Okay full transparency I am writing this post way ahead of time – as in I just finished the finale the day after it came out ahead of time and I am writing this then to be published a week from the time of writing – just to write while it’s all the freshest in my brain and aid in my efforts to catch up to my own missed posts. Okay, that said.
It’s been a hot minute, Complete Comments don’t get written as often as I’d like anymore but – no promises – I’m going to try to make an effort to amend that. We’ll see how that goes. Gonna start off strong with another entry in the 9-1-1 folder.
We have some things to discuss with this one.
Full disclaimer, like always, this entire post is my own subjective opinion. I do quite a bit of research into writing and I work at writing myself, but I am in no way an expert. This is subjective.
Many SPOILERS Ahead
Expectations
Last time I spoke about 9-1-1 in a Complete Comments post it was with great praise. It was one of the early Complete Comments posts, back when it was still ‘Comments on Completion’. I loved 9-1-1. We’re talking over a year ago now, but the post is there.
I approved of their balance, their writing, everything they did with the platform and foundation they had built. They gave voices to so many different kinds of struggles and stories. They gave voices to so many kinds of families and people and relationships. There was so much to find yourself in because they were so varied.
They had a large cast but no one felt unimportant or left behind, everyone had spotlight that was given time and attention. You could assume Bobby and Athena were your leads but it wasn’t glaringly in your face like some other ensemble casts. It didn’t feel like the writers had obvious favourites or neglected characters. They were all important. They had balance.
They had good writing. Such good writing. Trauma arcs that weren’t rushed through, recovery that took time, survival that mattered and relationships that lasted. These were characters who felt whole because nothing about them was forgotten or pushed to the side when it became inconvenient to write with.
I adored them and their brilliant writing. It was getting high praise because it had earned it.
I do not take back what I said. At the time I wrote that it was all true, and regards to those five or six seasons it still is.
The fact of the matter is that now, with these latest seasons, it isn’t anymore.
They had set the bar high for themselves because they smashed it out of the park for six consecutive seasons.
Admittedly, due to my own personal Maddie bias I found Season 6 to be a little rough but I was giving them a pass for that due to the fact JLH presumable had an infant at home and I wouldn’t be surprised if she’d asked to be eased back in. I haven’t checked this, but I am saying I gave them some leeway there. Now I wonder if, if I’d watched it as it aired like I have with Season 7 and 8 if it would have bugged me as much as these seasons have. Though I do recall it’s got some episodes I quite like. Same can be said of 7 and 8, though.
Regardless, they’d done so good for so long. They had some Season 1 hiccups but they proved over and over again that they’d learnt from those. Season’s 2-4 were smashing. I watch for Maddie so I tend to race through Season 5, but on my last watch I realised despite her absence it’s a pretty damn good season. Each new season promised to only get better. Right?
The bar was high.
They fell short of it.
Over and over again they fell short of the bar they set.
All our expectations? Crushed. By them! Expectations they had pushed up so high by showing us how good they can do! Repeatedly. For consecutive seasons.
At this point it’s not even that the episodes in isolation are bad. If they were an episode of any other TV Show they would be a good episode. ‘The Last Alarm’ was tearfully stunning. Needless side plots aside, that is perhaps one of the best funeral sequences I have watched. I was bawling. However, it is effectively an episode that has the unfavourable and gruelling task of being ‘the one that comes after’, but not the one that comes after a stellar episode you wonder how they could possibly beat it like ‘Innocence’ but instead the one that comes after an episode that was so fandom wide panned its now one of their lowest rated episodes of all time. The episode bar was set so low by the one before it, it had to somehow recover from that absolute tragedy, and it just barely scraped by doing so.
The thing is, even ‘Lab Rats’ in isolation, it’s stupid, but it’s not bad. Like as episodes of TV go, I was in tears. We hate it because it’s ending is dumb as f**k and unnecessary. After ‘Lab Rats’ I lost all faith and hope in them for a comeback they were long over due. And ya know what? ‘Voices’ tricks you into thinking they’re making it. I wasn’t overly impressed with the first half of Season 8 but the second half opened so well I thought they might be on a come back. Those two episodes were absolute gold. Everything played to perfection. I thought it was a little weird to put Maddie’s trauma arc off for an episode, but they somewhat allude to it in the like 3 scenes she has? I think they could’ve dragged it out for a little longer but they resolved it in like one episode. She’s resilient, she’s done this shit before so it’s fine, whatever, we got some so I’ll take it. I’ve not lost hope but then you get ‘Lab Rats’ and that’s just it, isn’t it?
