Because my favorite 9-1-1 character is Eddie Diaz ( Ryan Guzman) and he’s been getting sidelined all season, I had high hopes going into this week’s episode. Season 9, Episode 10, “Handle with Care” sees the return of Abigail (Fallon Heaslip), a teenage girl whom the 118 treated on a call earlier this season when her parents locked her up and performed an exorcism on her. This call really affected Eddie, bringing up difficult feelings about his own relationship to religion and his strict upbringing. For a long time, I’ve wanted to see a storyline for Eddie that would properly address his repression and his shame, and possibly even allow him to explore his sexuality and why his romantic relationships always feel so forced for him. This season seemed to be hinting at something big for Eddie, with him reconsidering his relationship with religion, showing no interest in finding a woman to date, and just generally acting like he’s holding something back. This episode would have been the perfect opportunity for 9-1-1 to finally give Eddie the storyline he deserves this season, but instead, he gets sidelined once again in a truly bizarre hour that makes a number of baffling and insensitive choices.
‘9-1-1’ Season 9, Episode 10 Continues to Go in Circles With Harry’s Storyline

While Eddie’s storyline is my biggest issue with this episode, it went wrong with nearly every other character plot, including the main one. In this episode, we learn that Chimney (Kenneth Choi) has been having nightmares about Harry (Elijah M. Cooper) dying on the job, and Harry hasn’t even started at the 118 yet. It’s very sweet, but the nightmare that opens the episode is also pretty funny, as it ends with Athena ( Angela Bassett) yelling at him. At the root of this is yet another storyline that is centered on the aftermath of Bobby’s (Peter Krause) death: after Bobby died on the job last season, Chimney is scared that the same thing could happen to Harry. This is understandable, but 9-1-1 just spent last week showing why Athena needed to worry less about Harry, so it feels repetitive to have Chimney do it this week. The entire storyline is very heavy-handed, as the 118 and Athena tend to a call where one person has been overbearing in trying to protect their loved ones, and it winds up causing major problems. The lesson of this storyline is clear from the beginning, but 9-1-1 eats into valuable screen time trying to hammer in the fact that Chimney needs to worry less about Harry and let him actually do the job. The worst thing about this storyline is that it unnecessarily pardons Captain Gerrard (Brian Thompson) for all his past bigotry. Gerrard doesn’t even appear in the episode, and this was absolutely unnecessary, so I really don’t understand the thought process behind this choice. While giving Chimney advice, Hen (Aisha Hinds) compares him to Captain Gerrard, saying that he’s doing the same thing to Harry that the former 118 captain did to Chimney and Hen. This was just a mindboggling comparison to me, because Chimney is benching Harry out of love and fear, while Gerrard benched Hen and Chimney out of racism and misogyny. Later in the episode, Chimney further cements this argument, retconning all of Gerrard’s bigotry by essentially saying that Gerrard was just a bad captain because he didn’t take a chance on them. Later, Chimney finally gives Harry a chance, and he proves himself essentially on a call. Harry’s plan helps to put out a garbage truck fire, and then he saves Chimney’s life when he almost gets hit by a car. Harry’s storyline this episode ends with the same lesson as last week’s: everyone just needs to trust him, not be afraid for him, and move past the pain from Bobby’s death. This ends with a cute scene between Chimney, Maddie ( Jennifer Love Hewitt), and their kids, as well as a touching moment for the Grant family where Athena and May (Corinne Massiah) give Harry Bobby’s old pocket knife. Ultimately, though, this storyline just feels repetitive when it could’ve been something new.
‘9-1-1’ Season 9, Episode 10 Somehow Sidelines Eddie in His Own Storyline

Eddie Diaz and Chimney Han standing together in the firehouse in 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 10Image via ABC

