2.06: Dosed

That WeeWoo Show Podcast - Ep 2.06 - Dosed
Bex: [00:00:00] Welcome back to That WeeWoo Show, a podcast where we watch and discuss episodes of the ABC show 9-1-1. I'm Bex.
Alice: I'm Alice.
Ellen: And I'm Ellen.
Bex: Thank you to everyone who has listened to our previous episodes and to those who have rated and reviewed us on Spotify or Apple podcasts.
Remember, the best way to show your love is to spread the word about us. Tell your friends, tell your family, tell that friend from high school that you haven't spoken to since you graduated, but they keep hitting you up on Facebook to join their MLM. The more people who listen to us, the more people we can reach.
Ellen: Yeah. (laughs) Those pesky friends.
Bex: Hey girl!
Ellen: Just tell all of them.
Alice: I totally didn't steal my staff members phones and [00:01:00] make them rate us on Spotify. I don't know what you're talking about.
Ellen: That's allowed. That's totally legal. (laughs) What happened last week, Alice?
Alice: So last week on 9-1-1, the 118 dealt with some awful people, (sarcastic laughing) including a homophobic protester who defied anatomy to choke on his own shit, and Hen's terrible ex. That was two separate incidents. Well, Maddie had to deal with an awful coworker who just hung up on everyone. I don't know. It wasn't a great episode.
Bex: This one will be better.
Alice: Basically everyone was awful. The end.
Ellen: Yeah. This week we've got a much more you know, entertaining and. Well, it's, this one's an interesting one.
It's in turns, entertaining and heartbreaking.
Alice: It really is.
Ellen: This is season two, episode six with the title “Dosed”, which first aired on October the 22nd, 2018. Right. The official summary, when the first responders race to the rescue of a crashed news copter, they unwittingly become the subject of an eager reporter's first on [00:02:00] air assignment.
Meanwhile, Bobby tries to deal with his daughter's death as Athena prepares for May's homecoming dance. Then Maddie struggles to let go of her fear of the past. Also, the team responds to emergencies at an eating contest, a bodybuilding competition, and a toddler pageant.
Alice: It's a very long summary.
Ellen: I think as we said last week, far more things go on in this episode than we had last week.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Yes.
Ellen: Partially because we suspect one of the emergencies got completely cut out of the last one. But anyway.
Alice: Yeah. I still don't understand what happened with that, but yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. Well, anyway, in this with all these different emergencies, we've got a few triggers to report. We've got a helicopter accident.
We have the consumption of insects. We have a major character at threat due to non consensual dosing of LSD.
Right. Where do we even begin with this episode? That's right. [00:03:00] We're at Maddie's place.
Bex: We're at Maddie's new place. We jumped straight into it.
Alice: It's great. There's no like fluffing around this week.
Bex: Nope. To the point where I started the episode and went, wait, have I just like missed the first five minutes or something? And kept trying to scrub back. But every time it was like, no, we're starting here. Like, okay.
Alice: Even better. I started this episode with my brother who apparently has never seen this show before.
So he jumped right in and was like, “what is happening?” And I'm like, Oh, my bad.
Bex: He would have been so confused.
Ellen: Well, we usually start with like an emergency, like a proper sort of first five minutes cold open thing, but this time was not.
Bex: I would have at least expected like an exterior establishing shot of Maddie's apartment to like, place us. Nope. We're going straight into it. Chim's putting security cameras up around Maddie's new apartment.
Ellen: Which is really nice. It's like, you know, that kind of Mexican looking like [00:04:00] tiles on the stairs and, oh, it's really pretty. I like it.
Bex: Yeah. 9-1-1 dispatchers apparently make bank. Yeah. If she can afford that kind of place.
Alice: I’ll say! Meanwhile, Buck is still camping in his ex's place, so apparently firefighters do not make as much as dispatchers.
Ellen: He was living in a frat house beforehand. That's it. Yeah. Anyway Chim's helping out. Well, Chim and Buck and Eddie are all helping Maddie on their days off, apparently, which is very nice of them.
She's rounded them all up. She brought all the boys to the yard. Chim is
Alice: Made those milkshakes.
Ellen: Yeah, Chim's up a ladder tinkering with some motion sensors and he's set up Fort Knox level of security and he shows her how to work it on her phone and an iPad, I think.
Alice: Yeah. It's all smart.
Bex: Yeah, she does question whether three motion sensors in her living room alone is too much. And Chim tells her that it might be, [00:05:00] unless she's trying to keep Tom Cruise from getting his hands on her NOC list, which is a Mission Impossible reference. And the only reason I bring that up specifically is because that's going to be called back later in the episode.
Ellen: She hasn't seen Mission Impossible, so she doesn't know. Of
Bex: course she hasn't, because Buckleys don't understand pop culture references. Yeah,
Alice: I don't think the Buckleys had DVD players growing up, or cinemas, or like VCRs, or anything.
Ellen: I mean, I've seen Mission Impossible, and I have no idea what an NOC is.
Bex: I got that it was a Mission Impossible reference.
I did not understand the NOC list, but I got that it was Mission Impossible. Maybe it's like an age thing. Maybe it's just, Chim just keeps making references that are way too old for the Buckleys, which then makes me feel sad because I get all of Chim's references.
Alice: Anyway, yeah, Chim's giving Maddie some looks, which is cute.
[00:06:00] While Dumb and Dumber are outside trying to get a couch into Maddie's apartment and they are not having a good time. Eddie wants to pop the hinges off the door, whereas Buck just wants to straight up use the jaws of life.
Ellen: Yeah. And Eddie agrees with him and I'm like, how are you going to use the jaws of life? Like…
Bex: What are they going to use the Jaws of Life on? Are they using it on the doorway? Yeah, the wall.
Alice: Or on the couch.
Ellen: Like, isn't the Jaws of Life going to crush something? Like, you don't, I don't know. Anyway.
Bex: But what makes it even stupider is that Maddie just says, can't you guys just like, turn the couch around the other way?
Ellen: And they both go, oh, then the pizza would fall off.
Alice: But then the pizza will slide off! (laughing)
Bex: Which Maddie is horrified at, that they put pizza on her brand new couch. But I mean, in their defense, the couch is wrapped in plastic and they are, the pizza is in boxes. [00:07:00] So there's several layers of defense. It's not like they've slapped the slices on top of the leather.
Alice: It's still just bring the pizza in separately. Like, it's just so funny.
Bex: But yeah that's the, like, take the, bring the pizza in, then come back, move the couch around. She gives them a look like they're idiots, which they are, (laughs) grabs the pizzas and moves off inside. And while Chimney is showing Maddie how she can use her, iPad or her phone to monitor the security devices.
The boys are trying to get the couch in through the door for a second time. And we just hear off camera, Eddie go, “All right, pivot.” And I burst into laughter.
Alice: Like everyone was thinking it and they were like, yeah.
Bex: And I really want to know. Did they specifically write that into the episode, or was it the boys when they were trying to get the couch in, somebody made the joke and then they made him repeat it so that they caught it on camera? Cause it's just, it's perfect.
Alice: [00:08:00] Yeah, it's great.
Bex: And if nobody has any idea what we're talking about, because it's like a Chim level of pop culture reference, look up on YouTube the Friends episode season five, episode 16, “The One With the Cop”, or just search “Friends pivot”, and you'll find out what we're talking about.
Alice: “Pivot!” Yeah. So the app's very high tech. They can check everything on there. You can check it on your phone if you're not at home. If you hear a noise at night, you can check it from the comfort and security of your bed. The couch is still being brought inside. It takes Eddie as long to bring a couch inside as it does to put on a shirt.
Bex: Well, it, I mean, they keep changing backwards and forwards. So, you know, we see Buck trying to back the couch in, then suddenly it's Eddie backing the couch in. The couch was up one way, now the couch is another.
Alice: They're pivoting!
Bex: Continuity. Continuity is not doing their job in this episode.
Alice: They took a day off. That's fine.
Bex: [00:09:00] Eventually they do get the couch in which then begs the question, has Maddie been living in this apartment without furniture since she moved into it after the episode “Stuck”?
Alice: I think everyone just forgot about “Awful People?”, honestly, and moved straight from “Stuck” to this.
Bex: Like how long has it been since she moved out of Abby's apartment?
Ellen: Yeah, but, like, maybe, well, she did say it was her new couch, so maybe
Bex: So she's just been living without a couch?
Ellen: Maybe she yeah, maybe she moved in and then now a couple of weeks later her couch is finally available, you know?
Alice: Bex! Bex! She is a Buckley. They do tend to live without couches.
Ellen: Do they?
Bex: Aww. (laughs) Let's not bring couch theory in for Maddie as well, please.
Ellen: Okay, I feel like this is a future reference.
Bex: It is.
Alice: Okay. It's very future reference.
Ellen: I'll wait to get it later then.
Alice: [00:10:00] Future Ellen is going to love this joke.
Ellen: (laughs) Okay.
Bex: So, so they got the couch in Maddie thanks them for coming in on their day off, Eddie tells her not to worry, grabs the pizzas, takes them into the kitchen, Chim follows.
And then we get this adorable little exchange between the Buckley siblings where Maddie watches Chim go into the kitchen, and then turns back to her brother and goes, “Oh, he is so cute.” And the look on Buck's face, he's like, he's so proud. He's so fond. He 100 percent agrees. He goes, “Yeah, he gets that a lot. You should meet his kid though.”
And Maddie's all confused because she didn't think that Chim had a kid. And then we get Buck, surprised Pikachu face. His face absolutely falls. Because he thought that Maddie meant Eddie, [00:11:00] and he just cannot fathom that when you've got the choice between Eddie and Chim, you're going to go for Chim.
Alice: Like, hang on, what are we up to? Is this episode six?
Ellen: I, it was so cute. And I was watching this the other night. Like, and I just sort of point to the TV and screamed. And then with the second time I was watching it, when I can actually look at it a bit more carefully I was like, he goes, “Oh, I thought you were talking about…”, and then Maddie goes, “Oh, I didn't know Chimney had a kid” and then but goes, “Oh, he, he doesn't.”
And he looks really confused. And then Maddie just like turns and walks off without any further conversation. I'm like, Whoa, that was awkward as hell. It was, it's just bad. Bad dialogue. But I was sort of watching through the rest of the episode going, this dialogue in this episode is really bad. Like it's weird.
It's not bad dialogue. It's just, it starts and stops in odd places. Anyway.
Alice: [00:12:00] It's just so funny because like, Buck's just like, yeah, that's my boyfriend. And Maddie's just like, chimney? And Buck's like, no, what? No.
Ellen: They're both so confused. She obviously doesn't remember the conversation they had the other week where she told him he had a boy crush.
Alice: No, I think that's what, cause like, that's why Maddie walks off because she's absolutely like, he, she knows that Buck's talking about Eddie and is like, “oh, Chimney has a kid?” And Buck's like, “wait, what?” And Maddie's just like, ha, and left.
Ellen: Yeah. Maybe. Yeah.
Alice: Cause Maddie, that's, it's definitely not Maddie's first dig about this, and it will not be the last. Anyway, love Chim.
