[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 15 “Lab Rats.”]
9-1-1 puts its firefighters in life and death situations all the time and they’ve made it even when it’s seemed like they shouldn’t. Chimney (Kenneth Choi) survived rebar through his head. Buck (Oliver Stark) was able to return to work after getting his leg pinned under a truck. Eddie (Ryan Guzman) was buried alive and rescued himself. Bobby (Peter Krause) probably should have been pancaked in the pile-up of storage containers, vans, and even the 118’s ambulance. So, when they’re facing a super strain of CCHF (Crimean–Congo hemorrhagic fever), and even while Chimney’s reached out the bleeding out stage, why should we think that this time won’t be just like every other? Because it wasn’t.
9-1-1 just killed off its first major character, and it did so in the most utterly devastating, sob-inducing, hard-to-process way. This is a show that had the same cast in place since Season 2. Connie Britton left at the first season, but she’s still alive out there; she even returned as Abby in Season 3, to surprise Buck in the middle of an emergency, during which he had to rescue her fiancé. But once Guzman and Jennifer Love Hewitt (Maddie) joined Krause, Angela Bassett (Athena), Stark, Aisha Hinds (Hen), and Choi in the Season 2 premiere, that was it. These characters became like a family, and in fact, it was recently that I said to a fellow 9-1-1 fan that it’s hard to imagine the show killing off anyone because of that, because if that happened, these characters would all need months to grieve. And because of that, were it to happen, it would need to be a season finale, to give them the time jump to move past it enough to function as they would need to on the show. Well, 9-1-1 is about to prove that I was apparently wrong.
What the drama has continually excelled at, both during its Fox and ABC runs, is the emergency, especially the multi-part emergency. It’s kicked off multiple seasons with one stretching across three episodes. It’s gone big every time. Somehow, with its latest two-parter, with three episodes still to go in the season, even while set in a lab under quarantine, it did so again. The stakes had never been higher, the consequences never more serious, and the loss never greater. 9-1-1 has just been changed fundamentally with the death of Bobby Nash, and it will never be the same.
Heading into the second part, it was Chimney whose life was hanging in the balance, following his exposure to CCHF, but what no one knew until it was too late was he was not the only one who had been during the explosion that sent the members of the 118 in the lab flying. But it was Chimney whom we watched slowly dying, entering each stage, and preparing to say goodbye to his loved one. It was Chimney who made Bobby promise that he’d watch over his family for him, the moment that showrunner Tim Minear told TV Insider the captain knew if there was a choice to be made, the other man would walk out of the lab, not him. Bobby sacrificing himself for someone else, especially someone close to him like Chimney? It makes sense.
9-1-1 has, quite a few times over the years, taken a moment to go back to an earlier point in the episode to reveal what we didn’t see. And it did so again with the shocking turn of events as everyone was rescued: the moment that Bobby was fixing everyone’s oxygen problems, he looked down at something on his gear. Watching it, I had a feeling that was foreshadowing something to come, and I was right: His oxygen line tore during the explosion, and so he experienced symptoms for hours without telling anyone, knowing he was going to die because there was only one dose of the anti-viral and there was no question it would go to Chimney.
A major death on a TV show (or movie) needs to do a few things to be effective: have a great impact on the show and the rest of its characters going forward, make the audience feel something, and be executed well. 9-1-1‘s of Bobby Nash checked all three boxes.
There’s no other character’s death on the show that would affect each and every person like Bobby’s. He’s Athena’s husband. He’s captain to Buck, Hen, Chimney, Eddie (even though he’s in Texas right now), and Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody). He’s a surrogate father to Buck. Bobby and Athena have been there for Maddie and Chimney time and time again, and now there’s the added survivor’s guilt that Chimney will be feeling, even though he didn’t know and it wasn’t his choice. When Ravi goes to Karen (Tracie Thoms) and we see their reactions without him ever saying Bobby’s name, we understand. When Buck collapses in the hall, sobbing, we care. When Hen cries upon hearing the news, we care. When Chimney reacts, in isolation, then talks to Maddie about it, we care.
