9-1-1 Recap: When My Time Comes

When I wrote about last week’s episode of 9-1-1, I confessed that I was in “moderate denial” about the thought of someone dying in the second half of the two-parter. As it turns out, I may have been in more denial than I realized. In my defense, 9-1-1 is not actually a show that kills off main characters — and there was really nothing that could have prepared me for what “Lab Rats” delivers, a brutal death scene that’s more heartbreaking than anything the show has given us over the last seven years. Which is all to say, if this recap is a little lighter on the humor than usual, I trust you can understand.

The episode starts where the last left off, with Moira on the run — antidote secure in a bedazzled tumbler — and Athena and Buck facing Colonel Hartman, who is largely indifferent to the plight of the 118 trapped in the lab. When Special Agent Mark Santos of the FBI arrives, Buck is excited for a change of pace, but his “tell him to open the damn door” demand doesn’t get him very far. Bobby advises Athena and Buck to let the Army and FBI do their jobs, though it’s clear he’s passing on a coded message. Athena hears him loud and clear — she and Buck will have to apprehend Moira themselves. “We’re gonna find that crazy bitch and get our hands on the dose before anyone else in there gets sick,” Athena says. She and Buck will have to retrieve the antidote before the U.S. government can get their hands on it if there’s any hope of saving Chimney.

In the meantime, Chim is, as you might expect, not doing all that well. The virus is progressing fast, and the only thing you can do for a hemorrhagic fever is offer supportive care, fluids, and pain management — all pretty hard to do when you’re trapped in a lab with limited supplies. Still on the line, Maddie points out they’ll need to give Chimney two to five liters of saline every 24 hours, and they don’t have nearly that much. But hey, it’s a lab, so they can certainly make some! Hen coaches Bobby on the saline recipe, with an assist from Maddie (and a reminder that getting this even a little bit wrong could stop Chim’s heart, no pressure). While all this is happening, Ravi passes out, because this is an episode with a constant barrage of simultaneous crises.

Thankfully, Ravi is not sick — he just ran out of oxygen. Which is, of course, bad enough on its own. In fact, he’s three minutes away from brain damage. MVP Maddie explains that the lab uses air supply lines for its pressure suits that provide a constant stream of filtered air. Even though the hose coupling doesn’t quite fit, Bobby says he’ll make it work, and he manages to duct tape his way toward getting Ravi breathing again. There’s a fair amount of foreshadowing here. First, Ravi shares that when he passed out, he thought he was sick, and wasn’t sure what the team would have done with only one dose of the antidote. “We would have figured it out,” Bobby answers. “It’s what we do.” Ambiguous, Bobby! Second, we learn the importance of air supply lines.

Chimney has an emotional conversation with Bobby, made all the more tragic by how this episode ends. It’s sad enough in the moment, though, with Chim making Bobby promise to take care of Maddie and the kids in his absence. “They are the best thing I’ve ever done,” he says. Bobby agrees that he’ll be there for the Hans, of course, but at this point, he’s mostly just trying to keep Chimney awake, even FaceTiming Maddie for some backup. Soon enough, they’ve got more pressing concerns, as Chim starts gushing blood from his nose, and nothing seems able to stop the flow. “You can’t really bleed out from your nose, can you?” Ravi asks, an astoundingly naive question for a show like 9-1-1. At this point, they’re able to give Chim the DIY saline, but he’s losing too much blood too quickly. It’s finally Hen (still with a hole in her chest, mind you) who is able to figure out that injecting water up Chimney’s nose can stop the bleed, and Chim is stabilized.

Meanwhile, Athena and Buck are still on the hunt for Moira, eventually tracking her to Martel-Harvey Pharmaceuticals, where she’s trying to sell her antidote to a surprisingly ethical pharma head. He realizes that her promise of an impending pandemic is a major red flag, so he does the responsible thing and calls 9-1-1. Unfortunately, that tips off the FBI, and Athena is trying to beat the feds to the punch here. She manages to reach Moira before Santos arrives, and she’s even able to snag the bedazzled tumbler with the single dose of antiviral that Moira’s stashed in the watercooler. But Santos is hot on their tail, which means they can’t get out of the building the normal way. Buck suggests going up the stairs instead of down — and while that’s, generally speaking, the worst move in a horror movie, he appears to have a plan.