Bex: We then get a bit of a montage of Maddie later that night, trying to sleep. not succeeding. [00:13:00] The first time we see her, it's 1:42 am. She's got all the lights on in her bedroom and she's holding her phone in her hand and the screen is on to the security app.
And the slightest bit of noise, she jolts up and immediately checks her phone to check the cameras to see if there's anything if the cameras have picked up any motion. If there are any alerts and this goes on till like three or four times
Ellen: It's the face of anxiety right there.
Bex: Yeah, finally that she gets an alert at 3:47 where the cameras pick up motion outside and she scrambles out of bed and she races down the stairs.
She's got a baseball bat in her hand and rips open the door, but nobody's there. And she realizes that the wind chimes that she'd hung are directly in line with the cameras. [00:14:00] And so as they were moving in the wind, the camera was picking up the motion and alerting her that there was motion outside her door.
By the time Maddie's alarm goes off, at some point she must have like gotten up, gotten dressed, made her bed, and then she's just collapsed onto the bed, completely exhausted.
Ellen: Yeah, she's got her shoes on and everything. She's just lying there asleep.
Bex: Yeah, That was weird.
Ellen: Yeah, it looked effective, the shot.
Bex: Yes, it's very much that she's so damn tired.
Alice: This is why I sleep with TV on, because then I can't hear. Like any of the outside noises.
Ellen: Yeah, noises. Yeah.
Bex: But then again, if she can't hear the outside noises, how would she know if Doug's sneaking up the stairs?
Ellen: Oh. Poor Maddie.
Bex: It's like a damned if you do, damned if you don't kind of situation.
You don't want to be jumping at the small noises, but you still need to be hearing the small noises.
Alice: This is also why I have three scary dogs.
Bex: [00:15:00] Your dogs aren’t scary.
Ellen: They're adorable.
Alice: Shh, They sound scary.
Ellen: They're floofy.
Bex: They're, they yip.
Alice: Shh. Only one of them yips.
Bex: They squeak.
Alice: Okay. I have two scary dogs and an autumn. (laughs)
Ellen: All right we go to the title card and following that is a 9-1-1 call. Now in this episode, I think they have given up making any of these 9-1-1 calls actually sound like someone is calling 9-1-1.
Bex: They're purely transitional.
Ellen: They're just to set the scene. So we have Taylor, who. Taylor Kelly, who is the you know, the traffic reporter lady who goes up in the helicopter.
And she says, “This is Taylor Kelly with your morning traffic update, and we are going down!” [00:16:00] because the helicopter is crashing. So
Bex: yeah, they had mechanical failure. So they are going down. They go down into what looks like a sports field. So we get a cut, we cut to LAPD and the 118 screeching into this sports field and the helicopter is balanced precariously on the bleachers.
Ellen: Yeah, I don't know, that was, they were aiming for a field, but they've sort of ended up in the middle of a much smaller little oval kind of thing. And there's heaps of people standing around taking videos on their phones and stuff, but so Athena shouts at them to get out of the way and.
Bex: Yeah, cause as the rotors are still spinning on the helicopter and we can hear pinging noises, so it's for some, somehow it's picking up rocks and flinging them at people and flinging them around.
So there's a distinct possibility that someone could get taken out by flying shrapnel.
Alice: Yeah. Helicopters will just pick up anything.
Ellen: [00:17:00] And they are like, Bobby sort of lays out the plan, like, they're going to get behind it and get close to it so that they can get the people out of the helicopter. And then, like, I, I'm, we don't know until they get close to it, but the pilot has like passed out or something.
Is that what's happened? Because,
Bex: yeah, it's like they started having mechanical, we got told that they were going down because they had mechanical failure, but then the pilot has had. Some kind of medical episode as well.
Ellen: Cause he can't, he's passed out. And then as soon as Eddie gets in the pilot seat, he just turns the thing off. So
Bex: yes,
Ellen: I'm not sure.
Alice: It's a weird one. It's very weird. Like we were watching and
Ellen: We just don't have all the information.
Alice: Yeah. Like I meant to go back and watch again. Was Taylor in the front seat?
Ellen: No, she was on the back.
Alice: Okay, cool.
Bex: Although why she didn't
Alice: Cause we were like, why didn't she just turn off the, helicopter.
Ellen: [00:18:00] Well, I mean, I assume she doesn't know how to turn the helicopter off, but maybe he hit his head when they came down.
Alice: If Eddie did, Eddie could have just radioed in and been like, Hey, do this. And she could have just done it. Like she clearly called for help. But anyway.
Bex: I don't know. I don't, I feel like maybe they decided, and it was like cross communication.
Like they started with, it's a mechanical failure. And then when they actually got to filming the scene, they went, Oh no, we need this guy to be unconscious. Cause otherwise it doesn't make sense. It's just, it's a weird thing.
Alice: I wouldn't think about it too hard. It's fine.
Bex: Definitely don't think about it too hard, but in the end, like, long story short, they get Taylor out, Eddie…
Alice: Buck gets Taylor out, Buck, like, gets there and gets Taylor to cling to him.
Bex: Yeah, princess carry, out of the out of the helicopter. Eddie does that thing you do where you're trying to switch places with someone in the front seat. [00:19:00] So Bobby yanks the pilot out as Eddie slides in because they need to make sure that the weight stays distributed evenly, because if they remove too much weight, the helicopter could flip, but he gets in, shuts down the rotors, turns off the engine.
Everyone's fine.
Alice: So the pilot gets wheeled to the ambulance. Hen and Buck check out on Taylor. I don't know why Buck's checking out Taylor, I'm pretty sure
Bex: It's literally so that they could do the next scene. It makes no sense for Buck to be doing it, Eddie should be the Eddie or Chim should be doing it since they are the actual paramedics.
Ellen: Also, I think Buck's just distracted by the pretty face. He needs to get involved.
Bex: Oh yeah. Oh yeah, it's very much he's he wants to get extra face time with Taylor.
Ellen: She asks about how the pilot's going and Athena tells her that he's gonna be fine. [00:20:00] Because Athena's there too.
Yeah. Apparently. I'm not even entirely sure why she's there at all, but, cause I don't think anyone's getting arrested or
Alice: Well, the last week we were all like, there's no, not enough ensemble. And this time they're just like, Oh, we'll just put everyone.
Ellen: Everyone is just in every scene. (laughs)
Alice: It doesn't even make sense, but they're all there.
Anyway, yeah. So then Buck turns to Taylor and goes, “Hey, do me a favor, say, ‘and on the 405 speeds are under five miles an hour, making your morning commute a rough one.’” And Hen is just like, what the fuck are you talking about?
Bex: And Buck says it's because he knows that voice. He's never seen Taylor, but he's recognized her voice and says “You're Taylor Kelly reporting right from Sky News 8?” and Taylor looks pleased to be recognized.
And there's this little sort of flirty backwards and forwards.
Alice: I do like Buck’s “Like, it's weird to hear that voice come out of her face” because like, I was like, Oh my God, it's me when I first met Ellen first face to face. Cause I was like, why are you talking like, why is the voice coming out of her face?
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah. When I first, when I went over to her, The US and met like Mal and I've been speaking to you for like years. Without actually seeing your face moving before.
Alice: Right. It's so strange.
Ellen: Really strange.
Alice: So yeah, it's weird to hear that voice come out of her face. I was like, yes, that I relate to that so hard.
Bex: We relate to that. Yes.
Ellen: And then Buck's being all sweet with her and he's like, Oh, you helped me beat traffic in the city. And then she goes, Oh, you might want to take an Uber tomorrow. Yeah. I don't know how that will help. It
Alice: sounds like
Ellen: she's not going to be directing the traffic, so, or, you know, telling him about the traffic.
Alice: [00:22:00] Well, the helicopter's down with mechanical failure too, so, yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. And I don't think, she says later that she's not ready to get back in the sky and I do not blame her. No. After a helicopter crash almost.
Alice: Again, almost crash.
Ellen: And Hen and Athena are standing in the background just looking at each other going, Oh my God.
Alice: Yeah. Not this again.
Ellen: Here we go.
Alice: We should mention that Buck…
Bex: That’s appropriate!
Alice: (laughs) Bex’s trying to segue here…
Alice: I was gonna say, we should mention that Buck is still living in Abby's apartment at this stage.
Ellen: Yeah. But he's starting to sort of get the feeling that maybe he should think about moving on.
Bex: Yeah. Hasn't quite done it yet, but the thought is there.
Alice: That's it. And speaking about thinking, I don't know. That was a terrible segue… We cut to the church. (laughs)
Ellen: [00:23:00] Oh, this is such a beautiful church. They always like, you know, fill it up with smoke so that the sunlight can like beam in through the windows and stuff. It's pretty.
Bex: It’s amazing that when they do the exterior for this church, it's just like this square Minecraft looking building with a giant crucifix on top of it.
And then you go to the inside and it's absolutely beautiful. Yeah, it is. The outside definitely does not match the inside.
Ellen: But unlike most times we're at this church, there's actually people inside at this time.
Alice: Has, have we seen Hot Priest yet? Since last season?
Bex: No, I don't think so. No, this is the first time that we've seen Hot Priest this season.
Welcome back, Hot Priest. And he's actually delivering a sermon this time. He's not just taking confession.
Alice: Look at him, moving up in the world.
Ellen: He's doing the little prayers of the week thing. rather than a sermon. He's like, you know, the one where they will do the call and response thing.
Bex: Yeah, I don't know. I don't go to church.
Alice: Me neither.
Ellen: [00:24:00] And it's like a, it's like a Catholic thing.
Bex: The point is we're setting up that the storyline with Brooke.
Alice: Yeah. So they say something about Brooke's soul, like the soul of Brooke Nash.
Ellen: For, yeah, the repose of the soul of Brooke Nash. And Bobby and the rest of the congregation say, “Lord, hear our prayer,” in response to that. So then we go after that, we suddenly jumped to after the mass and Bobby is talking to hot priest in their usual spot.
And we find out that today would have been Brooks 13th birthday. And it's very sad.
Bex: The only issue I have with this storyline is why is it Brooke? And why don't we, why didn't we get a similar storyline for Bobby Jr.?
Ellen: Because May…
Bex: Why is so much importance?
Ellen: Because he's remembering it…
Bex: Yeah, it's linked with, it's linked with May. I get that. It just feels forced. I don't know.
Alice: [00:25:00] Yeah, it's weird. Like, I honestly don't care about Bobby's old family at all. Which sounds bad,
Ellen: You know, I mean, we only met them briefly and they were cute, but like.
Alice: Something about Target. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. I'm sad for Bobby, but yeah, this, yeah, it is a strange storyline.
Anyway.
Alice: Yeah. So it's Brooke's birthday. She would’ve turned 13 and the priest asks if it's hard to like, think about the fact that she would have turned 13 because the image that Bobby still has is her of a, like, little kid. Bobby says that Brooke's very last school project was a show and tell with her dad, the hero.
And she was so proud of him. And Hot Priest says, I believe she's proud of you now.
Bex: And now I'm seeing what you mean about the dialogue. Yeah.
Ellen: [00:26:00] Yeah. And not just the dialogue, but the scenes in this episode are very short. All of them are short and they cut. between scenes like quite quickly. I'm not sure how to describe it, but we don't get much of a scene before it's suddenly the next one.
