9-1-1, what's your emergency?
What are you wearing?
Nothing at all.
I think that's good.
I think that's fun.
We've officially become a Not Safe for Work podcast.
Officially.
I like that in our buck abbey, I guess role play or whatever.
I'm abbey.
I'm a buck.
We always knew this was the case.
Yeah, I feel like with the amount of lesbians on Twitter that I've seen that very much identify
with buck, that tracks.
This is a very lesbian fandom.
I've noticed that.
Oh, yeah.
It's like, I feel like it's more sapphic than most other.
I don't want to say that.
I don't know if it's more sapphic than supernatural.
That felt pretty sapphic.
I think, yeah, there was plenty of that.
I also, it's kind of like what I talked about in my steric video where I feel like there
were a lot of people who joined those fandoms as people who thought they were young girls
and then turned out to be transmasculine.
I've heard about a lot of that going around in the supernatural fandom, the Teen Wolf
fandom.
Oh, that's not surprising.
I feel like that happens a lot when you deal with situations of cross gender identification
with characters.
Yes.
Yeah, I guess the gay shipping thing.
Yeah.
We've talked about it before, but yes.
And I'm sure we'll talk about it plenty more.
Plenty more.
Down the road.
But we're not there yet.
Not yet.
But what, oh, but when that day comes.
Welcome back to the First Your Spodcast, everybody.
I am your host who is voted early with his absentee ballot, Ryan Kearns.
I am your host who voted like two hours ago because I'm a procrastinator, Jane Mulcahy.
And also, we released these episodes like two weeks after recording them.
So this is going to be really dated by the time we post it.
But for the record, it is election day as we are recording this.
At the time of recording, we do not know who the president is going to be.
We do not know who the president-elect is going to be.
And so this is our last little hurrah of not knowing and biting our little nails that that
man does not get back in office.
It's the election day special.
And I worry that this entire episode is going to be like drenched in dramatic irony no matter
what happens.
Yeah.
But, you know, what can you do?
I saw this tweet that was like trying to have conversations with people today while we're
not freaking out about the big thing that's happening.
Yeah, there's a lot of that going around.
My restaurant's been really dead recently because everyone's just been on edge about
the election.
Like yesterday, I think I had maybe like seven tables total over like a six and a half hour
shift.
And like the tables that were there, I like went up to them and I asked them, how are
you guys doing today?
And they're like, oh, you know.
Coping.
Can we get the baked meatballs like drowning your sorrows?
Yeah.
Meatballs.
Oh my God.
I'm getting drunk tonight, Ryan.
That's all I know.
I'm getting so drunk tonight.
I don't have work tomorrow.
I'm going to be so hungover.
Honestly, I've been seeing this guy for a couple of weeks.
And so we're going to hang out tonight after I get off work and just like get smashed and
eat dinner and watch a movie and just like try not to think about anything.
I'm going to like an election night, not party, but kind of a get together.
Oh, nice.
So it's going to be like all election night.
But I mean, honestly, like I kind of, I don't enjoy because it's so nerve wracking, but
I do find it kind of exciting to like watch the results come in.
No, I do too.
I do too.
Yeah, I come from that kind of family, I guess that's very like politics.
My dad was a political editor on the radio, so.
Oh, nice.
It's always a big event for us.
I just remember like the trauma of like being 16 and like sitting in like my high school
green room, like after rehearsals for the show we were in, which was Chicago.
And like we were sitting there like watching like, like state after state, this 2016 state
after state turned red and red Virginia's red, Pennsylvania's red.
It's all red.
And we're like, oh no, she's losing all these background states.
No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Yeah, my mom and I had gone out to dinner that night because like, you know, we all
just thought that Hillary was going to win.
So we were like, yeah, this is chill.
We'll go out to dinner and we came back home and started watching the news and it was like,
oh, this is not going our way.
And then I went to like a hippie Montessori high school where like everybody was woke
and gay.
I've heard of those.
Yeah, you know, it's it happens.
So like the next day going into school, everybody was like including myself, like it was bad.
Everybody was in the dumps.
I grew up in a very blue area, like a very comfy sort of liberal area.
And so like being being like Republican was like super taboo owning guns was super taboo.
And so like, you could totally snuff out like exactly who was really, really happy about
it.
Just by like walking around and seeing who didn't look completely devastated.
Damn.
And there was this one guy I had in my civics class, civics that year.
There was only like, like, like two conservative guys in the in the class.
And one of them was like from this like super, super right wing family, his dad told him
to wear a MAGA hat the next day.
Oh my God.
And like he walked in and he had this bright smile on his face.
And it was like, did you ever see the producers like from the 60s?
Yeah, yeah.
Well, the end of my God, Ryan, telepathy, because literally as I was casting my ballot, I had
not from the 60s version, but I had I want to be a producer from the musical version
of the producers stuck in my head for some reason.
It's a producer's kind of day.
And he walked in and I swear to God, it was like at the end of springtime for Hitler
when that that one day pops and everyone starts like beating him up.
Yeah, I feel like if there had been a guy like that at my school, it would have.
Yeah, we were like, because everybody was so woke and gay, it was a very peaceful place.
But like that probably could have been like the first physical fight at our school.
All right.
So do we want to set the state, the America decides aside for the next hour and talk about
911?
I guess we should, although I wouldn't be surprised if it ends up popping up throughout
this discussion anyway.
Yeah, probably.
But yes, on to season one, episode five, point of origin.
So we we open with a very, I think at the time it was topical, because there was a big
viral video and a news that this is like a ripped right from the headlines call.
Oh, I didn't know.
Yeah.
So there's this Indian wedding that's happening in LA, this all these Indian families.
There's an arranged marriage happening between a very handsome young man and a very beautiful
young woman.
Like, and Savita.
Can we just say the most gorgeous people on the planet is this couple?
I guess I hadn't really taken note of that, but sure.
It's like it's just a very like TV thing.
Like, oh, we're having this like random marriage with these random characters and they just
happen to be played by like just two like physically perfect people.
Yeah, I just feel like that's basically always how it is on TV.
Yeah.
And she has like nerves about the wedding and he has nerves about the wedding because
obviously they don't know each other that well.
It's you know, it's arranged by their families, but they're going in with open minds.
Their friends are encouraging them and it's a very beautiful ceremony.
She looks gorgeous in her dress.
It's all traditional.
And then at the reception, everyone's dancing on the dance floor and then it collapses and
a lot of people die.
Yes.
The entire floor falls through as the 118 get there.
I'm pretty sure Buck says like 16 DOA, which I took note of is just like, wow, that's a
lot.
Like that would be a major disaster.
Yeah.
It's like two stories.
Yeah, two stories.
Yeah.
Down to the ground floor.
It's like a nightmare.
Yeah.
They can't find the bride, which is really distressing, but eventually they find her under some rubble.
They get her out.
She seems okay.
Bobby gets very personally angry about all this.
He finds the building owner and like walks up to him, starts shoving him around.
He's like, did you know that this material has been outlawed for years?
This floor used to be the roof, didn't it?
And then you added a story.
He's like really going in.
Really going in.
Like uncharacteristically like, like, like enraged at this like cheapskate landlord.
And obviously it's laying the seeds or something we find out later, but it's just his like
dark Bobby era because he's still obviously like he fell off the wagon last episode and
he's struggling and he's having a difficult time.
And Hen and Buck are very sort of taken aback by his behavior here, especially Hen.
Yeah, Hen's trying to like talk him out of it.
And she's like, just last night or whatever yesterday you were saying, help, which of
course brought me back to Bobby's delivery of the line.
Help.
But yeah, so he's clearly, it hasn't been long since the events of the last episode.
So he's kind of still going through it, it seems.
Right.
I just want to say for our listeners, they are doing construction in my building.
So if you get any drilling noises in your headphones, just know it's not you, it's me.
Ryan lives in a very noisy place.
Yeah.
There's always something going on in the background of your audio.
No, seriously, there is.
It's a nightmare.
Part of the reason I don't make videos more often is because recording is just such an
absolute nightmare.
Oh, and there's police sirens.
That's okay.
It like puts us into the setting.
It's immersive.
That's thematically appropriate, you know.
Yeah, just pretend that's the 118.
What do we think about this opening call?
I think it's a pretty effective way to start off, especially because it's a very sensational
story.
And I remember this because I was still on Facebook when the news broke about a similar
story happening that I think inspired this episode.
So I saw all this like outpouring of like concern on Facebook over this and like rage
at like the building not being up to code.
And it was like a big thing on like CNN or whatever.
I think when I watched this for the first time, when I was watching it through for the
first time back in the day, I think I clocked this too.
And I was like, oh, I guess we are doing the sort of ripped from the headlines thing.
Because I think this is like the first one where they really sort of based it off of
like a specific event.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think that is probably some others like probably you
could argue like the bouncy house thing.
Yeah, probably directly inspired by at least a couple specific events.
But yeah, I just remember I just remember how viral the video was of that happening.
Like actually, I think I saw it in like a vine compilation at one point like that.
Like it bled over into like entertainment YouTube, which is horrible.
