Station 19 Episode 707: “Give It All”
Last week my frustrations with Station 19 hit a boil and maybe… just maybe… I was too hasty in my critiques, maybe I pulled the trigger one week too early. It’s not that I don’t stand by what I said! I still believe that in its final season, Station 19 has sidelined Maya and Carina, saddling them with week after week of a family planning plot that’s felt stuck in a forever limbo.
But I ended last week with a wishlist that we’d finally get Danielle Savre some work worthy of her talents with upcoming return of Maya’s brother, Mason, and the white supremacist cult he’s fallen in with. I remained hopeful that “one day we’ll return to the storyline of Carina being sued by her patient. I’m really hopeful that we’re going to get a few more hot sex scenes before the fire soap’s final bow.” I’m excited to report that this week Station 19 hit every note on this list. Not only did this week make good on its promise of Maya and Mason (more on that later), but it also wrapped up Carina’s lawsuit, gave Maya and Carina some much needed hot sex, and overall — this might have been Station 19’s gayest episode ever. EVER. And that includes the misaligned Pride episode earlier this year!
In fact, so many gay things happened in that one hour that I’m going to have to pick and choose what we focus in on during this short little recap. To get it out of the way: Carina survived her lawsuit by putting her heart first, which wrapped up that plot perhaps a little neatly — but not without its good moments. Carina and Maya are still riding the hormonal waves of IVF. The cute gay Latino firefighter (I haven’t learned his name yet) that works with Ruiz started making moves on Travis, and it’s very swoony. And longstanding gay comedian Cameron Esposito (!!!) guest-starred as the patient of a week, a lesbian construction worker with a nail through her arm. This next part isn’t gay, but there’s also a wonderful glimpse into Indigenious fire work. All of it is great.
All that said, it’s Maya and Mason’s plot line that really shines. Danielle Savre has always been one of Station 19’s acting heavy weights, and when writers give her material worth her caliber, it’s stunning. Maya, having tracked down Mason in his new cult house, shows up at her brother’s door. She came with the hope of “saving him” — I think in part out of self-inflicted guilt, when she last saw Mason, he was in the midst of mental health struggles and living on the street, but also because she believes that underneath the hate he’s been lately spewing is still her little brother, the boy with the drawings who she loved so much and loved her in return.
Mason, unsurprisingly, rebukes her at first. When he was at his lowest, it wasn’t Maya but his new “brotherhood” that picked him back up, got him sober, and gave him a home. They’ve also filled him full of shit that “the American tradition is broken” and that it’s “identity politics” that’s kept white men like him without a job. Maya knows that there’s more to being a family than being brainwashed, so she offers to take Mason home with her. She wants to give him a second chance, she also wants to give them a second chance together/
The longer Maya is in that house, listening as Mason pivots from Proud Boy talking point to talking point, the more she realizes, it might be too late. She wants to help Mason, but she’s unwilling to risk the fragility of the love that she’s clawed for herself away from the emotionally abusive house that they both grew up in. Mason is deserving of that same love, real love, but he has to want it first.
Instead, Maya goes home to Carina. And her wife blindfolds her and feeds her donuts and they have very hot sex. Just the way the bisexual gods intended.