Maybe it's because there's so much happening in this episode that we don't have time to sort of linger on anything in particular. It's just bang, bang, you know.
Bex: Very fast moving episode, this one.
Ellen: So we're right back to the 118 again. They're doing some equipment checks on the trucks and everything, but it's like a really washed out kind of, color.
Bex: yeah, cause we're seeing it through a video camera.
Ellen: Yeah. Taylor is in the house with her cameraman.
Bex: With her cameraman, Brett. I love Brett. Brett's awesome.
Ellen: Yeah, he sees it how it is. They go around and film. They're going to film everyone and show what real life is [00:27:00] like inside a firehouse. And she says, “Please, God, tell me there's a Dalmatian around here somewhere.”
Alice: And then it cuts straight to Buck in the background.
Bex: I mean, there, there is, there's a Dalmatian statue upstairs, but I think that's what she's talking about.
Alice: No, Buck is our Dalmatian, that's fine. Yeah.
Bex: Bobbie shows up to see what's going on and tries to get Taylor to stop recording. And she just sort of bluntly asks, why?
And he doesn't really… it throws him for a second. He's so used to people just accepting his orders that he's thrown by the fact that Taylor isn't just going to stop recording and it takes him a second before he can come back with “Because it's rude.” Which it is. I mean, nobody in a firehouse has consented to being filmed, but that doesn't matter because the chief has apparently consented to them all being filmed.
Ellen: [00:28:00] Just giving them blanket permission.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: And meanwhile, Bobby disappears to take the call from the Chief and Which
Bex: has, like, very, coincidentally, as soon as Taylor mentions, “Oh, you haven't talked to the Chief,” we get someone yelling off camera, “Oi! Bobby, there's a call for you. It's the chief.”
Alice: Yeah, immediately.
Ellen: yeah. But now Buck's seen that she's there and he bounces over and he calls her Taylor Kelly. “Hey Taylor Kelly, what are you doing here?” She goes, “you can just call me Taylor.”
Bex: Eddie's on the other side of the firehouse working out in the gym area. But as soon as he sees Buck and Taylor talking, he immediately has to insert himself into that conversation.
Alice: You hitting on my boyfriend? (laughs)
Ellen: It was really odd, actually, he just goes, how you doing? It's still like, still from the other side of the room. Like,
Bex: yeah,
Ellen: he didn't even come over.
Bex: Like literally just yells across the firehouse at them.
Alice: [00:29:00] Hey Taylor back off my man!
Bex: (laughs) So long story short, she wants to do a cover story on the 118. And show everybody the heroes who work there. Or as Hen more cynically puts it, she wants to capitalize on her newfound fame and transition from being a traffic reporter to a real reporter. Which,
Alice: yeah, absolutely.
Ellen: Yeah. “And then she goes, I want to know why you chose this job, what it's like to face death. I mean, Howie, you almost died, right?” And I'm like, who the hell's Howie?
Alice: Who the fuck is Howie?
Ellen: Like, this is the first time they've called him Howie. How does she know that he's called Howie?
Alice: Literally, like, who the fuck is Howie?
Bex: And just the audacity, like if she has gone into maybe the employment records of the 118 and who is stationed at that house.
Chimney's name would not be listed on there as Howie, so [00:30:00] she's looked at his government name and then decided, okay, I'm just going to go straight for the nickname.
Alice: Like, what? Maybe she spoke to the old chief and was just like, “oh yes, I know all of these people.”
Bex: I don't know.
Ellen: Me old mate Howie.
Bex: But Howie looks at her and says, “well, actually nobody calls me that. It's Chimney.” Which Taylor immediately loves, she's like, “oh, I bet there's a story there.”
Ellen: And we all go, “yes, what is the story?”
Bex: Apparently it's not one that you can tell on television.
Alice: Which is funny considering Hen was going to tell Chris, who's like seven. (laughs)
Ellen: So apparently we're just never going to hear about it on TV.
Bex: We are never going to hear about it. Bobby returns at this point and confirms to everyone that yes, the captain, the chief has actually signed them all up with this and has told Bobby to give Taylor whatever access she needs to make her story.
[00:31:00] Nobody looks very convinced at this point.
Alice: No.
Ellen: No.
Alice: Taylor announces she's going to make them all famous and they're all just like, Oh,
Ellen: Bobby looks really unimpressed, but we go upstairs and there's like a bunch of food on the table and cards and things in the kitchen area. And Taylor wants to know what's at, what that's all about.
Bex: It's the tokens of appreciation from the people in the community. So people thank them by bringing them cakes and cookies and making cards for them.
Alice: They love the cards. And the carbs.
Ellen: And the carbs. Buck's just shoving a cupcake in his face. The carbs.
Bex: He's gonna ruin his girlish figure if he keeps shoving cupcakes into his face like that.
Ellen: Wasn't he just talking about low carbs? the, in the last season, maybe
Bex: The whole fact that they got a tapeworm from eating the, this, the raw fish has [00:32:00] turned him off.
Alice: He's having a cheat week. He's not Keto this week. It's fine.
Ellen: But I'm just looking at this the first time I saw it going, you want to eat this stuff that people have just randomly brought in?
Like, why would you do that?
Bex: Yes! It is such an OHS issue, I mean, you don't know what has been put in it, and I mean, I know that's the whole point of the episode, is they don't know what gets put in it, but even things like food allergies, if you have a food allergy, you don't know whether that cake has got nuts in it or not, or if it's, you've got someone that's got an egg allergy.
Alice: I mean, to be fair, we've we have a client that brings us like, random baked goods all the time. We absolutely eat it all. We won't even think about it. I think last time it was brownies. It's also been shortbread around Christmas. It's great.
Ellen: Oh, lovely. No, I mean, in a police station it would be different because, I mean, there are people out there who don't like police for whatever reason.
[00:33:00] But I mean, everyone likes the fireys, right? Like you're giving them presents because they've saved you or like, I don't think they make many enemies. Well, maybe they do, but sometimes I'm sure
Alice: We'll get back to that yeah. We'll circle back to that point. Future Ellen's gonna be yeah.
Ellen: (laughs) Oh dear, okay.
Bex: But yeah, it is, it does seem like they're you know, playing with fire, pardon the pun, by eating random baked goods that have been brought in for them without, you know, being 100 percent certain as to who the person was and what they put in it.
Ellen: Anyway, we come back to that.
Alice: Yeah, I don't know.
It's interest. I should ask my cousin this. So when… Cause he's a firefighter, not just cause he has a special interest in baked goods. When there were bushfires down near where I grew up last time, the local firefighters went down to help. [00:34:00] So I'm now like an hour from where I grew up, but the ones local to me, which literally are just around the corner went down to help them.
And so like, I asked my cousin, like, if I could like gift them something or anything like that, like to thank them for helping. Cause it's like, it's a long drive for one. And they're like protecting houses that like, aren't even in their like district and that sort of thing. Yeah. So I ended up like dropping them off a slab of bottled water and like some lollies.
Cause he said that sugar is always appreciated. So yeah, lollies and like a thank you card and I just dropped it at the door and left and yeah, but like it was all packaged stuff, but I guess like baking is a big part of a lot of people's lives. So if I baked, I probably would have just been like, Oh yeah, I'll make them brownies.
I just can't cook. But anyway, yeah. Thank the, thank you. Thank the volunteer fireys and drop them off water because they appreciate it.
Ellen: [00:35:00] So now we have some interviews with each of the team. Chim's like eating while he's giving his interview, which is a bit casual. But
Bex: yeah, it's crunchy too.
Ellen: Yeah. That makes great TV. Hen's sitting in the ambulance doing something and she tells us awful story about apparently how she got shot when she was a young person and the paramedics saved her life. And that's where the, you know, they told her to stay with them. And I'm like, Oh, Stay With Me, Sweetheart!
Sorry. I'm just lapsing back into Destiel fic excitement there for a moment. And
Bex: It's a great story. Unfortunately. Nobody remembered that they had Hen tell this story because in a couple of episodes, we're going to get “Hen Begins”, and it's going to be a very different story that we get as to why Hen decided to become a firefighter.
Alice: [00:36:00] Literally, and isn't it the same season? Like, doesn't it?
Bex: Yes, it's like literally in four episodes time. So it's not even that you can, Oh, well, it was a couple of seasons ago. They forgot it was it's like literally. What, maybe a month or two?
Alice: I'm just going to say that Hen was bullshitting because she doesn't like Taylor.
Bex: I mean, that would be a good in universe explanation that she's trying to she's telling a good story for the interview. But yeah.
Alice: Yeah. It's just, yeah, it's interesting. Especially since like, Chim actually has like a really good story of how I became a firefighter, and in this one they're just like, eh.
Bex: Like, what kid doesn't want to be a firefighter, especially a hot firefighter? Here, I've bought this just for you. Here's the calendar I prepared earlier where I'm shirtless on the front.
Alice: How many copies of this calendar?
Bex: All of them. He bought all of them. he forced them into a second print run.
Alice: [00:37:00] Like, did they, did he get some, like, was it like, thanks for being part of the calendar, he has like 10 free calendars?
Or did he literally just buy 20 of them to hand out to random people?
Bex: Yup.
Alice: Interestingly though, that's not what he gifts Maddie, although maybe he just like put it on the back of her bathroom door or something while they were setting up the house.
Bex: But you're right. We've had we've had a beautiful story from Chim as to why he wanted to be a firefighter.
So it, it is a little bit disappointing that they go for the humor in this one, or maybe it's because, well, the audience has already heard that story. We don't need to rehash that.
Ellen: And Eddie gives a little story about missing camaraderie and working with a team in the army. And then he says, “there's none better than the one I found here.”
I'm like, dude, you've only been there for like four weeks or something.
Alice: Yeah. But him and Buck are like, very close now.
Bex: [00:38:00] Speaking of Buck, I love that everybody has had these long stories, like really deep and meaningful reasons why they became a firefighter and his entire interview is, “I just kind of fell into it.”
Ellen: Sounded like fun, I don't know. Yeah,
Bex: But while the rest of the 118 are. Not happy, but they're talking to Taylor. Bobby is doing his best to ignore her and avoid her. Sort of luckily for him, when they finally finished their interviews and they head up to the kitchen to corner him and get his interview, the alarm goes off.
And they are called to a medical emergency where they have a report of an adult male with difficulty breathing. [00:39:00] And I am going to switch off now, y'all can do this one. I will come back after this scene. Cause I do not want to have to think about this medical emergency.
Alice: All right. I'll take this.
I'll take this one. So we got a 9-1-1 call. The operator is not Maddie. The caller says that her name is Sandy from Sandy's Exotic Creatures on Venture. And. She has a gentleman here who's, who isn't doing very well. And the dispatcher’s like, “well, what seems to be the problem?” And Sandy goes, “well, we had an eating contest and he, well, he's just not doing very well”, which is the vaguest 9-1-1 call.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
Alice: So the 118 and the ambulance roll up Taylor and the cameraman also turn up and there's like a crowd there's cheering. And Bobby's just like, well, like “I was told there's a man who's choking to death?” Like there's like crowd all happy. [00:40:00] Why are they all cheering? Yeah. They do not care.