That plan involves Buck calling his ex, who is still a little miffed about how they ended things after their recent hook-up. Tommy arrives in an LAFD helicopter to fetch Athena, Buck, Moira, and the antidote from the roof of the building. As plans go, it’s a good one, at least until Hartman patches in to tell Tommy he’ll need to return to the base — and the Army will be providing an escort in case he’s not in the mood to comply. What follows is something resembling a helicopter dogfight in which multiple Army choppers chase Tommy and company through the LA sky. I don’t know if 9-1-1 has quite the budget to pull this off, but I really admire the ambition. Eventually, Tommy is forced to land at the L.A. Coliseum, at which point it becomes clear that the whole helicopter thing was all a distraction. Buck and Moira walk out with their hands up, but Athena and the antidote are nowhere to be found. Turns out she’s safely on the ground with Karen, who is driving her and the antiviral straight to the lab.

I’ll be honest, I’m not entirely clear on when exactly the bait-and-switch happened, or how Athena is so easily able to get inside the lab without being intercepted by the Army or the FBI. (I know they’re mostly at the Coliseum, but surely they’ve left enough men with guns behind to prevent an extremely potent strain of a deadly virus from escaping?) Honestly, it doesn’t really matter — she was always going to get that antidote to Chim somehow, and on a show like this, you just have to go with it sometimes. What matters is that Bobby injects Chimney with the antidote, and he instantly begins to recover. It seems all’s well that ends well as Bobby holds up a sign to the cameras demanding that the Army extract his people. Once Radiohead’s “High & Dry” starts playing, however, it’s clear we’re not getting off that easy. Sure enough, as members of the 118 exit the lab and make their way through the filtered air tunnel the Army promised in the last episode, Bobby puts the lab back into lockdown mode and traps himself inside. He’s been infected.

“You’re gonna be okay, Buck,” Bobby tells him through the protective glass, his nose bleeding in a way that indicates imminent death from the virulent CCHF strain. “Remember that. They’re gonna need you. I love you, kid.” This is where the tears start, and they don’t really stop until the episode ends (or really several minutes after). Buck radios Athena and tells her to get to the lab, where Bobby asks for time alone with his wife. This is a predictably gutting good-bye, with Bobby explaining that there was a hole in his air supply line, but that he couldn’t let his team know — even as he started to feel sick — because there was only enough antiviral to save Chimney. “This isn’t how I wanted to leave you,” Bobby tells Athena. “I’m not choosing to leave you. I chose to save my team because it was the right thing to do. It was never because I wanted to go. I don’t want to go. If I could choose, I would stay with you, always.” These lines would be devastating even if not delivered by Peter Krause at the top of his game — but they are very much delivered by Peter Krause at the top of his game! And I am a mess.

Bobby wants Athena to leave so she won’t have to be there for the next part, which promises to be, well, a big bloody mess. “I’m here for all the parts that we have left,” Athena answers, and they put their hands together across the glass. (Angela Bassett is also incredible in this scene. Do I even need to say that?) As Hozier’s “Work Song” plays, Bobby Nash succumbs to the virus and dies, the lyrics “when my time comes around, lay me gently in the cold dark earth” amplifying the trauma. The montage of the 118 learning about Bobby’s sacrifice adds additional agony to these closing moments. “He knew, Maddie,” Chimney says. “When he saved my life, he knew.” At some point, I will forgive 9-1-1 for the emotional terrorism of this episode. For the time being, however, I’m in mourning.

Call Log:

• It really seemed like Ravi was marked for death throughout the episode, especially when he revealed that he had planned on quitting that day and was glad he hadn’t. I can’t help but feel like this was a deliberate misdirect to make the gut punch of Bobby’s death that much worse.

• To be clear, I’m not actually mad at 9-1-1. This was a stunning conclusion to Bobby’s story, and a well-earned tearjerker death scene on a show that has been surprisingly protective of its main characters. This is, somewhat unbelievably, the first time any series regular has died on the show.

• I do reserve the right to be a little annoyed that Bobby ended up dead at the hands of a character as ridiculous as mad scientist Moira. The indignity!

• I’ll spare you the Buck-Tommy watch while we all recover, but I do suddenly find myself a little less certain that those two are done for good. Bobby’s death is going to send every other character on this show into an emotional tailspin, and who knows what could emerge from that?

• Peter Krause’s statement on his surprise exit from 9-1-1 makes it sound like this wasn’t entirely his choice, in which case kudos to him for being so gracious. This is, after all, the second time he’s been a lead character on a show who dies before it’s over.