That hour was all over the place.
9-1-1 Season 5 Episode 15 started light, with an influencer living a double life. And along the way, we got a reality wedding emergency and some vintage 118 talks in the firetruck.
And then bam. We got hit with one of the sadder deaths this show has tackled in a while.
The theme of this hour was FOMO, and of course, we’re all hit from time to time with a feeling like we missed out on something. It can be something as small as regretting that time you stayed home to study for a Geometry exam instead of heading out for a night on the town with your best friends.
Or it can be something huge, like forgoing a career you always dreamed of for something else.
It’s a familiar feeling, and here we saw it manifest in various ways through both the characters and the emergencies.
We saw it with Hen and Karen most prominently, and I must admit that I can relate to Karen’s struggles. Hopefully, there comes a point in adulthood where you become content with your life because life can be so rich while also being incredibly tragic at times and mundane at others.
Embracing the mundane is a part of growing up, and while Hen and Karen have embraced it fully, Karen’s worries about feeling like she should have played harder and worked a little less back in the day are very relatable. You can be incredibly content and happy with your life and still have regrets.
Hen and Karen have a good life, and unfortunately, none of us can go back in time and change the past. But everything Hen and Karen have done in their lives led them to the place they’re at now. And hell, you’re only as old as you feel, right?
Seeing them traipse around the club looking for the credit card thief was hilarious and good for them to stick around the club a little longer to let loose.
9-1-1 needs those lighter moments to balance out the heaviness, and them closing out the hour looking totally at peace together was beautiful.
Maddie regretted having missed out on so much of Jee-Yun’s life while she was getting well, and again, this is a perfectly valid fear to have.
Chimney documenting so much of his time with his daughter was lovely, and it was just another reason to love Howard Han. He was traveling all over the states looking for Maddie and also keeping track of every little thing Jee did so he could show Maddie one day.
The conversation between Maddie and Buck was VERY needed because Buck knows better than anyone about Maddie’s abilities to raise a child and the size of her heart. She has so much love to give those around her, and she’s sharing that love with her daughter in spades.
Maddie: I’m scared that I’ve scarred her for life.
Buck: You haven’t. You know how I know that? Cuz that’s not the first kid you raised. That was me.
Leaving Chimney and Jee-Yun was never about a lack of love but about Maddie needing to get well to be there for her family. And she is there for them in every way possible.
Maddie and Chimney’s breakup has been quite the hot topic since we found out they split in 9-1-1 Season 5 Episode 13. While I’m of the belief that the breakup was for the best right now, opinions are varied.
But you can see when they’re together that the love and respect is still there between them, and they’ve been slowly learning how to navigate co-parenting with great results. There’s a little awkwardness here and there, but they’re still a team.
And bless Maddie’s soul for just enjoying Jee-Yun’s first instead of running to grab her phone. It’s always nice to have the memories, but sometimes it’s also nice to be present in the moment to enjoy what’s in front of your eyes and not behind a screen.
We haven’t spent a ton of time with May lately, and to be honest, I’d forgotten that the plan wasn’t for her to work at dispatch forever because the show hasn’t brought it up in so long.
May had plans for her life coming out of high school, much like we all do, but life came and hit her hard, and plans changed. But now she’s got this massive decision to make about her life, and she’s conflicted.
May is an excellent dispatcher. Time and time again, May proved that she has what it takes to help people through some of the worst moments of their lives. And if she wanted to stay at dispatch forever, they would be lucky to have her. But it sounds like maybe that’s not exactly what she wants.
And if she decides to leave dispatch to go to USC, you can’t fault her at all because going to school was a dream of hers. Circumstances inspired her to work at the call center, but now she’s in a different place, and it’s okay to pivot back to what you previously wanted, especially if this is your last chance.
Side note, Eddie and May being work friends, is something I never knew I needed.
Sure, Eddie is friends with everyone at the 118 and yada yada, but sometimes it can feel like he only really has Buck in some ways. It’s nice to see him have someone else outside of the 118 to talk to and bond with.
Even though Eddie nor May may be long for dispatch, hopefully, that friendship continues to thrive!
The emergencies went from a little funny and outlandish, as only 9-1-1 can do, to ugly tears just like that.
We’ve seen people die on the show before because while the happy endings are plentiful and necessary, there will be casualties in a show that deals with emergencies. After all, that’s just a fact of life.
But man, seeing a mother of three young girls perish like that was very hard to digest.
Annabelle spent time with her girls and trying to make up for the time she didn’t have with them as they bounced between two homes. To have her die here was just incredibly heartbreaking on every single level.