Ellen: And then Sandy's like cutting them off going, “no, he says he doesn't want any help.”
Alice: Yeah. Like he's good now.
Ellen: It's like, we're going to check out anyway. And then. Buck's. Like, I wonder how many he put down.
Alice: Oh my God. Buck is so enthusiastic.
Ellen: He's really excited about this.
Alice: He's talking and his ear completely off. He's just like “Joey Chestnut,” whoever he is, “scarfed down 74 hot dogs in 10 minutes at last year's eating contest, like Nathan's eating contest.”
And like, I love the random facts that Buck just like,
Ellen: yeah, he doesn't know anything about any pop culture, but he knows some real, some random other crap.
Alice: Yeah. That's great. So yeah, so the guy is refusing care, he looks like he's about to hurl, but he's like waving them off. And there's no hot dogs.
Ellen: No.
Alice: But there's a lot of clear plastic, like, tubs.
Ellen: [00:41:00] And we don't even get a chance to work out what it might be, because there's like a hissing noise from the ground and Chim's like, whoa, what the hell? There's like a huge like Komodo dragon lizard thing there under the table.
Alice: Whose name is Claude.
Ellen: Yes. Claude.
Alice: So Claude's the grand prize in the eating contest. The eating contest is not, it's not hot dogs. It's not peppers. It's protein.
Ellen: It's things that Claude would eat.
Alice: It's things that Claude would eat.
Ellen: And then Gregory, who's the dude just falls off his chair and the others like spring into action.
Alice: Yes. So again if you refuse care and then fall unconscious, being unconscious is like automatic consent. Yep.
Ellen: It's consent. Yep. Yep.
Alice: [00:42:00] Yep. So yeah, once he keels over, they give themselves to work, they prep the defib, they like, grab the like, oxygen mask, and
Ellen: Oh yeah, and he opens his mouth and all these crickets like, start flying out of his mouth.
Alice: so like, they start like, yelling, “Oh my god, locusts!” And they're like “no, they're just crickets,” like, that's better.
Ellen: Yeah, anything Claude would eat and
Alice: so they're trying to do compressions and Hen says that the blockage is too big, so they like get the forceps and clear the obstruction, which is just like a ball of some sort of insects and there's still just crickets like coming out of his, the whole time.
Ellen: Oh, it's so disgusting. I'm just like, why are [00:43:00] they eating live crickets? like, yeah. I mean, you work in a pet, pet shop, do you?
Alice: We sell crickets. We absolutely sell crickets.
Ellen: Are they living though?
Alice: They're, yeah. Yeah, they're living. We have to feed them like every couple days. [00:43:00] We have to make sure they've got water, like they're live crickets that people feed to the lizards.
Ellen: To lizards. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Fair enough.
Alice: Yeah, the dead ones really stink, but yeah, like I wouldn't eat them. We occasionally feed them to the Dalmatian that works with us because he will literally eat anything. But but yeah, like we, we sell crickets and we sell… they call them woodies, but they're cockroaches.
Like they're baby cockroaches. They're gross.
Ellen: Yeah. Okay.
Alice: Anyway. Yeah. So they use the forceps to clear the obstruction. They do not do a tracheotomy.
Ellen: No, thank God.
Alice: With a steak knife. (laughs)
Ellen: No, no tracheotomies this time, but they get him back upright and he's getting a bit mad with them because he's like, Oh, I just lost like.
you know, monitor lizard and 500 bucks and I lost. And then the other, one of the other contestants is like, “yeah, you did.” [00:44:00] And it's like, like, you know, quite glamorous looking woman, but then all these like beetles start just coming out of her mouth.
Alice: They're cockroaches. They're absolutely cockroaches.
Ellen: Ah, disgusting. Yep. So disgusting. This is exactly why Bex does not want to listen to this part. So,
Alice: So Sandy says that Claude is staying with her, And then Claude, like, goes towards Taylor, who's like ugh! and Sandy says that he likes redheads.
Ellen: And she's just like, what the fuck, man? Anyway. All right. That's the end of that horrible scene. And I don't really know what purpose it served other than just to gross everyone out.
Alice: Oh it's interesting.
Bex: That's one word for it.
Ellen: You did listen!
Bex: No, I did not.
Alice: [00:45:00] Honestly, it's just lucky that it was only insects because that's not what people feed big lizards or snakes.
Ellen: Ah, yes. It could have been worse. Anyway, let's not worry about that.
Alice: Yeah. So we go to the Grant household.
Ellen: Are you with us Bex?
Bex: Yeah. I'm here. I'm back.
Ellen: All right.
Bex: Yes. We go to the, we go to the Grant household. Bobby is doing the dishes. It's after dinner and he's bitching to Athena about Taylor.
Alice: He really is.
Ellen: We start this conversation in the middle again. Like he just says, I don't like her. And I'm like, what? Who?
Bex: But I think I'm okay with that because enough con we have enough context that we as the audience immediately understand what he's saying and there's none of this Like in the previous episode where you have, the character kind of has to backtrack and explain themselves a little bit and set the scene he's, [00:46:00] Bobby's just immediately like, “I don't like her.”
And we immediately know I was talking about Taylor.
Alice: Either that or Claude the monitor lizard. Yeah. So Athena goes, “you don't like the intrusion?” and Bobby goes, “I don't like the cameras in the firehouse. I certainly don't like them on calls. It's harder for us to do our job.”
Athena's like, “well, unfortunately that's the reality nowadays. Cameras everywhere. Body cams, phone cams, CCTVs. Big Brother's definitely watching.” And Athena, why are you worried about body cams?
Bex: Of course she's worried about body cams.
Alice: Maybe she should stop intimidating shop owners.
Bex: Yeah! Could you imagine if she'd been wearing a body cam when she tried to shake down that grocery store owner?
Alice: Honestly. (sighs)
Bex: So then we're going to have an intro, a segue into the storyline about Mae's homecoming. Because while everybody apparently enjoyed the dinner that I'm guessing Bobby cooked which was short ribs May barely touched her plate. [00:47:00] And Harry says it's because she's still on a stupid diet so she can fit into her homecoming dress.
Alice: Oh, first off! Athena says it might have something to do with the story he told at meal time, which I'm assuming is the… (laughs)
Bex: He was telling Yeah. I mean that just seems completely appropriate, doesn't it? You know, we're sitting down at the table eating dinner and I'm going to tell you about an eating contest.
Alice: Crickets were coming…
Bex: Nope, nope.
Ellen: Oh dear. Anyway, she may herself comes in her beautiful homecoming dress.
Bex: And, It's so pretty.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Although I kind of do want to see, she says that Michael didn't like the first one because it was too low cut. And Harry pipes up that, yeah, we could almost see a belly button. So I kind of want to see what that one was now.
Ellen: Yeah. It must have been like a plunging neckline or something.
Bex: Which, considering May is, what, 15? 16? Yeah. [00:48:00] Probably not appropriate. Absolutely not appropriate.
Ellen: Athena sounded like she liked it. But anyway, they’ve gone with the other one. And Bobby is sort of looking at them just not kind of dealing with it very well.
Bex: No, he's realizing that he's never going to get that moment to watch his daughter get ready for homecoming.
Ellen: So he says he's got to go home so he can you know, get a good night's sleep for early shift tomorrow. And he just sort of leaves.
Bex: It's very abrupt. Yep.
Alice: Yep. He's like, yep, guys, gotta go home. Bye. Bye.
Ellen: And Athena follows him out and she's like, Look, I'm sorry, I didn't realise it was going to be hard. And he's like, no, it's fine.
Alice: Yeah, he says he wants her to be able to enjoy each and every one of the milestones that her kids have without worrying about me. And Athena says, “Don't tell me I can't do both.”
Bex: Which is kind of, it was flirty, she's trying to lighten the mood, like, you know, “I'm really good at multitasking, I can worry about you and enjoy the milestones at the same time.”
Alice: [00:49:00] But Bobby still goes home.
Ellen: Yeah. He needs to get out of there though.
Bex: He does. Although I don't think that was the best move for him.
I think he probably, as hard as it was, he should have stayed with Athena. Just because he has this, like, track history of isolating himself and that leads to bad things happening. So.
Alice: Bad choices.
Ellen: Yes. Another short scene, that one. But the next one is at we're now going to the next day, I assume. The sun's out.
It's the LA Bodybuilding Regionals, which are being held at Muscle Beach. I don't know if that is a real place.
Bex: It's Venice Beach. But I think it's like nicknamed Muscle Beach because they hold bodybuilding competitions there traditionally.
Ellen: Right.
Bex: I'm pretty sure I've been there in Grand Theft Auto V as well.
Ellen: Probably. There's a bunch of like five guys, five? Yeah, because there's one of the guys in the [00:50:00] middle who has the problems. Yeah. They're having a pose down, so they're all like, I don't know, bodybuilder physique is just. Not for me. I'm like, they just look like…
Alice: Yeah. I'm way too gay for all of this.
Ellen: They're doing their little poses with their, you know, biceps and side chest. And yeah, the guy in the middle is having a bit of trouble with this. He's like stuck with his bicep curls up, you know, like his pose can't move. His double bicep. He looks like he's in a lot of pain.
Bex: Yeah, he physically cannot lower his arms from the double bicep position.
Even as the men around him move into the other poses, as they're called, he is struggling. And he looks like he's in serious pain. And so finally we get a 9-1-1 call, which, like we said, it's literally just transitional at this point,
Alice: it did actually make me laugh though, because that was like, “Oh, [00:49:00] one of the body builders is stuck.”
And I'm like, is this, which episode is this?
Ellen: “What is he stuck in?” And it's like “the double bicep.”
Bex: yeah. But the irony, not the irony, but what's so horrible is that by the time the 118 get there, he is still standing on stage in that double bicep. All five men are still standing on stage. They have not made one mistake. Movement to, you know, get everybody off the stage, to get the guy off the stage, to get him sitting down, or lying down, or trying to help him at all.
They've just left him standing there.
Ellen: He's just standing there. Yeah
Alice: Look maybe the 118 were already at the beach. Maybe they were having a fun team building activity at the beach. And then
Bex: No, but don't we see them? We see them driving in.
Ellen: Yeah, they might have been at a different beach.
Alice: Yeah, they were just down the beach.
Bex:
Ellen: Anyway, maybe they were nearby. [00:52:00] We don't know where the 118, like, firehouse is. It might be at the beach. No. (laughs)
Bex: Anyway, so they all converge on the bodybuilding stage with Taylor and Brett in tow, recording everything that they do.
Ellen: Buck diagnoses him with some, I don't know what Buck is diagnosing anyone with. Maybe he just knows about bodybuilding jargon.
Bex: Yeah. I'm going to say that he knows that this is kind of his area. So
Alice: Buck has absolutely been watching the bodybuilding finals and he's just like, Oh my God, we're going to regionals. (laughs)
Ellen: He probably knows this guy. Extreme hyponatremia he has.
Apparently. And the cameraman goes, “he's got what?” And Hen’s like, “he's got a charley horse.”
Bex: He's got a cramp.
