9-1-1 season 8 episode 9 recap: 67 thoughts I had while watching ‘Sob Stories’

9-1-1 is back, baby! Our favourite queer firefighter show is diving in head-first for the season 8 mid-season premiere with the very aptly named “Sob Stories.”

The show drummed up some buzz (are we still doing beenado jokes?) last year with a very tense first look at the episode, which featured Maddie (the wonderful Jennifer Love Hewitt) only going and getting bloody kidnapped – again! The questions on everyone’s lips are: why? And, another classic, who? Let’s find out. 

Here are 67 thoughts I had while watching 9-1-1 season 8 episode 9, aka the mid-season premiere…

• You just know it’s going to be a good episode when they start with a creepy voice on the phone. I’m already sweating. 
• Maddie is so good at her job, taking all these calls without subtitles. I keep squinting, as if that will help me hear better.
• Maddie cry count: one. 
• They better not keep coming back to the whole Boston storyline throughout Maddie’s pregnancy this season. Just let her live her life, she’s been through enough! 
• Maddie cry count: two. (I’m counting this as two because she stopped and started again in one scene.)
• Jennifer Love Hewitt is one of the greatest eyebrow actors of our time. She’s a generational talent. 
• A Buddie scene just four minutes in, we never lose. 
• GERARD FRIEND REQUEST JUMP SCARE!
• Oh Buck. Poor, sweet Buck. 
• EDDIE DOWNPAYMENT JUMPSCARE!
• Okay, this scene is absolutely wild. Something about a metaphor around Buck and Eddie talking on either side of the glass. Something about them standing extremely close with just the glass separating them. Something about that scene from Pushing Daisies where Ned and Chuck kiss through the cling film… 
• They really are extremely close. 
• Buck, for the love of god, stop saying ‘brothers’. 
• Is it just me or is Buck’s stare more intense and unhinged than usual? Something has shifted here, I can feel it in my bones. 

• Soft piano soundtrack, a lost beagle, the pitter-patter of quiet rain. Am I going to cry today? 
• We’ve had quite a lot of dog storylines on this show. When are the cats getting their flowers? 
• Someone please tell me why I thought the dog was going to be barking down the phone to dispatch. 
• Bobby Nash, my father! 
• I fear I read into the framing too much sometimes. Seeing a massive ‘HAN’ on the back of Chim’s turnouts on the screen for a full second has me panicking we’re going to be seeing Chim facedown and unconscious at a call later on in the season. Sedate me. 
• Buck risking his life to chase a stray dog deeper into a building fire. Fork found in kitchen. 
• Buck near-death experience in season 8 count: one. 
• He’s going to adopt the dog, isn’t he?
• We are once again reminded that the parallels on this show are not subtle. 
• Maddie and Athena team-up. Oh, the girlies are out and the bobs are bobbing! 
• Detective Amber Braeburn is the killer, right? That’s the hair of the kidnapper from the trailer. Tell me they don’t think we don’t know she’s the killer. 
• Damn, this Maddie storyline is DARK. We’re really going there, huh. 
• The detective with the same hair as the kidnapper from the trailer reveals she’s not allowed to go anywhere near the killer, how very convenient… 
• Is this the first ever sighting of Buck in a cardigan? 
• Buck and Eddie are giving Cam and Mitch from Modern Family. These are exactly the kind of hijinks those guys would get up to. But they would be holding hands while they did it. 
• ‘The floor is a little squishy.’ WHAT. 
• BUCK, STOP. BUCK, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? 
• Locking in for the symbolic basketball prop… A cheeky callback to ‘Buck, Bothered and Bewildered,’ AKA the episode where Buck was embarrassingly obsessed with Eddie and everything he was doing and ended up kissing a boy over it? Interesting. 
• You’re telling me there was a guy living at the end of Eddie’s street called Methlab Jim and we never heard about it until now? We sometimes lose. 
• Obviously paused for a hot sec to look at what was displayed on Eddie’s fridge. Obviously cross-referenced it with the fridge in the kitchen scene from ‘Wannabes’. Nothing new to report. It’s exactly the same to the point where I’m actually wondering if they filmed this scene on the same day. (Do I need to seek help?)
• ‘No ties here, everything that matters is in Texas.’ My heart is breaking! 
• This feud is actually season-three-lawsuit levels of unhinged. 

• Bobby dissing the dog and then sitting down to stroke him, I’m sobbing. 
• BUDDIE DIVORCE ERA 2.0. 
• I’m going to need some Hen and Chim hijinks this season and I’m going to need them STAT. 
• Why do they keep zooming in on the mug? Athena, don’t drink anything she gives you! It’s poison!
• I don’t always follow the threads of Athena’s investigations because I’m too busy being enchanted by Angela Bassett. 
• ‘And it looks like he took Jayna with him.’ IYKYK. 
• Sue Blevins sighting! 
• Step aside, Cheerios. There’s a new Unholy Trinity in town (Josh, Maddie and Sue, slay.) 
• Killer, keep Jee-yun’s name out your damn mouth. 
• Ah, that’s… Maddie… is that… allowed? Is that in the dispatch handbook? Chat, is it ethical to persuade someone to kill themselves over the phone to stop them killing someone else? 
• Maddie cry count: three. 
• There’s no way that man in the actual killer, not with 12 minutes and a whole second episode left to go. 
• Oh, I’m sure you did find a waterproof pouch of trophies, long-haired detective. I’m sure you did. 
• If Buck and Eddie keep this cold shoulder thing up I’m actually going to develop a stomach ulcer from stress. 
• Buck sitting on the station floor with a dog in his lap while moping his little face off is the saddest sight I ever did see. Stand up, man. 
• BINGO REVEAL!
• ‘Would it be okay if he said goodbye to him?’ Chim, the light of my life. 
• We love a symbolic emotional speech to a pet that is actually meant for someone else! If the alarm hadn’t gone off I have no doubt that Buck would have ended up confessing to Blaze/Bingo right there and then. 

• The guy seeing the house is Buck, isn’t it? Buck is going to move into Eddie’s house while he’s gone, isn’t he? ISN’T HE? 
• ‘I didn’t mean to out you in front of Cap and everyone else.’ Now why would they phrase it like that? It’s giving: ‘I’m keeping my options fluid.’ 
• ‘I’m having more trouble dealing with the idea of you not being around than I like to admit.’ ‘I don’t like it any more than you do but if you’re gonna make this about me having to choose between you or my son, you’re gonna lose every time.’ And what if I died right here and now? What then? 
• (Obviously paused again to see what photos Eddie has on his sidetable. Chim makes a surprise cameo. Buck makes a not-so-surprising one.)
• Eddie is close to having another breakdown, I fear. 
• ‘Not to make it all about me, but it’s me!’ Is this foreshadowing??? 
• ‘You really did that for me?’ EDDIE, PLEASE! 
• Eddie cry count: one? 
• ‘You did really bond with that dog in about ten seconds.’ ‘That’s kind of what I do.’ I’m just quoting stuff now. Head empty, no thoughts. This scene is gold. GOLD. 
• BUDDIE HUG COUNT: ONE! 
• I’ve watched this scene six times now.
• Mama, a girl behind you! 
• Detective Braeburn. Called it, but so did everyone else.

Season eight of 9-1-1 airs on Thursdays on ABC in the US, and later in the year on Disney+ in the UK.