“Holy Mother of God” is the directorial debut of 9-1-1 star Aisha Hinds, who plays Henrietta Wilson. It also marks the first time a 9-1-1 cast member has stepped behind the camera to helm an episode of the series. It is, in many ways, a classic outing for the long-running procedural. The emergencies that the 118 responds to are kooky, but they’re also variations on emergencies that have been done at least a few times before. The central conflict, between Bobby (Peter Krause) and his mother, is also familiar. But it’s elevated by the actors’ performances.
For the third week in a row, creating something of a trend, some of the biggest developments in the episode belong to the renewed focus on the relationship between Eddie (Ryan Guzman) and Buck (Oliver Stark). Even though he doesn’t appear in “Holy Mother of God”, after moving to Texas in the previous episode, Eddie is everywhere. He’s all Buck can talk about, which is somewhat understandable, but he also looms large in a tense scene with massive implications. It makes for an installment of 9-1-1 that is fairly standard and unexpectedly consequential.
Bobby Reunites With His Mother
Ann Hutchinson Makes Quite The Entrance
The bulk of “Holy Mother” focuses on Bobby reconnecting with his mother Ann Hutchinson (played by the Oscar-nominated Victor/Victoria star Lesley Ann Warren). After an opening scene that underlines how Buck is struggling to adjust to living in Eddie’s home, the focus turns to Ann. She is proselytizing on stage, waxing poetic about the healing powers of faith and Jesus. The episode never really comes down on the side of whether Ann is doing a genuine service or preying on the vulnerable, oscillating wildly and mirroring the journey that Bobby goes through in the episode.
But the primary purpose of this scene is to reintroduce Ann and Bobby’s younger brother Charlie. Played by veteran actor Sean O’Bryan, Charlie is there when something strange breaks out during one of Ann’s services. It looks like a mass hysteria outbreak, albeit it’s actually a case of carbon monoxide poisoning. It’s all fairly familiar territory for the 118 once they arrive at the location, up to and including the woman who nearly climbs to her death and needs to be rescued by the team.
Hinds has a bit of fun with the emergency, especially in revealing how Ann’s audience starts to behave erratically. The choice to frame Buck as Jesus himself, as he tries to save the woman who has climbed too high for her own good, is similarly amusing. Once everything is under control, Bobby mentions to the 118 that the woman he shares a frosty greeting with is actually his mother. They’re stunned, and they’re not the only ones.
Bobby says that he never mentions his mom because he doesn’t like to talk about her. He calls her a fraud and a con artist, saying he’s embarrassed about the fact that she fleeces her flock.
Athena (Angela Bassett) is the most surprised, which is also fun to see. I’ve never felt that Athena and Bobby have the strongest chemistry. It’s something the show steered into itself, with Athena wondering whether they only share a spark when disaster strikes. Here though, as they talk about this soapy twist while some heavy construction goes on in their new home, it’s hard not to crack a smile. “When were you gonna tell me that your mother wasn’t dead?” Athena wonders, entirely fair. “I didn’t say that she was,” Bobby points out.
It’s a way for the show to wink at the fact that a significant character is just now being weaved into the story, but it works. Bobby says that he never mentions his mom because he doesn’t like to talk about her. He calls her a fraud and a con artist, saying he’s embarrassed about the fact that she fleeces her flock. But after some nudging from Athena, and after a meeting at the firehouse with his brother goes well, Bobby agrees to meet with his mother. It proves to be a mistake.
They don’t even get off on the right foot. Meeting at Ann’s hotel suite, with Athena and Charlie attempting to act as peacemakers, things go south in a hurry. Bobby feels that Ann abandoned him after his father died, refusing to claim responsibility or express remorse. Ann says she won’t apologize for building a life for herself once her marriage to the abusive alcoholic Tim Nash ended. It’s stirring stuff, well-acted by both Krause and Warren, with Bobby storming off after calling Ann a fraud as a mother. It’s still only the second most bruising fight of the episode.
Buck Is Advised To Make A New Friend
It Probably Shouldn’t Be Ravi, Though
The scene prior to the intro establishes that Buck is having a hard time sleeping at Eddie’s place. He’s been staying with Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Howard (Kenneth Choi) instead, since the lease on his loft is up. Howard isn’t thrilled about having Buck there every night. Maddie, who is sporting lighter and longer locks, welcomes having another man around after the traumatic experience of being abducted from her own home.
