It’s a road trip from hell for Buck (Oliver Stark) and Eddie (Ryan Guzman) in the March 12 episode of 9-1-1.
It all begins when they can’t get a flight back from Nashville due to a software glitch. But because they want to make it home for Hen’s (Aisha Hinds) birthday in 36 hours — remember last season? — they decide to drive back to Los Angeles. Only, things go terribly, terribly wrong. TV Insider spoke with showrunner Tim Minear about the story he wanted to tell in this episode and what’s ahead as Buck, in particular, heals from what happened. Warning: Spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 13 ahead!
At first, everything’s great. Buck and Eddie even sing along to Kansas‘ “Carry on Wayward Son,” a song Supernatural fans know well. But when they get lost off Buck’s navigation, things turn a bit sour. It all boils over when they stop in a diner (and get directions). Eddie blames Buck, saying that doing what he says is the path of least resistance with him. But then wonders if he’d jump off a bridge if he told him, quickly correcting himself that Eddie would probably already be jumping because he has a death wish. It escalates to the point that a homophobic patron asks if they’re done, and Eddie gets in his face. Buck tries to mediate. Eventually, they get back on the road and apologize — only to be run down by a truck. When Eddie comes to in the medical clinic, Buck is missing — and the sheriff is too busy focused on him as a suspect to actually do his job.
And so Eddie turns to Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), Athena (Angela Bassett), and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) back in L.A. to help him conduct his own investigation and go searching for Buck, which includes sneaking out of the clinic. Buck, meanwhile, is being held by the diner’s waitress, Bonnie (Melinda McGraw), and cook, Earl (Jeff Kober). She wants him to be the son who’s been hooked up to machines because of a motorcycle accident 14 years ago, to the point that she calls him Derek. He tries playing into her delusion before attempting to make his escape, only to end up moved from the son’s bedroom to the shed out back.
Disney/Christopher Willard
Soon after, Eddie finds himself at their house, and once Buck realizes he’s there, he promises to do anything if they let him live, even be Derek, bringing up his best friend’s son, Chris. It looks like Eddie’s about to leave, still thinking the homophobic man and his friends from the diner are responsible, but then he spots the truck that ran them down under a tarp. Eddie and Bonnie fight for control of her gun, and Buck hears it go off. Then, Earl goes outside to help, and Buck stops him before he can shoot Eddie. Then, the sheriff arrives and finally realizes what really happened. And with that, Buck and Eddie are able to continue on their way home — where Hen has missed her own surprise birthday party because Karen (Tracie Thoms) planned a weekend away and no one told anyone their plans.
Below, showrunner Tim Minear breaks down this episode, teases what’s ahead for Buck, discusses Eddie’s love life, and more.
Why did you want to tell this story with Buck and Eddie at this point in the season?
Tim Minear: The opportunity presented itself. They went to Nashville, and it just felt like here’s an opportunity to do something a little bit different. You know what’s great about these kinds of episodes? They’re always my favorites. I do them on Lone Star all the time. They’re always my favorite episodes because our main characters are in jeopardy, and it’s usually smaller, a little twisted, and it’s a thriller, and they’re cheaper to make. So this is always a good time in the season to do something like this because you spend a lot of money sending people to space or whatever you’ve done, and you have to start clawing back some of the budget. And so this is a way to do it. I did an episode of Firefly many years ago called “Out of Gas,” and it’s like everybody’s favorite episode. And I did it because we ran out of money. The whole thing takes place on the standing set. I know I’m going far afield of your question, but it just felt like an opportunity to do it.
And it was a way to start to shift the narrative a little bit into Buck’s point of view, because if you look at the season, I’ve been trying to give every character — Basically, the question I’ve been asking myself this year is, if it’s a story, a deep personal story that I could have told without Bobby’s [Peter Krause] sacrifice, it was probably the wrong story. So, I’ve been trying to give each of the characters a moment to express the hole in their heart, their grief, and now it’s time for Buck. And so to me, this was a way to start to shift into Buck’s point of view and to just give you a taste of it without the name Bobby being mentioned every five seconds.
We saw Buck willing to sacrifice himself for Eddie to the point that he kind of accepted he might die there. How is that going to affect him going forward?
I don’t know if that particular moment is going to affect him going forward. I mean, I think that’s just written into the DNA of those guys that they’re willing to — and really the whole team would be willing to — sacrifice themselves for their teammate. But Buck, for sure, has a deeper connection, I think, to Eddie, partially because of Chris. He’s thinking of that kid. The ordeal that Buck goes through in this episode will absolutely start to reveal some cracks going forward in Buck.
What can you preview about that? And also, how is this going to affect Eddie? Because Eddie went through some stuff, too.
Eddie went through some stuff, but I think it was different for Eddie. I think maybe when you’re kinetically moving forward and — Eddie wasn’t thinking about his own survival. And of course, Buck does get to that point of being willing to sacrifice himself, but I think it’s a little — and I also think that Buck was physically more damaged than Eddie.
Yeah, I agree. So what can you preview about conversations we’ll see between Buck and Eddie in subsequent episodes about what happened? Because no one else can understand what they went through.
You’re going to get it in the very next episode.
What can you tease about that conversation?
That Eddie is concerned that maybe Buck is not fully dealing with the trauma.
And it sounds like he’s right.
He’s absolutely right.
How is Buck reacting to being confronted with that?
By deflecting and kind of trying to handle things on his own in his own way, behind closed doors.
Is that something that he’s going to be able to realize he can’t do in one episode or is this going to be multiple episodes?
It’s more than one episode.
Buck and Eddie’s conversation in the diner kind of felt like something that needs to be said for a while because yes, there was what was building up as a result of them getting lost, but also the part about Eddie’s death wish and jumping off of a bridge, because that was the beginning of the season. Is that something that you’re going to be exploring going forward?