Unless you undo death, you cannot come back from this.
I have no hope left. I had hope when I reviewed Season 7, I did. I knew they could do better and I was hoping this was a one-off. Growing pains due to the move to ABC. But they’ve shown disappointment is the new normal. And when you’re failing to meet expectations you set for yourself that’s just even worse. You know they may not be bad episodes of TV but they are, comparatively speaking, bad episodes of 9-1-1.
‘Let them cook’ with the grief I said, and they cooked-… for two episodes. The entire season finale was a waste of time. ‘Lab Rats’ had more gravitas and I still hate that. It didn’t feel like a season finale. Ya know what did? ‘Lab Rats’, ‘The Last Alarm’. This was just a random episode with a montage notes section tacked on the end like they accidentally forgot about all those arcs they still had open trying to crawl their way out of the Bobby Death writing hole they created. We’ll get back to those later, though.
I hesitate to set my expectations any higher than the constant disappointment the end of this season has proven to be. It’s sad, because there was such a good thing going. I could’ve seen them going for another good few years, and while there is no plans to end 9-1-1 any time soon – as has been reported – I don’t see them going after Season 9. I’m not even sure I will tune in for Season 9. I loved this show, and if Maddie has something good going on I might pick up the episodes, but I hesitate to commit and get excited for the next season when this season has shit on my excitement. They hyped up 8b so much, and now it feels like we were punished for engaging with that hype.
So, ya know what, the bar has been reset and it is so much lower than it was.
Uninvited Realism
Let’s talk about the death they can’t undo because 9-1-1 is stuck for the fact it IS a realistic show. Setting-wise.
We’ve all been moaning about the fact that he died for ‘realism’ and ya know what, that is a bullshit reason. You don’t kill someone for realism, not this late in the game. If you’re killing someone for ‘realism’ you do that early on. Like Season 1 early on. The reality of death is something you set up as soon as possible. If after Seven seasons you’re worried your show isn’t realistic enough that’s because it isn’t. It never was to begin with and it’s too late to change that now. You’re stuck with it, so stick with it.
And ya know what I didn’t see anyone complaining about how unrealistic it is that they all live every episode. That’s the hopeful part of it. No one ever felt like they had plot armour but we were all comforted for knowing that at the end of the day they were all going to be okay. We have watched them all nearly die more times than any single person will experience in their life, and not on any of those occasions was my take away “He should’ve died”. The whole point is that we don’t want them to, and if that was a reality to your show you wanted you should’ve introduced it before the 8th Season. It’s too late, you’ve set a pattern, you’ve curated and gathered an audience for that pattern, if you change it, you’re going to lose them.
For example, Agents of SHIELD kills reoccurring characters in SEASON 1. Death therefore introduced as something that could happen to anyone at any time. There’s a core group of characters that we’re pretty sure aren’t going to die, but none of them feel like they’ve got plot armour and a lot of them come so close to death as to genuinely fear for the lives. Death was always a part of their show, from the very beginning. But it’s not a realistic show, so they can come back from that shit. They DO kill two main characters but they come back! In whatever new forms we fancy.
9-1-1 cannot do that shit. They’ve rocked the boat by killing a beloved character and there’s no alien super soldier serum sitting around to help them undo that! Bobby is dead dead and there’s no coming back from this. Coulson was dead dead and he came back from this! He did that IN THE PILOT! Lore established, barely took a minute. Setting fully clear to you – we will get to AOS‘s pilot in the future, it is astonishingly good.
It doesn’t earn you realism points to kill off your main character. It just doesn’t. Not when you’ve clearly established that this show hasn’t been realistic from the beginning. Like hello? Bee tornado for one? This is an LA that has a major disaster every year minimum. Bobby once sought out a guy trapped in a roof with insulation by stabbing the ceiling, was he trying to find him via a blood trail? Or that time they got a guy’s head out of a concrete block via a huge hammer and chisel? Realism is for people who do their research not cross their fingers for a dramatic shot and pray no one calls them out on it. If you want to kill a guy off for realism you don’t do so with a virus I’m pretty sure you just invented, ya know this adapted super virus type anyways.
