It’s the mid-season finale, and in true 9-1-1 fashion, absolute chaos ensues.
The episode starts with a voiceover from Bobby, which I was personally a big fan of. His voiceover even included a quote by Joan Didion, “The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.” This set the scene not only for the episode, but Bobby’s storyline leading into the second half of the season.
The episode then proceeds into the first emergency call, a dog who runs off after being scared by fireworks. However, the dog missing isn’t the actual emergency since the dog does come home, carrying a severed hand in her mouth. When the 118 gets there, they quickly realize that the hand wasn’t cut off, it was most likely blown off by the fireworks. With a genius music choice, “HandClap” by Fitz and the Tantrums’ plays while the team searched for the hand. Upon finding the victim, they also come across another victim missing a finger along with another missing a thumb. Eventually, they find the victims (and their missing appendages) and send them on the way to the hospital.
At the Wilson house, Denny is celebrating his birthday. He’s getting a bit older, so when Karen tells him he can do anything he wants on his birthday, prompting him to ask about his birth mother. Hen and Karen handle it well, collecting old photos and other things for him to look at. However, it does bring other emotions to the surface with Hen and Karen.
Turning back to Bobby, he is meeting with his sponsor, Wendell. Bobby asks how Wendell is doing, and he mentions that he’s going to see his son’s family in Las Cruces. Bobby double checks before Wendell leaves insisting that he doesn’t seem like himself. Wendell blames it on the Santa Anas before leaving the Grant-Nash house. It’s important to mention that the camera really holds the frame on his watch for a few seconds to ensure the audience sees it.
At the call center, Josh has been working shift and shift, and he’s obviously very tired. He’s continuously drinking coffee and mentioning his lack of sleep. He’s taking random calls until he reaches one from the supposed Murder House (an interesting nod to Ryan Murphy’s other work, American Horror Story). When the LAPD arrive, they find nothing, but one of the officers hits his head after getting scared through a window. Chimney and Hen arrive to treat him, and Chimney takes a special interest in the house. He even ends up fixing how the phone lines, so “the house” stops calling dispatch.
At the firehouse, Bobby is standing near the dining area when he receives a haunting voicemail from Wendell. Towards the end of the voicemail, Wendell says, “I tried to be a good man, but I’m tired now.” When he tries to call back, nobody answers. The rest of the team, except Buck who is asleep in the bunk room, is in the kitchen, Hen is talking about Denny’s recent interest in his birth mother, and Chimney is talking about how he’s been looking into the Murder House. Then, a woman sleep drives into the station naked (with a stolen car). After they get all of that situated, the team retreats to the rooftop. They attempt to have a calming cup of hot chocolate, but Bobby smells the smoke from a fire right before the alarm starts ringing.
When they arrive to the fire, they have to work pretty fast to put it out considering the Santa Anas combined with the woods surrounding the fire. While putting out the fires, a couple shows up claiming that their place is nearby. Bobby lets them know that the fire is being put out and that an arson investigator is on their way, which seems to shock them. During their conversation, Eddie finds a victim. Sadly, this victim isn’t just any victim. Bobby notices the watch on the body, and immediately knows that it’s Wendell.
Bobby later finds out that Wendell never went to New Mexico, and he hadn’t talked to his son in weeks. An LAPD detective said that the area where they found him at is common place for people to use, and that there’s a rehab facility less than a mile away.
Back at the Wilson house, Hen finds some stuff for Denny to look through, including pictures so he’ll know what his birth mother looked like. Later, Denny overhears a conversation between Hen and Karen, where Hen is feeling sad about Denny asking questions about his birth parents. Denny apologizes for this the next day, and Hen and Karen both insist that it’s okay for him to wonder about this stuff. Denny then tells that he wants them to know that he’s not looking for another mom, and that they’re awesome. It’s important to pay attention to Denny’s choice of words there. He said he wasn’t looking for another mom, but he never said he wasn’t looking for a dad.
The 118, minus Bobby, hold a group call. They talk about the Murder House, the fact that Buck’s responsible for the creation of new life (Kameron and Connor’s baby), and how they’re worried about Bobby. The scene then leads into Bobby arriving at the rehab facility near where Wendell was found. He’s obviously suspicious of the place and thinks that there’s something they’re not telling him.
To end the first half of the season, Chimney convinces Maddie to move into the Murder House, which turns out wasn’t actually a Murder House. Maddie isn’t sold on the idea until she finds a height chart on the door frame and realizes a family once lived there, and a family should live there again. Denny gets on his bike, and he goes to find his biological dad. Bobby decides to take investigating the rehab center into his own hands.
This episode did an excellent job at tying up loose ends of the first half of the season while also opening up new story lines for the second half. It will be interesting to see just how Buck is able to distance himself from the part he played in helping create the baby. Also, I’m feeling a little bit wary of Denny going to find his biological father on his own and what that will entail. And I hope we get some good moments between Bobby and Athena in the second half, where we see Bobby leaning on Athena, much like she was leaning on him at the beginning of the season.
