9-1-1 Recap: Crouching Tiger, Broken Pelvis

Our long national nightmare is over: Captain Gerrard is out at the 118, and Bobby Nash has returned as captain. That’s not the only welcome plot development that “No Place Like Home” brings to 9-1-1 — but while last week’s episode wrapped up storylines too neatly, this week’s offers a resolution that feels earned. Also, and this is so important, there are multiple gnarly injuries and a tiger. This is why we watch!

The episode begins with Gerrard and Buck on the driving range, where the captain reveals that mandatory budget cuts are coming to the firehouse. Bobby coddled the team and turned them into snowflakes, but they will now face the harsh reality of layoffs. Naturally, Gerrard wants his protegee to help him decide who to cut. (His feelings toward Buck remain somewhere between paternal and sexual, and I am ready to move on from this relationship.) As someone who has worked in media for the last couple of decades, I find the layoffs conversation highly triggering.

There are more changes coming to the 118. Councilmember Olivia Ortiz, who is now running for mayor on a platform of being evil, I guess, wants accountability for first responders after her son’s death last season. The team has been enlisted in a pilot program that will have them all wearing body cams when interacting with the public — which is not a bad idea as far as I’m concerned, both because I believe in transparency and because I’d like to see a shaky-cam found-footage-style episode of 9-1-1. Of course, this is really just part of Ortiz’s single-minded revenge on Hen, which makes it a tougher pill to swallow.

Thankfully, this is not an episode entirely about city government. We meet our first emergency of the week, a high school cheerleader named Weston. His mom is at the game to support her son, but his dad is MIA. Before we can delve too deeply into Wes’ trauma, however, he’s accidentally tackled into a bench by a football player. Suddenly his lower half is facing the opposite direction as his top half, an injury that looks very fatal even as he remains conscious. As a 9-1-1 caller helpfully explains, “A cheerleader is ass-backwards!”

The 118 arrives to, one assumes, twist Wes back into shape. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Eddie, who has seen this kind of injury in Afghanistan, explains that they’re looking at an open book fracture, a.k.a. a broken pelvis. There are a lot of arteries in the pelvis, so that means they have to transport him to the hospital extra carefully. When Wes’ blood pressure drops in the ambulance, Eddie has to perform a REBOA (resuscitative endovascular balloon occlusion of the aorta, if you were wondering) in a moving vehicle. It works, and the delirious cheerleader wakes up and calls Eddie “dad.” Who among us?

Off the clock, Hen and Karen are in court trying to get their foster license reinstated. It doesn’t go particularly well, especially after opposing counsel reveals that they’ve been seeing Mara while she’s living with Chimney and Maddie. Hen gives a powerful speech explaining how Mara is being used as a pawn by Ortiz to get revenge, but despite Aisha Hinds’ moving performance, the judge is not swayed. In fact, she orders Hen and Karen to have no contact with Mara at all.

Out of options, Hen tries to appeal to Ortiz directly, but it turns out this woman is an actual supervillain. Although Hen beautifully details Mara’s history and why it’s so important that she be reunited with her family, Ortiz is unmoved. Hen, Karen, and Denny might be all Mara has, but Ortiz’s son Kyle was all she had. She’s been forced to live without her loved one, so Mara will have to learn to do the same. Ortiz is so evil in this scene it strains credulity; on the other hand, there’s nothing I want less from 9-1-1 than believability. It’s here that Hen realizes something else — Ortiz and Gerrard are old friends, and she installed him as captain of the 118 as part of her revenge plan. (See? Supervillain!)

Hen decides to tell Bobby the real reason Gerrard replaced him, and it turns out she’s not the only one who’s been coming to the former captain for guidance. We get scenes of Buck, Eddie, and Chimney similarly venting about Gerrard’s reign of terror. Buck wants to quit because Gerrard “calls me his little buddy and he touches me,” which prompts an appropriately stunned reaction from Bobby. Chimney stresses that the 118 needs Bobby. And Eddie — well, Eddie is distracted thinking about Wes’ absent father, because he’s missing Christopher and these firefighters love nothing more than projecting. It’s refreshing to see Bobby interact with all his former co-workers after three episodes that have kept him largely on his own.

But there are more people to save! The second horrific injury of the week belongs to Carl Gates, a patient at the hospital who swears his pit bull mauled him but whose gruesome claw marks recall Griffin Dunne in An American Werewolf in London. Athena arrives at the hospital to get the truth out of Gates, who swears Bing is usually no trouble. Back at his apartment, Gates’ landlord Patty arrives to collect his late rent, and it’s here that we learn Bing’s true identity: He’s not a werewolf, but a pet Bengal tiger. (While I normally complain about shitty CGI, it’s part of the charm on this show.)

