How ‘9-1-1’ Reached 100 Episodes? “Characters You’d Want in Your Living Room”
When 9-1-1 co-creator Tim Minear signed up on Twitter (now known as X), he chose a name that made sense for his legacy as a writer and director: @Cancelledagain. “I’ve been notorious for all my catastrophic failures over the years,” Minear explains. “Firefly lasted one season, Terriers one season, The Inside one season, Drive six episodes. They were all canceled, so I just call myself ‘Cancelled Again,’ which really works for me because all of those shows are now beloved little TV shows.”
With the seventh season of 9-1-1, which he created with Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk, out and its 100th episode premiering on April 4, Minear now has a big, long-running show under his belt, along with a successful spinoff in 9-1-1: LoneStar, which will premiere its fifth season in the fall. So much so that he’s considering changing the name if he returns to the social media platform. “Maybe ‘refresh,'” he jokes, “or ‘more,’ because it’s like, ‘Really, do I have to come up with more?’ It’s hard on this show because sometimes we’ll have four cases in an episode, so you have to come up with four crazy things every week, and with LoneStar, now I have to come up with eight crazy things every week. It’s hard,” he says with more “a’s” than “y’s.”
Since the series debuted on January 3, 2018, the L.A. first responder drama starring Angela Bassett and Peter Krause has built a reputation for taking natural disasters and emergencies to a new level. “I can’t name another TV show that has tackled tsunamis, earthquakes, power outages, balloon crashes at stadiums, train derailments, dam failures and landslides in Hollywood, sharks on the freeway, animals escaping from a zoo, planes crashing into the ocean, a guy falling off a roller coaster, a bus crashing into the side of a building, a fire truck hanging off a cliff, and now, in your season opener, a honeymoon cruise disaster complete with pirates, explosions, and a capsized ship—all in three episodes,” Karey Burke, president of 20th Television, said on March 5 at a celebration of 9-1-1’s 100th episode that took place between filming at the Bel-Air Bay Club.
While the circumstances of L.A.’s finest may be bizarre, Minear admits that “the craziest cases on the show are often the ones that come from real life.” There are episodes based on incidents that happened far from Los Angeles. “It’s mostly China and Florida,” he adds with a laugh. “The episode with the baby being pulled out of that pipe happened in China. The insect-eating contest in season two was based on a man in Florida who ate too many insects and died.”
It was the believability of the characters in these stories and the visual execution of the horrific disasters—a testament to the creators’ philosophy of using practical effects as much as possible—that made 9-1-1 ripe for the taking when Fox didn’t renew it in May after six seasons. The decision was reportedly made for financial reasons, as the show remained the most-watched series on the network and the highest-rated scripted series among adults 18-49 until its finale. That was exactly the goal Murphy had when he first pitched the series—inspired by the medical drama Emergency! NBC in the 1970s—to then-Fox executive and now Disney entertainment co-chairman DanaWalden. “Ryan really wanted to give her a network hit. He’s really the only showrunner or creator that I know who could say, ‘You know what, I think it’s time to give Dana a hit for Fox,’ and do it,” Minear said.
Burke told THR of the show’s network transition this year: “Bringing 9-1-1 to ABC ahead of the show’s seventh season felt like a really natural move. We all felt that 9-1-1 fit perfectly into the network’s lineup of high-stakes, high-stakes dramas, and we had every indication that not only were people tuning in, but that the audience was growing.”
The March 14 season premiere, a nod to The Poseidon Adventure, drew 4.93 million viewers, up from 4.8 million viewers for season six. After three days of airing on ABC, Hulu, and Disney’s other digital platforms, the episode had a total of 8.85 million views, setting a streaming record for Disney.
