9-1-1 season 8’s latest episode, “Sick Day”, really lives up to its name: I feel sick to my stomach and it’s been a day. Part two of the “Contagion” storyline can’t come fast enough.
In some ways, it feels strange for the show to be launching a two-part emergency this deep into the season, especially considering it opened with that wild three-parter and we still have four episodes left to go. But something about throwing the gang (minus Eddie, who’s still in El Paso, love you my guy) into this much peril right now also feels so right.
Despite the number of close calls the show puts its characters through, 9-1-1 has become notorious for never killing off any of its main characters. Throat cut by a serial killer? Don’t even worry about it. Comatose from smoke inhalation? It’s all good. Shot by a sniper, struck by lightning, a solid piece of rebar through your actual brain? We said it’s fine! But how long can it continue like this, with amped-up perceived stakes but no long-term repercussions?
When we’re this comfortable eight seasons in (and a confirmed ninth on the way), it would definitely shake things up to throw a spanner in the works, and by ‘spanner’, I mean ‘major character death’, if that wasn’t clear. And that appears to be what “Sick Day” is currently setting up for “Lab Rats”, the concluding part of the story.
“Sick Day” starts off thoroughly harmless, with a cute brunch and gender reveal cake-gone-wrong, before launching into the first emergency of the episode: a city bus pile-up in which a three-month-old baby almost gets exploded. Oh, okay. Getting straight to it then. The baby survives, thanks to Captain Bobby Nash (Peter Krause), who runs into the wreckage, risking his life – and protecting the lives of his team – to pull her out.
There’s a moment when the 118 hold their breaths, unsure if Bobby is going to make it out alive while emotional piano music plays in the background. But nope, he comes striding out, baby carrier in hand. Of course! No one dies in the show, and they especially don’t die 10 minutes into a two-part episode. Don’t be ridiculous.
Cut to Bobby and Athena (Angela Bassett) having a grand old time while remodelling their new dream house. This fun little scene comes with a treat in that May and Harry Grant are back, making their first appearances of the season. But why are they back? Why have the Grant kids, whom we haven’t seen hide nor hair of since Bobby’s brush with death in the season seven finale, come back for this one-minute-long scene about building works? At this point, I’m suspicious of everyone and everything.
The next scene is also a treat, but far less fun. Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) is having a terrible day, after missing the baby in his sweep of the car in the bus emergency, and lets his feelings out over beers with Buck (Oliver Stark). After years of Ravi delivering one-liners on calls or just disappearing from the firehouse completely for months at a time, it feels so good having him back as more than the comic relief. He’s a complex character with an interesting backstory (that was addressed briefly once and then never mentioned again?) and he’s finally getting his well-earned spot on the main roster.
The second ‘Ravi and Buck drinking at the bar’ scene of the season is a lot heavier than the first. Distraught, Ravi threatens to quit the team. Buck tells him not to, clearly not ready to lose yet another partner, and attempts a pep talk while Ravi tries not to cry into his beer glass.
Meanwhile, something sinister is going on at a SoCal Tech laboratory… Moira (Bridget Regan), a, let’s say, ‘driven’ scientist hungry for a breakthrough, creates a new strain of Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever – described by Hen (Aisha Hinds) as ‘Ebola’s nastier cousin’ – with a 90-minute incubation period. Luckily, she also makes an antiviral. However, she breaks a whole load of scientific protocols to do so and obviously gets booted from the lab as a result.
9-1-1 really has a thing for villains this season. We’ve had a handful of awful foils and antagonists with overarching plots over the years, like Maddie’s abusive ex Doug, serial rapist Jeffrey Hudson and firefighter-turned-serial killer Jonah Greenway, but they’re usually few and far between, with the emergencies and interpersonal drama being the regular cause of strife for our first responders. Season eight, however, has been packed with them so far. Captain Gerrard, Councilwoman Ortiz and Brad Torrence caused mayhem of varying degrees over the first half of the season, and now we have an evil scientist trying to create a new pandemic not four episodes after a serial killer detective held Maddie hostage in her basement.
Anyway, a fire breaks out in the lab with the other scientists trapped inside, kickstarting what’s shaping out to become one of the 9-1-1’s most exciting major emergencies to date. The 118 tend to the call and things go smoothly at first, until a blast in the building causes the lab to go into a full-blown lockdown, with Bobby, Hen, Chim (Kenneth Choi) and Ravi all trapped inside while a vapourised version of the modified CCHF fills the air. With the rest of the crew unresponsive, Buck’s team sound-off into the radio is chilling.
Things only get worse from there. Athena and Buck team up to attempt a fruitless rescue, the whole-ass army joins the scene, Hen’s found unconscious with a collapsed lung and Chim’s face mask breaks, exposing him to the virus, while Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) tries not to panic over the dispatch line. The rest of the episode is dedicated to different rescue attempts, including a very stressful but delicious moment where Chim directs Bobby to perform surgery on Hen right there in the lab, but most of it is useless. And then Chim starts coughing up blood.
After getting wind of the shortened incubation period, the army colonel decides that, nope, the 118 are just going to have to die in there to protect the rest of the public. Like, okay, but no one’s going actually going to die, right? Right? Finally, after eight seasons of last-ditch rescues and miraculous recoveries, I’m not so sure.
The episode ends on a peak – the antiviral is still in there and, in an absolutely beautiful punch-the-air moment, Ravi runs over to grab it despite being threatened with charges of domestic terrorism if it’s administered. But, shock, the vial isn’t there. The disgruntled scientist took it with her, lives now hang in the balance, and we’ll have to wait until next week for the solution. And if you watched the preview for “Lab Rats” already, you know it’s probably going to hurt.
Whatever the conclusion of “Contagion” turns out to be, you can bet the first responders are going to need some support to get through it. Themes of family – found or otherwise – have always been at the heart of 9-1-1, but the show has been even less subtle about it as of late. Though much of “Sick Day” was dedicated to the major emergency, it still made time to touch on the familial relationships between the characters, with the Wilson and Han families coming together for cake, May and Harry lamenting not getting their own rooms in Bobby and Athena’s new place, and even Buck and Ravi hanging out outside of work, working towards cementing Ravi’s place in the 118 family.
But it’s more than just “Sick Day”. This whole half of the season so far has put family at the forefront. Bobby’s mother and brother came back into the picture. Maddie and Chim are preparing to welcome the upcoming baby Han. Eddie’s El Paso storyline has revolved around his relationship with son and his parents. Buck has been examining the family unit he’s built with Eddie and Chris over the years. Even Hen’s words to Chim in the hospital waiting room in “Voices” (‘You should be with your family.’ / ‘What makes you think I’m not?’) shone a spotlight on what we’ve always known: this is one big family. Which will make it all the more devastating if we ever lose one of them.
I feel like I’ve been saying this every week recently, but “Sick Day” really feels like 9-1-1 at its best. Season eight’s balance between emergency action, interpersonal drama and character development has been strong for a while, but the show has finally managed to throw high stakes back into the mix. With more than a handful of near-death experiences under its belt this season, it feels like only a matter of time before the good luck runs out.
Season eight of 9-1-1 airs on Thursdays on ABC in the US, and on Fridays on Disney+ in the UK.
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