But it's like it's also kind of like just telling it.
Yeah, I kind of wish that someone would like take note.
I wish like in the IMDB trivia or whatever you could find like exactly which events inspired
each call in an episode.
Like somebody should make a database for that because I think it's really interesting, but
it's kind of hard to know exactly unless like you you were like already aware of the thing
that happened.
Yeah.
I think my only other thought about this call before we move on because this is a very
character focused episode.
So there's not a whole lot of time spent on the calls.
The rubble that they use the way that they set up the rubble was in to me was very reminiscent.
And obviously it's not like reminiscent because like this happened after but it was it was
reminiscent of the rubble effect they used in the opening like the cold open of Teen
Wolf the movie.
Everyone's got like saving the little girl from like that building collapsing.
Yeah, the dog.
Yeah.
And I was like, oh wow.
Okay.
Similar production values.
But we cut from that to Athena and Hen having a little hangout.
We're having drinks together at a bar.
And they're basically sort of debriefing each other on everything that's been going
on, you know, maze back at home.
We didn't really see a resolution to the sort of the CPS thing.
Right.
But I guess it's over.
They talk a little bit about the whole thing with is her name Leila the child that Athena's
been harassing.
Yeah, Leila.
Actually, I think I might have missed it because I had to put on subtitles halfway
through this scene.
Well, basically, she says that the parents are willing to kind of drop their complaint
as long as Athena drops the charges against their daughter, which Athena's not happy about.
But if it can get her off of desk duty, fair enough.
And hence telling her about Bobby, which I found this interesting just like knowing
what's going to happen between Athena and Bobby.
It's kind of interesting to see her talking about him before that before she really knows
him that well.
Yeah.
And she refers to Bobby as both Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne at various points throughout
this conversation.
So I guess, which I thought was interesting because like the Clark Kent thing I can kind
of understand they're trying to set Bobby up as like he's a good old fashioned, big
tall, strong guy.
There was a line in the previous episode where I think it was Tatiana refers to Bobby as
Gary Cooper.
She's like, oh, now I see why they call you Gary Cooper, which is an interesting reference.
Right.
I love because I love Gary Cooper.
I think maybe the Bruce Wayne thing came out about like maybe he's like his mood shift
into like the sort of.
You're right.
Because I was going to say like, I feel like it doesn't make that much sense to compare
him to both Clark Kent and Bruce Wayne.
But I guess, yeah, it's like the duality of Bobby.
Yeah.
His little Jekyll and Hyde moment.
And then of course we also get the the the the lesbian confirmation with Hen.
And this is the first time on the show for the first time.
This is the first time on the show that they've ever actually spoken about not just Hen's
home life, but also the fact that, you know, she's married to a woman and she has a son.
And like, I remember watching this the first time through and like I was like craving some
gays, right?
Other than Michael, of course.
And when that happened, it was like that fucking scene in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood where
Leo sits up and she.
You're pointing at the TV.
Yeah, seriously, I was.
And so it was interesting that it took them until episode five to to confirm Hen's sexuality.
But yeah, I guess they just didn't have an opportunity to drop that into conversation
before.
This is such a weird question.
But like obviously like like this show, like it doesn't really need this conversation because
it's good about this in a lot of ways.
But does this scene specifically pass the Bechtel test?
Ooh, no.
I think no because they're talking about Bobby for much of it.
But also like what a lot of people don't understand about the Bechtel test is it's not like an
actual litmus test for everything you watch.
It's just like a fun thought experiment created by Alison Bechtel in a Dykes to Watch Out
for a comic in the 90s.
It's not that serious.
And you get people online like male critics often, not even critics like YouTubers is what
I really mean, who will be like, you like why does things have to pass the Bechtel test?
It's like it doesn't.
Nobody said that.
Only you said that.
Nobody thinks about it that way.
It's literally just a thing from a comic strip.
And if anything, it was more about lesbians than it was about like general feminism in
movies originally.
So it's often taken out of context.
Not that that's what you were implying, but just to clear it up for our listeners.
No, thank you.
I feel like the average like smart movie watcher.
The TV watcher these days probably already knows that lore.
Oh, yeah.
But it's basically a scene can still be good to women and good at feminism without technically
passing the Bechtel test.
Yeah, I think this is a good example of that.
You know, it's it's all about sort of like this, um, a hen and Athena's friendship.
Obviously, you know, Aisha and Angela have great chemistry and it's just, I guess it's
just giving life.
It's just giving voice to both of their lives.
And I don't I mean, like it's just two women having an inner world and sharing that with
each other over some drinks.
Like I don't see anything about that.
That wouldn't be feminist.
You know what I mean?
Definitely.
And well, another piece of information we get here is that hen hen's ex has reached
out to her ex Eva, who I was kind of impressed by how well they exposited everything in this
scene because it doesn't feel like they're just like dumping information on you or like
saying it in a clunky way, but they actually give you like a lot of exposition here.
Yeah, they established that hen is married and has a child specifically who is adopted
from her ex Eva, who she has a strained relationship with and who is now in prison.
So like you get all of that just from like a pretty natural conversation.
Yeah, because you're hearing it over drinks, you know, it feels like you're having a drink
with them basically when you're hearing about their lives like this.
It's like they're bringing you into their world.
Yeah, I just remember thinking there was like a very deft line.
I thought we're like Athena, she manages to like communicate all that information in like
one or two lines where she's like, and how does Karen feel about that?
Like your wife, I don't know, something about like, how does she feel about your ex wanting
to talk to you from the pokey or something like she just gets it all out in one line,
but it doesn't feel like super info dumpy.
So maybe that's good.
Maybe that's to Angela's strength as well.
Maybe that just that's to her strength as an actor that she's able to deliver exposition
in a way that feels very naturalistic.
True, yeah.
But it is like serious like bombshell information.
It's like, hen has a kid, has a wife, ex is coming back into the picture from prison.
Has a crazy ex who's in prison.
And is also, and I think, I don't think we learn this right away, but Eva is also Denny's
biological mother.
Yes.
Well, I feel like it's kind of, they even kind of communicate that in this scene.
It's maybe not entirely clear, but there's a line where hen says, I think, like she was
okay with us adopting Denny or something.
Yeah.
So they do at least get at that in this scene already.
I think that's, it's kind of like almost like a textbook example of like a good way
to deliver a lot of exposition about a character without making it feel heavy handed without,
while making it feel naturalistic and making it feel like you're being drawn into the world
rather than having the world thrown at you almost.
Yeah, exactly.
Yeah.
It's well done.
And then we go from that to Buck, we get some of his inner world for the first time where
we...
Buck's frat house.
Buck lives in a fucking frat house.
Jesus Christ.
It is wild.
Like he is not in college.
None of his friends, I don't think, are in college.
His roommates, I mean.
And yet they live in what is like clearly, textually a frat house.
Yeah.
They have red solo cups everywhere.
He walks in and his roommates like, what is he like, playing video games with some girl?
Yeah, the girl's over and they're like, oh, this is our friend Buck.
That's a disaster.
Shout out, shout out to the set deck of this scene specifically because they paint a very
vivid picture of, it's just like covered in like dirty dishes and yeah, the red solo
cups and like pizza boxes.
But I have to say, Buck as a 26 year old living in a frat house, very embarrassing.
Very embarrassing.
And honestly, it makes a lot of sense.
Like when you see everything he does on the show up to this point and then you see this,
it's like, oh.
He's that kind of person.
It's like, I'm not saying like at 26, you may very well still be living with lots of
roommates.
You might not have like a super amazing living situation.
Frat house is rough.
Yeah.
Don't get me wrong.
I live in an apartment of four other guys.
There have definitely been nights when we have had kind of like what you might consider
a fratty vibe, but we all do our chores.
Right?
We all clean.
Or other guys.
I didn't know this about you.
Oh yeah, Lore Drop.
I live in an apartment of four other guys in East Harlem.
We have two bathrooms.
We all have our own room.
It's great.
We have a big living room.
Do you all sleep in one bed like the grandparents and Charlie and the chocolate factory?
We do.
Yeah.
We cuddle up and we take shifts like who gets to be whose boyfriend for the week.
It's like very much like a Polly situation.
Of course.
And this is the only way you can afford rent in New York.
Yes, of course.
But it's actually been bad because Rainbow has been a gaslighting sock about doing the
dishes for months.
Yeah, no.
But like I like I on like on the one hand, like I can like somewhat relate to Buck that
this is a very like 20 situation, but like there's a line, right?
There's a line.
At 26, you've got to start doing your dishes though, I think is the line.
Yeah, 100%.
You got a sweep, you got a vacuum, you got a mop, you got to clean the bathroom.
You got to buy real glassware instead of using those red solo cups.
And then you have to wash them.
That's probably why they use the red solo cups so they don't have to wash them.
You live in LA.
You have a dishwasher presumably, especially in a house like this.
You probably have a garbage disposal like you have so many tools that you
He doesn't know how to use either one of those.
Buck is one of those people.
He's like googling how to turn dishwasher on.
He can do anything.
He just has to be showed how to do it once.
