9-1-1 Mid-season-Finale Recap: Breaking Brad
We open on a hospital bed as Captain Race Banner slowly regains consciousness. “You were hit by a bowling ball going 40 miles per hour,” the doctor explains — but that’s not Race’s biggest concern. Yes, he’s assured, all the orphans at the bowling alley were saved.
Wait, sorry, scratch that, I’m describing an episode of Hotshots and not the midseason finale of 9-1-1, a very Brad Torrance–centric installment that does culminate in the filming of his show. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. “Wannabes” starts with a different Hotshots scene, in which Brad’s Captain Banner helps a woman trapped in a burning car. “You don’t need to burn, too,” she tells him. He assures her, “Hotshots don’t get burned; we just get a little toasted.” Honestly, this is the kind of entertainment I’m looking for, not the very mid episode of 9-1-1 we get instead. I’m not sure if it’s just my distaste for the character of Brad after last week, but I feel like the show could have gone out on a higher note before a four-month hiatus.
Brad is screening the latest episode of Hotshots for his captive audience at the firehouse, and he’s not thrilled with their lukewarm responses — especially after he prods them to start pulling apart the inaccuracies. Bobby notes that the show is not meant to be a documentary (preempting my complaints about aspects of this 9-1-1 episode being unrealistic), and Buck points out that “real life is boring.” I don’t think you can say that when your real life is a soap opera with weekly life-or-death stakes, but I take his point. Brad is not satisfied: He doesn’t want to be on a fake show; he wants to be a real firefighter.
The first call of the episode doesn’t require firefighters, though. There’s a riot at Fields Market, inadvertently instigated by — you guessed it — a YouTuber. Graham, a.k.a. the Cart Cop, spends his free time filming people who don’t return their shopping carts to the proper cart corral at the grocery store. He tries to leave one of his shame-y magnetic bumper stickers (“I GOT CART NARCED”) on a woman’s car, which leads to a rapidly escalating incident: a fender bender, a jammed-up parking lot, ample yelling. Athena arrives, manages to defuse the situation, and finally gets the woman to return her cart. She does, however, call Graham a busybody, warning, “Stop all this Cart Cop nonsense before you busy the wrong body.” Foreshadowing!
The next emergency is far more disgusting, as a sewer line explodes and causes multiple car accidents while raining down 5,000 gallons of wastewater on everyone below. When the 118 arrives, only Brad is excited (“Thar she blows!”), but the rest of the team pushes through the stench and gets to work. Eddie is tasked with rescuing a young couple from a flooding SUV, and I did gag when they kissed because those two are neck-deep in poo water. “I know it smells crazy in there” does not begin to cover it. Brad is supposed to stand by and take notes, but of course he decides to rescue a woman instead, carrying her out of her car in his arms like he’s the real Captain Race Banner. Bobby is appropriately horrified — Brad did not check her vitals or check for a head injury — and it’s here where I wonder why Brad is allowed on calls at all. He is an actor with zero training!
Back at the firehouse, it’s time for showers and decontamination. (Buck describes the smell as like “sour milk and old fish guts had a baby.” Evocative!) Brad is riding high from his rescue — and from the applause he got from the bystanders who recognized him — but Bobby is ready to set him straight. The captain once again drags Brad to hell, letting him know how reckless and dangerous his behavior was. “You’re not a real firefighter, and no matter what notes you put down in that journal of yours, nothing is gonna change that,” Bobby snaps. As Bart Simpson once said, you can actually pinpoint the second when his heart rips in half.
A dejected Brad channels his feelings into doing a really good job at polishing the fire truck per Bobby’s orders. Eddie comes over to get an autograph for Christopher (timing, bro) and quickly realizes that Brad is in a bad place. He’s 47 without anything real in his life, he says — except, I guess, for the seemingly very successful TV show that he stars on. Look, I fully understand that people can be rich and famous but still miserable (stream “Lucky” by Britney Spears). I just resent the way Brad is suddenly being treated like a main character. He and Eddie have a heartfelt conversation, with Eddie sharing his distance from Christopher, revealing that he left his kid behind to do a CW pilot (dark!). Brad urges Eddie to not let that distance from Christopher grow any larger.
The episode’s next 9-1-1 call brings us back to Fields Market: “I think Cart Cop’s dead!” He isn’t, but he’s badly beaten and pretty close to death when he’s found.