Ellen: He's got a massive cramp. And then he goes, “what's your name?” And the guy goes, “Charlie.” It’s like what? (laughs)
Bex: [00:53:00] So it turns out Charlie is severely dehydrated because the last time he had anything to drink was yesterday afternoon.
He's probably been using diuretics as well to completely cure him. Deplete himself so that his veins and muscles pop for extra effect on the stage. Which, as Bobby tells him, his potassium, sodium levels have bottomed out and that's why they're seizing up. So he needs, like, bananas, stat. (laughs)
Ellen: But if they start flushing him, you know, with fluids, then his kidneys may fail if he's taking, you know, if he's taking steroids or whatever, so he needs, they need to tell him, he needs to tell them if he's taking something and he's like, “no, I'm totally clean.” [00:54:00] Bobby looks at the camera and he tells them to piss off.
Bex: And he realizes that Charlie's not going to give them a straight answer while the camera's rolling.
Ellen: So he explains what the problem is and then Charlie's like, “yeah, okay, I'm on steroids.” Immediately. Immediately. He doesn't mess around.
Alice: Like, if we give you this and you've been dosing your kidneys will fail. Okay, I'm sorry.
Ellen: Yeah And then he's like, am I gonna be okay? Like they get it. They managed to get him onto a… like he's still standing up They put the backboard on his back and then they like tip him over
Bex: I don’t understand why they didn't let him sit down or something I mean
Alice: I don’t think he could like I think all like his entire
Bex: you think his entire like his entire body seized up, not just his arms. I thought it was just his arms.
Alice: yeah, no, because otherwise, surely he would have sat down himself if he, but no, it'll be everything.
Ellen: I feel like if he just totally seized up like that, though, wouldn't he have fallen over? Like, you kind of need to move your body around to stay upright.
Bex: [00:55:00] I don't know. I don't know. It’s so stupid.
Ellen: Anyway, it doesn't matter. It's just the whole scene is a little bit stupid.
Alice: Don't think too hard.
Ellen: No.
Bex: The whole point of the scene is that Taylor and her camera impeded on their ability to help this guy. So Bobby can now get stuck into Taylor and tell her that she…
Alice: Again, hang on, which, he's getting “stuck” into Taylor? Which episode are we in? (laughs)
Bex: He tells her that he can't have her recording them, recording people who are in distress because they have to feel like that they can trust Bobby and his crew and be honest, otherwise mistakes will get made.
Alice: Not only that, but surely like they'd have to sign a waiver. Like the patients would have to sign a waiver to be on camera.
Bex: They would, it would probably be done afterwards. So once they had got all the footage, [00:56:00] they might go back and go, okay, we want to use this footage, let's track down this guy and get them to sign something so that I don't imagine that, you know, this guy's stuck in a double bicep and Taylor is you know, shoving a clipboard in his face going, “Can you hold a pen? Can you just sign here, please?”
Ellen: Yeah, so he does tell them to go away, and Taylor's like, we're totally using that.
Yeah, back to the firehouse. Taylor's working at one of the tables in the kitchen, and she sees Buck down below, and then he, like, he's talking to Bobby, but she, he looks up at Taylor, and she like, gives him a, like a, come hither kind of a look. Come here.
Bex: Oh yeah.
Ellen: Buck's just like, ooh, I'm in, okay, off he goes.
Bex: It's a, it's an awkward little scene. I'm not entirely sure what the purpose of this scene was, either, other than sort of establishing the rapport between Taylor and Buck a little bit further. [00:57:00] I think Taylor is maybe trying to get her way, trying to get her way into Bobby's good graces through Buck.
Cause she's trying to talk up what she is trying to do to Buck, yeah, maybe in the hopes that he will then turn around and tell Bobby and Bobby will stop stonewalling her and actually talk to her.
Alice: But yeah, Taylor says that she doesn't think Bobby likes her much, Buck's like, “That's funny cause you're so likeable.”
Ellen: Ugh, eye roll.
Alice: It's like, Buck, you are living in your girlfriend's, anyway. But yeah, so Buck says that Cap's not prickly, he just doesn't know Taylor yet, and you know, they get two, three calls, but Bobby's putting out fires all day. The rest of them, they just have to be one thing at a time, but Bobby has to be everything.
And the truth is, Bobby inspires Buck every single day.
Ellen: [00:58:00] He's got to be the agony aunt, like the chef. Like, he's got so many jobs.
Bex: As well as doing all the paperwork.
Alice: Yeah. He's got to be the dad, like Buck's dad.
Ellen: Yeah. Taylor just wants to put a spotlight on him, but he's not biting. And,
Bex: which do you really blame him considering he's trying so hard to hide who he was?
Yeah, right? Yeah. He does not need a massive spotlight shone on him. No. He doesn't need anybody finding out about his past in Minnesota.
Alice: God, no. So Taylor tells… like, you know, it says, tell your story and Buck goes “To him, we're not the story. We're just here to make sure no story ends before it should.”
And it's like, aw, Buck, Bobby totally said that to you and you are just now parroting it back, but good for you.
Bex: Okay. Yeah. Like you said, Ellen it's, the dialogue's a little clunky this week.
Ellen: [00:59:00] Yeah. Once you start noticing it, it's really hard to, yeah. Yeah. Anyway, we're going to back to 9-1-1 headquarters.
This seems really. It's kind of hard to watch in some ways. It's like a bit scary. Maddie is, answers a call and when she says, “what's your emergency?” There's just nothing on the other end. And then she says, “Is anyone there?” And this woman says, “I'm sorry. I'm sorry.”
And Maddie starts having this flashback to like, obviously her, like you can see her, it's her hiding in the dark kind of thing. She's got like bruises or blood on her face or something. She's terrified. And so she's, you can tell like this PTSD is like really affecting her. And she can hear this woman crying on the other end of the line.
And she says, “If you tell me where you are, you know, you can try. [01:00:00] Make it sound like you're talking to someone else, like, order pizza or something, just tell me where you are and I'll send help.” And the woman just says, “no, sorry, wrong number,” and hangs up. And Maddie's just like, you know, she's crying herself by this stage and she just puts the headset down and leaves.
Alice: Once again, Maddie cries and we all cry.
Ellen: Poor Maddie.
Bex: Sue has been watching all of this, and she follows Maddie to the break room and kicks the other dispatcher out who was just trying to make his coffee to, to check in with Maddie and make sure that she's doing okay. And of course, Maddie thinks that she's done something wrong.
And Sue's very quick...
Alice: She is a Buckley. “Am I getting fired?”
Bex: Sue's very quick to reassure her that she's made an excellent addition to the team. She's just worried that the job might be getting to Maddie. And Maddie confesses it's not the job, or, you know, right now it's the job. [01:01:00] But it's just that, that call hit a little bit too close to home and reminded her of her home life or her previous home life, her marriage.
Ellen: Yeah. Sue gives her a a pep talk, I guess, like a saying that got out, you got out of there. And here you are just, you're still keep moving forwards and you'll get there, you know? So yeah, it's just, it's a very sweet conversation.
Bex: It's very sweet and very short. Cause now we're back to the 118 and there are new arrivals on the table of goodies which Chim's very excited about except to his disappointment when he opens the Tupperware container, it's empty.
Everyone has got there before him. And the others are rubbing it in his face. They're all walking past telling him about how great they were, fudge brownies with nuts in it. They're all eating them. [01:02:00] And apparently they were in, as Hen puts it, “scrumptious”. So while they're stuffing their face with brownies, we get a call for medical aid, unknown injury, and they all race for the trucks.
Alice: Unknown injuries, right?
Bex: But Bobby doesn't go with them, which Taylor is surprised about, because she's followed them down to the trucks, but she's like, obviously doing a head count and going, wait, Bobby's not getting in a truck. Where is Captain Nash? And Chim, who has climbed into the engine truck, not in the ambulance, despite the fact that it's a medical emergency, you would think he would be in the ambulance.
No, he's in the engine truck. He tells her that Bobby's sitting this one out. It's just a simple medical call and he's wrapping up the shift. And as the trucks pull out, Taylor gets like this evil look in her eye. Like I finally got Bobby right where I want him. He can't escape me now.
Alice: Like the cat got the canary.
Bex: So they go up to talk to Bobby. [01:03:00] And Taylor gives him this speech where she says that she has one goal. She wants to tell the true story about your station. Bobby's sitting in the kitchen at the bench, just sort of staring at the benchtop, and as she starts talking, he very slowly looks up at her and then says, “You can have a true story. There's truth all around us all the time. There's truth right here in this napkin.” And we realized that he's been staring at this white napkin with crumbs on it, on the bench top.
Alice: I love this. Brett, the cameraman, like hurries, like Oh my God, I gotta get a shot of this napkin. He takes his job very serious.
Ellen: This is literally like, I'm sitting here watching this with my sister in law and I'm like, she's seen it before, but I hadn't. And I'm like, “Is he high?” And then Bobby goes, “Every crumb is a universe unto itself. The more you zoom in, the more you'll see.” [01:04:00] And then Brett actually says, “is he high?”
Bex: I love that he like grabs the camera to pull it in so that the camera gets a nice close up of these crumbs.
Ellen: And then all the other members of the 118 who are around. Who we don't, do we know any of these people?
Bex: We don't know any of them, but they are also as high as kites.
Ellen: And I'm like, “Oh my God, they're all high.” And then Taylor says, “I think they're all high.” (laughs)
Bex: Brett’s the one that figures out that it was the brownies, that the brownies have been dosed. So, everyone raise their glasses to Brett, who has got the episode title as part of his dialogue.
Alice: Yay, finally someone said it.
Bex: And then I love that he immediately like turns the camera on Taylor and goes, “wait, you didn't have one, did you?” Like, he's just waiting for Taylor to start spinning out on camera. Her only response is, “Do I look like I eat fudge?” And no, honey, you don't look like you've eaten a full meal in years.
Alice: No.
Bex: And then behind her, Bobby's holding up the napkin with the crumbs.
Ellen: It's funny.
Bex: It's hilarious. And then you realize, holy shit. Buck and Eddie and Hen also ate the brownies, and they are out on a call right now.
Ellen: Everyone ate… So they're in the truck and they're all like, looking like, and Eddie's like, “oh, my, the allergies are bad today.” And Buck's like, “you too, huh? Do you think it's a new kind?” And Eddie's like, “a new kind of what?” And he's like, “Of pollen.” Of pollen? And I'm like, Oh my God, they are all, they all ate the brownies.
Alice: Except for Chim, he's the only one who didn't eat any. Chim, so he's just sitting there like, what the fuck is wrong with this? He's like a new kind of pollen.
Bex: Which could just be, you know, Buck being Buck, but then Eddie reports that he can see the pollen.
[01:06:00] And Buck can hear the pollen, and he realizes that he's in, something is going on.
Alice: It doesn't even, like, I don't think Chim realizes,
Ellen: No, Chim doesn’t realise until later.
Alice: Chim's just like,
Bex: We realise something's going on.
Alice: Yeah. Dumb and Dumber have their own secret language now, like, this is fine. (laughs)
So we go to the call, which is to a tiny tots beauty pageant. Athena's already there, she's arresting one woman, and Chim like, bustles in, and the pageant mum who's getting arrested is like, going off. She's like, “This is ridiculous. She's the one who cheated. She and her demon seed. That little girl's 11 if she's a day, I want to see the birth certificate.”
