911: “Awful People” and a Little Hope (Recap)

On 9-1-1 this week the crew ran into some truly awful people, but by the end there were a couple good ones to balance things out, and the show left us feeling optimistic about humanity. Well, at least it left me feeling that way.

Maddie took a ride-along with Athena in her continuing training as a 9-1-1 operator. On the call, her nursing skills came in handy (I feel like that’s becoming a little bit of a crutch for the show). But on one call a wounded man said that 9-1-1 hung up on his call. After doing a little research, it turned out that senior 9-1-1 operator Gloria had been hanging up on 100s of calls, the revelation leading to her being fired. She blames Maddie and harasses her for days before distracted driving causes her to crash her car. Maddie’s on the other end of the call (of course), and doesn’t hang up, which results in her hearing the full story of what caused Gloria to go off the deep end at work. It doesn’t make what she did better, but at least we understand where it was coming from.

The other big story this week starts when Hen’s ex shows up with Hen’s son’s biological father. The ex wants to hurt Hen any way she can, and doesn’t care who she takes down with her. When Hen goes to….well, we don’t really know what she planned to do, but she sees the ex OD’ing and ends up saving her life (if with some reservations at first). Ultimately, the ex is back in jail and Hen and Karen don’t have to worry about losing their son because the biological father turned out to be a pretty ok guy.

In the end, this week focused a lot more on people than plot. We saw a bunch of awful people, but then we saw that there are lots of good ones too, and that it’s our relationships with the good ones that matter and make life worthwhile. It was an optimistic episode for a world where a lot of people feel angry at other people, so it was a nice reminder that we can make it work somehow, and the really awful ones….well, who needs them.

9-1-1- airs Mondays at 9/8c on Fox

Photo by Tyler Golden / FOX.