Disney / Christopher Willard
I dare you to say that you watched Bobby saying goodbye to Buck, then Athena, with dry eyes. The way Buck pounded on the door after Bobby closed it? Bobby’s goodbye to Buck — “You’re going to be okay, Buck. Remember that. They’re going to need you. I love you, kid.” — acknowledging that bond and how it has grown over the years (remember them in Season 1?!)? Then Bobby and Athena, having to say goodbye separated by glass and her refusing to leave? Cue every character’s reaction upon realizing Bobby was dying (except maybe Tommy’s, but more on that in a bit).
“I’m sorry, this isn’t how I wanted to leave you. 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,” Bobby told his wife. “I don’t want to go. If I could choose, I would stay with you always.” It was because of her that Los Angeles, which was supposed to be his penance, became his home, “and I started to live again,” he said. Then Athena’s “I’m here for all the parts that we have left” was the, pardon me, nail in the coffin. How could you not feel something watching this, Bobby then kneeling in prayer (Peter Krause’s idea!), and the episode ending on his helmet?
It’s hard to say goodbye to a character. It’s hard to do so in a way that feels right, especially when it’s someone who has already suffered so much, more than any one character should, it could be argued. Bobby came to Los Angeles after losing his family in a fire that he accidentally caused in Minnesota. (I’m not even detailing his alcoholic father’s death, and how Bobby found him the next morning.) Thanks to the show’s “Begins” episodes (in his case, “Begins Again”), we watched his journey. We saw Bobby and Athena fall in love. We saw him make the 118 a family and his family. We’ve seen him lead his firefighters in the right way, even when they didn’t agree with his decisions.
What makes it even more painful is it plays out like any other episode where the 118 would get the win. They snuck Athena back to the lab with the anti-viral. They worked together to save one of their own (Chimney). They stood defiant against the FBI and military. For the 118 to lose? There’s something off about that. Why couldn’t this just be like every other time?
And, frankly, some parts of it just did not work now that we know it was Bobby’s death episode. (Minear has told us that Peter Krause will be back in Season 8.) The helicopter chase to lure the FBI and military away? Sure, I can see where that was beneficial, but it could’ve been just a bit shorter (to give more time with the 118 in the lab, to give Buck just a bit more time with Bobby, since he’d been separated from him since Episode 14) and having Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) there — and the reminder of his relationship with Buck, considering they just had an episode where it was laid out that they would not be getting back together — felt unnecessary. And the cut to Tommy grieving amidst everyone else? It took me out of the moment. Bobby didn’t mean nearly what he did to the others to him. And it’s especially notable since Eddie, in Texas, doesn’t yet know (and we now know we won’t see that onscreen). What especially hurts? The team being separated at the end, unable to grieve together, and Buck being separated from everyone for most of the two-parter. What makes the show stand out is how much the 118 is like a family, and that was missing in the key moment.
A big death like this signals a shift. But did 9-1-1 need one? It’s impossible to say without seeing the episodes that follow, both this season and next, and it’s a tall mountain to climb to give something that gives a definitive answer of yes. For now, it feels a bit wrong to think about the show and the 118 continuing without Bobby.
And without Bobby and Athena’s relationship! They have been easily one of the best romances on TV in recent years, and it’s been refreshing to see a couple in love and as passionate as they are about each other (will May ever recover?) and still fight, still stand their ground, and still walk through fire (literally) to save one another. Watching Athena grieve is going to be tough.
What this episode makes clear is that it’s a shame that the Emmys rarely recognize broadcast TV these days; Abbott Elementary has gotten love in recent years, and it’d be surprising if Matlock and Kathy Bates aren’t nominated this year. But Peter Krause deserves the nomination for his work in this episode, playing a captain worried about his team, not himself, until he’s alone, and playing his own grief as well as that for his wife in his final moments. The way he looks at his team for the last time as Hen and Chimney are taken out? Then at Buck in their final moments and Athena throughout their goodbye? The way he plays Bobby’s death in the last 10 minutes is a performance that deserves to be recognized on a larger scale. With the face mask on for a significant part of it, he has to say so much with just his eyes, and Krause does.
For eight seasons, we’ve seen Captain Bobby Nash be the character the show cannot live without, and yet, somehow, it’s about to. It’s tough to wrap my head around, to be honest.
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
