Surprise, Bobby’s (Peter Krause) mother is alive! That’s even news to his wife Athena (Angela Bassett).
Bobby’s family reunion with his mother, Ann (Lesley Ann Warren), and his brother, Charlie (Sean O’Bryan), when an emergency at her mega-church brings the 118 to the scene. As he explains to Athena, he doesn’t talk about her because he doesn’t want to think about her or want her in his life because she’s a con artist. He last spoke to her before his and Marcy’s wedding, and after the apartment fire that killed his wife and children, Ann sent a condolence letter on official ministry stationary. He didn’t even finish it because he was afraid there’d be a pitch for a donation.
Charlie then visits Bobby at the firehouse and invites him and Athena to lunch with Ann. But it doesn’t take long for that lunch to take a turn. (Charlie was actually the one who organized the lunch, not Ann.) When Bobby and Athena discuss building a new house since their last one burned down, Ann remarks, “not you I trust,” to her son. (WOW.) It doesn’t take long for the conversation to turn to Bobby’s father, Tim, whose death we saw in flashbacks. Bobby says Ann walked out, while she argues he chose to stay. She refuses to apologize for leaving or not crawling into the casket with him. Bobby sees it as her not taking responsibility for walking out on them. “You are right: I do think you’re a fraud, but not as a preacher, as a mother,” he says to leave it.
When Bobby then goes to watch his mother, she collapses onstage and he has to do CPR. Once they’re at the hospital, Charlie reveals that she has cancer and it’s terminal — and she wasn’t going to tell Bobby. Bobby then suggests Ann stay with him in LA to be treated, but it’s stage 4, so there isn’t a treatment that will do anything, she reveals. It would take a miracle, and yes, she recognizes the irony. He tells her he came to the church to apologize, because he didn’t want what he said to be the last words between us, and he knows he’s been guilty of breaking half a commandment for the last 40 years (honor thy father and mother). He says she was right to get out when she did, and sometimes, all you can do is save yourself. And with that, they exchange “I miss you” and “I love yous.”
Executive producer Tim Minear reveals to TV Insider that the exploration of Bobby’s past with Amir (Malcolm-Jamal Warner), whose wife died in the fire Bobby accidentally caused that also killed his family was “one of the catalysts that made” him want to do this story with Ann.
“Last year, we did that flashback to Bobby as a kid and we met his mom and his brother. And it just got me to thinking it’s like, well, what really happened to his mother? He hasn’t really talked about her in eight seasons. Is she alive? What’s the story there? And for me, the Bobby familial dynamic with his mom and his brother and his dad is really all about his dad,” Minear explains. “He blamed his mother for walking away, but more than that, he blamed his mother for continuing to live after his father died — not that he wanted her to die, but it was like he died and then she blossomed into this creature. She found her best self. She’s had an amazing life in a lot of ways, and I think he resents the fact that his father had to die in order for that to happen that she could so easily go on and kind of self-actualize.”
He continues, “And so he kind of looks down on what she does or he’s got opinions about that because Bobby takes his religion very soberly and seriously, and I think maybe he looks at her and sees her as a bit of a clown show, but really I think he resents the fact that she could just so easily go on and be fulfilled. And I think that’s what he’s resented and that’s the thing he has to come to terms with in this episode.”
Warren might be back as Ann in the future, though for now, she and Charlie are going to be back on the road. “She’s going to be up on that stage as long as she can be,” says Minear.
Aisha Hinds did a wonderful job directing this episode (her first behind the camera), and she enjoyed the experience. “It meant the world to me, to be able to do it with people that I love and that care about me and that I’ve spent the last eight seasons living in this world and living in this character and really servicing these stories,” she says. “And so I know they care about this 9-1-1 universe and our audience and the stories as much as I do. It was really an honor to do it with them.”
She enjoyed getting to “peel back the onion and the layers of Bobby,” she tells us. “Many people may have forgotten that he had a mom and a brother who showed up in a previous season in a flashback.” She, too, wondered what happened to them. “To find that they are reentering his life and the story by way of this faith story point was really endearing for me because my life is steeped in my own personal faith walk. And so this was something that I was really excited to explore and look at and really service and in that way. Lesley Ann Warren came in and really brought so many beautiful layers to Ann Nash, and Sean, who plays his brother, also really brought such a heart and just an earnestness and so many great choices and such a strong, powerful presence. And you really felt like they were a family and you really felt the complexity of how long they had sort of been separated. There’d be estrangement, you could feel it, you could cut it like a knife in the room, but you could also kind of feel the love that is there that was palpable and that wanted to be there.”
Hinds was happy to get “such a nutrient dense storyline for my episodes and knowing that I get to play with some of the greats to have ever done it. Pete leading off and Angela as his wife and them unpacking that story of her like, wait a minute, how did I not even know that your mother was even still alive? What are we doing here? Bobby almost died last season and his family would’ve been none the wiser.”
When it came specifically to that hospital room scene, with Bobby taking on “quite bit in a short period of time … all of those emotions within [Krause] and within Lesley Ann as well, I just kind of set the stage and worked with our amazing DP, Andrew Mitchell, and our lighting designer Dave [Carter], and we set the stage for them and they walked into the space, filled it, and kind of left it all there on the hospital room floor, which was really beautiful,” shares Hinds.
Minear praises the work that Hinds did on this episode. “It had all the scope and the character scenes were great,” he says before revealing that she was originally going to direct Season 7 Episode 8, “Step Nine,” the two-hander with Bobby and Amir. “It just didn’t work out and I had to move her into this season and she just kind of fell into an episode where I’m like, well, not only is Bobby’s mother going to be here, but there’s going to be a giant scene in a megachurch and a woman climbing across on top of the building. It was a lot for a first-time director, but she handled it.”
And it was while filming that scene at the megachurch that the behind-the-scenes photos of Stark and Krause doing a trust fall are from (see above). It’s something they’ve done on set since Season 2 or 3, Stark says. “We all used to just do that to each other, just walk by and be like, ‘Trust fall,’ because we did, we had such trust in each other and we would catch each other. I dropped Kenny [Choi] one time — it was his fault. He did ‘Trust fall,’ I caught him, and I did not expect him to do it immediately within seconds again, so I dropped him the second time,” he shares. “But yeah, we don’t really do it so much anymore, but every now and then when I feel like bothering Pete, I’ll just make him catch me and hold my weight up. I think he enjoys it, but he may just be too polite to tell me that he doesn’t.”
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