Patty is also badly mauled by Bing before she escapes to the bathroom, where she calls 9-1-1. As Maddie tries to help her not bleed out, the 118 arrives to save her and put the tiger out of commission. Gerrard explains that they’ve only got 10 minutes until Patty goes into hypovolemic shock, and animal control is 17 minutes out. Not to worry, the L.A. Zoo has helpfully provided a tranq gun that Chimney is going to use on the tiger after rappelling down to the apartment from the roof. Simple enough! It does actually go exactly as planned, even if Chim is briefly startled by the tiger popping up at the window, a surprisingly effective jump scare.

Can you believe the 118 had an entire tiger incident without Bobby there as captain? He can’t let that stand. Bobby invites Gerrard to the set of Hotshots, where the current captain is visibly starstruck. (Gerrard doesn’t watch the show, he swears, but his sister is a big fan. We’ve all been there, bud.) Bobby tells him that the person he should be cutting from the firehouse is Gerrard himself — Ortiz is using him and laughing behind his back.

This seems to backfire when Gerrard confronts Ortiz, who admits that, yes, she didn’t tell Gerrard the full story, but they’re on the same page. Hen is the one who got Gerrard booted in the first place and Ortiz’s master plan is about making Hen miserable, so he should be delighted when Gerrard suggests a better revenge: shutting down the 118 entirely and making him the new fire chief once Ortiz is mayor.

If you’ve watched TV before, it’s pretty easy to clock that Gerrard is secretly recording Ortiz to take her down, but it’s nevertheless very satisfying seeing it all play out. At a city hall hearing on Ortiz’s proposal to close the firehouse, Hen delivers another impassioned speech (this really is a great episode for Hinds!). “The 118 isn’t just an item on a ledger,” she says. Oh, and also, roll that secret body cam footage of Ortiz doing her Bond villain monologue. Yes, Gerrard turned out to be … well, not a good guy, but decidedly less evil than Ortiz, who is (obviously) forced to suspend her mayoral campaign. As a fan of legal dramas, I live for this kind of courtroom drama. (It’s a city hall hearing, but close enough.)

The episode’s final moments are all about happy endings. Eddie brings Wes crutches to the hospital — yes, the ass-backward cheerleader is going to make a full recovery — and sees that Wes’ dad is finally showing up. That might have something to do with Eddie going to see him and reminding him that he’s the adult in the situation and responsible for fixing the relationship with his son. I do sort of wish he’d been able to do that without showing the dad how bad Wes’ injury was, because cheerleaders are cool whether or not they’ve been mangled. Now, how does Eddie get Christopher back?

With the evil Ortiz defeated, Mara is able to return to Hen and Karen’s home. Seems like they were able to get their license reinstated awfully fast, but I’m too pleased about seeing the family together again to care. And yes, as I fully gave away at the beginning of this recap, Bobby is finally back as captain of the 118. Gerrard is riding off into the sunset — or, more accurately, to the set of Hotshots, where he’s gotten Bobby’s old job as technical advisor. All’s well that ends well, though after bees and a tiger, there’s no telling what CGI animal will attack next.

Call Log

• This was a very plot-heavy episode, so I didn’t get to touch on Bobby and Athena’s search for a new home. Athena decides she wants to rebuild on the land where the last one burned down and proposes using Michael’s original architectural plans to build the very same house. Bobby ultimately nixes it, saying that the old home was Michael’s and he wants something of their own. I’m not sure I buy him being so territorial, but kudos to the show for not making the easy choice of reusing an existing set.

• Buck-Tommy watch: Should I have called this section Buck-Gerrard watch? Those two have gotten way more screen time this season than Buck and his boyfriend. On the football field, Gerrard learns what position Buck played and proceeds to call him “tight end.” I’m not imagining this, right?

• I don’t know if we’re meant to believe that Gerrard is a literal closet case, but his behavior on the Hotshots set — specifically his fangirling over hunky Brit actor Brad Torrance — also feels more than a little gay! Surely this is all intentional.

• As relieved as I am to have Bobby back at the 118, it feels like there was more material to mine with Brad. Again, I ask, what’s that guy’s deal?

• Chimney saying that Gerrard always needs to be the smartest person in the room and suggesting that’s why he spends so much time with Buck hurt my feelings a little. But I did laugh.