This show was never about realism from the beginning and we were okay with that because it made it comforting to watch, which is something that you build your TV Show around. If it was going for Walking Dead type drama or Game of Thrones stakes it should’ve established that early on, but it didn’t. It established itself as comfort food. Sure, it’s not Gilmore Girls type comfort food where everything is just a chill vibe at a coffee shop, but people live here. It’s often heartwarming as much as it is tragic, and I get goosebumps for the happy moments as much as I do for the sad ones. That is good balance and good TV. They write dramatically as much they do for comfort and it’s always been about that. They kind of show that can lift a weight from your day and also have you biting your nails in the same 42 minutes. That’s what it was about from the top. Every moment of tragedy had a light at the end of the tunnel.
The thing is 9-1-1 associates with the medical and crime drama side of TV Shows and ya know what those shows do kill people off. They do. So how much can we fault it for stepping outside of what we’ve come to expect from it? The thing is, I think if afterwards, Peter Krause had said anywhere that he wanted to leave, we would be less mad about it. Then it’s not a writing decision it’s a personal decision, and you can’t be annoyed at someone for wanting to move on with their life. It happens all the time in TV, especially shows that breach the five seasons, and for some of them before they even get there. A show could go on for decades, but some actors don’t want to spend decades playing the same character and we can’t fault them for that. They may have been your favourite, but when they choose to step away that is a decision you have to respect.
The press and exit interviews around Bobby’s death, however, indicate that it was a creative decision. Someone was going to die and they picked Bobby. For drama. For realism. For whatever.
The audience outcry has been well documented on the internet. People are mad. As far as we can tell Peter Krause didn’t want to leave. I was convinced the only way he would die is if Krause wanted to leave. If you think about it, if you’re being forced to write Bobby off the only way he does is via death. Season 8 Bobby was not one who was about to walk away from the 118, his family. If it was because Krause wanted out, I’d be far less annoyed about it.
I feel, however, that if death was a real threat for these characters you had to put that in the first five seasons latest. Grey’s Anatomy establishes death is a real threat by killing off Ellis Grey in Season 3. You don’t even need to use a main character to establish that your main characters could die, you just need to use one that we’ve seen several times before. Reoccurring is a-okay and fine to establish that as part of you’re setting. I reference Ellis Grey because she’s the earliest death I can think off and I’m so sure there’s probably more.
Whatever, we didn’t need or ask for the realism but we have it now, I guess? Ramble over.
Earning A Death
We’ve talked about this before. This is something I have come to heavily believe in. When writing a story you have to make death worth it. It is not a convenient way to get rid of nuisance characters or a shortcut or twist for pure shock value. Death, like all things in narratives, has to be earned, and you can earn it before, during or after.
The bar for earning death is really just like so low. No, really, because if you use deaths to effectively establish a hard and unforgiving setting, go you, you’ve done it right. The thing is, if you’re using death to establish something, you should do so as early as possible. A death cannot be used to establish a setting later on in the game if your setting has already been established.
In TV, I would say you can have a few years to change up your setting after your first season, but after the first five or so, you’re stuck. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing.
Setting’s change, yes, but if you’re going to change it you have to make us familiar with it as quick as possible. To use, Agents of SHIELD as an example again, any of you who have watched it will know that in the months between seasons the universe of the show can change quite a bit. Whether it’s because there’s new power dynamics, we’ve just skipped a few months and thing’s are obviously not stagnant in the MCU for so long, or because we got mysteriously catapulted to space. The point is, though, that AOS reestablishes that setting with the audience as quick as they can. For the first five seasons at minimum, AOS has some of the best pacing in a TV Show I have ever seen. You can see the seasons split up into the constituent parts and they take the time to set stuff up before things get really dramatic. The first few episodes of every season are to reintroduce you to the characters and where they are now and they do so effectively.
Even with this, however, the rules of their universe never change. We might end up time travelling in space by the end of the series. A thing, that I’m almost certain, none of the characters in the pilot could ever imagine they would end up doing, and still! Still with that, the rules of the world remain the same.
This to say, Bobby’s death doesn’t earn anything as a tool for establishing anything. As somewhat discussed in the above section. The rules of the universe had been well-established and the setting of each season stays roughly the same, aside from a few family changes. Besides, his death is way too late in the season never mind series to be used as anything like that.