Eddie and Hen serve as witnesses in Abigail’s trial against her parents, and they later get to talking with her in the courthouse. Abigail has developed an intense connection to Eddie after he rescued her, which could have been a way for 9-1-1 to explore the parallels between them. Eddie had a much better upbringing than Abigail’s, but he, too, was pushed into pretending to be something that he wasn’t, and constantly made to feel ashamed of himself by the religion in which he was raised. Eddie is proof that things can get better for Abigail, and I would’ve loved for her to view him as a mentor and mirror of herself. Instead, this is just made into a crush, and Abigail spends the entire episode obsessing over Eddie. While trying to help Abigail find a safe place to live, Eddie reaches out to Alex (Aimee Teegarden) from the LAPD SMART team for help. She’s barely in the episode at all, and all of her screentime is dedicated to helping Abigail. Oddly, though, 9-1-1 seems to be using her reappearance as a way to set up a romance between her and Eddie. We have only seen them interact in a professional capacity, and they’ve never even had a scene alone together, but Abigail’s jealousy over Alex is used to establish this romantic possibility. Funnily enough, when it’s revealed that Eddie called Alex for help, both Buck ( Oliver Stark) and Abigail immediately react to this in strong ways that seem to spell jealousy for both. I was much more interested in Buck’s mixed reaction to Alex being there, but 9-1-1 instead chose to focus on Abigail’s. Later, Abigail has somehow figured out where Eddie lives, and she shows up on his doorstep while he and Christopher (Gavin McHugh) are having dinner to tell him that the charges against her parents were dropped. There was a moment there where I could see Eddie essentially fostering Abigail and acting as a parent figure to her, because she’s just a scared 18-year-old girl who’s aged out of the foster system and now has nobody. Instead, Abigail pushes Eddie about Alex, leading Chris to tease him about her, and both of them to try to figure out if he thinks Alex is pretty. Eddie doesn’t respond and instead leaves Chris alone with a stranger for a moment while he goes to the kitchen to clear the dishes. His lack of response could be one of two things: either Eddie isn’t ready to say out loud that he isn’t interested in women romantically, or he does have an interest in Alex. I’m pretty confident that it’s the latter, even though these two characters have barely said more than a few words to each other.

Although Abigail wants to spend the night at Eddie’s house, Eddie gently urges her to leave after dinner. In the past, a storyline like this would’ve ended with the 118 coming together to help Abigail and Eddie parenting her, at least for a while. Instead, this unhoused teenage girl from an abusive household is reduced to a young woman who’s infatuated with Eddie and is trying to seduce him. The episode even ends with Abigail kidnapping Christopher, which is now the cliffhanger we’re left with for the next month until 9-1-1 returns. The misogynistic undertones of this storyline were unsettling and hard to ignore, because if Abigail been a teenage boy, perhaps Eddie would’ve welcomed him into his home and looked out for him. Instead, Abigail isn’t treated like the kid she is, and the whole thing just feels wrong. As it stands, 9-1-1 has everything at its disposal to deliver excellent character-centered episodes, but the show keeps taking giant missteps instead. As I look back on this week’s episode, I have to ask myself: who is 9-1-1 even for now? The fans who have been following and supporting this show for the past nine seasons do so because they love the characters and their dynamics so deeply. But now Bobby is dead, character-centered storylines keep getting ignored, and this latest episode was neither enjoyable nor entertaining to watch. 9-1-1 needs to do better when it returns next month, and that has to start with being more intentional about the types of stories that it’s telling, as well as how it’s telling them. 9-1-1 will return to ABC on Thursday, February 26 at 8:00 P.M. In the meantime, it is available to stream on Hulu.

Release Date

January 3, 2018

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

Maddie, Chimney, and their kids are adorably together this episode.

Abigail’s return is made unnecessary and bizarre in a storyline that falls into outdated misogynistic tropes.
The episode rushes to begin building up an unearned romance for Eddie with a woman whom he’s barely interacted with.
Captain Gerrard is unfairly pardoned for his past bigotry, which is retconned as just a lack of trust for his probies.
The episode’s pacing is poorly done, dragging out Chimney’s storyline and rushing Eddie’s.