I like how “Holy Mother” makes it clear that Maddie isn’t ready to talk about what she went through with the crazed detective, but I wish Buck pushed just a little harder to check in with his sister. It is a bit jarring to hear him complain to her about missing his best friend after the hell that she’s faced.
Regardless, in an echo of 9-1-1 season 7, episode 4, “Buck, Bothered and Bewildered”, which saw Buck coming out as bisexual, Maddie acts as her brother’s sounding board. She listens patiently and then offers a bit of advice that echoes the season 7 episode: Buck should try to make new friends. Awkwardly, and not all that convincingly, he tries to buddy up to Ravi (returning guest star Anirudh Pisharody). Even when he does, though, Buck can barely bring himself to stop talking about Eddie.
Ravi is a small but intriguing part of “Holy Mother.” Taking over Eddie’s spot in the 118, he doesn’t seem especially thrilled with his new team. It’s hard to blame him. Captain Bobby Nash keeps slipping up and calling him Eddie. Then, when Buck invites him out for drinks after work, there’s a bit of suspicion. Buck has put ketchup packets in Ravi’s boots. He’s stuffed peanuts in Ravi’s locker.
Ravi doesn’t seem to harbor any ill will, but his somewhat distant attitude in this episode makes for an interesting contrast to the familial dynamics that have developed between the 118. It’s potentially fertile ground for a “Ravi Begins”-style flashback, depending on if Pisharody sticks around for the likely-renewed 9-1-1 season 9.
Buck still can’t stop talking about Eddie when he’s out drinking with Ravi, valorizing him like someone who has died rather than just moved away. Bored out of his mind, Ravi finds an opportunity to slink away from the outing when he runs into Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) at the bar. It’s unclear how much Ravi knows about Buck and Tommy’s history when he sticks them together and practically runs in the opposite direction, but it’s a pretty funny moment all the same.
Buck & Tommy’s Argument Is One To Remember
Tommy Says What We’re All Thinking
Buck and Tommy catch up briefly, with Buck clumsily telling his ex about Maddie’s abduction. It’s only a few short beats later that Buck and Tommy are frantically, giddily, kissing in Eddie’s apartment. There’s a lot to appreciate about Ferrigno’s return, like the underplayed bit of dialogue when Tommy mentions that Eddie stopped talking to him after the break-up and Buck smiles at his best friend’s quiet solidarity. There’s also an amusing moment, nicely directed by Hinds, in which Tommy pauses the make-out session to marvel at how Buck is living in Eddie’s apartment.
Buck also, not once, not even in passing, denies having feelings for Eddie.
The fight that the exes have the morning after is more of a mixed bag. On the positive side of the ledger, it is the clearest sign yet that Buddie is on the horizon and it doesn’t involve either side of the fan-favorite pairing. Tommy has made Buck breakfast, admitting that he wants to give their relationship another try especially because “the competition is out of the way.”
Buck and Tommy’s happy morning is soured when Buck realizes that his ex saw Eddie as the competition. Tommy doesn’t back down. He scoffs when Buck points out that Eddie is straight, which is an unexpectedly huge clue about where Eddie’s storyline might be headed. Buck also doesn’t — not once, not even in passing — deny having feelings for Eddie. What he says, instead, what causes Tommy to walk out, is this:
Buck: You know, I don’t have to want to sleep with everyone I have feelings for, and I don’t have to have feelings for everyone I sleep with.
There’s a lot going on in that sentence. For the third time in as many weeks, there’s a lot going on with Buddie. In a few crucial ways, it’s smart. It is smart to have one of Buck’s exes, who also knows Eddie well enough, call them out on what they don’t realize. It carries weight coming from someone who has spent years living in the closet and knows what that looks like. But it rings false, based on what we’ve seen, that Tommy broke up with Buck because he felt threatened by Eddie’s presence.