I wouldn’t say that we’re leaning into Eddie’s “death wish.” And by the way, I don’t think Eddie necessarily does have a death wish. I think the reason he jumped off that bridge is so that Buck wouldn’t.
So are you going to get into that? Is that going to be the part of the story then that you’re telling?
Look, we got picked up for Season 10. I can’t do it all in three episodes.
Was the fight in the diner with Harley simply a red herring or more to that?
Yeah, it was a way to service the plot in that sense, to make it feel like, “Oh s**t, we don’t know who these guys are, and it’s turned into a thing, and then that truck appears.” And of course, I want the audience to assume it’s those guys. But also, I needed to create some drama in the diner because you’re talking about a whole act of setup before a car crash happens. So hopefully I skillfully kept you engaged for 10 minutes before the story started. I mean, to me, the first 10 minutes is my favorite in the episode.
I loved it. It was also just fun to see them — because we knew what was coming — have the joy before everything. Speaking of, talk about using “Carry On Wayward Son.”
I had a couple of different songs in there, and I don’t remember what the first one was that I had in there. And then it was Buecker, Brad Buecker. I was like, “Well, what about this and what about this and what about this?” Because we had to clear the song before we shot, because often we’ll put in a song and then try to clear it in the editing phase, and then maybe have to switch it out, or it comes down to the last minute. But obviously, this needed to be cleared up front since they were going to be singing to it. And Brad recommended Kansas, and so I put it in, and I thought it was great. And then Kristen [Reidel] is like, “You know, of course, this is going to have a lot of meaning to the Supernatural fans.” And I’m like, “Why?” Because I’ve never seen Supernatural. She’s like, “Well, apparently it either ended or started every season of that show.” And I was like, “Oh, no. Oh, well.” But I wouldn’t have it any other way because to me it is absolutely just perfect. But yeah, I was not aware of the Supernatural connection. And I’m sure a lot’s going to get made of it.
Was it important to have Buck and Eddie apologize after their fight and before the kidnapping separation? You knew you wanted them on good terms before that? Because it wouldn’t really matter, they’d still fight for each other either way.
Yeah, that was a question. Often in a story like this, what you will do is that you will create a rift between the characters that is not resolved so that it can resolve. And in this instance, as I was writing that stuff, it just didn’t feel real to me that they would be mad at each other for very long. So, yeah, for the truth of it, it felt to me like that is what would’ve happened, that Buck would have apologized and Eddie would’ve realized he was being a b***h, and things would calm down a little bit.
Disney/Christopher Willard
Eddie’s been avoiding dating all season to the point that he had Maddie bid on him for himself at the auction, a moment I loved, by the way. Why is that for Eddie? It can’t simply be because of Chris. Is anything coming up there with his love life?
Sometimes the story just kind of tells itself. And look, you know this, Meredith, it’s like — there have been a couple of points along the way this season where I have considered going down a dating situation with Eddie and various female characters on the show, but then I just felt like either the chemistry wasn’t there or there was just too much story I was telling and I just want to be very careful about trying to hook these characters up with outside characters. I really think the successful couplings on this show have often been existing characters. Or if you think of Karen, who is not a first responder, but she’s been there since the beginning of the show, so she’s been in the world. So I just think you have to be very careful to not try to just cram some contrived thing into the story. And I just feel like it’s not working, then I just move past it and go to the next bit.
On Lone Star, Owen [Rob Lowe] was often slugging people in the face. Now, that was not a plan. That was just me having very few ideas. I get into a scene, and it’s like, “I need something to happen, and I’ll just have Rob punch the guy in the face.” At some point, I realized, “Oh boy, I’ve done that a lot.” And then it ended up becoming the story, right? He had to go to anger management. And so sometimes things just aren’t planned. It’s almost like when you’re writing a show like this and trying to keep up with production, it’s almost like you’re on the current of a river, and you just have to try to at least not go under. So, things that might seem carefully strategically laid out, no, it’s mostly just chaos.
So it’s kind of just figuring out what you want to do with Eddie’s love life before you really go and do something?
Yeah, I just don’t want to go down another dead-end road.
What else is coming up, especially for Buck and Eddie as they’re moving past this and as they’re getting back into this regular life at the 118?
Well, there’s a significant time jump when we come back in Episode 14, you see that their physical manifestation of their injuries is gone. Buck’s back on duty. So, some time has passed, but in the very next episode, we’ll get into the fallout from Buck kind of not having dealt with things. And I think a lot of it’s really his Bobby grief. I mean, that’s really what I’ve been trying to do, like I’ve mentioned before. And with Buck, it’s like, yeah, OK, so there’s a crazy psycho woman who wants him to be Derek. That’s all well and good. To me, it’s really about that moment where he says, “I lost somebody and sometimes I don’t know who I am without him, and he’s not coming back.” That is the first clue that — I want to just resolve some of that for Buck before the end of the season because I certainly don’t want the show to just be … And I think we avoided it to a large degree. The whole season didn’t feel like a wake, but we sure didn’t forget what happened.
And I have to say how much I love the moment you had Maddie say, “He would do that for me. He did do that for me.” That callback was so great.
Yeah. And you owe that to the audience, really. You can’t ignore any of that stuff.
Is there anything else you can tease about what’s coming up heading towards the finale, or just any more crossovers?
No more crossovers. All the characters will have something. I got some big twists and turns coming up. I mean, hopefully, you’ll find that the last run of episodes grow out of everything that sort of came before [in] this season on some level. Things have been set up a little sneakily earlier on, and all that will come to fruition. But yeah, there’s a few jaw-dropping moments coming up, I think.
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
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