Last week, I was a little concerned that I was being too hard on 9-1-1, so distraught over the lack of bees in the three-part bee-nado event that it was clouding my judgment. Even as I praised the episode, I acknowledged the sting of their absence and my hope that the arc’s conclusion would have me buzzing with joy again. Instead, “Final Approach” traded bees for an overly pat ending that hastily tied up all the narrative threads — and without any of the wacky medical emergencies that have been the foundation of this series from the beginning.
That’s not to say, of course, that the episode isn’t action-packed. It picks up right at the cliffhanger of “When the Boeing Gets Tough,” with Athena doing compressions on the co-pilot. He’s been in cardiac arrest for six minutes, but as Maddie helpfully explains over the phone, if they can keep the CPR going through landing, he has a chance of survival. Athena enlists the passengers with first aid know-how to help before returning to the cockpit “to land this damn bird.”
Meanwhile, Bobby, Buck, and Brad are en route to LAX in a stolen fire truck from the TV set. Bobby is desperate to get in touch with Athena, urging Maddie to use the plane’s manifest to start calling random passengers who can pass the phone to her. Look, I understand his desperation here, but I have to believe Maddie has more important things to be doing — and Athena very much has her hands full! Besides, I expect Bobby to intuitively understand that there’s no way 9-1-1 is killing off Angela Bassett.
Things are admittedly looking pretty dicey, though. Even with Gem by her side (apologies for calling him “Jim” last week; that’s on me for not assuming a child would be named Gem), Athena can’t do much about the fact that all the damage to the plane keeps getting worse. Once the aircraft loses its rudder, air traffic control explains that it can no longer turn, ruling out a landing at LAX with its damn perpendicular-to-the-flight-path runways — and there’s only enough fuel for another 20 minutes in the air. When a passenger shows up in the cockpit with Bobby on the line, it does kind of feel like the worst possible moment for a tender conversation.
How foolish I was to not predict that Bobby would be the one to figure out a solution to the runway situation. As Athena explains the problem to her husband and Gem says they’ll need a mile of runway, Bobby realizes that the 110 freeway might just work perfectly, provided he can help clear it very quickly. This honestly feels a little too grounded to me: Aircraft landing on a freeway is an actual thing that happens (one landed on the 110 last month!), and therefore quite tame by 9-1-1 standards. At least it gives Bassett the opportunity for another speech. “We are making an emergency landing, and it is not going to be smooth, but we’re gonna do our best,” she tells the passengers. “We are all in this together.”
Bobby and Buck work fast to clear traffic, and Brad gets to do some method acting while assisting. As the plane nears its makeshift runway, Gem panics — this is where he always crashes when playing his flight simulator — but Athena helps him snap out of it, and together they’re able to touch down on the 110 and stop the plane just in time to avoid hitting any of the cars ahead. Bobby, who is very stupidly standing on top of the truck, ends up inches away from being obliterated. (I realize I’m being hard on him this week, but make better choices!) Safely on the ground, Athena tells Gem his mom would be very proud of him. They hug, and yes, I got a little emotional, though I blame the adrenaline rush of the landing.
“Safely on the ground” turns out to be a temporary thing when a fire breaks out at the back of the plane. All of the passengers manage to get out of harm’s way except for Athena, who is now the only one left to do CPR on the co-pilot. (I’m going to need this man to write her the nicest thank-you card when this is all over.) Thankfully, the 118 arrives, and Hen and Chimney are able to take over, safely evacuating the co-pilot and getting him transferred to the hospital, while Bobby finally gets Athena off the plane. At this point, there are probably no remaining modes of transportation she won’t have some level of PTSD about, but that’s a later problem.
The more pressing right-now problem is that Athena still has Dennis Jenkins in her custody, and there are still very bad men after him. She correctly intuits that one of the Assistant U.S. Attorneys must have set them up back in Arizona, so she gets Bobby to lie and say that Athena and Jenkins are being taken to the hospital to get checked out. The three of them then set off to retrieve Maxwell Fulton’s black book, which — in true Alanis irony — is at LAX, hidden in a Ferrari that Fulton had parked there.
That black book turns out to be very literal, but it’s what’s inside that counts: a lot of very big names next to QR codes linked to damning evidence (read: sex tapes). Before Athena and Bobby can decide who to turn the book over to, AUSA Spencer shows up. Athena realizes he wants the book not because someone is paying him, but because his name is in there. When Spencer tries to shoot Bobby, Jenkins jumps in front of the bullet, an awfully convenient form of retribution for killing Athena’s fiancé decades prior. Even after being shot, Jenkins comes to the rescue again when he uses his toothbrush shiv to shank Spencer, giving Athena the opportunity to cuff the corrupt U.S. Attorney.
At the hospital, AUSA Lawrence reveals that the whole operation to get Fulton’s little black book was Spencer’s idea, and he almost certainly would have destroyed it and gotten off scot-free if not for Athena. (I do feel like Jenkins also deserves major credit here.) Given that we’re dealing with an Epstein-level figure and a book that contains the names (and sex tapes) of senators and billionaires, it’s bizarre how cleanly this storyline seems to wrap up. Was Spencer really acting solo? Jenkins and Athena get their resolution, too, with Sergeant Grant giving her blessing for his early release. Her explanation that Emmett would want her to let go of her anger feels honest and Bassett sells it well, but “Final Approach” throws all of this in after the dramatic landing, making the whole thing feel rushed. Surely some of this plot could have extended beyond the three-episode event?
One storyline that isn’t finished, however, is Captain Gerrard’s reign of terror. The episode ends with his return to the 118, still surly as ever. But while he has plenty of vitriol to spew toward Hen, Chimney, and Eddie, he embraces Buck. “You feel these arms, son?” Gerrard asks him, again pinging my gaydar. “This is me taking you under my wing.” Yes, the captain has interpreted Buck’s tackle as an attempt to save him from the flying buzzsaw that nearly killed him. Fair enough, but I’m not sure how much more 9-1-1 can get out of this largely one-note character. And as much as I don’t want the show burning through plot, I’m eager to see Bobby officially brought back into the fold.
Call Log
• Buck noting that he never would have guessed Brad was British because he plays an American firefighter on TV is, of course, a cheeky reference to Oliver Stark being British.
• Brad has some of the funnier moments in the episode, even if I’m still not sure what they’re doing with the character. His attempt to ham it up as a real-life firefighter while putting on his gruff American accent got a laugh out of me, as did his immediately passing out when confronted with the volleyball girl’s disgusting leg injury.
• 9-1-1 is my favorite TV comedy because in real life, Athena’s “Miracle on the 110” landing would make her extremely famous and earn a fast-tracked movie adaptation, while Fulton’s little black book — which promises to take down sitting politicians, among others — would dominate news coverage basically forever. But here it’s just another week!
• Buck-Tommy watch: Still no Tommy, but I have to assume he’ll show up again next week when Buck needs someone to vent to about his forced bromance with Gerrard.
• Though I don’t generally find Gerrad’s incessant bullying to be amusing, I did enjoy him calling out Hen’s “vulgar” use of an exclamation point in her report. As a millennial who overuses that particular punctuation mark, it resonated!
