‘9-1-1’ Recap Season 8 Episode 6: ‘Confessions’

9-1-1

Confessions

Season 8

Section 6

Editor’s assessment

4 stars

****

Photo: Mike Taing/Disney

It feels like 9-1-1 knew we’d all be crushed under the weight of election week and decided, “Let’s do a stupid one.” That’s not to say there aren’t heavy moments in “Confessions” — and rest assured, I have feelings about them — but the calls are much lighter than what we’ve seen without Denny’s life-or-death stakes attached to a house in the Halloween episode. There are also enough fun and excitingly bizarre scenes to at least balance out the grim stuff, and for that I’m grateful.

The first emergency of the episode tells you the kind of tone to expect: Trent calls 9-1-1 and says his wife has taken his mother, sending Athena on the hunt for what she believes is a kidnapping. But Trent’s mother is long dead – Celeste has fled with her mother-in-law’s ashes. As it turns out, Trent only cares about the vase of mom’s cremain, which he says is worth enough to keep him flush when he and Celeste finally divorce. But while the 118 is able to save both Celeste and her mother-in-law’s final resting place, a smug Trent trips and drops the vase, a fitting punchline for a very silly cold.

Thematically, I’m not sure what the vase incident has to do with confessions, other than maybe Trent confessing his true intentions, for whatever that’s worth. Eddie, going to confession, is on the other side in his seat. It’s been 23 years since his last visit, and as the priest tells him to “hit the highlights”, Eddie uses this time to once again reference the dead wife’s double incident from last season. He gets emotional when he talks about Christopher and how he’s failed to protect him, allowing Ryan Guzman to deliver his strongest work of the season so far. It’s a nice scene about forgiveness, so you know this arc is going to culminate in the most ridiculous way possible. (We’ll get there.)

It’s Buck and Tommy’s six-month anniversary, which means another Mexican dinner date and—as per the episode’s title—a big confession. When a woman hits on Buck, Tommy assures him that it’s okay to look, even though he’s totally gay himself. It’s weird that this apparently hasn’t come up before, but I love the idea that Buck just assumes everyone around him is bisexual too. His beautiful mind. Tommy then reveals that he tried dating women and was once even engaged to one. After he broke it off, she was heartbroken and took up with a “himbo who was half her age.” If the word “himbo” doesn’t immediately suggest you in here, you’re not watching 9-1-1 properly. Yes, Tommy was engaged to Abby Clark, who then dated Buck in Season 1, and while we don’t get a Connie Britton cameo outside of pictures, Tommy does at least refer to her “amazing hair.” (This is the gayest thing he’s said on the show so far.)

Time for the next call and let’s hope you’re not eating! The soon-to-be-divorced couple Walter and Liza are in mediation with their lawyers. Walter is a pathological liar – he claimed to have been assaulted to hide a bad Botox reaction, something I will will use in the future – and he sneezes every time he tells one. After he swears he won’t sleep with his lawyer, Walter sneezes so intensely that his intestines fall out of his stomach. Want to feel even more horrified? This is almost certainly based on a widely publicized one latest case reportso yes, it can actually happen. (If you’ve recently had stomach surgery and are prone to sneezing, that is.) Kudos to Liza for delivering the best 9-1-1 call of the episode: “My cheating husband just lost him.” We love puns!

118 arrives and the team is quickly able to set things right. Well, not in the sense of putting the intestines back where they belong – that’s a job for the surgeons at the hospital. But at least they can clean things up and make sure Walter makes it to the ER in one slightly crooked piece. He ends up having a few sneezes left in him: first, after telling Liza that he never loved her, a lie that makes her decide to give him another chance, and for that second, after swearing he’ll never cheat again, a lie that makes her realize he can’t change. So much for their happy ending.

Meanwhile, Buck continues to struggle with Tommy’s revelation, leading to the episode’s most surreal scene. (Maybe. There’s some competition.) Buck tells Maddie that he judges Tommy for being “dishonest and cruel” to Abby, forcing a perfectly placed Josh to chime in and tell Buck that he has no idea what he is talking about. “There is a pre-Glee the world and a post-Glee world,” Josh explains, “and you, my friend, were lucky enough to have your sexual awakening in post-Glee world.” Buck protests that he never saw the show, to which Josh replies, “That’s the beauty of it Glee; you don’t have to have seen it to benefit from it.” His point – which is accurate, if a bit reductive – is that Tommy grew up in a less accepting time. He hurt Abby not because he’s a bad person, but because he was trying to fit into a heteronormative society that Buck can never fully understand. Although the whole scene was the writers trying to make sure that Ryan Murphy continues to protect 9-1-1 after leaving 9-1-1: Lone Starit doesn’t make me love it any less.

