Photo: Christopher Willard/Disney
Our long national nightmare is over: The disaster-plagued first responders of 9-1-1 are finally back. Of course, the return of our favorite procedural means that there are new nightmares in store for the residents of Los Angeles, who will once again be forced to reckon with any number of apocalyptic scenarios rained down on them by sadistic showrunner Tim Minear and his creatively evil writing staff.
It’s an exciting time to be a 9-1-1 fan, and not just because the show is back. While some of us have been in the trenches since season one — Connie Britton, gone but not forgotten — interest in the series reached new heights last season when Buck’s newly discovered bisexuality took over everyone’s timelines. (Shout-out to the TikTok algorithm and the die-hard Buddie shippers, who have been fighting the good fight for years.) In the run-up to season eight, the buzz for 9-1-1 grew even louder with the promise of another major event on the horizon: the bee-nado.
Yes, in the series’ ethic of constant escalation, the three-part season premiere is centered on killer bees, and we’re off to the races in the cold open, which sees a private plane flying into a cloud of bees and veering wildly off course. More on that later — we’ve got problems on the ground to deal with first. After Bobby’s aborted retirement at the end of last season, the 118 is now being led by Captain Gerrard, whom we mostly know from his abusive treatment of Chimney and Hen in previous flashbacks. (That he would be reinstated as captain of the 118 despite his history of bad behavior does feel sadly realistic.)
Present-day Gerrard is still pretty awful, though he does have a fetching mustache that makes you forget actor Brian Thompson was The X-Files’s alien bounty hunter. He’s in full drill-sergeant mode, demanding that Hen polish her boots and that Buck clean the fire truck so that “when you’re done, I want to lick the bumper and taste chrome.” (What in the Titane?) Buck is the primary target of Gerrard’s bullying mostly because he’s so reactive, leading the rest of the 118 to warn Buck not to let the new captain get under his skin.
For his part, Buck wants everyone to quit in a dramatic move that would, ideally, force the LAFD to realize its mistake and bring back Bobby, who is now stuck offering expert advice on the set of a TV show about firefighters. (Who would watch that?) But Buck’s co-workers have too much going on for a mutiny. Hen is focused on trying to get her foster license back so she can bring Mara home, while Chimney is worried about providing for two kids since he and Maddie are temporarily housing Hen and Karen’s foster daughter. Eddie has grown a mustache that looks suspiciously like Gerrard’s and therefore can’t be trusted.
Personal issues aside, they’ve all got bigger fish to fry, and the fish … are bees. In the episode’s inciting incident, a truck hauling 22 million killer bees (just go with it) crashes on the freeway, unleashing an angry swarm. The bees’ first target is a car inhabited by a mother and daughter who are allergic to bees and only have one EpiPen between them — how did the bees know? — which is a pretty serious problem when both of them get stung. Buck comes up with a plan to get the hive off the car, while resourceful 911 dispatcher Maddie tells the little girl how to get an extra dose out of the pen to save her mom.
At the same time, Hen and Chimney are able to suction bees out of the truck driver’s throat, bringing him back to consciousness. (“Why do I taste honey?” is very upsetting in context.) Of course, the problems don’t stop there — we’ve been teased with a bee-nado. On cue, the truck explodes, which doesn’t kill the bees so much as piss them off. They lift off en masse and end up joining forces with the local L.A. bees, forming a deadly superswarm ready to terrorize the city.
The bees’ next target is a garden launch party for a rich lady named Tori’s new fragrance, Tori by Tori. Tori’s assistant Sheila spritzes herself with the perfume, which turns out to be catnip for the nearby bees (beenip?), who quickly swarm her. Sheila tries to escape their stings by jumping into the pool, but they hover over the water, attacking her whenever she comes up for air. Here’s where 9-1-1 reminds us that it’s, above all, an educational series: You should never try to escape a swarm of bees by going underwater!
It’s the 118 to the rescue again. Buck devises another brilliant plan, spraying Eddie with lots of Tori by Tori and making him run really fast to draw the bees away from the pool. Once Sheila is rescued, Chimney uses duct tape to pull all the stingers out of her, which helps stabilize Tori’s due-for-a-raise assistant.
Back at the firehouse, Gerrard makes it clear that he’s not impressed by Buck’s quick thinking, launching into a triggering verbal attack. Buck lunges at the captain and knocks him down — which he’s probably going to regret, because he inadvertently saves Gerrard from a flying buzzsaw let loose by nearby construction. (Remember, there are an infinite number of ways to be killed in the 9-1-1 universe.)
The killer bees may be the A-plot (bee plot) of this premiere, but Athena is facing her own metaphorical bee-nado. The U.S. Attorney’s office has made a deal with Dennis Jenkins, the man Athena helped send to prison decades after the murder of her then-fiancé. In exchange for early release, Jenkins will share what he knows about the clients of his former cellmate, sex trafficker Maxwell Fulton, who might as well be called Schmeffrey Schmepstein. Jenkins has requested that his prison transfer be handled by Athena herself, so she’s sent off to Arizona against her will by Captain Maynard.
It turns out Jenkins was right to ask for Athena. She’s not willing to give him the forgiveness he’s looking for, but she is the only cop she can trust — and Jenkins knows that someone wants him dead. Athena quickly clocks that the “U.S. Attorney” who pulls them over en route to the airport is not who he seems, so she goes Thelma & Louise and locks him in his own trunk. At the airport, Jenkins notes that there will be more assassins after him when they land in L.A., but Athena lets him know she’s way ahead of him, booking an alternate flight back to throw Jenkins’s pursuers off their trail.
Unfortunately, while Athena may be able to outrun the men who are after them, she can’t outrun fate — or, perhaps more accurately, the 9-1-1 writers. Shortly before the new flight begins its descent, the plane collides with the bee-addled pilot from the cold open (remember him?), leaving Athena, Dennis Jenkins, and all their fellow passengers in a very precarious position 30,000 feet in the air. It’s a solid cliffhanger that helps bring Athena’s stand-alone story line into the fold. Everything is connected, in this case by bees.
Up to the midair collision at the end of the episode, however, “Buzzkill” feels like it’s holding back a bit. There’s a lot of setup at play, both in terms of interpersonal conflicts and bee crises, and although that kind of table-setting makes sense for the start of a new season, the end result is somewhat underwhelming. We were promised a bee-nado, and got more of a bee-heavy rain. Thankfully, there are two special-event episodes left, and the superswarm is poised to come back stinging.
Call Log
• I’m thrilled to be recapping 9-1-1 for Vulture this season! I’ve been gleefully describing the plot of 9-1-1 episodes to friends for the last seven years, and I’m grateful for the opportunity to expand my audience.
• Buck-Tommy watch: Buck and Tommy are still together and still being cute as hell at Eddie’s very depressing virtual birthday party for Christopher, who is loving life with his grandparents and away from his dad’s Vertigo shtick. (I’m sorry I wasn’t here last season to document Eddie’s relationship with his dead wife’s doppelgänger, but I’m also not sorry at all.)
• Are we supposed to read Captain Gerrard as gay for Buck, or am I just seeing homoeroticism anywhere? I did a double-take when he called out Buck’s “broody little pout.”
• I’m not loving how siloed off Bobby is, though I do think his story line offers potential for fun studio-backlot shenanigans. I’m envisioning something like Maxine Minx running into the Psycho house, except with bees.
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