Bobby’s death, if anything, is used to capitalise on shock. Or at least, it would have if the funeral pictures hadn’t been leaked. There was nothing they could do about that, though, and the fault of that can hardly be attributed to the writers. That’s just the internet for you.
In my opinion, they didn’t earn Bobby’s death in the moment, nor did they earn it beforehand or after. For any reason. Bobby had not come to a satisfying enough point in his recovery arc for his sacrifice to feel like a sacrifice and like a good ending for his character. He may have been a character built for this, but that’s because in the beginning his self-sacrificial BS came from low grade suicidal ideation, and he hadn’t recovered enough from that, come far enough from that, for that to not be a factor in his death. He was only just starting to move past that, and if he has to reassure his wife, that’s not what this is, he hasn’t yet come far enough to have earned a sacrifice play when that is a part of his character.
Furthermore, his death felt more like something that was avoidable than inevitable. If you want to tell me that he is doing this because he has to, for his team, you have to show me that there truly was no other options, which in my opinion, they did not do. Yes, he did it so his team could get out, but the thing is, because there is so many of them in there, we do not believe the threat that they’re going to let all of them die to begin with. Because Hen and Ravi are there it doesn’t feel like a “Chim or Bobby” situation.
Also side note, Hen had an open chest wound and she didn’t contract it at all? I may not be an expert on how viruses work, but I feel like open wounds should make you a concern for infection.
Regardless, in the finale even, we are told Bobby taught them there was always other options, a thing they kept mentioning earlier on, I think. Which feels like contradictory advice to come from a man who just took the nuclear one. This doesn’t earn his death in retrospect. They haven’t learned anything from him in death they didn’t learn from him in life. If anything, Bobby just died because he didn’t take his own goddamn advice. You can’t tell me Bobby taught you to seek out a third option when he looked at two and decided on his own.
Further to that point baby Robert Nash Han does not earn his death either. Also, that’s a dumb baby name. The Han’s have kids Jee-Yun and Bob. I hate it. Pay homage to him sure, he was like a father to Chimney, but like just for his middle name. They both have brother or brother adjacent dead relatives they could have named him after. Both with better names than Robert. When Bobby died I said “I swear if they name that kid after him-” and then they bloody did.
TV characters have kids named after dead characters all the time, but like-… Robert Nash Han??? Sweet as it is, that’s how you set a kid up to be bullied.
I’m on a tangent.
I just don’t think his death has been worth it. I don’t think it’s particularly added to the show in anyway. If anything it’s the leading factor in the chunk of audience they might drive away with their writing that seems like they’re asking to be cancelled. At best it’s a mistake they’ve been floundering in trying to recover from and at worst it was a creative decision done purely to shock you – and as we all know that is the worst kind of creative decision.
And you know death is sad. We should be upset and angry at a character’s death irregardless of whether it’s earned or not. I can be angry that someone is dead and still know that it was a good decision for the story, and I just don’t feel that here. Ya know, Agents of SHIELD kills characters I love and their deaths bring me to tears every time, but I have never thought the series is worse off without them. Those decisions to kill those characters at those times are earned and make narrative sense. The Handmaid’s Tale will kill of characters I adore – and I am still mad they are dead – but I’ve never thought they shouldn’t have done that. So far Bobby’s death has felt inconvenient for the plot. I’m not annoyed because he’s dead, I’m annoyed because he doesn’t need to be. It’s not been worth it, and in some instances it would have been better if he wasn’t.
If they were going to kill anyone it should have been Gerard, though, I’m just saying. That man can have a sudden change of heart and I still hate his guts. The emotional payoff would have been nowhere near the same, but – let’s be real – less of a tragedy. If you’re killing just anyone, let it be someone who’s absence will not drastically effect your show. He’s reappeared enough for it to feel like you’re taking from us, and he had started a growth that could’ve been effectively ended by a sacrifice play, shit it would have earned his death. You could even bring the Hotshots drama back after it, seen as you introduced that show for no good reason earlier. I started this paragraph because I just disliked Gerard but now I’m starting to think it may have been a better creative decision, if pushed back a little, to accomodate a little more growth. Though, I am aware the emotional payoff is part of the point. Bobby’s dead because it upsets us so much.
I see a season now in which Bobby gets injured and out of commission for a few episodes, like in a deathly way, Gerard steps in for a little bit, grows a little, and then dies.
