9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 4 Review: No Place Like Home

Critic’s Rating: 4 / 5.0

4

Coming off an opening emergency for the ages, 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 2 settled back into the characters.

Family has always been the main thread of the series, from the flesh-and-blood variety to found family and everything in between.

This was an hour not only about family but also about home. Bringing family home, wanting family home, and finding the perfect home for a family.

The bee-nado/plane crash extravaganza was an excellent start to this season, but I’d be lying if I didn’t say I wasn’t ready to get back into the character journeys.

The characters will always be the heartbeat of the series, and while the hours heavy on the action are necessary and welcome on a show like 9-1-1, it’s also nice to have more character-driven hours.

Or a healthy mixture of both.

After surviving another brush with danger, Athena was in full house-hunting mode, though her heart didn’t seem to be in it. I was hoping we’d see this journey with the pair, and we got a small taste, though it was mostly to show us that the two weren’t really on the same page.

As someone with copious hours of House Hunter under their belt, which makes me an expert on real estate and all things related to buying a home, the number one thing you’ll always hear on the hunt is that you’re never going to find everything you want.

Bobby and Athena looked at a beautiful house, but she wasn’t feeling it, and that’s completely understandable. You can often walk into a house and know immediately whether or not you feel safe and comfortable inside.

It can take people months or even years to find the “perfect” home, and Bobby’s slight exasperation suggested that he was worried they may be headed for the same fate.

The whole house journey must have been difficult for Athena, even if she wasn’t outwardly expressing that at every turn. Having your house burn down is devastating, and for Athena and her family, that was a house built specifically for them.

A place where Athena, Michael, and Bobby helped raise May and Harry, with so many memories seeped into those walls. And suddenly, overnight, that was just all gone.

How do you replace something like that? I’m not sure you really can, though you can look to find something that makes you feel like that house once did.

God love Athena. Her heart was in the right place, but she was so excited about the potential of having her home back that she failed to see how rebuilding the exact house Michael did would make Bobby feel.

Undoubtedly, Bobby loved that house and living with Athena and the kids, as it was his home for many years. But in the same way that he blended into the Grant family, he also blended into that home. But it was never his in the same way that it was hers.

It took a tragedy to get them to this point where they had to find a new forever home. It was important to make sure it embodied something that felt like home for both of them, and their conversation at the end of the hour was a great encapsulation of what we’ve known their relationship to typically be.

Bobby was open, honest, and vulnerable, and Athena simply heard him. They can build something equal parts theirs, and that’s beautiful when you think about it.

Finding a physical home for him and Athena was a major priority for Bobby, but he was also starting to truly feel the effects of missing his other home, the 118.

Listen, Hotshots has been a good time. It was a clever way to incorporate some meta-humor and put Bobby into a situation where he was a bit of a fish out of water.

It also allowed Peter Krause to flex those comedic muscles, which he’s so good at.

But as they say, all good things must come to an end. Or do they?

Bringing back Gerrard as captain during 9-1-1 Season 7 Episode 10 was certainly a choice, but what they’ve chosen to do with him this season is make him a crass, overbearing, and imposing boss tinged with moments of levity, which frankly doesn’t sit right with me.

I’ve talked at length about the 9-1-1 redemption arc epidemic, and it’s not even as if they’re giving Gerrard the full redemption arc treatment. Still, there’s a significant tonal shift in his presentation this season.

Is he still awful? Sure, but he’s being presented to the audience in a kind of ‘aw shucks, he’s just a jerk now, isn’t he?’ way, which is at odds with the racist and misogynistic man we saw in the Begins episodes.  

Take, for instance, his meeting with Bobby on the set of Hotshots, in which he’s practically giddy over seeing Brad. Was it really necessary?

He’s been giving cartoon villainy all season, which carried into this hour.

Once Bobby discovered that Gerrard was tasking Buck with picking someone at the 118 to fire, Bobby found an opening to get his job back and help Hen, especially once it became apparent that Gerrard and Ortiz were in cahoots.