Elsewhere in post-Glee world, Eddie is at a juice bar when he is spotted by the priest he confessed to. Surprise, he’s hot! Father Brian correctly points out that Eddie chose water over juice because he doesn’t think he deserves juice – or more generally joy. He tells Eddie that he has a lot going for him in the pleasure department, including his job, his son, and “the very handsome moustache.” (Maybe Buck’s right. Maybe everyone’s bisexual.) Eddie reveals that he grew a mustache because he wasn’t allowed to grow a full mountain man beard. It’s a disguise, and it’s probably outgrown its usefulness. The hot priest advises Eddie to seek forgiveness and stop punishing himself, then suggests that Eddie do something joyful after his penance. Joyful but not sinful, he clarifies, in case any of us get the wrong idea.

The episode’s third emergency is the most serious, but still pretty silly in its execution. After being told off by his older brother Miles, young Jack falls down a drainpipe in his backyard and although his parents can hear him, they can’t get him out. When 118 arrive, they realize that Jack keeps slipping deeper, making it harder and harder to breathe. (“Positional asphyxia,” explains Hen. Again, 9-1-1 is the most educational show on TV.) They’ll have to get Jack out of the tube, but only Miles is small enough to get down there to grab him. Look, I’m not an expert, just a fan of the show and a concerned citizen – you really won’t be another toddler go down the tube? Obviously, it works; I just question the method.

But hey, both Jack and Miles are safe, and what’s really important is what this particular call does on a plot level. Throughout the episode, Maddie shares her feelings about wanting another child: Jee-Yun misses Mara, who spent three months as a temporary big sister. Chimney is worried about Maddie having another child, as her postpartum depression after Jee-Yun’s birth was so severe that she ran away for months. (In real life, Jennifer Love Hewitt was on maternity leavewhich makes that particular story a bit troubling.) After the 911 call, Chimney realizes that he wants a sibling for Jee-Yun. What if she falls into a drain! And his change of heart is good news because Maddie is already pregnant.

The second relationship update of the episode is not so heartwarming. Inspired by the speech of his gay elder, Buck decides to make his own confession to Tommy (“I’m the himbo”) and ask Tommy to move in. Tommy is taken aback—not so much by the Abby stuff, but by Buck’s sudden proposal. In the end, he can’t move in with Buck because he knows how the relationship will end. “No matter how bad I want it to be, I’m not your last; I am your first,” he says. And suddenly they have broken up. It’s a disappointing and cowardly move by Tommy, and a deflating end to this story. Even if you’ve never considered Buck and Tommy endgame, this abrupt ending feels a little weak.

Fortunately, 9-1-1 knows how to win me back in the final scene, and this one is at least as surreal as “post-Glee” conversation. Eddie shaves off his metaphorical mustache and decides to do something joyful: He strips down to a shirt and panties and does Risky business dance. Now, I said the confession scene was a beautiful showcase for Ryan Guzman, and this gratuitous and confusing scene is… another kind of showcase for Ryan Guzman that is also worthy of celebration. Just then, a broken Buck arrives, and Eddie makes it a gift to shippers everywhere not put your pants back on. Instead, the two friends are sitting on the couch with beer and an uncertain future as the episode ends. Happy, but not sinful, boys. Happy, but not sinful!

• Maddie is a comedy queen in this episode. Her response to Abby being Tommy and Buck’s ex made me laugh out loud—“I wonder how many men she turned gay”—but she also provided the perfect button to the scene: “You never saw Glee?”

• I don’t think so 9-1-1 would do the same thing twice over the pregnancy story, but I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. This is a show where every major life event has a shadow of danger over it. Remember when they got married and Chimney didn’t show up because he was dying of a brain infection?

• Buck-Tommy watch: And now our shift is over. I’ve made my feelings about the sudden breakup clear, and I’ll figure out how to honor Buck’s bisexuality in the coming weeks. Establishing a Buck-Eddie watch feels premature at this point, even if the show knew exactly what it was doing in the final scene.

• Can we bring back Father Brian, the hot priest? I miss him already.