Much of what people outside of Tennessee presume about Nashville isn’t actually the real Nashville. People come here for what’s been dubbed “NashVegas,” a strip of downtown Nashville known for its nightlife, drinking and celebrity-owned establishments. The area is on Lower Broadway, a vibrant but absolutely chaotic street that is basically a scene from The Walking Dead on Friday and Saturday nights. The street used to be easily accessible by vehicle a decade or so ago, but now it is practically impossible on busy nights with people in cowboy boots drunkenly wandering the area and creeps sexually harassing women. It’s basically a giant safety hazard. Anyone who is from Nashville or Middle Tennessee in general avoids Broadway at all costs, but Broadway sometimes delivers what it promises: it can be fun for people who enjoy loud country music and honky tonk bars, as long as friends keep an eye on each other.
But that’s not what the city is, and hopefully 9-1-1: Nashville knows that. Yes, it’s the scene for country music, but it’s a go-to for blues and jazz. Underrated musicians play at random bars and restaurants in East Nashville, known as the “hipster” part of the city. And it’s also so much more than just music. There’s great food, museums (Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief was filmed at the Parthenon), ma and pop restaurants, parks with gorgeous scenery, and top-ranked universities.
Best of all, most people are so friendly. The majority of people who live here have regular jobs like anyone else, and aren’t musicians or cowboys. Locals want to share their history and culture with each other and tourists, and will recommend niche spots at the first chance they get. As big as the city is, it feels like a community where everyone looks out for each other.
That’s the part of Nashville that the series needs to show, but it also needs to address the growing problems in the city as part of its dramatic storylines. Nashville has boomed astronomically in the past decade, and locals have suffered because of it. Rent and housing prices are absolutely horrendous, making it nearly impossible for someone with a decent job to live here on their own. The traffic is the worst it’s ever been; since most people who work in Nashville can’t afford to live in the city, they spend most of their time sitting in traffic on the interstate.
Neighborhoods have become so heavily gentrified to appeal to transplants that high housing prices are driving locals out of areas they and their families have lived in for generations. And with this massive growth spurt, the city’s poor infrastructure can’t keep up. Politics has also become a pressing issue concerning restrictions on women’s reproductive rights, banned books and more, but Nashville is also a considerably progressive area. If 9-1-1: Nashville isn’t going to bother touching on these issues that naturally write the story itself, then what exactly is the point of the show?
The Spinoff Should Be Careful With Stereotypical Emergencies. Personal drama aside, the excitement really begins in the emergencies the first responders of Nashville will have to tend to on the show. Nashville is far from a calm and serene city, so there are situations ripe for picking. Behind-the-scenes reporting already confirms a tornado is taking place. It’s the most fitting disaster to kick off the series, though, with how many locals are still feeling the fallout of fatal tornadoes from the past few years, it’ll need to be handled with sensitivity. The same goes for any call that has to deal with attacks or hate crimes, both touchy subjects that deserve far more than surface-level writing, regardless of what city they’re in.
But if 9-1-1 is going to do anything, it’s show the weird cases firefighters, paramedics and police officers respond to. 9-1-1 might have a bee-nado, but 9-1-1: Nashville will probably have a cicada infestation, turning the city into Gotham. A guy falling into a vat of chocolate? An overconsumption of hot chicken will beat that in a second. A woman getting kidnapped in her own moving home? How about two intoxicated bachelorette parties crashing into each other on pedal taverns? And let’s already bet that there’s going to be a Morgan Wallen-type singer throwing a chair off a rooftop bar.
These are only the silliest examples of what might happen on 9-1-1: Nashville. Otherwise, normal emergencies still take place. The show is already off to a rocky start by capitalizing off stereotypes — O’Donnell’s Captain Don Sharpe is a former rodeo rider, despite the fact that rodeos aren’t that big in Tennessee as they are in the Western United States. The occasional goofy emergency will be amusing entertainment to draw viewers in, but Nashville is just like any other city. 9-1-1: Nashville needs to show that its heroes are regular people dedicating their lives to saving people, not relying on tacky storylines that make a mockery of Southern culture.