Garbage disposal.
Where is it?
I just want to mom this guy.
I want to mom him so hard.
I want to like get his life in order.
Do you think he knows how to do his own laundry?
That's the question.
Season one, buck 1.0, I'm not 100% sure he does.
Laundry.
And I feel like he would give him an iron to iron his uniform.
He'd be like...
Why do I need this?
He would just press it to his skin.
Burn himself immediately.
But then he gets home.
Obviously, it's a very noisy place.
It's a very chaotic spot.
I presume it would be hard to unwind and focus and everything.
Wait, wait, wait.
One more thing, roasting buck about his frat house.
Isn't it kind of a surprise that he doesn't just sweep on a mattress on the floor that
he has a real bed frame?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
That would have been one more detail to really sell it.
Yeah.
I'm surprised his floor is in dirtier.
I feel like he'd be the kind of person to walk around barefoot and then he gets that
like foot seasoning from when you don't sweep.
Oh, God.
You know what I mean?
Not seasoning.
But then, you know, he goes up to his room and he gets a text from Abby and it's like
a spam text because we found out later she sends it to all of her contacts.
But it's a flyer.
It's a missing person's flyer for her mom who, as we know, walked out the house and
didn't walk back in.
Yes.
So he immediately calls Abby.
Abby and Carla are kind of frantically bustling around the house trying to figure out how
to track down Patricia, which is her mom's name, which we couldn't remember in one of
our last episodes.
So Buck's like, you know, are you okay?
What's going on?
And he kind of, once he hears what's going on, he immediately is like, I'm coming over
and I'm going to help look for your mom.
And this is the first time Buck is going to have seen Abby.
And obviously this is the first time they'll have seen each other in person.
She knows what he looks like.
He doesn't know what she looks like.
So this is going to be interesting.
And we'll find out what happens with that in a moment.
But right after that, it switches to Hen going to visit Eva at the prison.
Yes.
And it's Eva with the cornrows.
Eva with the cornrows and the prison jumpsuit giving a little oranges, the new black.
Okay.
So do you consider any story about prison giving oranges for new black?
Women in prison, white women with cornrows in prison.
Their reunion is very tense, right?
There is a very palpable tension between the two of them, but not like a hatred or a despise.
It's like a jilted lover's tension.
Obviously, Eva greets Hen by calling her baby.
Yeah, you can just tell that however they left things was not very good.
Obviously, Eva's in prison.
They, well, I'm not trying to imply that Hen put her in prison.
She, yeah, Eva's kind of seemingly trying to pick up where they left off a little bit.
Hen's not having that.
She's like, I'm married.
At one point Eva says, you don't want to catch up with your girl.
Hen's like, you're not my girl.
Eva tries to ask about Denny, who is Hen and her wife's son, but you know, Hen doesn't
really want to tell her much about him.
It's like not really her business now that he's been adopted.
We find out.
And basically the purpose, yeah.
We find out that Denny's full first name is actually Diesel.
Well, do you think that's like his full name or just like what Eva has called him?
Yeah, it might be what she called it.
Like, I think it would be like just based on the slice of her life that we get from
this, like, I think it would be in character for her to be like, let me name my son Diesel
and then Hen to be like, we're going to call him Denny.
Yeah, I guess she does have the line where she says we call him Denny now.
I don't think she says his name is Denny.
That's wild if Denny's legal name is Diesel.
Yeah, his government name.
Well, anyway, it turns out the purpose of Eva's doing this, asking Hen here is that
she's up for release soon because like good behavior, it sounds like.
And she's been trying hard.
She's been like taking some accounting courses.
She's like ready to get back in the workforce and she needs somebody to vouch for her at
her hearing, I think.
So she's asking Hen if she could kind of play the upstanding firefighter and vouch for her.
But Hen is a little hesitant about this.
And that's kind of where we leave things.
Eva wants her to like come in her uniform and everything and sort of like basically perform
a sort of like testimony on behalf of like a city official, right?
That like this is an upstanding member of the community.
She is fit for release.
Get her out of that cell.
Yeah.
You know, and they haven't seen each other in over a year.
And so like, you know, you can only imagine like the things running through Hen's mind
seeing her again.
She still obviously has an obvious sort of like affection for Eva and sort of a patience
for her.
Otherwise she wouldn't be here and she wouldn't be like having this conversation with her.
But like she walks away from this seemingly considering it.
Yeah.
And like you said, that's sort of where we leave it on that sort of ambiguous note.
Then we go from that right back to Carla is at Abby's.
There's a knock at the door.
She answers it.
Buck appears and Carla melts.
Well there's a great moment here where Abby where Buck sees Carla and goes Abby.
You know, there is totally like a thought running through Carla's mind like, yes, that's
me.
Hello.
What if I just ran to this?
But then of course the camera pans over.
Abby appears.
Abby in her cute little overalls.
Her cute little overalls.
Yes.
And like the glasses with them too.
Very farm rapport.
And like the messy hair like very giving sort of like Watt pad protagonist.
Very like sort of like.
It's like, oh, I'm just thrown together today.
A little Sardu Valley core even.
Sure.
And you know, this is Buck's first time seeing Abby and he gets this little look on his face,
but they have business to do.
So they can't focus on that right now.
Right.
They get right into tracking down Abby's mom.
Abby has kind of with her 911 dispatcher powers.
She's kind of figured out all these things like this is the mile radius we need to look
in.
And it's incredible that she's made like just like a map of like all the possible routes
based on like the time elapsed, which is like nine hours.
And her mom's calculated three mile per hour walking speed.
Yeah.
They have a funny line where, you know, Carla's like Patricia is an annoyingly fast walker.
And they have this like this like just like this great just sort of like this like radius
of like possible places to where she could be.
And they just commit to spending the day checking everywhere.
They're like, yeah, like one mile at a time.
And she see in Abby's eyes like, oh, he's alive.
I do like, like I was thinking when they were on the phone earlier and Buck was just like
immediately like, okay, I'm coming over to help you.
Like even back then with Buck 1.0, I feel like it's he was always just like ready to
help someone at the drop of the hat, you know, even if it's kind of inconvenient for him
or even if it's someone he doesn't know that well.
And I feel like that's one of the reasons we love Buck, you know, it's just in his nature.
He's a really good person, you know, and he's just just kind and giving and generous and
so handsome and, you know, he's got those giant arms, those big arms and that's that
cute birthmark.
Oh, despite living in a fat house, you know, remember the fact that he lives in a frat house
remember the fat house, remember the probably can't do laundry.
It's okay.
From there, we can write Bobby in church.
Right from the all could use the visit to church right now.
Yes, we could.
Let's let's let's feel the healing warm presence of the Lord.
I'm writing it in.
Right.
And speaking of gay people, the gay priest is back and we're in the pews with with Bobby
and homotron.
Hot gay priest.
And he's struggling with whether to, I guess, trust his team with sort of like the truth
of his past, you know, he's saying like, you know, they've given me so much of themselves
and I've given them nothing in return.
Right.
And then the priest asks, like, what are what are you hiding from them?
What are you holding back?
And he goes, says this in the craziest possible way that he could.
He goes that I murdered my own family, which once again, I just have to call us back to
the Degrassi episode where Eli Golds where he says to Claire, this is where I killed
my girlfriend because exactly the same energy.
Yeah.
It's like cut to the reaction shots of Claire and hot priest respectively.
See, you don't got to say it like that, man.
You're making it worse for yourself.
You don't got to say it like that.
So now I have.
Okay, from there, we cut to huge Bobby flashback.
This is much of the episode.
Cut to Bobby in his car title card, St. Paul, Minnesota.
Five years ago.
How do you feel about the rep, but the rep.
Oh, I love it.
You know, I love it.
I just love to see St. Paul in the movies, in the television, anytime.
I guess this isn't like the best.
Well, all we see of St. Paul is them having a terrible building that isn't up to code
that catches on fire and kills a ton of people.
Blowing endorsement for 11 city.
Not every building in St. Paul is like that.
Right.
Yeah.
No, it seems like a great place.
I can't wait to visit at some point.
I just voted on two city questions for St. Paul.
So we flashback to St. Paul, Minnesota.
My hometown in which I still live.
Five years prior.
Five years ago.
I don't know why, but I thought the fire was more recent.
I guess because Bobby had moved to LA more recently or something like that, I think he
moved to LA.
Yeah.
He mentions at one point that he spent like one or two years after the fire, like living
on pills and vodka.
So I guess it was like kind of just stayed in St. Paul like on a bender for a while.
I think, I mean, we'll get more context in like his Bobby Begins Again episode in season
two.
But yeah, I also kind of misremembered that.
I wasn't sure it was that long ago.
Yeah.
But it was fully five years ago.
This is kind of like, I guess the predecessor to all of the Begins episodes because this
is the first time we're actually taking like a significant chunk out of an episode to spend
some time with the characters past.
Yeah.
Definitely.
So approaching it from that, I guess, angle, I have more of a patience for it.
I already told you that I normally kind of hate flashbacks as a narrative device just
because I feel like they always slow the momentum of an episode or a film or whatever to like
a complete dead stop.
