Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8, Episode 14.
Well, 9-1-1’s latest two-part emergency is officially here, and boy, is it a stressful one. Naturally, it contains a number of close calls for many of my favorite characters, with one life hanging in the balance as of the end of the episode. It starts off with a low-key emergency involving a bus crash, as well as a fun cold open where the color of the cake gets mixed up when Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) are planning to tell Jee-Yun (Bailey and Hailey Leung) that she is going to have a little brother. Oddly, though, Buck (Oliver Stark) is notably absent, in spite of being both Jee and the baby’s uncle.
There is also the return of May (Corinne Massiah) and Harry (Elijah M. Cooper), but not under the best circumstances, as they show up to Bobby (Peter Krause) and Athena’s (Angela Bassett) house-in-progress to learn that they are not included in the future house plans. It’s disappointing, and it feels more than a little out of character for Athena and Bobby, as we learn that Harry’s bedroom doubles as a guest room, and May doesn’t have a bedroom at all. This, of course, hurts both of their feelings, and it will likely be touched on again in the second half of the two-parter. Right now, though, 9-1-1’s focus is on a fire that takes place at a lab that studies infectious diseases.
Ravi Doubts Himself After an Emergency That Almost Gets a Baby and Bobby Killed

Image via ABC

The lab fire is the main emergency of this episode (and will be continued in the next one), but it starts with the 118 tending to a bus crash that involves multiple cars. They work to extract everybody from their vehicles while clearing each of the cars and the bus to make sure that nobody else is inside. Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) saves a woman and clears her car, but she then reveals that her three-month-old daughter is still inside. Bobby runs back to the car to save the baby, and he finds her, but then they both get caught in a car explosion.
Normally, it’s not that concerning when the 118 have near-death experiences because we know that they will always make it out alive. As of recent leaks, though, both of Bobby’s close calls in this episode had me a little nervous, even though that storyline likely won’t occur until after the lab fire is resolved. I am not the only one left worried by the explosion, as Hen, Buck, Ravi, Chimney, and the baby’s mother look on in horror, before Bobby and the baby finally emerge. The call ends on a high note, with everyone making it out alive, but Ravi can’t get past his mistake.
Buck takes Ravi out for drinks to cheer him up, and Ravi tells Buck that he wants to quit. It may seem sudden, but it’s not that surprising considering Ravi’s history. Back in Season 5, Ravi took some time away from firefighting in favor of staying at the academy for a while as he grappled with a horrific rescue that ended in a loss. Back then, Chimney talked him out of it, and now, Buck does. “No one else is quitting this month,” Buck says, referring to Eddie (Ryan Guzman) in what is his only mention in this episode, in spite of his whole team being put in severe danger (I get that they’re busy almost dying, but it just felt wrong). Buck steps up as a mentor to Ravi, both complimenting him and relating Ravi’s struggles to his own experiences. It does the trick, and Ravi goes back to work, where he later even has his hero moment.
The 118 Tends to a Lab Fire That Could Endanger Everyone in Los Angeles

