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Reviews
9-1-1: Boston (2022)
Brilliant
Jennifer Love Hewitt and Kenneth Choi are good enough they could carry an entire show by themselves. I cannot WAIT for Maddie and Chimney to be back in LA.
9-1-1: Wrapped in Red (2021)
Bleak end to a bleak half season
Overall, the episode itself was just fine honestly. The three main emergencies felt very classic 9-1-1 and that was nice to see! The domestic scenes with Eddie and Chris were excellently done (seriously, props to that kid because he's a great actor).
But in a season that's already been marked entirely by absences, having the "cliffhanger" be that Eddie's leaving the 118 (even though we know Ryan Guzman isn't leaving the show) just felt like kicking us when we're down. Although I understand the character motivations behind it and wouldn't necessarily have altered the storyline or the conclusion he came to, I think the episode would've been stronger if it had ended on a positive anticipatory note. Tell us Eddie's leaving, sure, but give us some spark of hope to keep going. Like even the slightest hint about Maddie and Chimney's return?
Literally any glimmer of hope would've been nice instead of just...more bleak on top of bleak.
9-1-1: Past Is Prologue (2021)
Mixed
Reviewing this episode is difficult because the parts that were good were very good! And the parts that were bad were borderline unwatchable.
So! The good: the opening call with the oil well was excellently paced, well-acted, well-directed, and felt like honestly one of the better individual calls we've seen in the show all season. They did a great job connecting us with the one-off characters (something this show is so, so good at) and it was nice to see our firefam shine. Also good - seeing Bobby and Athena have a healthy love life, seeing them have FUN together both at home and while investigating their cold case (although I will admit I lost some of the thread at the conclusion) was lovely and refreshing. Another good - having a nice Hen storyline! And finding out more about Toni and the Wilson family was so nice.
And then, unfortunately, there was the other half of the episode. If the goal was to give Taylor a tragic backstory to develop audience sympathy for her, they grotesquely missed the mark. Wanting to hide her own story by ruthlessly exploiting the tragic stories of others (such as Bobby's back at her first introduction) doesn't stand up as sympathetic especially when contrasted with the tragic backstories of the rest of the 118, whose traumas and heartbreaks emphatically drove them to want to help people.
And all of these unfortunate storylines they keep forcing on us about Miss...not Kelly would be so much more bearable if Megan West wasn't such a laughably bad actress. She simply cannot carry a dramatic scene to save her life and in an episode that had one-off barely named characters played emotionally and convincingly at the start, it only served to highlight the nagging question of how on Earth she got this role in a show headlined by excellent household name level celebrity actors.
9-1-1: Defend in Place (2021)
Felt like a 9-1-1 episode
If you didn't tune in this week because you were disappointed last week, happy to report that 9-1-1, a show about first responders, is back! As is the family-we-chose theme. Plus, the big emergency was suitably dramatic and worth watching.
9-1-1: Ghost Stories (2021)
Unfortunate
Not even the temporary return of Kenneth Choi as Chimney or the otherwise transcendant Tracie Thoms returning to her role as Karen could save this episode.
We watch this show because we like our first responders - our firefighters and our call center folks - not because we want to watch a procedural investigation with a detective (not a first responder by definition) and a reporter.
Edit: just learned that the storyline cut from this episode with the ghost roommate (the storyline that appeared in ALL of the promotional material) was supposed to be five scenes, and would've highlighted an actress who can actually act (as we know from her short appearance in Wrapped in Red episode 5.10) and would've included our mains and actual first responders, in order to give more space unnecessarily to Taylor Kelly, who is not a first responder and is not a played by a competent actress. Dropping this episode's rating to 1 star.