But I think here, because it's such a character focused episode already, I think it works
better.
And I think this show generally handles it better than most.
I mean, it's such a like fast paced, sensational show in general and like the flashbacks are
no different, I feel that.
Yeah.
I don't mind a flashback.
It's all about execution for me.
Yeah.
So in this one, we have Bobby is sitting in his truck alone drinking.
He said truck.
So that doesn't go well.
He said truck and I thought of Darren Hansen.
A real life truck.
Truck.
Is there another truck coming to our driveway?
Driveway.
There's not another truck coming to our driveway.
A real life truck.
Okay, we can't get too side trucked.
Can't get too side trucked.
Am I right?
I'm not saying truck.
No, I can't.
Miss Julian.
I just love the way that she hits the T and the K too.
It's just the perfect way of saying truck.
Anyway, Bobby, I don't even really know that it was a truck.
I think he was sitting in a truck, whatever.
It was the same Paul I called a truck, you know, but he goes inside.
We see he had a wife.
He had a wife and two young children.
He is kind of getting his kids ready for bed.
He kisses his wife when he walks in and you can tell that she immediately like smells
something on him or can tell that he's off in some way.
He's getting ready for bed with the kids and he like falls asleep while like sitting on
the toilet next to them.
So we're getting some kind of red flags already.
He puts the kids to bed.
They're like adorable kids.
Oh my God.
The most adorable kids in the entire world.
She's like, she's talking about, did you know that the best car to get hit by is an ambulance?
Yeah.
You know, the best place to get robbed is inside a police station.
Right.
And it's like, yeah, like the best place to get shot is in a hospital.
Yeah, yeah, totally.
Well, she has a line where Bobby says something like, where'd you get that big beautiful brain?
And she says, probably Target.
Probably Target.
I think, must have been, I don't know if they were trying to like set the scene in Minnesota
since like Target is a Minnesota company.
But they must have had targets in LA by 2018.
Oh, 100%.
We had targets everywhere growing up in Washington.
So they're big on the West Coast.
But like, I want to believe that that was supposed to be a Minnesota thing.
I also got my brain at Target.
I love it there.
After he puts his kids to bed, you know, we, he has a little, obviously he has a little
moment with his son.
His son's kind of concerned for him, but he goes lights out.
And he has a talk with his wife and we sort of learn, and this is, I think this exposition
was handled a bit more clumsily than the Hen and Athena scene.
Sure.
Which exposition do you mean the back thing?
I mean the back thing primarily.
We learn that Bobby has chronic pain because he broke his back about five years ago, which
explains why he sort of self-medicates with booze and uses this like excuse of like going
on walks at night to drink and to take pills and all this stuff, right?
Yeah.
He mentions that, you know, his wife kind of approaches him like, I'm thinking maybe
we should go to another doctor about your back.
He says, you know, they say a broken back never really heals, which I think this is
interesting because I feel like they kind of forget at some point in the show that he
initially started using because of chronic pain because I feel like that never comes
back again.
Ever.
Or the fact that he broke his back.
Yeah.
So that's interesting.
Like I wonder, like does he still have struggle with pain management or is that just like,
that was just an excuse and it actually got better and he was just using anyway because
he was addicted, I don't know.
I guess by this point in the timeline, like in the modern day, it has been a decade since
he broke his back.
Right.
So it's probably said a broken back never really fully heals.
That's true.
I mean, my back is kind of fucked up right now.
So that's probably true, which is, I hope you didn't break it.
No, definitely not.
Just like a little bit of a strain because I was, I had some bad form on some hack squats
and I was kind of overloading.
So don't don't do 300 pounds on hack squats unless you are very, very, very convinced
that you have the form down to a T.
Oh, I do not intend to.
But yeah, so Bobby says, I'm going out for my walk and the wife seems to kind of know
what that means, but you know, she can't stop them.
So he goes to his little secret drug den, which is like another room in the apartment
building.
It's like three floors down, like three floors down.
I think it's room like 306 or 308 or no, like 608.
I forget whatever.
I think it was 608.
Yeah, I think it was.
Yeah.
Yes.
So he goes into his little drug den, he's like got a space heater in there.
Because he doesn't pay the utilities in that apartment, obviously it's too expensive to
have two apartments.
He just pays the rent on it.
Yeah, they also mentioned it's like in the deep midwinter, you know, it's like super
cold out, his wife mentioned.
Classic St. Paul, Minnesota.
Hey, actually, if this took place five years before 2018, so 2013, this could have been
around the time of what they called the polar vortex in Minnesota, this was a whole thing
where like it got unbelievably cold for several days during the winter of, I think, it might
have been 2014.
How cold are we talking?
I remember they canceled, like they canceled school, not because of snow, but because
it was so cold.
Like because they were like concerned people would like freeze.
Yeah, like because it wasn't safe to travel basically because of how cold it was.
Yeah, no, the polar vortex, our first one, I'm pretty sure was in 2014, but then we
had like several more polar vortexes.
Negative 55?
Yeah, dude, it was bad.
What the fuck happens in your state?
I'm telling you, I was in like seventh grade and they canceled a ton of school for like
a week or two.
Wow.
Because you just couldn't go outside.
I had a dog at the time and I would like take him, like not even around the block just
to like the end of the block and back for his walk because like we couldn't be outside
for any longer than that.
No kidding.
Jesus Christ.
I mean, he's looping it back to St. Paul of the show's universe in order to beat the
cold.
Feel free to cut as much or as little of that polar vortex sidebar as you want.
It's important context because in order to beat the cold, Bobby uses both a gas lamp
and a space heater.
Yeah, and he's also like sloppily pouring liquor into a flask, you know, so kind of
getting that everywhere.
He accidentally falls asleep while he's doing this.
He has the heater next to these like seemingly like very flammable drapes.
Yes.
Which is which is crazy.
I wrote in my notes, it's kind of giving final destination again where you're just getting
all these little hints of like little dangerous things or things that could go wrong.
If I could like link it to anything specifically, it would be the girls in the tanning beds
in Final Destination 3.
By the way, it's fucking setting this up.
Well, I was thinking more of the teacher in FD1 who, you know, she has like the most
like Rube Goldberg kind of death in the movie where like a ton of they're showing you a
ton of little hints of all these different things that could happen.
And one of them is she's like really nervous because she is scared that death is coming
to get her.
And she's like pouring vodka into a mug and it's a mug with a crack in it.
So she's walking along in her house and it's like dripping, leaving this trail of drips
of vodka.
And then she spills a little bit in like her computer or printer or something and you see
the sparks and then eventually a fire starts and you see it like light the trail of vodka
drips along her floor.
So that's what this was reminding me of.
And obviously it ends in like the big knife moment.
Yes.
Once again, similarly to the glee thing, if we don't talk about Final Destination at
least once per episode, we'll also die.
We'll wither and die, yes.
But Bobby accidentally falls asleep during this little ritual and when he wakes up it's
like been a couple of hours and so he comes back to his apartment, his wife's asleep on
the couch.
She clearly was waiting up for him.
So this looks bad.
He wakes her up, kind of tries to explain himself, but she already knows.
She's figured it all out.
She is really upset.
They have this little talk about it.
He's doing, I think, an interesting thing.
Like I liked the way they depicted kind of where his mind is at, like in the throes of
this addiction, where you can tell he's really still trying to like rationalize it all to
himself and to his wife.
He says some interesting things.
He seems to still believe that he has it under control.
He says at one point he's like, I'm Superman.
I go into burning buildings and come out without a scratch.
You know, it's like he's doing this sort of self aggrandizing thing, like addiction wise
to like convince himself that he doesn't really have a problem, which I thought was interesting.
It was.
And it was very, it was honestly, it was really realistic.
I've known many an addict in my day and sort of the self rationalization and sort of the
defensiveness is obviously, you know, sort of a very real space to be.
And especially when you know that you have a problem, but you're not ready to admit it
or you're not willing to admit that, especially you've fallen off the wagon after working
so hard to get back on it.
You know, he mentioned that he'd been to rehab a year prior.
There's so much like sleight of hand to like try and keep it from loved ones.
So I feel like, you know, he's been doing all these things.
He's got like these rituals to basically try and cover it up, like going on his little
walk and stuff.
And, you know, the wife brings up a lot of very fair points.
She's like, have you been driving our kids to school high?
And apparently he has.
Which you know, he absolutely has been.
Absolutely.
Yeah.
And she actually honestly, you know, says a very understandable thing.
She's like, I just need you to get out tonight.
Like I can't, I love you and I'm going to forgive you, but like I can't deal with you
tonight.
Yeah.
And she's like, spend the night in your drug den or whatever.
It's interesting that she sort of the way that this aesthetically mirrors the way a lot
of like similar scenes in other media happens where a wife confronts a husband about an
affair, right, and sort of the way that that breaks up a marriage and breaks up a family.
But this addiction is sort of like a chronic problem that they're that they're working
like multiple years, obviously, to sort of work through together for the sake of their
kids, for the sake of their marriage.
Obviously, you know, she loves him very much still.
