Hold onto your (assless) chaps, we’re going to Texas for this week’s 9-1-1 recap, baby!
9-1-1’s latest episode, “Disconnected”, unpacks the fallout from two of season 8b’s biggest moments so far: Eddie’s (Ryan Guzman) long-awaited move to El Paso and Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) having her throat slashed by a serial killer. Extremely different though these storylines may be in tone, urgency and trauma levels, they provide a perfect balance of drama and levity that we’ve come to know and love from the show. Both also feel connected by a key theme, but more on that later…
9-1-1’s often dubious timeline picks up around five weeks after the events of “Voices”. (We’re putting Maddie’s abnormally fast hair growth down to pregnancy hormones, but that doesn’t account for the size of her baby bump). We’re launched straight into Maddie’s trauma post-kidnapping with a harrowing night terror that ends with her throat splitting open while on a call as her fellow dispatchers smile and nod. So, not dealing with things too well right now. You’d think Maddie would take that as a sign that she has some more healing to do, but this is 9-1-1, so Maddie obviously goes back to work far too early, as is 118-and-co tradition. The nightmare becomes reality when, on her first call back, she goes from hatching a genius plan to help a kid and his dad trapped in a high-rise fire to being physically unable to speak.
Voiceless for the rest of the episode, Maddie grapples with her trauma with the help of Chimney (Kenneth Choi), who runs vocal exercises with her and does all he can to reassure her that her voice isn’t gone for good. Finally, after a very rare but wonderful heart-to-heart with Athena (Angela Bassett), Maddie finds her voice again at the play park, after a moment of panic in which Jee-yun briefly disappears.
Maddie’s mom override kicks in and she’s able to take back her power to call Jee’s name. Meanwhile, we meet back up with Eddie, who was absent for “Holy Mother of God”, in El Paso. Unfortunately, whatever emotional or awkward reunion he had with his son Chris (Gavin McHugh) after an unspecified period of time happened off-camera, so when we join Eddie again he’s fixing up his run-down new house, trying to find a job and attempting to earn back Chris’ trust. Eddie’s taken loss after loss recently but is faced with yet another: the El Paso Fire Department is in the middle of a hiring freeze, meaning he can no longer be a firefighter. Instead of doing something sensible like looking into jobs at dispatch or whatever, he trades his beloved truck in for something more fuel efficient and becomes a driver. Save a horse, ride a cowboy? More like ‘ride share with a cowboy’. The whole montage of Eddie finding his feet (or maybe ass as he’s sitting down all the time?) in his new role is a comedic delight, but it of course also has its challenges, like his son randomly getting into his car and discovering that he’d been lying about being a firefighter this whole time.
However, the issue is resolved much more smoothly than before. Christopher gets it: Eddie shouldn’t have lied, but he was just trying to be a good dad. Chris tells Eddie he’s proud of him whether he’s a firefighter or not, the two share a much-needed hug, and we all cry. So how are we tying these two storylines together and making it about Buddie again? I’m so glad you asked: it’s family.
As far as family dynamics go, the Diazes are trying but they’re still somewhat dysfunctional. Scenes between Eddie and his parents, Eddie and Christopher, and all four of them feel tense, like everyone is walking on eggshells, and like they’re scared one wrong comment is going to cause someone to blow up, break down, or flee the state (again). The Buckley-Diazes, however, are nothing but love and support. Some people may still be sceptical about whether Buck (Oliver Stark) and Eddie are toeing the line between platonic and romantic. But even without snorting a line of Buddie cocaine, Buck, Eddie and Chris are undeniably a family and pretty much always have been. The parallels between the three of them and Maddie, Chim and Jee in “Disconnected” continue to make that clear.
In Maddie’s storyline in LA, we see Chim gently support her as she overcomes obstacles and gets back to being a good mother to Jee. In El Paso, Eddie’s facing his own new parental barriers, but he’s cheered on all the way through FaceTime calls with Buck. Buck’s his confidante, his sounding board and his biggest supporter, even from 800 miles away. They are partners in almost every sense of the word. If we really want to get into it, Buck and Eddie’s partnership feels like it bypasses just the Buck-Eddie-and-Chris family dynamic here too. Let’s talk about love languages. Love languages are the five different ways that people supposedly express and receive love, and include: acts of service, quality time, physical touch, words of affirmation, and giving and receiving gifts.
Some may turn their noses up at the concept, and rightly so: it was developed by pastor Gary Chapman, a notorious homophobe, and is a very binary and simplistic way of viewing love and affection. But if there’s one thing I’m going to latch onto it’s a clichéd romance trope so please humour this train of thought. Throughout season 8b so far, Eddie and Buck have been showing care through each other’s love languages. Eddie is someone who has never been able to rely on people, from his father treating him like the ‘man of the house’ throughout his childhood instead of letting him be a kid, to his late wife Shannon leaving him to raise Christopher alone. It feels right for him to welcome acts of service from his loved ones, and that’s exactly what Buck has been giving him.
He offered to help him sublet his house, took over the whole damn lease so Eddie didn’t have to worry, and helped Eddie pack up his things before he left, despite feeling very obviously internally conflicted about the whole thing. Buck does it again in “Disconnected” – we’ve just had three back-to-back episodes of Buck spiralling about Eddie’s move, but when Eddie voices a half-formed plan about coming back to the 118, Buck shuts it down instantly, telling him he needs to stay in El Paso and be a good father to Christopher. That sacrifice feels like an act of service in itself.
Buck, on the other hand, is a character that has historically felt unloved and abandoned. He was literally born to be a bone marrow donor for his brother, and then spent his childhood injuring himself so his absent parents would pay him some attention. He’s also been dumped a number of times for inexplicable reasons, with each new breakup delivering a clean roundhouse kick to his self-esteem. Buck feels suited to words of affirmation to Eddie’s acts of service, and Eddie’s been muttering those affirmations to him since the day they met (‘You’re a badass under pressure,’ anyone?).
Like Buck, Eddie has been continuing the theme through season 8b too. During the pair’s goodbye in “Voices”, he says: ‘I hope you know you do matter to me.’ It’s nothing too wild or overly emotional, but the moment still feels huge. Buck needed to hear it. Then in “Disconnected”, Buck gives Eddie some sage advice over FaceTime and Eddie signs off with: ‘I appreciate you, Buck.’ It’s a bit of a weirdly formal thing to say instead of ‘goodbye’ to a friend, but Buck probably loved to hear that too.
Buck and Eddie have been giving each other exactly what they need since season two. Eddie needed help finding care for Christopher? Buck hooked him up with Carla, the best professional care provider in the business, just a few weeks after meeting him. Buck felt worthless after being put on sick leave and almost losing Chris in the tsunami? Eddie got him to babysit Chris (on dry land this time) and told him that there’s nobody on this world that he trusts with his son more than Buck. Eddie had a PTSD episode and smashed up his room? Buck was there to get him help and patch up the holes. Buck felt hopeless after Eddie got shot rather than him? Eddie gave him a pep talk about how important he is and revealed that he put Buck in his will as Christopher’s legal guardian if he dies. If all that’s not TV true love, familial, romantic or otherwise, then I don’t know what is.
