9-1-1 Season 9 Episode Had Everything Spinning With Mixed Results

Critic’s Rating: 3.9 / 5.0

3.9

Would you go into space if given the chance?

It’s an interesting question to pose, and depending on your fear of heights and enclosed spaces, you may not feel the pull of seeing what’s truly out there. But for someone else, it could be their dream.

While Hen was ready to get out there and enjoy this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, Athena had no idea why she was stepping onto that space shuttle.

Much of 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 1 centered around Athena throwing herself into work to the point that she alienated her children in the aftermath of her guilt.

With so many swirling emotions and under the weight of crushing grief, Athena was struggling, and the opportunity to travel into space with Hen came in a moment where she was terrified of isolating herself to the point she’d find herself alone.

But outside of that opportunity coming at the perfect time (if you want to call it that), why was she going into space?

The opening segments featuring the space crew were a nice way to introduce us to the other players who would be up in the sky with Athena and Hen. The show always does a decent job of expanding the characters involved in the emergencies.

Through those little moments, we got to know them well enough to form an opinion about them beyond just being seat holders on the Athena and Hen flight.

On the road to space, the hours leading up to it were filled with a mixture of emotions, and I’m very glad the series didn’t forget about the fact that Karen would be both excited and confused about Hen living out something she had always dreamed of.

She had every right to have complicated feelings about Hen going into space, and it wasn’t rooted in jealousy, but more just in a quiet sadness that the two of them couldn’t do it together.

On the flipside of that, Harry was downright pissed about Athena going into space, and when Athena inevitably survives another disastrous trip, I need these two to be trapped in a room together so they can start working through things together.

Harry may have been aged up during 9-1-1 Season 7, but he’s still an 18-year-old kid trying to handle a tremendous amount of change and his own pain, all while feeling further away from his mother than he perhaps ever has before.

We’ve seen snippets of how Bobby’s death has affected the 118 and Athena, but what about the kids?

We haven’t really spent any time with them yet, and there’s plenty of time to dive into that this season, but this hour was the first time we got a real extended conversation between the two, and you could tell in Harry’s voice that he’s in his own sort of pain.

He lost Bobby, someone who’s been in his life for a long time, and on top of that, he feels like he’s losing his mom even when she’s right in front of him.

It has to be terrifying for an 18-year-old to grapple with, and I feel for him, so I’ll excuse the crack about Athena having more than one deceased life partner because it came from a place of pain. But only this once!

Harry had a crazy premonition that something was going to go wrong, and to be honest, considering Athena was going on this trip, the chances were high that something would inevitably go wrong.

It was a shame the crew barely got two minutes into the air before they were hit with satellite debris. They could have at least gotten a chance to enjoy space before they were fighting for their lives.

Inside the capsule was an absolute mess, and the episode as a whole felt very disjointed at times, not really hitting its stride until it was almost over.

The Tripp stuff was necessary, of course, but if we could have cut some of that down to dive more into the 118 stuff, the hour would have been all the better for it.

Speaking of the 118, this was the hour that set up what will likely be a season-long journey; Harry becoming a probie.

If he doesn’t, I would be shocked because they have set everything into motion with him dropping out of school and now riding along with the team and proving himself to be more than capable.

The scene between him and Buck was a friendly reminder of how interconnected everyone is, even though we don’t always see it.

Everyone, including Denny and Mara, was right at home at the 118 because they’re all a big family. And Buck taking the time to notice how stressed Harry was and give him a chance to get out of his head for a bit was a nice moment.

Now, throwing Harry into dangerous situations may not have been the safest decision, but hey, it was the thought behind it that really counted.

I am a sucker for technology gone wrong, and watching the 118 have to stop a self-driving car and then step into a malfunctioning hospital was comedy, but also just really well done.

People often talk about the old 9-1-1, and everyone probably has a different view of what that means to them. But to me, it’s scenes like the one of Buck stuck in the hospital room fighting for his life against a robot.

It’s cheesy, campy, entertaining, and just everything about 9-1-1 that works. It’s the kind of scene you want to go and talk to someone about because it’s just completely absurd, but also unlike anything else you’re going to see on television.

Speaking of absurd, the space stuff was really out there and hard to follow at times.

And it could be because I totally forgot the space lessons I learned in fourth grade, except for the fact that space ice cream is delicious, making it hard to get super invested in it.

Between that and the Tripp stuff on Earth, there were unfortunate lags throughout the episode, leaving it feeling like the middle part of a three-part emergency.

That is to say, it was serviceable but didn’t move the needle all that much.

The hour ending with Karen, beautiful, intelligent, and dedicated Karen, doing more than Tripp could ever dream of doing and finally making contact with the capsule, only for things to get even worse, was typical 9-1-1.

They love to give you that little bit of hope and then pull it out from underneath you. And while I knew they weren’t just magically going to be fine because we still need to see Athena outside that capsule, did we need a fire inside?

How does one survive a fire inside a confined space like that?

Athena and Hen will find a way because they always do, but my goodness. It may be time to wrap Athena in bubble wrap for the foreseeable future, and I’m being deadly serious.

Loose Ends

• The mockumentary style moments with the 118 and family were cute, but everyone was TOO camera-ready. At least one of them would have been nervous knowing how many people were going to be watching those videos!

• We got both a Katy Perry and a Jeff Bezos mention! Priceless.

• Captain Chimney is killing it. No notes.

• When did Denny and Mara grow up? I can’t get over all the kids getting so grown on this show!

• Welcome back, Terry! I feel like we haven’t seen him since the days Eddie was working at dispatch. Or maybe even earlier than that?

• What awful luck to be standing next to all those firefighters with helmets on and then getting pelted in the face with space debris. I would be so upset.

• There was a disgusting amount of spinning in this episode.

Part two of the space emergency has come and gone!

How are you guys feeling about it so far?

Let me know in the comments how this opening emergency is stacking up to ones from years past so we can discuss!

You can watch 9-1-1 on Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC.