Entertainment
‘9-1-1’ Is Failing Buck and Eddie on Every Level
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 13.9-1-1 has had an elephant in the firehouse for quite some time now. This elephant is shaped like a pair of best friends who are deeply attached to each other, can’t ever seem to make their romantic relationships work, and have essentially been raising a kid together for the better part of the show. This week’s episode, Season 9, Episode 13, “Mother’s Boy,” promised an installment that would finally properly focus on both Buck (Oliver Stark) and Eddie (Ryan Guzman), and that would give them space to exist together away from the firefighting world.
Sure, the promo for this episode teased that they would get into a car accident, in which Buck would be abducted, and Eddie would be left in a hospital room by himself to worry about him. Still, though, it looked like “Mother’s Boy” was going to be exactly the episode that this dynamic needed at this point in the season. Instead, “Mother’s Boy” is a disappointingly surface-level episode that doesn’t feel new or fresh for 9-1-1, and that resolves everything in predictable and cookie-cutter ways.
‘9-1-1’ Season 9, Episode 13 Gives Buck and Eddie Generic, Surface-Level Conflict on Their Road Trip
The episode opens with the car accident that was teased in the promo, in which a badly-injured Eddie is pulled out of the crash alone. It then goes back in time to Buck and Eddie at the Nashville airport, where all flights have been grounded due to a software issue (which is probably setup for 9-1-1: Nashville‘s episode this week). They’re in a rush to get home for Hen’s (Aisha Hinds) surprise birthday party, which is a do-over after almost everyone forgot her birthday last year. Buck suggests they just drive, which leads to a really fun Buddie road trip sequence where they sing along to the music, rank their favorite Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, and toss snacks into each other’s mouths. It’s a breath of fresh air to see them acting like silly best friends together, but of course, the fun is short-lived.
Buck and Eddie’s conversation in the car stays surface-level, touching just on their previous 9-1-1: Lone Star crossover, and then turning into a fight after Buck gets them lost when he suggests an unconventional route down south through New Mexico. Buck loves the food and gets along very well with the waitress, Bonnie (Melinda McGraw), while Eddie is just angry, and then they get into an explosive argument right there in the diner. Their argument is very generic and standard, with Buck getting mad at Eddie for getting “gloomy” like he says Eddie always does, while Eddie is only mad about being lost. It’s not specific enough for two people who have been best friends for eight years, and even their loud and vicious diner fight doesn’t feel detailed or cutting enough for two people who know each other that well.
‘9-1-1’ Season 9 Finally Delivers a Near-Perfect Episode
Part 1 of the ‘9-1-1’ crossover is definitely not just a filler episode.
The most compelling part of their argument is Buck expressing his anger that Eddie is mad at him for a choice that they both made. Buck is frustrated that Eddie doesn’t speak his mind and say what he wants, while Eddie admits to taking the “path of least resistance” with Buck most of the time to avoid arguments. This had the potential to touch deeper on their dynamic, but it just skates along the surface and instead turns into an over-the-top argument that has Buck dramatically holding a fork to his own neck and screaming at Eddie to kill him. A group of homophobic truckers mistakes this for a lover’s quarrel, and one of them tells Buck and Eddie that “We just don’t see a lot of your kind around here.”
When Eddie asks what the trucker means by his and Buck’s kind, the trucker says, “You tell me, Princess.” It’s a deliberate narrative choice to show homophobia being directed specifically at Eddie, but the episode never unpacks this further. Buck and Eddie both apologize to each other and cement their position as a team, then they get followed by a truck on the road. They believe that it’s a homophobic hate crime, and they’re driven off the road, which turns into a car accident. Eddie wakes up alone in the hospital where he’s told that he was the only person in the car. Meanwhile, Buck is trapped alone in Bonnie’s house, where she believes that he’s her son, Derek, who has been brain-dead since a motorcycle accident 15 years earlier (and is still on life support in her basement).
‘9-1-1’ Season 9, Episode 13 Doesn’t Give True Emotional Payoff to Buck and Eddie’s NDEs
Buck’s predicament this episode feels generally low-stakes, because Bonnie is clearly just grieving and unwell, and there’s no doubt that he will make it out alive. The much more high-stakes storyline this episode is Eddie’s. Eddie tries to get the local Sheriff to listen to him and take Buck’s case seriously, but Eddie is instead met with racist and homophobic microaggressions from the Sheriff, who very obviously thinks that Eddie killed Buck in an act of intimate partner violence (which is a baffling choice when this, alongside the homophobia from the truckers, is the only time the romantic undertone of Buck and Eddie’s dynamic is addressed this episode). Eddie turns to the team back home for help, and Athena (Angela Bassett), Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) do their best to assist from afar.
Athena calls the Sheriff, who is still set on Eddie as a suspect, and who doesn’t want to actually do his job. With Buck trapped in a locked room and nobody else around to help, Eddie has to be the one to save him. Eddie is hesitant to break out of the hospital and make himself more of a suspect, but Athena pushes him to go save Buck. This is a disappointing writing choice considering how close Buck and Eddie are, but Eddie’s concerns are understandable due to the Sheriff’s obvious racism, even though the episode doesn’t ever explore this further. An injured Buck and Eddie are paralleled with one another as they both escape to try to get to each other. Buck gets caught, first by Bonnie, and then by her ex-husband and Derek’s father, Earl (Jeff Kober), who’s also the cook at the diner. Eddie’s search for Buck takes him to the diner, where one of the waitresses flirts with him, and Eddie, of course, shows a lack of interest. She offers her his number, and he nods with a serious face, presumably because he wants to be able to contact her in the search for Buck, but that’s the last we see of this odd detour.
Eddie goes to Bonnie’s house, where Earl now has Buck tied up in the basement. Bonnie knows that Buck isn’t Derek now, and she knows that there’s no way out now, so she tries to convince Earl to kill him. Buck talks to Bonnie one-on-one and shows compassion for her, relating her loss of Derek to his own loss of Bobby (Peter Krause), and encouraging her to let Derek go. She almost kills Buck, but Eddie shows up right on time to ask her questions about the truckers, whom he believes has Buck. Buck asks Bonnie and Earl to convince Eddie to leave, willing to sacrifice himself to save Eddie. He appeals to Bonnie as a parent, telling her about Christopher (Gavin McHugh), and saying that Eddie is all Chris has. She tries to steer Eddie away, but he sees the truck and knows that Buck is there. Eddie gets into a confrontation with Bonnie and Earl, where he has a gun to Bonnie’s head, and Earl has a gun to Eddie’s. Buck then escapes and tackles Earl, saving Eddie.
The Truth Is In Here — The Collider TV Quiz!
This week, X marks the spot. Eight conspiratorial questions to see if you’re a real X-Files fan… or if you’re an alien posing as an agent.
The cops interrupt at that point, and the Sheriff sees that Eddie was right. Buck collapses and Eddie rushes to him in a moment that should have been the emotional payoff that this episode so desperately needed, showing just how much they mean to each other. Instead, the moment is undercut with a joke, and Buck and Eddie never get a moment to properly debrief either what they just went through together or the argument that they had. It felt like this episode is trying so hard to avoid stepping into anything romantic with Buck and Eddie, that in doing so, there is a massive lack of emotional payoff for what they just went through together. Even if this was supposed to be played as platonic, they could’ve at least had a scene like Hen and Chimney got at the end of “Hero Complex.”
Instead, that’s it for Buck and Eddie, and the only emotional payoff is for Maddie, who’s been terrified for Buck all episode. She drops everything, ready to go find him herself, until she gets the call that he is alright. Even Eddie’s phone call after with Chris takes place off-screen, and we never see Buck proven wrong about his own place in Christopher’s life. The episode ends on a joke, as it’s revealed that the whole thing was pointless, because Hen missed her party for a surprise trip with Karen (Tracie Thoms). The episode is uneven throughout, but it had a lot of potential, if only Buck and Eddie’s emotional conflict and concern for each other had been given proper emotional payoff. Ultimately, though, 9-1-1 seems afraid to let Buck and Eddie have a real conversation, and the episode shoots itself in the foot because of it.
9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8:00 P.M. on ABC.
- Release Date
-
January 3, 2018
- Showrunner
-
Tim Minear
- Directors
-
Bradley Buecker, David Grossman, Brenna Malloy, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Jann Turner, Jennifer Lynch, Marita Grabiak, Sarah Boyd, John J. Gray, Barbara Brown, Robert M. Williams Jr., Kristen Reidel, Marcus Stokes, Tasha Smith, Millicent Shelton, Juan Carlos Coto, John Gray, Greg Sirota, Alonso Alvarez, James Wong, Kevin Hooks, Varda Bar-Kar, Shauna Duggins, Sharat Raju
- Writers
-
Tim Minear, Andrew Meyers, Brad Falchuk, David Fury, Ryan Murphy, Christopher Monfette, Nadia Abass-Madden, Nicole Barraza Keim, Erica L. Anderson, Matthew Hodgson, Stacey R. Rose, Taylor Wong, Tonya Kong, Adam Penn
- Eddie’s storyline this episode is high-stakes and frightening, as it shows the bigoted Sheriff not taking him seriously, leading him to have to save Buck himself.
- This episode remembers how close Buck and Maddie are, and allows Maddie to be terrified for him.
- This episode has a major lack of emotional payoff, making the whole storyline ultimately feel shallow and pointless.
- There is a lack of stakes in Buck’s half of the storyline, which feels repetitive for ‘9-1-1’ and doesn’t bring anything new to the table.
- By refusing to let Buck and Eddie have a real conversation, this episode in turn sidesteps any deeper meaning and misses the opportunity to pack an emotional punch.