Bex: Yeah. I don't think she is the medical emergency. I think she is the cause of the medical emergency.
Alice: Yeah. She's the cause of the medical emergency.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Athena says that [01:07:00] she needs to calm down or she'll be charged with resisting arrest and the pageant mom's like, “for what? This was self defense. My ex husband's a lawyer.” Yeah. And Athena’s like, “Oh, good. Cause I need you to contact him to come pick up your daughter.” Cause the kid is just standing there watching the whole time. But Eddie and Buck walk in and Eddie's like,
Ellen: He's smiles.
Alice: Is it Eddie that's really, like, Eddie is, one of them's really excited and one of them's horrified.
Bex: Eddie looks like he's walked into Disneyland.
Ellen: Yeah, he loves it.
Bex: He is, his face just lights up, but his eyes wide in, like, shock. Cause he has no idea what is going on. Chim's off doing his job. He's trying to find this victim that they've been called on. These two barely make it in through the doorway.
Alice: So we, like, we get a quick view of the actual medical emergency.
And it's a woman who has this, like the heel [01:08:00] of a, Like high heel shoe.
Bex: Stiletto heel. Yeah.
Alice: Yeah. There you go. I'm clearly not girl enough for this. It is through her cheek.
Bex: Yeah. It's not just like in her cheek. It's gone down off her cheekbone and is just like,
Ellen: It's stuck into her face. Basically.
Alice: And she's like on the phone trying to reach her plastic surgeon who was apparently in Aruba at this time of year.
And she's like, like can hardly even move her mouth to talk. And Chim's like, “let's just sit down over here. Like maybe hang up the phone, maybe sit down for a minute.” And so Chim's like, “Cool. Like, come on guys. Let's, where are you? Diaz, Buckley, let's go.” They haven't moved. They're still just in the doorway.
[01:09:00] Yeah, cause Buck's like, “Did these beauty queens shrink or are we suddenly giants?” And that's when Eddie freaks out.
Bex: That never occurred to Eddie and he's like, “Oh my God,” although I don't know what has scared him more that he is suddenly a giant or that all of the women in the room are suddenly very tiny, but either way, it's freaking him out.
Oh, it's so silly.
Alice: Yeah. So the pageant mom's like getting let out in cuffs. She's like, “Don't arrest me or pay for any medical bills. I stopped my birth control. Cause I started menopause and then my hormones are going crazy. Can I get my shoe back?” And Chimney who's still trying to take control of the scene is like, can someone bring me the rest of my gear?
And Athena's like, “I think he means you guys.” And Eddie is just, Like, freaking out that the kids are going to attack him and Buck's just staring at them.
Bex: And he looks up when Athena when he hears Athena's voice and I love this bit. His voice is like really high pitch and he's like, [01:10:00] “Hey Athena, they're like the tiniest ladies I've ever seen. They're teeny tiny!”
Ellen: Oh god, the rest of the women in this room are like looking at him going, What is wrong with these guys? They're just, it's really creepy. They're just standing there staring at the girls.
Bex: Athena's wondering what's up with them. Oh yeah. And
Alice: he's there like, so tiny. And Athena's like, “right, okay, whatever. Henrietta!”
Bex: Oh, I think Han's even better cause she didn't even make it into the room. She found a mirror and she's just been staring at herself in the mirror for the past couple of minutes.
Alice: Yeah, this whole time she's just Ooh!
Bex: But she hears Athena and she comes like floating into the room and she's like, “‘thena! You smell like love.”
And I think that's what convinces Athena that something is going wrong. Cause she can understand Eddie and Buck being stupid.
Alice: Which like, everyone's just like, Oh yeah, it's just Eddie and Buck.
Bex: [01:11:00] It's just Eddie and Buck. But Henrietta…
Alice: it's Buck doing Buck things and he's just dragged Eddie along for the ride. Like, yeah, okay. Eddie's caught, whatever Buckley disease this is fine.
Bex: But Hen is normally the sensible one. And if she's like off in La La Land, something has gone wrong. So Athena just yells, “Chimney!”
Alice: Oh, so Hen’s walked through Buck and Eddie. And Eddie hits a balloon arrangement.
Yeah. And like fully freaks out. Like, so yeah, so Athena calls for Chimney, calls for backup. As well, and then Eddie starts shining his pen light into the balloons.
Bex: I had to watch this scene so many times because I'd be focusing on, okay, what is each one of them doing every single time? So the first time I'm just watching, okay, what is Eddie doing?
Eddie's freaking out over the balloon arrangement. [01:12:00] Okay. What is Hen doing this time? She's now just standing there sniffing Athena. Cause apparently Athena smells like love.
Alice: She smells like love. So Chim storms over and she's like, what? He's like, “what are you doing? Where's my stuff?” Like, and Athena just goes, “We've got a problem. Your guys be tripping.” And Chim’s like, “What? Guys, look at me, do you know where you are?”
Bex: And somehow Eddie has managed to get himself inside the balloon arrangement and he just kind of parts the balloons and peers out and goes, “We're everywhere, man.” (laughing)
I love the fact that all three of them are having different reactions to the drugs. It's great.
Ellen: And Hen just gives Chim a big hug and Chim's like, “Oh my God, the brownies.” And Athena’s like, “Brownies?”
Alice: Oh, this is. This is the best, like, I like cackled.
Ellen: [01:13:00] Chim says, we've got a new batch today.
We've been getting a lot of stuff lately. And Athena's like, “You guys eat that stuff? We just throw that stuff right in the trash.”
Alice: Chim goes, “we're firefighters. Everybody loves us.”
Ellen: You see, there you go.
Alice: And it's like, oh, deep cuts to Athena.
Bex: But as funny as these three are trippin’ balls. We cut back to the 118 and Bobby's not really having as good a time on the drugs. He's set up some kind of science experiment that he's making Taylor watch, where he's got a plate, he's got, there's some water on the plate, there's a tea candle and a glass.
He tells Taylor to watch. So he lights the tea candle and puts the glass over the top and [01:14:00] the tea candle goes out and we can see the water start to rise up the sides of the glass. And he asks Taylor if he knows, if she knows why that happens and when she can't give him an answer, he's going to do the experiment again.
And I get the feeling that he's just going to keep doing it until she can tell him the science behind what is going on with that.
Ellen: And this is where it quite quickly trips from… trips, haha… from hilarity into heartbreak.
Bex: Yeah. Cause Taylor tries to take the lighter away from him so that he'll focus. And Bobby says “no, this is a show and tell, not a show and touch, Brooke. I don't want you to burn yourself.” And like, oh no, he thinks that she's his daughter.
Ellen: Yeah. And she, yeah, she calls him out on it. She's like, “who's Brooke?”
Bex: Bobby sort of. gets distracted by all of the lights and he goes, “There's so many lights in here, lights and colors and death. You died.” [01:15:00] I'm like, oh no.
Ellen: Yeah, “Someone died?”
Bex: Taylor's not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed because it's taking her a while to put together all the pieces.
Either that or she's intentionally asking leading questions to try and get Bobby to spill.
Ellen: Oh yeah, that's the impression I got. She was like treating him kind of gently to get him to tell her. But also when he said there was lights and colors and death, I'd be like, okay, I'll be going now. Bye.
See you. But yeah, he, she sort of asked him, like, “did you lose someone, Captain Nash?” And he says, “Oh, she's not lost. She's right here.” And then he's like looking at this chair at the end of the table that's empty.
Bex: There's this moment where Brett starts to turn the camera towards the chair and then almost like, ah shit, there's nothing gonna be there.
There's no point putting the camera there. This guy's high. But apparently [01:16:00] Hallucination Brooke is taller than her mother now and in a few seconds she's gonna be taller than all of us, so she's I don't know what he's seeing, but It's not good.
Alice: Well, while the beauty queens have shrunk into teeny tiny,
Bex: Brooke's gotten bigger.
Alice: Yeah, Bobby's dead daughter is getting bigger and bigger.
Bex: Speaking of teeny tiny little ladies, we're going to jump from there back to the pageant where Athena has gotten sick of putting up with the three musketeers and put them in handcuffs.
Ellen: At least Buck and Hen get to have their hands in front of them. But Eddie's like, is behind his back, like
Bex: Behind his back and he is not enjoying it, he is freaking out.
Alice: He just, he's like, “I don't like this” and just starts crying and Buck is like, “Oh, you made him cry!”
Ellen: Oh, it's just so mean.
Bex: [01:17:00] Athena tells him to breathe and he like purses out his lips and nods really like, really fast. Like, yeah, okay, I'm just going to breathe. I'm just going to breathe.
Alice: Anyway, yeah, so meanwhile, Chim's still doing his job and like, is bandaging up the like the shoe that's in the lady's face.
So that it doesn't move around too much. And she's like, “why aren't you taking it out?” And he goes, “they'll take it out at the hospital.”
Bex: Because you don't remove things in situ if they're in you. You just leave them there and you let the professionals do it.
Alice: And you know, he's like, He goes, “we'll get you there. I called 9-1-1.” Chimney, you are 9-1-1. Like, I'm really surprised nobody
Bex: said that actually,
Alice: in that line. Oh, Buck would have, but he's too busy with Eddie being made to cry. Just, “ooh, you made him cry.” (laughs)
Bex: [01:18:00] As funny as this is, there, there is a serious issue in that they've, realized that these guys are dosed on the brownies, which Chim has then realized that probably everybody else in the station house has eaten them. And they've been trying to call the station house and nobody's picking up.
Alice: Yeah. Chim's like, “We should probably like, divert like all the calls from there.” And Athena's like, “yeah, I already did that. Like, I've actually been doing my job. I don't know what you're doing Chimney.”
Bex: He's also been doing his job. But then it kind of occurs to Athena, if everybody in the station house has eaten them.
Alice: So has Bobby.
Bex: Bobby's probably eaten them. And that's probably not a good thing. And she is correct because she puts lights and sirens on screams up to the station house to find a crowd gathered outside and Bobby standing on the edge of the roof.
Alice: [01:19:00] And Brett's still filming.
Bex: Yeah, of course he's going to keep filming.
Ellen: He was high and then he got higher. (laughs) I love that, what Athena's response is, “Look at me again and tell me another joke.” Like instead of saying, “are you kidding?” But yeah, she goes up to the roof and she's like, “Bobby, it's me. It's me.” And Bobby eventually turns around and looks at her. But he's just giving her this spiel about “the ones we save and the ones we lose” and, well, you know, he's tripping balls.
Bex: Yep. So the reason we had sort of such confusion about how we were going to mention that this is a trigger is that Bobby's not up there specifically to jump. He's followed Brooke up there. She's either grown so massive that she's now outside the building, [01:20:00] or she’s now floating in the sky, and he’s followed her and he’s trying to get to her, not realizing that means that he's going to be putting himself in peril.
And it is sad because Bobby wants… He tells Athena that he wants to float away with her wherever she goes.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: And Athena has to literally talk him down and tell him that he needs to stay here where it's real. And as she's doing that, she's edging closer and closer to him. She doesn't want to startle him because if she startles him, he might slip and fall.