And not only does he like have his schemes, but he has his schemes down to like a science.
You know, he's so practiced with it where he has the lamp ready on the counter, you
know.
Yeah.
But even falling asleep, he rushes out of the drug den and he leaves the space heater
on.
Oh, yes.
So final destination hint.
He left the space heater on without thinking.
I do want to say in this conversation, though, I just have a problem where I have trouble
taking Peter Krause's performance seriously sometimes, not that I think it's not that
I think he's bad or anything.
I think he just comes off a little like over the top to me in a way that I like.
Like as I've said many times, I love like the campy elements of the show.
But like to me, I think he's technically good.
It's just he has this unique style.
And I wanted to say he there's just something about like the moments in this sort of conversation
when he's like listing all of all of the things he does or like the drugs he started
using.
He just rattles them off in this sort of like really matter of fact, quick way that I found
kind of funny.
He's like, yeah, well, I started my back started hurting again.
I got a prescription.
I started doing pills and then I started drinking again.
Like, I don't know.
He's like not really giving it any like.
It's like he was like he was delivering his lines in the cadence of like Nicole Kidman
and being the Riccardo's like it was like it was like an Aaron Sorkin joint scene.
Yeah, he is like Catherine Hepburn in Bringing Up Baby.
Oh my God.
Again, I don't think it's bad, but like and I've noticed he does this.
Sometimes he's like a very quick.
He'll deliver dialogue very quickly in a way that kind of this comes off as kind of silly
to me.
But I don't know.
I just like if you watch that argument back, there's something it's also like with his
little smirk on his face, it just makes him seem like less serious.
But again, not saying it's bad, just like a funny thing.
We can say funny to me.
We can say he's very theatrical.
He's a very theatrical actor.
Yeah, but like in a way that I love, I also wanted to point out, I feel like he was doing
a lot of the Bobby Smirk in these conversations with his wife.
Definitely.
Maybe maybe just maybe just his natural resting state and it's like it's like Oliver starts
accent and he has to like train himself out of it.
So he kind of goes out again because his wife told him to spend the night somewhere else.
So he tries to go back to his drug den.
He's like forgotten the key so he can't get in.
So instead he goes up to the roof, falls asleep drinking, taking pills on the roof, which
back to the polar vortex thing.
That's what I thought was unbelievable is like, damn, he would, I don't know if he'd
be able to.
He would die.
I mean, he's drunk and high.
So who knows.
Yeah, maybe that's keeping him warm inside.
Yeah.
And then his wife asks him what he's taking, he says quote everything.
Everything.
He says everything, just everything.
I'm sorry, not again, this is not like funny subject matter, but that also I was like,
damn, everything.
Everything.
Like is he being literal?
What's like, I don't know.
I don't see any track marks on his arms.
Like it can't be everything.
I think he was supposed to be just like exaggerating, but I thought it was kind of a funny thing
for him to say.
I just like imagine what everything entails, like, oh, he's smoking some pot.
Like, you know, he's taking ecstasy.
He's taking opiates.
He's fucking going to a music festival and like doing acid with a bunch of hippies.
It's drinking.
But then he wakes up a few hours later and we get a 911 call in the flashback.
Yes, wild, wild, revolutionary.
911 call of the episode and it's in the flashback and Bobby wakes up, buildings on fire, people
are dying.
Yes.
So he rushes back down to try and make sure his wife and kids are okay.
He first like finds a man who's on fire, puts the fire out.
He finds his family's apartment door.
He kicks it in and right as he kicks in the door, he and this man both fall through the
floor.
The floor gives out.
It collapses.
Yeah.
He goes to check on his family.
Some firefighters come in.
They seem to recognize him.
They're like, Bobby, you got to get out of here.
He, you know, obviously is in like not only is he high and drunk, but he's like fully
in his survival mode, got to save my family mode.
So he's just like frantically yelling at these people.
He's like, give me your gear.
Basically begging them to like, like, let him like go in there and like get his family
out.
It's like, it's very tragic to watch.
Honestly, it is.
It's, it's rough and they have to like physically drag him out of there.
And I think that point is when we cut back to the present in the church.
That's all we see of this flashback.
And the gay priest asks him like why it happened and, you know, well, first of all, the gay
priest is wiping away tears.
Yeah.
Which I thought was a great detail.
Like what an empath.
What an empath.
He chose the right profession.
Yes.
And yes, sort of like why it happened and Bobby reveals like, like nothing in the building
was up to code.
Obviously, this is why he took everything so personally at the Indian wedding.
Yeah.
The sprinklers didn't go off.
They're like asbestos in the walls and it was made of like very shoddy material.
Like, you know, the, I think there's like, I don't know, like electrical cables weren't
hooked up properly or something like that.
I don't know.
It was like, he's basically everything that could have been wrong was wrong.
Yeah.
Gas pipes were, were not insulated properly or something.
I don't know fucking now.
It was just like, it was like everything that could go wrong with the construction and management
of a building did go wrong and he didn't see it because he was always drunk and high.
Yeah.
And like, obviously he has a trained eye for it.
Like if he was sober or one presumes, he would have been able to see something and
be like, maybe we should get an inspection going here.
So he feels a sense of guilt over that.
He obviously blames himself not only because his space heater was basically the inciting
spark, which I don't think we technically mentioned we hinted at it, but yeah, we actually
see his space heater spark.
Some very funny looking CGI spark effects, you know, so in addition to him like literally
technically being the start of the fire, he also just feels like had he been in his sound
mind, he would have noted all of these problems with the building's fire safety.
Yeah.
We find out 148 people died in the fire, including his wife and kids.
He has an insane line where he says he choked them on smoke and then burned their little
bodies.
Which I'm sure is how it feels.
I'm sure it's how it feels.
It's like, damn, he is very tortured.
Very tortured.
And honestly, you do see that in like the way that he sort of his breakdown scene.
I feel like those breakdown scenes are really hard to do, especially when, you know, I feel
like male actors are always given the note to sort of like rein it in.
You know what I mean?
And you think Peter is not reining it in?
No, I think he's letting it all out.
And good for him.
Good for him.
Bobby needs that.
Yeah.
So yeah, the priest is basically encouraging him like, you know, you've been carrying
this burden all by yourself.
Like you should just be honest with your coworkers, which makes Bobby emotional, but you kind of
get the vibe that he is going to try that.
Yeah.
The gay priest is correct.
Yeah, he's correct about that.
Of course.
I don't think, I was going to say, I don't think he has anything to be ashamed of.
I don't know, but I don't know if that's true.
I thought it's like honesty is the best policy.
Yeah.
He'll never get closer to his team without letting them in like this.
Yeah, exactly.
Exactly.
And it's like, it's the, it's the day that he stops standing in place and starts walking
towards them and meeting them where they are.
Yeah.
So we cut to Hen and her wife, Karen, at the playground.
Yes.
Our very first Karen Wilson appearance.
Yass.
This episode marks the first appearance of Tracy Toms as the one and only lesbian rock
ass scientist, Karen Wilson.
Literally.
Basically the star of this show.
Yes.
I was like, I had like air horns going off in my head when she showed up in this episode.
Certainly the most.
Finally.
Certainly the most deserving recurring cast member to be promoted to main cast.
It hasn't happened yet.
Yes.
Well, it's hard to say.
I mean, she would have to get more involved with like the first responder stuff, I think.
And I also don't think it's like bad to have characters be in the background as long as
they're like given adequate stuff.
Yeah.
But like, I mean, Albert was main cast for a season.
Yeah.
So I don't know if he gets one season of main cast, she should get one too.
Tracy top.
It's like Karen becomes interim captain somehow.
How great would that be?
I don't know if Michael could be a firefighter, but I am a rocket scientist.
If Michael could be main cast for all those seasons, Karen can get one.
I don't think I don't think Michael was main cast.
Was he not?
Oh, I could have sworn he was.
I don't think he ever was.
I would think he only was ever recurring, but I could be wrong.
Michael Grant.
I'm looking this up right now.
Yeah.
Michael Grant is a former main character on 911.
Who is the ex husband of a thing?
Okay.
But that's not the same as that's just like what his what his wiki says.
No, no, I'm telling you, he's he's main cast.
I don't believe that.
Okay.
I mean, like was he billed as a as a main cast member?
Yeah, I'm like, I'm going to the Wikipedia right now because they have it listed.
I know that May and Harry were also main cast for a while and then may make sense to be
main cast in the seasons where she becomes more of a.
Yep.
Rockman Dunbar as Michael Grant, Athena's ex husband seasons one through five.
Well, okay.
If you say so.
I'm not trying to like be not trying to be mean to Rockman Dunbar.
I just feel like his character did not seem like main cast.
Yeah.
I mean, I mean, neither did Albert, but he got a season like on his Wikipedia.
It says main cast season one through five, like all of his seasons.
That just does not make sense.
It just doesn't.
Well, you know, good for him if he was like being paid for that type of billing.
But damn.
Yeah.
So, here, Hen and Karen are taking Dunney to the park and they're sitting on the bench
watching him on the playground as parents are often do.