I know when I say this I’m saying it more so as a fan than as a writer. I know from a writing perspective that when you kill someone you want it to be impactful, you want it to bring us to tears. Bobby’s death does all that, and I am a big believer in stories not being altered in order for it to be marketable. However, I feel like if you’re going to kill a main character that is a big decision and should be as story driven as it drives the story. If it was just about killing someone, anyone, then did it have to be Bobby? Is this the best you could do with Bobby’s death? It sounds like this arc wasn’t about killing Bobby but about killing just anyone, and I’d have been much happier with it if it was about killing Bobby specifically, that could’ve been dramatic and tragic and probably all the things we feel this misses.
As a final note, to be very clear, Athena selling the house makes it worse. My biggest gripe with Derek’s death is that Meredith sells the house. I was happy Athena wasn’t. Why in gods name has she gone back on that? Keep the house. There’s a certain amount of trauma and grief that might come from living in a house you designed with your now dead husband, I understand that, I do. However, there’s also the last memories of your husband tied to designing this place, he lives in these walls, and maybe you don’t want to live with him forever, but this is an Athena who didn’t move out of a house designed by the husband who broke her heart. Yes, for her kids that are now grown, but she started a new marriage in that house, they could’ve moved out at any time and they didn’t. She’s going to give up on this one? That is on that same land? BS.
Okay, moving on because I’ve spoken about his death way more than probably needed at this point.
That Was Not a Finale
Ya know, they’ve had disappointing finale’s in the past, Season 7’s among them… and this was about on par with that. I don’t have much to say about it because it was just so… meh.
As said, waste of time.
A building collapse was nothing new for us, we’ve seen that before with the hotel in the earthquake, and then something similar with the freeway collapse. This is all well-trodden territory. So to say the main drama of the episode was uninteresting at it’s best would be an understatement.
There was something this episode could’ve been and it just wasn’t.
I didn’t care for the collapse at all, and everything we would care about is tacked on in a few minute montage at the end.
It really feels like they forgot this was supposed to be their series finale, and in that, forgot about all those arcs they still had open that had taken up so much of the beginning and middle of the season.
Bobby’s death has completely overshadowed fan reactions, and dealing with it has completely overtaken the season. Death might not be conveniently timed in real life, but shocker this is a fictional TV Show, they have control over when someone dies, and it very much should be timed for when it is most suitable for the narrative. Everything else was made to feel like an inconvenience for the narrative because Bobby’s death was inconvenient for the writing.
So, well done, not only did you piss off your fans an unimaginable amount, you then ruined the rest of your season, that was almost making a comeback.
We were getting to the end of this season and I was starting to think all those arcs that had been laid to the way side were going to get resolved in the next season, because they were simply running out of time. This montage proves that.
You filled an episode with unnecessary action and then ran through emotional beats that almost definitely should have been hung on to.
For instance, let’s discuss Maddie’s pregnancy. Let’s be honest, Maddie has hardly been a well used character since ‘Disconnected’, you could almost forget she was pregnant at all if Chim hadn’t mentioned it in ‘Lab Rats’ briefly. Look, there is a trend in TV pregnancies with the second that once you’ve done most of it already with the first one what’s the point in doing it again, which I sort of get. Ya know, it is a story that has been told before. This is a pregnancy that they wrote, though. JLH isn’t pregnant. This is a very much intentional pregnancy, so do something with it. It was put to excellent use in ‘Voices’, but in my opinion that is not enough. A pregnancy is 9 months long. It, like death, is an arc you have to commit to. If you’re going to do an intentional pregnancy you better make 9 months worth of stories out of it.
Maddie’s first pregnancy was traumatic enough, and I get that. While I am a big supporter of ‘Maddie deserves a break’ I am also saying ‘give her some attention’.
It may have been a factor in Bobby’s death, but it didn’t need to be. As stupid as I think his decision was it also wasn’t out of character for him. We all know he would have made the same choice if Maddie wasn’t pregnant so what’s the point? The show was basically done with the pregnancy by the end of ‘Disconnected’. No longer gave a shit. It was just a mild inconvenience for Maddie’s costuming. You would think she had a symptomless pregnancy.
There was so much potential in that storyline and they squandered all of it. They really did. They set it up with so much potential too, the Han’s were having honest and real conversations about it, it was such a factor in ‘Voices’, it wasn’t not a factor in ‘Disconnected’. Sure we’ve had allusions to it, but we haven’t done anything with it. And, no, naming the kid Robert is not good enough.