And finally she gets close enough that she can grab him and yanked him off the edge of the building and holds on tight to him, telling him that she is real, he is real, they can be real together.
Ellen: She says, “You asked what about all of this was real. We are.” No, hang on that's the wrong show. (laughs)
Alice: [01:21:00] No, Ellen, that was platonic, apparently. (laughs)
Ellen: Anyway, short scene ends again.
Bex: Short scene and another full width jump.
Ellen: Then we just jump forward to these two again which is, Yes. Kind of a strange scene break, but anyway, “How's the chief?” Athena says and Bobby's fine now. He's in like his full dress uniform, including his hat. I don't know why he brought his hat in the house.
But, you know, he's obviously come from,
Alice: I think he just had a, yeah, I think he just had a meeting with the chief.
Bex: So he's like, yeah, but the point is he just got out of the car. So why does he get out of the car and bring his hat,
Ellen: He’s carrying his hat. It's not on his head.
Alice: He's a professional.
Bex: I mean, I know that there is…They have to have like full uniform if it's anything like military, but he's on private property going into a private residence. I don't think the uniform rules really apply, [01:22:00] but it does look very dashing in his formal, his dress uniform. I do like that they made him dress up to rake him over the coals.
I mean, just, you know, really rub it in there. We're going to put you in something really uncomfortable while we yell at you.
Ellen: I mean he may have got like reprimanded for being high on the job, even though it wasn't their fault, I guess. Maybe.
Bex: Maybe. We do find out that they were all high on LSD. So apparently they ran a tox screen on them all once they got them back.
Alice: Oh, no.
Ellen: Yes. And they, they don't know who did it.
Alice: But yeah, they don't know who yet. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah. The Taylor Kelly's exclusive report is going to come out tomorrow. She filmed the whole thing, so who knows what she's going to have on there.
But
Bex: Yeah, Bobby's worried that it's like, the headline is going to be Captain loses his sobriety. [01:23:00] And they have this little moment where they're talking, or Bobby is talking to Athena about the impact that being drugged has had on him because he's an addict. It’s like his, he was an alcoholic, but he was also a drug addict before he sobered up.
And so he's, he was forced off the wagon and
Alice: he didn't fall off the wagon, he was pushed.
Bex: Yeah. He was, well, Athena says that he was pushed. And he's, he tells her that he doesn't feel like a failure because he was pushed off the wagon. He feels like a failure because he was pushed off the wagon and he enjoyed it, and he wants to stay off the wagon.
Because it's easier being off the wagon. Yeah, that it's had a really big impact on him. And I like that they brought it up, [01:24:00] that they didn't just brush it off as, Oh, isn't it funny? You know, everyone got high. Like, no, this is not funny. Because it would not have been out of the realm of possibility that Bobby would have kept reaching… like Bobby would've then gone out and started using LSD regularly trying to recapture that moment, trying to keep seeing his daughter.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: So I liked that they included that and I like that they have shown that he recognizes the danger that he is now in that he has to work twice as hard to get back on that wagon.
Ellen: Yeah. This is such a rollercoaster of an episode like. One minute we're all laughing, and then the next minute it's like, oh, right in the feels. Anyway, we're going back to the 118 Firehouse again, and it's time for Taylor's report to be on the TV.
Bex: Yeah, everybody's gathering to watch it together.
Ellen: Yeah, and Eddie says, “did everything kind of sparkle to you?” [01:25:00] Hen's like, “it was more glistening.”
Alice: Like the whole world was covered in dew.
Ellen: But they watch the segment and they're all kind of, you know, enjoying it and sharing glances and liking it but Bobby's not there. He decided he didn't want to watch it.
He would rather do anything other than this. So he's down in the gym working out.
Bex: Buck goes down to check on him afterwards, and we find out that Taylor was nice to them, that she made a bit of a puff piece, and none of the footage about Bobby or everybody high on LSD was included. And Bobby's a little bit confused, because Taylor's like, even he recognizes that for an up and coming reporter, that stuff is gold.
And he asks Buck, why would she leave that out? [01:26:00] And then poor, adorable little Buck goes “I think she likes me. I think she changed the story to to get into my good graces because she likes me.”
Ellen: Bless him. This is one of the, those, like we've had an episode like this before, but the scenes, a few scenes at the end feel like they should be the end. But then they're not, like there's more after, like this feels like it's kind of the end because
Bex: yes,
Ellen: but then we cut to Bobby at home, and he ends up watching the piece on his laptop and he's sort of tearing up at the different interviews and whatever but then we get to the bit where you know that Charlie, who, you know, the muscle guy, he was saying that they would they were great.
They seem like real decent people. And then Sandy, who was the lady at the eating competition was like, “Oh, I worry about them,” [01:27:00] Bobby’s sort of watching and going on this, not this chick again. She was nuts. She said, “I'm worried about them. They're under so much stress all the time. I wish I could do something to ease their burden, a dose of something to lift their spirits.”
And at this point I'm doing that meme with like, Leo pointing at the screen going…
Bex: Yes!
Ellen: it was her!
Bex: And Bobby's right there with you. But rather than reporting it to the chief, rather than reporting it to the police, he grabs his police woman girlfriend off duty and decides to go check out the situation himself. Or themselves, in a completely unofficial civilian capacity.
Ellen: I was like, why are you not, do you not intend to arrest her? Like, what is the point of this?
Bex: Yeah. [01:28:00] And I mean, it's not as though she's a, I know that she really fucked with Bobby and that she put everyone in danger, but it's not as though she's a dangerous criminal that they need to worry about her fleeing the country.
It could have waited until morning.
Ellen: Yeah. Yeah.
Bex: But they're not going to wait. It's weird. It's weird. They're going to let themselves into the store and go in search of Sandy.
Alice: Wait. It's because she went in civvies because she didn't want to wear a body cam, clearly.
Bex: But she's off duty.
Ellen: I mean, the store's not even open, but they see a light on and they just let themselves in the store, into the store.
Bex: Yeah.
Ellen: But they don't get far in when this, there's this cat, like a large cat, which has large ears. Like it's one of those, it's a savannah type cat.
Bex: It’s a savannah cat, yeah.
Ellen: Just sitting on near the door.
Bex: Bestest kitty does not move. I thought it was a statue at first, but then I saw its tail twitching and went, no, it's actually a cat. Cool. It's just doing such a good job waiting for its treats.
Alice: [01:29:00] It's the best actor kitty ever.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: The kitties are such good actors in this show.
Ellen: Yeah. Athena's a bit freaked out.
Bex: Athena freaks out and like almost tries to push Bobby in front of her as like a human shield. But they get past the guard kitty, through the store with all of the cages of exotic animals, and end up in the back office where they find Sandy and Claude and an alligator.
And a tortoise and a turtle and some kind of other lizard. And they're all in like a big cuddle puddle on the floor.
Ellen: And Athena's like, “This doesn't look safe.”
Alice: So Sandy goes, “I freed my mind and then I freed them.”
Bex: Oh, Sandy's high as a kite.
Ellen: Yep. How much acid did you take?
Bex: And Sandy says, “well, not much. I micro dose.” And Bobby's like, “No ma'am, I don't think you did. And think, I, in fact, I think you macro dosed my entire fire station.” Sandy's like, “oh, I guess I used too much.”
She just wanted to give them all a little clarity, a Athena's response is “In my kind, in my line of work that's called a felony.” Sandy thinks that it's the funniest thing she's ever heard.
Ellen: And I'm like, what, so what happens now? Are you going to arrest her or
Alice: like? Yeah. Like in your civvies, like what?
Bex: I don't know. I don't know. You're going to call animal control and get Claude put away? What's the next step guys? What did you think was going to happen next? Yeah. It's just it's written for television, not for reality.
Ellen: Anyway, now it's time for Maddie again. [01:31:00] She is folding laundry on her couch and while she's watching Taylor Kelly, who is now doing a mosquito story. At least it's not the traffic, I guess, but it's about mosquitoes.
Yes. Yeah, the doorbell rings. She looks on the phone. Just at the camera that's outside the door, and it's Chim.
Bex: Who knows exactly where the cameras are, so he's looking at the camera and waving. Like, just waiting for her to open the door for him.
Ellen: She lets him in, and he hands over a gift wrapped present, and he tells her what it is before she even opens it.
Bex: He was so like, eager cause she's like shaking it, going, trying to draw her out, like, like, put some suspense into it. Like, “Ooh, it's not a book.” He's like, “it's a DVD. It's a Mission Impossible DVD.”
Ellen: They’re so adorable.
Bex: And it's only, it's then that he realizes like, you know, “Shit. You do have a DVD player, don't you?”
Alice: Yeah, I sure don't. I also don't have a popcorn maker, and apparently Maddie has one of those too.
Ellen: [01:32:00] Yeah, even though she, like, last episode she didn't have anything. But now she has a popcorn maker.
Bex: Maybe she stole it from Abby's apartment? Maybe. Like, maybe Abby had a popcorn maker? I don't know. I mean, you know, to go with all the wine that she drinks, like very Olivia Pope. (laughs)
Alice: Anyway, so Maddie asks if Chim would like to hang out and watch a movie. And Chim does the biggest, cutest smile. He's like, I love you.
Ellen: It's like, Chim, that's so smooth, Invite yourself over to watch a movie.
Bex: They're so cute. It's so cute. And it's so nice that he's being 100 percent himself with Maddie.
Alice: Yeah, right. Like he's hasn't lied. He's just.
Bex: He's he. Yeah. He's geeky. He likes watching movies. So he's bought a movie. [01:33:00] It's one that they've already had like a little in joke about.
Alice: Do you think that Chim just did this or do you think that Buck was like, “Can you believe that my sister. I don't know. thinks that Chimney's cute and not Eddie? Like, has she seen Eddie?” Like
Bex: No. I honestly think this is Chim just he's shooting his shot.
Alice: I just love him so much.
Bex: So while these two get the popcorn going and start watching Mission Impossible Taylor is wrapping up her broadcast.
Ellen: We're still not finished. We're still not finished. It looks like it'll be the end, but it's not.
Bex: It's not, I think that's probably the, that's the problem with all of these like tiny little scenes that just keep cutting.
There's no like beginning, there's no clear beginning, middle and end. It's just middle. Oh, hey, we've run out of middle. [01:34:00] So Buck has tracked Taylor down and has come to thank her for what she did for Bobby and not using any of the footage from when he was high and sharing anything that he said and Taylor just flat out says, “Oh, I wanted to use it. I got overruled.”
And Buck's like, “wait, you were going to use it?” She's like, “Oh, hell yeah. The only reason we didn't was because your lawyers are apparently bigger than our lawyers.” And Buck does a complete attitude 180 because he's coming up, he had been coming over like, you know, oh, you know, you like me, you're kind of cute, I kind of like you.
And then she's revealed her, like, ambition and her drive and the fact that she was willing to bulldoze over Bobby to further her career, and he's just like, nope, don't like you. You, that this job is a stupid job. [01:35:00] I don't like your job.
Alice: Job's stupid.