Tommy might be more perceptive about the relationship between Eddie and Buck, but the show has never depicted him feeling particularly bothered by their closeness. Tommy is there, all smiles, and no complaints, to celebrate Christopher’s (Gavin McHugh) birthday early in season 8. When Buck’s face was covered in boils, just a few episodes ago for Halloween, with Eddie understanding Buck’s irrationality better than Tommy, this did not lead to a display of jealousy and insecurity from Tommy. It could have. Based on their fight here, it should have.
It would have added so much texture to the Buck and Tommy relationship if 9-1-1 leaned into the fact that Tommy felt secondary to Eddie. But instead, the relationship was barely explored before Tommy ended things because Buck was moving too fast. It feels like a retcon to say that Eddie was the primary reason for the split, and it shouldn’t. If the writers knew that the storyline was headed in this direction all along, then they should have actually bothered to build towards it.
Bobby Patches Things Up With His Mother
He Receives Some Devastating News, Too
The second emergency the 118 responds to is another familiar one. They arrive to find an elderly man in physical distress. He’s freaking out, though, because he’s buried his wife alive in the dirt after drugging her. It seems that he’s grown tired of her smothering attention. When she rises from the soil like Lazarus, exposing his attempted murder, the man has a heart attack and dies. In the process, Bobby learns that he has been too harsh on his mother for refusing to stay in a marriage that would have ultimately killed her.
Bobby goes to one of Ann’s sermons while she’s still in town, watching from the sidelines and intending to apologize. 9-1-1 paints her in a far more generous light. Or perhaps it’s Bobby’s view of her that’s changed, as she insists to her flock that they’re already healed and that she doesn’t perform miracles. Ann collapses on stage moments later and gets rushed to the hospital. Charlie explains to Bobby and Athena that Ann has terminal cancer. She didn’t want Bobby to know, likely not wanting to burden him.
There’s a very This Is Us quality to the last scene between Ann and Bobby. The writing on 9-1-1 is far from the sharpest. But what elevates it, why this silly show launched a franchise, is that it lucked out with a core cast that is absolutely in tune with their characters. Like This Is Us, it tosses in the regrettably relatable trappings of losing a parent to an illness and leans on the actors to sell it. Krause and Warren do so in spades, and it’s hard not to get a little emotional watching the reconciliation in Ann’s hospital room.
Buck & Maddie Have Another Revealing Post-Mortem
Hewitt’s Expressions Tell The Whole Story
In another echo of “Buck, Bothered, and Bewildered”, Maddie and Buck have a heart-to-heart about his personal life and where Eddie fits into it. Buck rants about Tommy, wondering if his ex ever actually trusted him during their relationship. Maddie, however, seems more interested in nudging her brother in a certain direction. Buck insists that there is no truth to Tommy’s concerns, declaring that he isn’t “hopelessly pining for his straight best friend.”
Maddie, having already floated the suggestion that Buck is in love with Eddie, isn’t convinced. What stood out to me most, rewatching this episode, was how deliberately the camera cuts back to Maddie whenever Eddie comes up in the conversation. She’s biting her tongue throughout, not wanting to say more than her brother is prepared to hear.
She tries, all the same, to steer the conversation back to Eddie and she doesn’t seem the least bit surprised by Tommy’s accusation. “It wouldn’t be so crazy,” she says to the idea of Buck and Eddie having feelings for each other, choosing her words and inflection very carefully. I never would have expected confirmation of Buddie going canon to happen thanks to a scoff from Tommy and a look from Maddie, but it seems like everyone has already arrived at the realization the fan-favorite pairing is still figuring out. It’s a hell of a choice.
I don’t love that Buck feels compelled to apologize to Tommy. It’s fine for 9-1-1 to live with a bit of conflict and not offer redemption as soon as a character does or says something a little unlikable. But on the whole, the Buck and Maddie scene is a great bit of foreshadowing that concludes with Buck finally being ready to live in Eddie’s apartment.
With both Buck and Bobby’s stories partially resolved, for now at least, “Holy Mother of God” ends with Athena on call to disrupt and de-escalate a situation. She seems less than thrilled, showing up to a cruise ship after the ordeal that she went through the last time she was on a ship in the 9-1-1 season 7 premiere. This time, it sets up the much-touted crossover with the Doctor Odyssey characters. Both shows are on ABC, both are Ryan Murphy productions, and both get a little kooky.