I had forgotten Hen was adopting Mara it had been so long and then it was done and brushed away within seconds if not minutes. Athena selling the house was barely addressed. Maddie didn’t even speak in the scene that revealed she’d given birth just off-screen apparently. Eddie moved back in, barely?
Let’s be clear the montage was the best part of the episode but it shouldn’t have been a montage.
So, here, let me adjust your waste of time.
We can’t bring Bobby back in this setting, we’ve established that. This is not the sort of place people come back from the dead, so unless we reveal he faked his death for some ungodly reason that is as of yet unclear, he is dead for good. So, moving on from that disappointment let’s establish what still needs to happen in the finale of the season, shall we?
- Chimney and Athena need to reconcile.
- Eddie has to come back from Texas permanently.
- Hen and Karen adopt Mara
- Maddie and Chimney welcome their son to the world.
- The 118 needs a new Captain.
In a perfect world Eddie and Buck are also canon, but Eddie’s also got to decide to pick up and move his family back to California, so one thing at a time for the man. Though, in theory, he could’ve been moving back for Buck and gay reasons… I’m just saying.
Maddie giving birth has been a storyline that’s been done before, that one mostly went swimmingly, so if we’re going to do something with that we have to make it worth it. Just spit-balling here, but perhaps it is, at minimum, the B-plot. Considering she gives birth at the end of this episode, the fact she is pregnant is mentioned all of zero times, I think. So… adjust there first.
You have to remind us of things before they happen. Eddie staying has pay-off because we were reminded by his goodbye party that he’s intending to leave. Therefore, you need a reference to the pregnancy, perhaps the Han’s undecided on a name again, that could be a good running joke, and gives a foundation to the reveal they’re going to name it after Bobby. You could also have Hen reference the fact the adoption for Mara is coming up very soon in the same scene. The line from new baby to second adoption is tangible, and sets up both of those arcs to be concluded at the end of the episode. They are emotional pay-off scenes, they don’t need to be shocking to us.
I said early on that I would like it to be dramatic and nearly kill her or something, but that’s already happened for her fairly recently, so lets not do that. Chimney has nearly died fairly recently too. If you smash all these things too close together it get’s a bit repetitive so this does admittedly limit options but I feel there’s still space to do something with it.
Even as I type this I want there to be something more with the birth. I would even have been happy if they’d saved it for the opening of the next season, as long a pregnancy as that could turn out to be. The point is, it cannot happen off-screen and be revealed in a scene in which Maddie has no dialogue. She just gave birth, let her speak.
My first idea was to have her go into labour mid-way through the episode, so Chimney is also fighting to get out of the building in time, but if he’s busy at the hospital after the call he can’t give his excellent speech. Which, I think absolutely needs to stay. He doesn’t really do anything in the episode to earn it, though? Sure, he and Athena seem to have patched up, but does it come just from her saying Bobby would be proud? I’ll take it, it’s enough for a 42 minute episode, I guess, but if you’re going to go with that as the catalyst for Chimney stepping up to the chair – which, is essentially what is happening, early seasons Chimney would never – all you need is any situation that would pull Athena and Chimney to work together to force that reconciliation and conversation, and it’s the fact he fought to save the kid’s life in spite of the obvious doom that does it for Athena, isn’t it? You don’t need the building collapse to do that, but the building collapse does knock a few birds out with one stone, as it gives Eddie something to feel obligated to help at, prove himself and feel part of the 118 again. So, I get why it’s there and such a large part of the story because it’s serving multiple purposes, which tends to be a sign of good writing.
Perhaps we could condense it a bit, though? The pacing of this season has felt good right up until this last episode which seems to be trying to accomplish far too much in it’s 42 minutes. The thing is, all the things they conclude in this episode we don’t really want to drag out to next season. The Mara situation has been such a factor of the season it should be concluded now. The Eddie situation is something we have been dying to have fixed, we don’t want to wait with that. Maddie’s pregnancy is legitimately running out of time. We don’t really want to end the season with Gerard still Captain again.
They can’t put these things off, they don’t have the time to cover them all. This episode is a tall order. Especially because none these plots can really be thematically linked together, which is probably why the montage feels like such a tacked on after thought. If I thought any of it would make sense to be in some of the last few episodes I would say they should be spread out.