Side note: they didn’t do much with Buck being under Gerrard’s wing and Buck’s struggles with saving Gerrard, which they could technically revisit since Gerrard’s still seemingly around, but it felt like a wasted opportunity, no?

Anyway, it was interesting to see everything converge, with Henren’s foster license case, Ortiz and Gerrard’s duplicitousness, and Bobby’s desire to get his job back all intersecting by the episode’s end.

Ortiz and Gerrard being homies was the least surprising thing in the world, but for someone who most likely made a living out of being shady, lying, and doing whatever she had to do to get to the top, Ortiz had some very loose lips.

Once Bobby met with Gerrard, it was obvious where things were headed. You could tell they were speed-running through Henren’s story, which meant stuff with Ortiz wouldn’t last beyond this hour.

Gerrard was by no means the “good guy” in this situation, especially because his helping Bobby was mainly about helping himself and ensuring he got something in return. However, him standing there next to Bobby Nash in the courtroom like he really did something heroic was frustrating, to say the least.

Am I to believe Gerrard is suddenly NOT the absolute worst? No. The whole wrap-up to this story felt off and was incredibly frustrating, especially the inclusion of Gerrard.

Also frustrating was that we had another incredibly sad story for Henren, even if we did get to this happy ending.

I wish I were confident this was the last hurdle the couple would face, but this is a drama series, the keyword being a drama, and something else is likely to befall them.

But we’ve had several seasons of seeing the couple struggle with one thing or another, especially regarding their family. Let them explore new terrain outside of fighting to expand their beautiful family.

I hated seeing them beaten down in court by the system rigged against them, even though there was a happy ending here. It’s been many seasons of this, and I want to see them happy in their family.

There can be drama not centered around them explicitly looking to expand their family, and that doesn’t feel like a tall ask.

Aisha Hinds always shines, but her impassioned plea in court probably reduced many people to tears. Hen and Karen have been put through the wringer; this time, the wringer was someone with a vendetta and the power to destroy lives.

Words can’t describe how glad I am to see this storyline end, and it better be over. We know this show loves a comeback, but let Ortiz face the shame and repercussions for her actions and let that be done off-screen.

Her actions were cavalier and reckless with a lot of people’s lives, and while she was operating from a place of grief, that’s not an excuse. Not at all.

In wrapping this story up rather quickly, the show never dove too deeply into Mara’s being at Madney’s and how the two families were affected by everything, but that shot of Mara reuniting with her moms and Denny while Madney looked on with a smile was very sweet.

The whole situation was crushing, and poor Mara had been through so much. She’s a child. A young black girl was forcibly ripped from her home and punished through no fault of her own, and the way Ortiz and that judge were just using her actually made me sick to my stomach.

I don’t want to see Mara in pain again, and I don’t want to see the Wilson family dynamic upset again.

We’re tired, and it’s enough.

Speaking of family dynamics, Eddie was still without his anchor in Christopher, and the cheerleading rescue profoundly impacted him. Now that Christopher was no longer under his roof, he was again reminded of the imbalance in his life.

They’ve barely scratched the surface of what I assume will be a much greater arc regarding Eddie and his deep-diving into himself now that he’s got a lot of extra time on his hands to consider his decisions and what kind of person he intends to be moving forward.

When talking to showrunner Timothy Minear ahead of the premiere about Eddie’s early season journey, he mentioned this:

“…When he realizes that he was the thing that made it a little unsafe for Christopher last year, he’s got to now look in the mirror and figure out who he is before he can repair that relationship. So that’s Eddie’s struggle.”

We’ve yet to see him do a lot of that searching, but they started to scratch the surface of what will surely be an emotional dive when Eddie became invested in Weston and his family after Weston’s broken pelvis.

What a freak and scary accident to have to endure for a kid who was tumbling his heart out on the sidelines and just living his life.