So true.
And they're having this little conversation because Karen wants Hen to, I guess, sort
of, I guess leave Eva in the cell and hence, Hen is kind of leaning more towards helping
her out.
Yeah.
I wanted to note in terms of like the production design of this scene, Hen is wearing these
like conspicuously dark sunglasses where you cannot see her eyes at all.
And maybe it's reading too much into it, but I feel like that was a conscious choice on
the part of the costumer to be like, she's in this murky state of mind.
And like, you know, she's like, Karen can't quite trust her right now and she's not really
showing her hand completely.
And so we can't see her eyes at all in this scene.
I like that.
That was my thought.
No, I like that.
I like that.
Maybe she was wearing the super dark sunglasses to communicate like she's not being totally
forthcoming about her feelings towards Eva.
Yeah.
She's being a little shady, so she's wearing her shades.
So shout out to whoever made the decision to give her those super, super dark sunglasses.
Yeah.
And it's a pretty brief scene, but and it's like just like sort of, it's like a tertiary
sort of introduction to Karen, but it is good to get Tracy Toms in the episode and you find
out more about what you'd imagine Karen's feelings about Eva would be, which is she
hates that bitch.
Keep her in a cage like, you know.
Yeah.
Hen has a line where she's like, she's not as bad as you think.
And Karen says she's worse.
She's worse.
Right.
Yeah.
So from there we cut to back to Buck and Abby.
I almost said Buck and Eddie.
No, not yet.
Not yet.
Getting ahead of myself.
Buck and Abby, this is another kind of interestingly structured episode where like instead of like
really cutting back between like A, B and C plots in a really evenly distributed way,
we have like opening a couple like introductions and then like huge Bobby flashback and then
we get back to everybody else's stuff.
Yeah.
And you know, I was sweet on it before just because I liked the character work that they
were doing, but I'm not crazy about the structure of this episode.
It just feels very like sort of disjointed and kind of poorly paced in my opinion.
Like I really like the rhythm that they get into as the show goes along where they sort
of have an even spread or at least a more even spread because I think that helps keep
things rolling.
Whereas I feel like, I mean, like I certainly like for a while you sort of forget that like
the thing with Patricia is happening or like the specifics on everything with Hennan Eva,
like is like you're spending so much time with Bobby and his flashback.
And like, I don't know, like all the stories are kind of equally interesting to me.
So I just, I just, I want to spend an equal amount of time on them.
I don't know.
Maybe that's just me, but I don't know.
I don't think like it didn't not work for me, but yeah, I did kind of take note of this
being a kind of weird way to structure it.
Yeah.
So Abby and Buck are in Buck's Jeep together.
They're talking about looking for Patricia.
They've got Athena on the line, like letting, keeping them updated if the police hear anything.
They've also got one of those little scanners to like, yeah, scanners to hear whatever calls
come in on the like police radio and very styles core, by the way, very styles.
And Buck has this line that I took note of where, you know, they're talking about how
this is the first time they're really meeting each other.
And he says, worst first date ever, which reminded me of the previous episode being called worst
day ever.
It, you know, made me want to go, Buck, no, that title of the episode is worst day ever.
And then he just like, he just jumps right into like, oh, you haven't had sex in a year.
He is so scandalized by hearing that she might not have had sex in not even like under a
year.
Yeah.
And it's like, Buck, it's honestly not that crazy.
It's not.
Stuff happens.
Like life gets a little bit.
There are some great moments where like, you know, she says, it's been a while since
I've been on a date and he says, what, like two weeks?
Something like that.
Oh, God, he's such a goddamn menace.
Buck 1.0, you will always be famous.
Jesus Christ, Buck.
Most people are not going on separate dates that often.
That often.
I'm projecting.
Maybe that's just speaking for myself.
I mean, like, I definitely, I've certainly known some people who have.
I can tell you from my experience, I like to like get to know people for kind of a substantial
amount of time.
I don't know.
Not Buck though.
Yeah.
Buck and Abby happened to hear on their little scanner, a call come in about a downed power
line that has electrified a pool where a little girl is stuck in the pool on like a
pool floaty, so they decide to go help because they realize they're closer to it than the
first responders coming to the rescue.
And so they like run into these people's yard and yeah, scary situation where you have
this like, gotta be like two or three year old girl sitting on this big floaty in the
middle of what you know is like a live charged pool.
Some guy has jumped in to rescue her.
They're like, is that the dad?
And the mom says, no, that's the man.
The man.
Poor manny.
He is dead as fuck.
Yeah.
And she's by the way, she's floating on like a giant slice of pizza essentially.
Like, like it's a pizza shaped floaty.
Yeah.
Awesome.
They're trying to figure out what to do.
The dad comes out of the house and tries to run to the pool.
Buck tackles.
Football tackles him as he is want to do.
Buck is always fucking tackling people.
Yeah.
One of his signature moves.
It's a crazy scenario, but it's also it's Abby's first time out in the field and she
gets this fucking like insane thing.
And so she thinks fast and she goes to the rubber hose that doesn't conduct electricity.
Well, let us just say that before before she gets that idea, Buck picks up like a killer
whale shaped pool floaty and she's like, what are you doing?
And he's like, I'm going to ride this out to the middle of the pool, which doesn't make
any sense because like his legs would definitely get into the water.
But I love that that was his first idea.
Maybe he'd be like maybe he like one of those like those planking guys.
Remember when planking was big?
Oh, yeah, he's going to plank on the.
Yeah, right above the water.
Yeah, he definitely won't fall.
The core strength for that.
Probably I just don't know they is the balance or that floaty has the the fortitude.
Right.
So thankfully Abby is like, okay, we're not going to fucking do that.
Yeah, we're not.
Abby walks over to the garden hose and snips off a big length of it and they decide to
like, you know, Abby's on one side of the pool, bucks on the other.
They take the hose and like walk it over to the girl, have her grab onto it so that they
can pull her to the edge of the pool, which is pretty smart.
And they get her out of there and then the firefighters arrived.
They're able to turn off the electricity.
I hope they were able to revive that Manny because what an awful way to go.
The 5000 volts and pool of water.
I don't know.
It's not looking good for him.
But people on this show have survived way crazier than that, if we're being honest.
He was floating.
I mean, it was probably only like a couple of minutes.
Wasn't his eyes open though?
Well, that doesn't mean anything.
How many volts do you think pumped through Buck when he got struck by lightning?
Spoilers.
You want this man to keep that in.
You want this man to be alive so bad.
I'm just I felt bad because like the fact that he's the Manny like imagine dying over
some dumb ass job.
Yeah, I don't know.
And I probably like from one of those agencies.
You know, my sister used to work for one of those like not glamorous work.
You're like underpaid to go look after kids for rich people.
And then you die in a pool trying to rescue the kid you're taking care of.
I just know that if I was Buck and Abby, I would have been so pissed off that right
as we finish this stunt, the fire department comes and turns off the power.
I thought that too.
I was like, oh, you probably could have just waited.
Yeah, like I like who knows if they would have thought of the ingenious.
I guess no, because they turned the power off.
I was going to say who knows if they would have thought of that great rescue, but I guess
it wouldn't have mattered if they turned the power off.
It's like when you wait like for your opportunity to start jaywalking and you get that perfect
little gap in the cars.
And then as you're walking, the light like turns like green on your end.
So you could you could have walked anyways.
It's like, oh, okay, great.
That's a very New York comparison for you to make.
Congratulations on the fact that it's no longer illegal to jaywalk in New York.
Thank you very much.
I got a hit tweet out of it.
Yeah, I noticed.
I got people getting angry at you in the comments.
It was my first.
It was actually my first non-summerton related hit tweet.
Damn.
Yeah.
Congrats on that.
You don't need your legacy to be tied to that guy.
Thank God.
Twitter hit tweet legacy.
Thank God.
That's that the replies that were so funny because it's like everyone's like actually
cops who's jaywalking as a way to criminalize black people and harass them.
I'm like, I know that.
I know that.
Like it's the NYPD.
Who do you think I am?
It's like, I was a joke.
Sweaty calm down.
Twitter is like millions of the most humorless people in the world.
Seriously.
Getting together to try to experience jokes together.
It's not a good mix.
It's okay.
At least 400,000 people thought it was funny.
So you know, that's comforting.
That's comforting.
We go from there to we have this sort of scene where they're walking away from the call
and Abby's sort of, she's riding the high of saving that little girl's life and you
sort of, you get to understand what they both see in each other.
Right?
You know, Abby's tied down with her mom.
She says back in the car, like it's hard to feel sexy with your mom dying and the living
room or something like that.
And so she's...
Yeah.
She's drawn to Buck's reckless, daring, adventurous life and he's drawn to her stability, it seems.
Because then in the car, he actually says, I was looking at your hands earlier because
you know, when you deal with stuff like that, there's all this adrenaline and my first few
calls, my hands would be shaking like crazy and your hands didn't shake at all.
Yeah.
I feel like it's kind of a metaphor for, yeah, what he likes about her that she's this
stable, calm kind of person.
Yeah, I agree.