Okay. Eddie staying and Chimney taking captain are about keeping the 118 together as a family. Athena and Chimney reconciling is also a part of that, if not also a catalyst for that. All those things were linked together in this episode, it’s everything else that feels like they forgot about it and put it on the end. If those are the things you want at the end of your season, the rest has to either be moved to the start of the next one, or be moved earlier in the season. And I’m just saying, there is a conceivable thematic link between the adoption and the birth. However, both are about family, and if you’re keeping remaining as a family as a motif in the finale, by dropping a few scenes you could’ve probably done both of those justice in this episode.
Athena selling the house right now is stupid because she said she wasn’t going to an episode ago, so like… drop it, open with some arc about the struggles of living in it next season, sell it then if you really must. Then at least it comes from somewhere instead of seemingly out of the blue. Because lets be clear even if you round out her grief as much as you can in the finale we are not expecting her to be fine in the next season. You just killed the love of her life. If she’s not still grieving quietly in Season 9 I might be mad.
The only issue I can’t figure out thinking about this is how you get from Chimney’s speech to Maddie giving birth. Unless you do that he’s then getting changed afterwards and gets the call. You can then smash cut, do a bit of sequence because she better have some dialogue, and conclude as you did from there. I know Maddie went into labour at work last time so I’m not going to say she should do that again, because there’s revisiting trauma from a new angle over and over again and then there’s quite literally doing the exact same thing, but it’s not not an option, ya know? It’s not like we don’t see her at work this episode. Perhaps she’s home with Jee and goes into labour. Perhaps Chimney’s just walked through the door, whatever. Just give it more time than you did. Once more, an intentional pregnancy, make use of it.
My brother made an excellent suggestion, which I had hesitated to say because I assumed they episode limits – but I suggested this last season so what the hell – but they needed like one more episode. That’s it. This was a penultimate episode. It felt like it. They just needed one more episode, one that could make good use of all the stuff that’s in the montage. This was a season of relatively good pacing just thrown out the window in it’s last 10 minutes. One more episode is all they needed and this could’ve been much improved. That’s it.
All this spit-balling laid out and worked through, I am in no way an expert at writing TV. I’m just looking at the episode as a fan, and theorising improvements. The finale could’ve been better, but they do what they can I suppose within the constraints they have. Unrelated, was this the first time we didn’t see Bobby at all since he died? That feels like A Choice for the finale.
Something Good
All the annoyance at the direction 9-1-1 has gone aside, those episodes are good in isolation and I think it’s because of the performances.
The subject matter isn’t something we wanted, fine. As far as I can tell the fandom is still very mad about it, but we may move forward. The point is, irregardless of what was happening, the casts performances? Oh my gods.
All of them have been excellent for just like the whole second half of the season. We opened with Jennifer Love Hewitt leaving us in tears and awe and ended with some of Angela Bassett’s and Kenneth Choi’s best performances.
It’s because of these performances that I’ve not entirely given up, the bar may be lowered but if the trailer’s look decent enough for Season 9, I will probably tune back in again. If only because I know if the content of the episode isn’t loved their performances will absolutely be jaw-dropping, as they often are.
This cast have been knocking it out of the park since Day 1 and Season 8 has only proven that not only have they still got it but they just get better with time. Even in arcs they wish didn’t happen they can deliver some of the most phenomenal performances. They continue to be outstanding and only shows just how great of a cast has been assembled on 9-1-1. Peter Krause will be missed going forward. Bobby was the heart of the show and Peter Krause was the heart of him.
To Conclude
Okay, yes, look I’ve rambled. Quite a bit actually. I had thoughts because the annoyance was out of love and disappointment for something that’s been so good, and ya know what? Nothing stirs thoughts more than being annoyed at it.
Usually I end these sorts of negative rambles with the very truthful disclaimer that I still love it. The best I can say here is that I still love what I had watched and fell in love with, and I still love these characters. It’s just hard to have that same hope and love for what’s to come after such continuous disappointment.
So, moving on.
Thank you for reading this far if you have, I know it was a long one. I hope you enjoyed it. As always:
Feel free to leave a comment or send me a DM on socials.
You can follow me on Instagram at: @thebomff or on Threads at: @thebomff
On to the next!
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the images, narratives or characters present or referenced in this post. All rights belong to 20th Century Fox, ABC, Marvel, Mutant Enemy Productions and all other relevant parties.