The next call opens by focusing on the people who are in trouble, as is per usual for 9-1-1. Two lab techs, Roz (Sadie Kuwano) and Allen (Brian Knoebel), talk about working with viruses while complaining about their difficult boss. They join their boss, Moira (Bridget Regan), who has just injected a rat with a new strain of CCHF (described as a worse Ebola by Hen) that she has modified to have a much shorter incubation period. In other words, Moira has made an especially dangerous version of the virus, but she also made an antivirus that actually works. When Moira’s boss, Dr. Francis Banting, learns what she has done, he fires her, but she angrily goes back into the lab by knocking Allen out and stealing his ID badge.
Soon after, it’s revealed that the lab is now on fire, and the 118 show up to tend to the disaster. They are fully outfitted in protective gear because CCHF is very contagious and will kill them if they get infected. When the 118 enter the lab, they tend to Allen and Roz, while looking for Moira, whom they think is just an innocent person who got stuck. They also put out the fires in the process. There is then an explosion in the lab, and the protective door forcibly closes. Bobby, Chimney, Hen, and Ravi are thankfully all alive, but they are trapped inside the lab. Hen and Chimney are in especially rough shape, as she has a punctured lung, and his mask has been destroyed. Hen needs a thoracotomy, but Chimney can’t treat her without risk of infecting her, so Bobby performs the procedure on Hen guided by Chim. It may not be all that realistic, but it is an excellent scene, reminiscent of 9-1-1’s early season emergencies.
Athena and Buck try to get the 118 out of the lab, but Dr. Banting is against the idea. The Colonel who is brought in, John Hartman, is as well after learning about Moira’s new virus. Hartman wants to leave the 118 to die and to keep Moira’s antivirus (which is supposedly inside the lab, but knowing 9-1-1, of course, there was a twist) to make a vaccine for CCHF. Bobby and Ravi disobey his orders at the risk of going to supermax prison. Bobby tells Ravi to let him break the law and save Chimney, but Ravi does it himself, coming full circle from his doubts at the beginning of the episode. The only problem is that the antivirus is gone.
At the End of ‘9-1-1’ Season 8, Episode 14, Chimney’s Life Hangs in the Balance

Image via ABC

Because Maddie and Chimney apparently haven’t suffered enough since 9-1-1’s return from hiatus, Chimney gets infected with the virus after his mask is blown off. Because this strain of the virus has a much faster incubation period, he is already coughing up blood and bleeding from the nose within minutes. Still, his focus is on keeping Hen alive, which he does, before he starts experiencing symptoms. In a heartbreaking moment with fantastic acting from Choi, Chimey realizes that he’s dying, and he gently tells Maddie over the phone, “Hey, Honey… Not sure I’m gonna make it home for dinner; I think I picked up a little bug at the office.”
9-1-1 has made it clear in the past that they would never kill off main characters (if we temporarily ignore the possible Bobby situation), but there are occasionally moments that really have me worried like Buck getting crushed by a fire truck, Maddie getting her throat slit, and now, Chimney getting sick with CCHF. It’s a very scary moment, as the episode ends with Chimney deathly ill and the antivirus nowhere in sight. As soon as I saw Bridget Regan in the episode, I knew that she would probably be playing a villain, as she has previously done on Jane the Virgin and The Rookie. Now, though, she likely set the lab on fire, and she is the reason that Chimney could die because she has taken the only antivirus with her. Next week’s episode will likely show Chimney being saved, but as it stands, this is a nail-biting first half of the two-parter and a really strong episode of 9-1-1.
9-1-1 airs Thursday nights on ABC and is available to watch the next day on Hulu.

9-1-1

Release Date

January 3, 2018

Network

ABC, FOX

Showrunner

Tim Minear

Directors

Bradley Buecker, David Grossman, Brenna Malloy, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Jann Turner, Jennifer Lynch, Marita Grabiak, Sarah Boyd, John J. Gray, Barbara Brown, Robert M. Williams Jr., Kristen Reidel, Marcus Stokes, Tasha Smith, Millicent Shelton, Juan Carlos Coto, John Gray, Greg Sirota, Alonso Alvarez, James Wong, Kevin Hooks, Varda Bar-Kar, Shauna Duggins, Sharat Raju

Writers

Tim Minear, Andrew Meyers, Brad Falchuk, David Fury, Ryan Murphy, Christopher Monfette, Nadia Abass-Madden, Nicole Barraza Keim, Erica L. Anderson, Matthew Hodgson, Stacey R. Rose, Taylor Wong, Tonya Kong, Adam Penn

Pros & Cons

This episode is a nailbiter that leaves Chimney’s life hanging in the balance.
Bobby performs surgery on Hen in the middle of a lab fire.
Choi is absolutely heartbreaking in Chimney’s goodbye to Maddie.

Bobby and Athena treat May and Harry with a surprising lack of care for their feelings.
Eddie is out there somewhere in Texas with no idea what his team is going through.