Bex: He literally says your job is stupid.
Ellen: “I don't like it.” That's what he says.
Alice: Yep.
Bex: But to, to Taylor's credit, she doesn't care if Buck likes it or not. She's like, “I've wanted to be a reporter since I was 14. I have put myself through college. I did traffic because it was what I hoped would break me into the industry. You don't have to like my job, but you don't get to make me feel bad about my job.”
And Buck's just like, “Well, well, I don't like it.”
Alice: And Taylor goes, “I don't care.” And Brett, who is literally the MVP of this entire episode. Walks past them and goes, “Just get a room already.”
Bex: [01:36:00] Buck likes that idea.
Alice: Yeah. Taylor looks confused, but like Buck's just like, well, do you? Buck, you're like, are you going to take her home to your girlfriend's apartment?
Like, what are you…?
Anyway, Buck is in like, He's in civilian clothes and he's adorable, is what I got from that scene.
Bex: He's very adorable. Like he's attempting to be adorable to start off with, but even then when he gets pouty.
Alice: Yeah. He's so pouty.
Bex: He's still adorable.
Alice: He's so cute.
Bex: And then we have another scene
Alice: because
Bex: we're still not over.
Last one. We got to, we, we set up, it's Chekhov's Homecoming. We set it up. So now we've got to see it through. We do. Athena's kind of thrown a little homecoming party for May and I'm guessing a couple of her friends. They're all sort of standing around with their parents, they're all dressed to the nines.
She's put out a nice spread and the doorbell rings because Michael, who's got like the fancy DSLR camera forgot batteries.
Alice: [01:37:00] Apparently it needed batteries, which is ridiculous because most of those cameras, if not all of those cameras, have a rechargeable battery in them.
Ellen: Yeah.
Bex: Yeah. But let's not let the truth get in the way of an interesting segue to get Bobby into the Grant household because they've called Bobby and he's come rushing over with batteries so that Michael can start taking the pics.
So they start, Michael starts taking the pictures and he calls Harry to come over and take pictures with his sister. And I love that Harry just kind of saddles up to Bobby and says, “Run. Save yourself.”
Ellen: (laughs) How old is Harry again?
Bex: He must be 10, 11.
Ellen: Yeah. I don't know. It's just a bit of a grown up thing to say.
Alice: We got that we got the like chat last week about Michael being, you know, saying how Henry just adores Bobby. [01:38:00] And then we get a bit more of it this time.
Bex: Yeah.
Alice: Like, it is really cute that they're bonding.
Bex: Yes. So there's a little bit of back and forth about between the grown ups about what their homecomings were like and what their proms were like and how what is happening right now does not resemble at all what they experienced when they were teenagers.
But then they get interrupted because Athena gets called over to have her photo taken. So we've got Athena and May and Harry having their photo taken by Michael, like sort of semi happy families going on, and Bobby's kind of hanging around on the sidelines. And you can see him make a decision to step up, to step into this family and go, “Hey, why don't I take the photos so that you guys can have a shot of all four of you together?”
Ellen: [01:39:00] Yeah, it's cute. So he does, and he does say, “That is one happy looking family.” And it's like, wow, they're happy now. Like they've worked hard to get back to this point.
Bex: They're happy for the camera. As soon as the camera stops, who knows what's, what they'll be like. But photos get interrupted because Athena suddenly realized that May has lost her bracelet.
And so there was a frantic search for it. And, of course, Bobby is the one who finds it, and May just immediately just holds her hand out and expects Bobby to put it on her wrist and he doesn't hesitate.
Ellen: Yeah, it’s cute.
Bex: And it's nice because he's, I think it's a little moment of he's accepting that he can, like, be happy for May and be involved with May.
[01:40:00] And he's not dishonoring the memory of his daughter by doing so.
Ellen: Yeah. And they go back to taking photos, but Michael stops him and yanks in one of the other parents who were there to take a photo of all of them and gets Bobby to get in. And Bobby's like, “Oh no, that's okay.” And May's like, come on, you can be in it.
Like, okay, here's me and my mom and my two dads. It's kind of strange.
Bex: I love that Harry's just like “I warned you.” Yeah.
Ellen: You're in now. Here's Michael dragging him into the house again, you know, like. “You're part of this family whether you like it or not, get over here and get a photo taken.”
Bex: “I'm finally having sex, so I need my ex wife to be having sex too, so get your ass over here.”
[01:41:00] That's nice. I did love that you could see the parents of the other kids in the background, like, taking photos of the Grants and Bobby taking photos, and you just know that's going to be going around the church. “Did you see what the Grants were doing on homecoming night?”
Ellen: Yeah. Oh, and that's finally the end.
Bex: That is finally the end of the episode.
Ellen: There was so much in this episode. Oh my God.
Alice: There was so much in this episode. I actually really liked this episode, but I…
Bex: I liked the part where they were high. I like, like that's, yeah, I ev, every time I think about “Dosed”, I'm like, oh yeah, I really like that episode, 'cause I like watching Buck and Eddie stoned out their minds. Yeah. But then when I sit down and watch it, it's like, oh, there's actually some other shit going on in this episode that I just keep conveniently forgetting about.
Alice: I think the difference is I didn't sit down to watch this week's episode 'cause I was out and so like I watched like the first quarter at my brother's house over dinner, and so I was like explaining to him like why Maddie was so scared of dogs barking [01:42:00] and then like I watched some while making like While feeding the dogs when I got home and like I didn't really sit down to watch it.
Bex: So you weren't watching it like critically?
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: Picking it to pieces. Like, we've said all along that 9-1-1 is a great, like, background show, or the kind of show that you sit down and you can just turn your brain off and enjoy.
Ellen: Yeah, it's light entertainment.
Bex: It's only because we're scrutinizing every single frame that we're finding all of the flaws with it. If we weren't scrutinizing it, yeah, we would be enjoying this show a lot more, I think.
Not that we're not enjoying most of it. But we'd be enjoying it more if we weren't picking it to pieces.
Ellen: I'm still enjoying it. This is the first time for me! (laughs)
Bex: Oh Yeah.
Alice: That’s it, I think Bex is on like her eighth rewatch by now, and it’s like “what’s wrong with this show?”
Ellen: Yeah, now you’re in your hate-watching phase!
Bex: No, no! [01:43:00] I think it's more, the episodes that I really like, I like even more now because I'm appreciating what in those episodes makes me like them so much.
I'm appreciating the good writing, I'm appreciating the good acting, I'm appreciating the storylines, but conversely, the episodes that I was either like meh about or I didn't like, I'm now hating in the very, every fiber of my being because I now see why I hate it or why I was so on the fence about them.
So I've gone to extremes. I'm no longer just, Oh yeah, this is a good show, like sort of middle of the ground. I'm now either, I really love this or I hate this with the passion of a fiery sun.
At least we don't have the racism, sexism, misogyny, unless it's specific to storylines.
Alice: Yeah. Like I do remember there like are episodes where it's very copaganda.
Bex: Oh yeah. Yeah. And I cannot wait to get to those and discuss them, but they are isolated episodes.
Alice: Yeah.
Bex: [01:44:00] Or they are sort of strictly Athena.
Alice: But the rest, like, otherwise they're, they try and be pretty good. Yeah. They don't always hit the mark, but they try.
Bex: Points for effort. Yeah.
Alice: Also, I just looked at, like, skimmed over my notes for next week's episode, and I'm like, oh dear God, not again.
Bex: I honestly never remember the next week's episode. Every time. So next week's episode is the Halloween episode. But every time I think, but every time I think about Halloween episodes, I think about next season's Halloween episode, and I forget that this one exists.
Ellen: So the last season's Halloween episode was the full moon one, right?
Bex: Which was but I don't think that was specifically a Halloween episode. That wasn't Halloween, that was just, yeah, no. I think it aired around Halloween, but it wasn't specifically Halloween, [01:45:00] whereas this one they are saying, this is our Halloween episode, and it actually airs very close to Halloween.
The same as next season, they have a specifically Halloween episode. Okay. I mean, it was scary, but it wasn't specifically Halloween.
Ellen: Yeah, okay.
Bex: So yeah I'm, I remember parts of it, but only because I'm looking at the trigger warning going, Oh yeah, I remember that. Like, Oh, I remember that. But otherwise, if you asked me what the entire storyline of that episode was, I would have no clue.
So the summary for next week's episode, surprisingly, says: Halloween finds the first responders racing to the rescue at a cemetery, a haunted hayride, and a spooky Halloween parade. Meanwhile, Maddie thinks she has received a ghost call from a missing hiker.
Oh yeah, that one. Hen finds herself facing a life or death situation with the father who abandoned her and Eddie reconnects with his estranged wife. Oh, is that this episode? Okay.
Ellen: I don't know about you, but when I say like “racing to the rescue”, I'm just like, are we watching Paw Patrol? It feels a bit like that. (laughs)
Bex: Paw Patrol to the rescue!
Alice: But also they're first responders. They're like, nah, they're like, Oh, there's an emergency, but like, We'll get to it.
Bex: We've got like five minutes, right?
Alice: I'll put it, they don't race. I'll flag it in my inbox and I'll get back to it when I get time.
Bex: Have I got time to finish my lunch? Yeah, you got time.
Alice: Yeah, next week's, I remember like key parts about next week, so it'll be interesting to rewatch it.
Bex: Do we need to go through the triggers for what people can expect if they haven't watched this episode before?
Ellen: Yep, go for it.
Bex: We have bats. Just bats,
Ellen: [01:47:00] it's Halloween, of course, there's bats.
Bex: We have a person being buried alive. We have a death of an estranged parent. The horse dies. If you're one of these people that Google's movies and TV shows to find out if the dog dies. I'm letting you know next week, the horse dies.
Alice: The horse definitely dies. That was like the main part that I remember.
Bex: Yes. We have a character in a medical coma and a quote unquote zombie, which I can't remember what that refers to.
Alice: I do. Ish.
Bex: All right. Well. I guess I'll find out when I re watch this episode to prepare for next week's recording.
Alice: Maybe next week I'll watch it before 10 minutes before we record.
Let's find out.
Bex: No. Not gonna happen.
Alice: [01:48:00] I feel like Shannon should also just be a trigger for next week's episode, but
Bex: Leave Shannon alone. Shannon's the ex wife.
Ellen: Yeah, okay, I got that. I don't know her yet. So it's fine. So let us know what you thought of this episode. If you agree with us, if you disagree with us or tell us how much you love the you know, the high sequence, you can either leave us a comment on our, on this episode's post on thatweewooshow.com. Or you can get in touch with us via social media, or you can email us contact (at) thatweewooshow.com.
Thank you for listening this week and we will talk to you again for episode seven, which is called “Haunted”. See you then.
Alice: Bye.
Bex: Bye.
[Outro music with Ellen speaking over: 9-1-1 is a fictional show, but many of the situations portrayed happen in the real world too.
If any of the topics we've discussed in this episode have affected you, please know you're not alone. You can call or text numbers in your country for help. Just Google crisis support in your location to find out the number. If you enjoy our podcast, you can help us out by leaving us a review on Spotify or your preferred listening app, and by sharing our social media posts.
Find out more at thatweewooshow.com.]