It's a really good way to do this sort of like this kind of age gap relationship where
you sort of tie it into, first person to say age gap relationship in a way that's praising.
Give us more of this age gap relationship.
You actually tie it into like who they are as people and sort of like what they need
in their lives and their lack and what they're finding in each other.
It's like, you know, she finds this sort of youthful sort of thrill seeking lifestyle and
Buck and he finds this maturity in her, this stability like you said.
Yeah, Buck needs to come to age.
Yeah, it's exactly that.
It's kind of, it's almost like a coming of age moment for both of them where she's reclaiming
her youth and he's coming into his maturity.
Yeah, yeah, it's like both of what their strengths are in these two different periods
of their lives and how they're able to help each other kind of, dare I say, great written
romance.
I would agree.
I did not.
I did not anticipate that we would be such like Buck Abbey stands as we have been so far
in this podcast.
I think part of it is that we know that it's not a permanent thing.
It's like kind of easier to just enjoy it.
Yeah.
Because we kind of know that the stakes aren't that high since it's not going to last forever.
It's like we're Abbey in this situation and we're like, well, this probably isn't my end
game, but I'm just going to like enjoy this whirlwind while I can.
They're just stepping stones for each other.
And honestly, it's kind of all they need to be because like that's kind of where they
are in their lives.
It's sort of what they need.
So yeah, I think it really works.
And honestly, it's like, it's making me wonder why the Buck Abbey hate is so strong at all.
Yeah.
You know, I wish I knew.
Wish I knew.
Why do people hate Abbey so much?
Could it be that they just hate Witton?
So they get a call from, yes, they get a call from Athena, who says that somebody matching
Patricia's description has just been brought into a hospital.
So they rush off to the hospital.
It's a fully night time, by the way.
She's been gone for like almost 24 hours.
It's become evening.
And so they bring Patricia home, right?
I had a feeling you would have something to say about this scene.
So they bring Patricia home.
Buck is still with them.
And Patricia like looks at Buck.
She's like, is that Tom?
I listen, I felt so vindicated for a moment because I said in my video that, okay, assuming
that most of our listeners are like watching the show currently, not all of them probably,
but like if any or like if they've seen my video or whatever, if they know about what's
going on currently on the show, you know, Buck's dating this guy, Tommy.
And the joke that we keep referring to in these episodes is that Abby early in the show
also mentions having an ex named Tommy.
And so this is sort of a fan like crack theory of like, obviously this isn't the case, but
imagine if it was the same time.
And in this scene, Patricia like mistakes Buck for Tommy.
And something I pointed out in my video is that I have always felt that the Tommy that
Buck is dating now kind of looks a little too similar to Buck for me to like be on board
with their relationship.
They don't look identical, but like they have kind of similar build, similar hair or whatever.
And so in this moment, I was like, wait, this actually makes me think this is like more evidence
for the two Tommy's being the same.
If that if Buck would be mistakeable for Tommy, but I realized that the mom has Alzheimer's.
I wrote down in my notes, Jane's gonna love this one.
And you know I did.
I know you did.
And like, I just like, I wrote, I wrote in my notes, the jokes right themselves.
The reason I go so hard for this fan theory is because like, I'm correct me if I'm wrong,
but Tommy's not a very common name.
Right.
I mean, I don't think it's uncommon.
I'd be like, Thomas or Tom, sure.
But like, how, how many grown adult men do you know, go by Tommy?
Right.
It kind of evokes like a propeller hat.
Little child.
Right.
Hey Tommy.
Hey Timmy.
Hey Jimmy.
Hey buddy.
Like, you know, like it's that sort of thing.
I just, I need this to be canon now.
I started out like admonishing you for even bringing it up.
And now I'm like fully on the conspiracy train.
Like yes, it is the same Tommy.
I know exactly how it happened to Buck would be at Tommy's apartment.
He'd find like an old like photo book and he'd like, oh my God.
How do you know Abby?
You know Abby?
And it's like a big moment and cut to commercial through the mirror of my mind.
And then we'd come back and be like, it'd be like really like, like it would be like
kind of like intense standoff almost.
I love like all the shippers have been like dreaming of all these different ways he could
break up with Tommy.
What if this is the reason?
This is the reason.
I'm sorry.
I just can't date another person who's dated my traumatic ex.
Yeah.
Literally.
I have like no hard feelings at all, but this is a deal breaker for me.
In fairness, Eddie will have already come out at that point.
And so Buck will have seen him as a viable alternative and wait, I'm so sorry.
But also, hasn't there been like a recent thing with like what the casting crew have
been saying about like what's going to happen next in season eight?
Didn't they say that there's going to be a thing where like Buck learns more about Tommy's
past?
Yes.
Like challenged by that.
Yes.
They totally did.
It's happening.
You heard it here first.
Well, this is what's going to happen.
And this is so funny too.
Because by the time we post this episode, like probably episode six and maybe even episode
seven will have already come out.
And almost definitely proved us wrong.
But I think we should keep this in.
Just a little time capsule.
Like we'll know who the president is and we'll also know definitively that we're wrong.
Yes.
Yass.
I'll be a Tommy Abbey truth or for life though.
Me too.
And honestly, I'm also a truth that Tommy has a wife.
That would be insane.
But I'm not really, I can't say I'm a truth or for that.
It's okay.
But I'll take the abbey thing.
It's okay.
I'll do like the really like insane shit.
It's okay.
I'm happy to do that.
But so then Abby and Buck are saying good night.
Oh, there's also a funny moment with Patricia where she like, she like pulls buck closer
and she's like, take care of her.
Be kind to Abby.
She's like, okay mom.
Bye.
Did you ever see that SNL sketch?
I think it was like a segment they used to do on Weekend Update where Andy Samberg
would come on and he would be playing specifically the like jock boyfriend in a teen romcom who
gets like rejected for like the real love interest.
No.
Did you ever see this?
I mean, his whole act was he would be like wearing a Letterman jacket.
He sort of goes up on there and he's like, hey, take care of her, man.
And like that was the whole joke.
Oh my God.
Let's remind him of that.
That's fantastic.
Then we get to Buck and Abby in the kitchen as they're saying goodbye.
And what the fuck kind of game is Buck trying to have?
He's like, what exactly does he say to her?
He's like talking about like, wow, this is the longest I've been hanging out with a woman
that I want to have sex with.
Without having sex with her.
And Abby jokes, oh my mom.
Yeah.
He's like, it's the nightgown.
Buck, yes, he answered.
He would be great at improv.
He'd be great at improv.
It's the nightgown.
It just drives me crazy.
Yeah.
Kind of a weird exchange, but you know, they're matching each other's freak.
They are.
They like each other's humor, apparently.
They are.
And honestly good for them.
So then they kind of resolve to just be phone friends again.
In fact, one of them has a line.
I think it's Abby.
She says, go back to being phone buddies again, which I wrote down in my notes with no commentary.
No commentary.
But anyway, they say goodbye, but it's a very like kind of charged moment where like clearly
they're very into each other and they've just gotten a lot more attracted to each other
by meeting each other in person and you know, having this intense day.
They say goodbye anyway.
It's not a chased hug.
It's not a chased embrace.
And we'll just say that.
Neither of them want to let go.
And then we go back to the firehouse.
It's the next day.
There's this residual tension between Hen and Bobby.
But Buck walks in feeling like a million bucks.
Like, hey, million bucks.
Hey, million bucks.
Hey, at ease.
Look at this.
I didn't even do that on purpose.
It's like a big golden retriever energy.
I mean, like a buck is a dog.
He says, Bobby, oh, Captain.
My handsome captain.
He calls him Gary Cooper, Clark Kent looking captain.
He calls Hen Henry.
Eta.
And she threatens to fucking like throw him over the rail.
Over the back and as she said, as she said.
And they get their last call the episode this guy, he's a carwash attendant and he gets
stuck in the fucking brush.
I assume this must have also been based on a viral video. That was just my only thought.
