in Season 2. Okay.

Bex: Yes. We get to talk about them all at once.

Ellen: Yeah, yeah.

Compile, kind of, our thoughts to talk next week. So I mean, this episode, at least it wasn’t like last week, we thought that it was kind of a filler episode. Like it had sections where they kind of brought in the bits that needed to be wrapped up before the end of the season. But this episode

Bex: But you kinda understand what I mean when I said that last week was a filler episode, right?

Because it was The, the, the key components of last week was the mail bomb and then that, which led on very nicely to this episode.

Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. But they needed some other stuff.

Bex: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah. And last week was put together in a rather, it was, it was like a different, a strange way. Yeah. The way they put it together didn’t really work that well, but this one was a lot better I thought.

Bex: No, because you had the showrunner writing it.

Ellen: Yeah. [02:05:00] Like we still had some bits of it that didn’t really. That were filler, like, we didn’t really need them, like, the

Bex: Oh, I’m not saying he’s a brilliant writer, and I’m not saying that, you know, that there are parts of the episode that absolutely didn’t work, but it was a vast improvement on last week’s episode, and it’s a vast improvement on a lot of the episodes from season two, which we can get into next week when we can, like, dissect which episodes are written by which writers, and why we liked them and why we didn’t like them.

Ellen: Yeah, I’m still a bit sad about brushing the whole Shannon thing under the rug, but anyway, what can we do?

Bex: Get writers that actually care about female characters?

Ellen: That would be a start.

Bex: Get some more women in the writers room. Because I’m sure that there are female writers, and there are female writers of colour, um, in the writers room.

It just, it doesn’t seem to be translating on screen.

Ellen: So next week we’re going to have our, we’re going to do a wrap up of Season [02:06:00] 2, and then I guess we’re going to go straight into Season 3. We haven’t really planned that yet, how we’re going to approach that, but yes.

We won’t have too much of a break this time, we’ll just press on with Season 3, I think.

Bex: We won’t leave Buck in his cast for too long. .

Ellen: Yeah. Uh, yeah. Like we said at the beginning, we, uh, you are probably too late at this stage when you were listening to this to get your thoughts in for the wrap up episode itself, but we’d still love to hear from you and let us know what you thought about this season or if you’ve got any comments about how the podcast is going in general.

We’d love to hear that. Uh, you can leave us a comment on this episode’s post in on our website or in Spotify as well. You can send us an email, which is contact at thatweewooshow. com or send us a DM on any of our social media accounts. And the website, thatweewooshow. com also has all the other ways that you can subscribe to the podcast.

So. [02:07:00] Thank you all very much for listening to all of our season two episodes. We will talk to you again next week for our season two wrap up. See you then.

Bex: Bye.

Alice: Bye.

Ellen: (voice over outro music) 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world too. If any of the topics we’ve discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you’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. [02:08:00] If you enjoy our podcast, you can help us out by leaving us a review on Spotify or your preferred listening app, and by sharing our social media posts. Find out more at thatweewooshow.com.

[first outtake]

Ellen: Alright, are we ready to go?

Bex: Holy shit.

Ellen: What?

Bex: I got, no.

Alice: What?

Bex: Sorry, I opened Twitter and someone had reposted one of Hot Priest’s mirror selfies and oh my god.

Hang on. Hold please! That was a, um, a bit of a jump scare.

Ellen: Are you too horny to continue?

Alice: I swear we’ll talk about season two eventually.

Ellen: Oh god.

Bex: See?

Alice: Oh my god.

Bex: [02:09:00] See?

Ellen: Wow.

Bex: I have a feeling that that was a justified, um, response.

Alice: Damn!

Ellen: Yes!

Alice: I think you need to send that to, um, Luci as well. Yeah.

Ellen: Damn.

[second outtake]

I just remember getting to the end of this. I like, um, maybe I’ll talk about it in a moment, when we’re talking about it. But it was like, I got to the end and I was like, that was the finale? I’m kind of just a bit meh about the whole thing.

Bex: You’re overwhelmed. You’re not overwhelmed.

Ellen: I was well and truly whelmed.

Alice: I think you can in Europe.

Bex: You can be. You can definitely be whelmed in Europe.

Ellen: Why can you be whelmed in Europe?

Bex: Oh no!

Alice: It’s a Ten Things I Hate About You thing.

Bex: It’s a quote from Ten Things I Hate About You. Bianca was talking to a friend and she’s like, “I know you can be overwhelmed, and I know you can be underwhelmed, but can you [02:10:00] ever just be whelmed?”

And her friend says, “I think you can in Europe.”

Ellen: oh right, yes, I have heard that quote before. I should really watch that movie at some point.

Alice: I can’t believe you haven’t seen it.

Bex: I’m sorry, was that I really need to watch that movie at some point again? Or I just really need to watch that movie.

Ellen: I don’t know, I don’t remember having watched it before, that’s all.

Bex: You don’t remember Heath Ledger’s, like, seminal performance where he’s singing serenading Kat on the

Ellen: I’ve seen a lot of memes and clips from it. I don’t think I’ve seen the actual movie.

Alice: Like, instead of recording, we might just need to watch 10 Things I Hate About You. Yeah. They tune in to get the last episode of season two and instead we’re just talking Ten Things I Hate About You.

Bex: With Kat and her erotic romances that she’s writing on the school computer.

Ellen: Um, the Monster of the Week guys just did [02:11:00] like a, uh, a commentary episode on Twilight where they watched Twilight and recorded their commentary.

Alice: Oh, I was obsessed with, um, Ten Things I Hate About You when I was like, oh, it must have been like 15?

Ellen: Yeah.

Alice: Um, obsessed. Like, I watched it so many times. I had so many screenshots of random, like, things.

[third outtake]

I was so tempted to, like, instead of “9-1-1 what’s your emergency” at the start of this one, just have Buck saying “maggot”.

Ellen: Ah. Yeah, I could do that.

Bex: Such a happy boy.

Alice: He’s just so happy about it. Don’t say maggot. MAGGOT!

Bex: Three things in life make Buck happy. Eddie, Christopher, and maggots.

Alice: And just, like, insects in people’s bodies.

Ellen: Worms in general.[02:12:00]

He’s an entomologist in another life.

Alice: He’s like, “Being a firefighter’s all I have!” And Maddie’s like, “What about your intense love of insects?”

Ellen: What about the bugs?

Bex: Be a science teacher in a different life.

Ellen: Or just that perpetual little boy catching, um, bugs in the garden. Bless him.

Bex: That’s a nice thought.

Becca: Oh, don’t say maggot!

Buck: Maggot!