9-1-1 Recap: Living in His Post-Glee World

It feels like 9-1-1 knew we’d all be crushed under the weight of election week and decided, “Let’s do a silly one.” That’s not to say there aren’t heavy moments in “Confessions” — and rest assured I have feelings about those — but the calls are a lot lighter than what we’ve been seeing, without the life-or-death stakes of Denny being pinned to a house in the Halloween episode. There are also enough funny and thrillingly bizarre scenes to at least balance out the somber stuff, and for that I am grateful.

The first emergency of the episode tells you the kind of tone that’s in store: Trent calls 9-1-1 and says his wife has taken his mother, which sends Athena in pursuit of what she thinks is a kidnapping. But Trent’s mother is long dead — Celeste has absconded with her mother-in-law’s ashes. As it turns out, Trent really only cares about the vase holding mom’s cremains, 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, an appropriate punchline to a very silly cold open.

Thematically, I’m not sure what the vase incident has to do with confessions, except maybe that Trent confesses his true intentions, for whatever that’s worth. Eddie going to confession, on the other hand, is on point. It’s been 23 years since his last visit, and while the priest tells him to “hit the highlights,” Eddie uses this time to once again reference the dead wife doppelgänger incident from last season. He’s emotional talking about Christopher and how he’s failed to protect him, letting Ryan Guzman deliver his strongest work of the season so far. It’s a lovely 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 — pursuant to the episode title — a big confession. When a woman hits on Buck, Tommy assures him that it’s okay to look, even though he himself is all the way gay. It’s strange that this apparently hasn’t come up before, but I love the idea that Buck just assumes everyone around him is also bisexual. His beautiful mind. Tommy then reveals that he did try to date women and was once even engaged to one. After he broke it off, she was heartbroken and took up with a “himbo half her age.” If the word “himbo” doesn’t immediately clue you in here, you’re not watching 9-1-1 properly. Yes, Tommy was engaged to Abby Clark, who then dated Buck in season one, and while we don’t get a Connie Britton cameo outside of photos, Tommy does at least reference 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! Soon-to-be-divorced couple Walter and Liza are in mediation with their lawyers. Walter is a pathological liar — he claimed to have been mugged to hide a bad Botox reaction, something I will be using in the future — and he sneezes every time he tells one. After he swears he’s not sleeping with his lawyer, Walter sneezes so intensely that his intestines fall out from his stomach. Want to feel even more horrified? This is almost certainly based on a widely publicized recent case report, so yes, it can actually happen. (If you’ve had recent abdominal surgery and are prone to sneezing, that is.) Kudos to Liza for delivering the episode’s best 9-1-1 call: “My cheating husband just spilled his guts.” We love wordplay!

The 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 they can at least clean things up and make sure Walter makes it to the emergency room in one slightly janky piece. He ends up having a couple of 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 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’s judging Tommy for being “dishonest and cruel” to Abby, which forces a perfectly deployed Josh to butt in and tell Buck he has no idea what he’s talking about. “There’s a pre-Glee world and a post-Glee world,” Josh explains, “and you, my friend, were lucky enough to have your sexual awakening in the post-Glee world.” Buck protests that he never watched the show, to which Josh answers, “That’s the beauty of Glee; you don’t have to have watched it to benefit from it.” His point — which is accurate, if a little 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 conform to a heteronormative society that Buck can never fully understand. Even if the entire scene was the writers trying to ensure Ryan Murphy continues to protect 9-1-1 after abandoning 9-1-1: Lone Star, that does not make me love it any less.

Elsewhere in the post-Glee world, Eddie is at a juice bar when he’s spotted by the priest he confessed to. Surprise, he’s hot! Father Brian correctly clocks that Eddie chose water over juice because he doesn’t think he deserves juice — or, more broadly, joy. He tells Eddie that he has a lot going for him in the joy department, including his work, his son, and “that very handsome mustache.” (Maybe Buck is right. Maybe everyone is bisexual.) Eddie reveals that he grew the 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 earn forgiveness and stop punishing himself and 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 third emergency of the episode is the most serious, though still pretty goofy in its execution. After being told off by his older brother Miles, young Jack falls into a drainpipe in his backyard, and though his parents can hear him, they can’t get him out. When the 118 arrives, they realize that Jack keeps sliding down deeper, making it harder and harder to breathe. (“Positional asphyxia,” Hen explains. Again, 9-1-1 is the most educational show on television.) They’re going to have to get Jack out of the pipe, 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’re really going to let another small child go down the pipe? Obviously, it does work; I’m just questioning the methodology.

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 has been sharing her feelings about wanting another child: Jee-Yun is missing Mara, who spent three months as a temporary big sister. Chimney is worried about Maddie having another baby given that her postpartum depression after Jee-Yun’s birth was so severe she ran away for several months. (In real life, Jennifer Love Hewitt was on maternity leave, which makes that particular storyline a little troubling.) After the emergency call, Chimney realizes he does want a sibling for Jee-Yun. What if she falls into a drainpipe! And his change of heart is good news because Maddie is already pregnant.

The other relationship update of the episode is not as heartwarming. Inspired by the speech from his gay elder, Buck decides to make his own confession to Tommy (“I’m the himbo”) and to ask Tommy to move in. Tommy is taken aback — not so much by the Abby stuff, but by Buck’s sudden proposition. Ultimately, 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’m your first,” he says. And suddenly, they’re broken up. It’s a disappointing and cowardly move from Tommy, and a deflating end to this storyline. Even if you never considered Buck and Tommy to be endgame, this abrupt ending feels a little weak.

Thankfully, 9-1-1 knows how to win me back in the final scene, and this one is at least as surreal as the “post-Glee” conversation. Eddie shaves off his metaphor mustache and decides to do something joyful: He strips down to a shirt and briefs and does the Risky Business dance. Now, I said the confession scene was a beautiful showcase for Ryan Guzman, and this gratuitous and baffling scene is … a different kind of showcase for Ryan Guzman, also worthy of celebration. Just then, a heartbroken Buck arrives, and in a gift to shippers everywhere, Eddie does not put his pants back on. Instead, the two friends sit on the couch with beer and uncertain futures as the episode ends. Joyful but not sinful, boys. Joyful but not sinful!

• Maddie is a comedy queen in this episode. Her response to Abby being Tommy’s 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 9-1-1 would do the same thing twice in terms of the pregnancy storyline, 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 watch has ended. I’ve made my feelings about the sudden breakup clear, and I’ll figure out how to honor Buck’s bisexuality in the weeks ahead. Establishing a Buck-Eddie watch feels too soon at this juncture, though the show knew exactly what it was doing in that last scene.

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