Weston was a good kid doing something he loved, but within a flash, he was fighting for his life.

It’s been said before and will be repeated, but the 118 are truly the best of the best. All of them have gone above and beyond time and time again to help people in the worst moments of their lives.

Eddie did that in the back of the ambulance, performing a rather risky procedure because he knew it was Weston’s best chance of survival. And he did it flawlessly.

When Weston opened his eyes and said, ‘Dad,’ so softly to Eddie, I swear you could hear Eddie’s heart crack in half and the gasp from my living room simultaneously.

There surely aren’t words to describe how badly Eddie misses Christopher and how much guilt he feels about how everything went down. Eddie didn’t ask Kim to cosplay his dead ex-wife, but he had a hand in everything that happened and now must deal with those consequences.

He latched onto Weston and his father’s issues because they were probably a distraction from his fractured father-son dynamic.

Christopher may want nothing to do with his dad currently, while Weston wanted his dad around, but his dad didn’t want to be there.

You’ve got to love how things work out on this show sometimes, like how exactly did Eddie find out where Weston’s dad worked? And why did he know the exact time Weston was set to be discharged from the hospital?

Things that make you go, huh? But it was all to have Eddie helping to reunite a family and starting his journey toward reuniting his.

Listen, we’re entering this story with minimal context, but even so, it was disappointing that it took a stranger to convince that man that he should see his son in the hospital.

Your child is your child, and your entire job as a parent is to love and protect them.

By avoiding him essentially, Mike was doing neither. Missing your son but staying away because you don’t want to watch your son be a cheerleader? Was that an actual thing that man said?

Eddie came from a good place when approaching Mike and getting him to see how important that father-son relationship is to both sides. That hospital reunion was inevitable, but Mike FINALLY showing up doesn’t negate his refusing to show up in the past, and he needs to do some serious work on himself.

Hint, hint, he needs to see a damn therapist or something.

Eddie’s desire to motivate Mike to reunite with his son was a nice sentiment born from his current situation. Hopefully, this will lead Eddie to question his decisions regarding the Kim situation and beyond that.

It’s long overdue for Eddie to self-reflect about who he is at his core. So much of his adult life has been defined by being a father, son, husband, soldier, co-worker, friend.

But when you strip it all away, who is Eddie Diaz? He’s certainly not the man who zooms with his adolescent son, who lives a few states away.

That’s the question he needs to grapple with as he works to reconcile his guilt and move toward accepting himself, practicing self-compassion, and understanding who he is when you remove all those titles that have defined him.

Eddie’s story has only just begun and should be something to watch unfold through the first half of the season.

Loose Ends

• Ortiz wants the firefighters to wear body cams, only for it to be her undoing. 9-1-1 loves poetic justice.

• The whole Hotshots subplot is still ongoing, so does that mean Gerrard is also sticking around now?

• I feared they would have Bobby away from the 118 for a long while, but bringing him back during any episode centered around family and home was the perfect time for him to return. 

• Bobby pointed out Eddie’s mustache crisis, and Eddie innocently asked if he liked it was a perfect moment. No notes.

• After watching Chimp on Max, the “tiger in the apartment” emergency felt like its weird sequel. What’s actually crazy is that exotic animals living in apartment buildings like that aren’t as crazy as you think.

• The scene of the core four making the rounds with Bobby to update him on what’s been happening was a nice reminder of what an important role Bobby plays in all of their lives.

• Buck being a tight end on the football team tracks. And his wanting to quit instead of being Gerrard’s lackey also tracks, but it took him a little while to put his foot down.
• Give me more paramedic Eddie!

Bobby’s home. Mara’s home. Athena and Bobby are building a home.

And Eddie wants his son home.

It was an interesting hour after the three-parter, and while some stories were over, others were just beginning.

Let me know in the comments how you’re feeling about this one! And let me know what you’d like to see in the upcoming Halloween hour!

You can watch 9-1-1 on Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.

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