What one assumes? I don't know. I so
My first job that ever had I was a car wash attendant when I was 15
Did you ever get stuck in the
In the spin cycle? No, cuz I waited for the fucking
Thing to turn off all the way before I hosed it down
But I could totally imagine my dumb ass 15 year old self like a hosin down the car wash and just like fucking getting caught up in
these fucking brushes and the guys and the guy's fine obviously just like really like dizzy or whatever he has whiplash
Checking him out. We finally get a chimney mention, which I'm not sure chimney was even mentioned in the last episode
Oh, I don't think he was finally get a chimney mention and
You know just Bobby and passing saying like can't wait for chimney to be back
But they get the guy totally safe, you know, like you said, he's fine, but then we hear
a fucking laughing
And they walk over and he's looking he's reviewing the security footage of the guy getting spun around
Hen is the first to kind of you know, Bobby's like, that's not funny, but you know hen kind of breaks
I love are you should hide like laughing
She has some really great moments. She says like I'm not laughing
Like her laughter was really funny. I thought bucks sounded a little forced, but you know, he's still getting his experience
But you'd expect like in like a more like self serious show Bobby to like admonish him and be like buck
This is not okay. That man could have been seriously hurt
But instead Bobby starts to break down Bobby breaks to and it's like their little bonding moment where they all
Finally the tension breaks. Yeah, and then afterwards, you know hen comes up to Bobby and they finally have a little moment
What does she say to him? Is she like just trying to get him to open up again? I think so. Yeah
I know he and he does he tells her, you know that
You know, he lost everything that he cared about everyone he cared about
and
Too afraid to let more people get close to him. Yeah, he's been afraid of losing them again
Yeah, but then he says very fun like kind of dad energy line where he's like, I'll take you guys back to the station
I'll cook you a meal and I'll introduce you to somebody and she's like who and he says me
And it's very sweet. It's it's like it's the sort of the wholesome sort of family thing that you sort of go to this show for
And and it's good and it's really good. And so then
Final scene final scene one last sequence between Buck and Abby Abby's putting her mom to bed
Abby so iconic with Abby is wearing like a an oversized button-up shirt
Yeah, as her pajamas and she's holding a huge glass of white wine. Yeah
And she gets a call from Buck and Buck is lying in bed shirtless
Tits out his fucking like tits out. He's got the covers on the covers pulled up, you know
We've got to stop sexualizing Buck so much. I felt kind of uncomfortable listening to
No, one of our maybe our fourth episode. Yeah, we probably should it probably be it's probably pretty irresponsible
But I mean if the show sexualizes not just a piece of meat Ryan
The buck 1.0 or buck on the hole true
Is it ethical to sexualize buck as long as it's buck 1.0 as long as no, I mean like I mean this is the show's
Whole like thing with him right in the first season, right? He's a very sort of sexualized presence and then he becomes a
Little bit more I guess mellowed out as the show goes on all I'm saying is I am less slutty
He gets less slutty all I'm saying is I am
Riding the high while it lasts
Fair enough, but they start talking on the phone and you can tell bucks just like up to something basically Abby
Okay, I first of all love the energy of Abby getting into bed with a glass of wine
Yes, like I've definitely like sometimes like you're hanging out just like sitting on your bed
And I've had wine in that situation. I can't say I've ever like gotten into my pajamas gotten under the covers
With a glass of wine, but now that's like on my bucket list. I think that's iconic of her
I all I'll all say is I totally have
Fair enough. No, I think that's the way to live. I think I've been depriving myself
Also, I just want to I just want to enjoy the irony of you saying we need to sexualize buck less on the scene where he has
phone sex with Abby
Okay, okay. I'm being a little over the top whatever because you know
They they they're talking on the phone and he goes. What are you wearing?
Right. Yes. He asked the classic first. He's like asking her if she's in bed. She says, yeah, I'm in bed
and then yeah, he asked the classic what are you wearing and
the episode just kind of cuts
It's like it's like tasteful cut away. It's like he goes like don't me to stop and she goes
No, no
And we love a consent asking King true, you know even phone sex means consent
Otherwise, you're just one of those creepy phone callers in a slasher movie. Exactly
Yeah, so how do we feel about this episode? Yeah, I mean, I know you said you're not a huge fan of the structure
It's like I said, I think it works for me like it probably could be cleaner, but I don't think anything really didn't work
I love to hear more about Bobby's tragic backstory. You know, it gives us so much context. I
Again kind of digging the buck and Abby thing which I didn't really anticipate on this rewatch
But mm-hmm. Yeah, we love that. Yeah, loved the hen stuff overall like as much as the structure is kind of weird
I like how much we get of all our characters in this episode other than chimney
Obviously, oh
Portion we like still come a toast in the hospital is he'll be back. I want to say next episode. I want to say
It must be yeah, I don't think he's missing for that long. No, I wouldn't think so. No
I I definitely think that's the biggest revelation for me on this rewatch is just how much I'm enjoying the buck Abby
storyline
What's their ship name? Is it babby? I think I just think it's buck Abby
His babby's kind of ugly. I mean, you can't do like
No, I think I think it's just buck Abby
Fair enough. That's that's that's how you know buddy cannon because that's the only buck ship name that has a good or monto
Yeah, I think you know the I'm really really
Curious about the the hen Eva stuff how much attention that's gonna get in the narrative going forward
So remember it getting quite a bit of screen time
And it's leading to some other things that happen in this season. Yeah, I remember I remember it leading to a bit of frustration
On my end with hen's character in that I was basically just pounding on my TV screen like no
Hen stop you have a family
Like yeah, we'll have to deal with that when we get to it
Yeah, but for now that all is a relative piece in the Wilson family and
Yeah, we'll just I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes from here
You know as much as the structure
Pained me a little bit. I did enjoy all of the time with Bobby's story. I think his story is definitely
one of the most interesting for me and
Yeah, I'm looking forward to exploring it more in the dedicated Bobby episode in season two
When we sort of are I guess prepared to set aside that sort of amount of time for it
But yeah, I think great performances this episode
really good character writing and good development especially after such an action-packed last few episodes I think
Scaling it back and having a more character-focused episode this time was definitely warranted. Mm-hmm. Yeah
I mean they just pack so much into this season. It's pretty wild
I believe our next episode is the Valentine's Day episode which is exciting
So stay tuned for next week. We will be covering season one episode six. I think it's called heartbreaker
Heartbreaker look forward to that kids and that's remember and hopefully our country still has a democracy
Yeah by the time you hear this. I hope everybody got out and voted, you know, I know it's not
The rosiest year, but there are some choices that are worse than others
So I hope we all made the right one and just remember no matter what happens
One day he'll die and we can all take comfort in that true
And so with that, thank you for listening to this episode of the first response cast you can find us on Twitter
And on YouTube and tiktok now we are on tiktok
We do technically have our first two tiktoks pretty much flopped. Yeah, however are they on YouTube shorts?
They did okay. They got a few hundred views. Oh nice. Okay. Well, that makes sense like we're youtubers
So that's kind of our natural domain. I don't really know how any of these things work
But basically we got like no views on tiktok, but you know, we're trying we're trying we're making it work
But yeah, we're on YouTube now
And we're trying to post like some highlights and outtakes on like our YouTube shorts and our tiktok and stuff
That's just all at first response cast as always you can find us on Twitter at first response cast spelled how it sounds
Spelled how it sounds
There's nothing else called first response cast out there. So we pretty much have all the user names cornered nothing at all
You can find me on Twitter at Dan comma dirty and on Instagram at Prime Minister of Sadness. I also
Upload videos occasionally. I am working on one right now. So stay tuned for that. Yeah, I'm on Twitter at Jane underscore Mulcahy
Don't ask me about Instagram and
Honestly, we should just start putting our socials in like the descriptions of these episodes because I feel like it's getting kind of
tedious to plug them every single time honestly, but also always be plugging always be plugging
Don't stop plugging, you know. Yeah keep watching my 9-1-1 video
Over and over again because it's got good legs and I want it to just keep getting views until I'm rich and famous
Is it monetized it sure is oh, yeah, thank you Fox and ABC for not copyright claiming my video
Hey, that's awesome. There is nothing here's like a little youtuber behind the curtain
Thing is that there is nothing that feels better than uploading a video to YouTube
Certain it's gonna get a bunch of copyright claims and that you're gonna have to re-edit a bunch of times
And then it goes through checks no issues found green dollar sign. Oh, I feel so good
It's only happened to me a couple of times. I remember when I uploaded my Teen Wolf video
It was the most grueling editing process of any video I've ever made in my entire life
And then the upload process took about eight hours
Because I was on like, you know, I'm I'm still on the same computer. I uploaded it on and it's you know
It's it's nice, but it's you know
It's not the highest end computer in the world and I got out there and I got 40
Copyright claims from Paramount and I had to dispute them all individually
They were all rejected and I had to appeal them all individually. Oh my god
To do it worked it worked on like 99% of them
But there's one of them that is still on there and so to this day my Teen Wolf video is still demonetized
Oh, I didn't know that. Yeah, that sucks so bad. I did not make a penny off of that video. Oh my god
everybody Venmo Ryan
Yes pay my rent
If you watched the Teen Wolf video you owe him money you owe me money one dollar for every hour you watched
No, I feel like I've gotten pretty good at like sensing like how much footage is too much footage to use in any individual
Thing like when to cut back to myself. I basically just try and cover up like my jump cuts and stuff
Yeah
But yeah, I actually had several places in the 911 video where I was pretty sure I had used like too long of a clip
And I was gonna get flagged, but then it just didn't so that was amazing
Oh, yeah, I did whenever I get a copyright claim for something
It always gives me the vibe that whatever property it is is like insecure, you know
When I get copyright claims about Teen Wolf, I'm like, oh you need my pennies, huh?
Right, right. Oh, you guys aren't doing well financially. Oh this last fiscal quarter wasn't so good for you, huh?
Yeah, take my money take my money you have a to steal from a poor
23 year old in St. Paul, Minnesota. God. All right. Well with that we'll probably cut the recording here
So thanks again for listening and see you on the other side of this fucking
Other side truly
This concludes the election night special. Yeah, have a good night
Bye, respodcasters. Bye.