9-1-1 Season 5 Episode 13 – Fear-o-phobia

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9-1-1 Season 5 Episode 13 – Fear-o-phobia Review

This episode I went in with high expectations and left disappointed. I believe it was Becker who said, “No expectations no disappointments.” He was onto something there. I was impressed with the previous episode and how they handled Maddie and Chim and their story but Fear-o-phobia fell flat. Not to say there weren’t great moments but overall not impressed.

This whole episode was focused on fears. All the calls were somehow fear related. A man trying to face his fear of sharks, a man with a fear of spiders pet sitting for man’s spiders, and a woman with a condition that inhibited her ability to feel fear. Plus our main crew were dealing with fears of their own. Eddie with his survivors guilt and his fear of never feeling normal, Buck and his fear of being left behind, Maddie overcoming her fear with Jee and the bathtub, Chim overcoming his fear with Maddie being alone with Jee.

As with most of my reviews I’ll start with what I felt didn’t work, what disappointed me.

One of the biggest things about this episode that I felt missed the mark was the focus on more calls than the characters. Eddie was clearly having a rough time, this episode was hyped to us as it was his breakdown episode and it was all of about three minutes maybe five? I think there could have been more focus on Eddie. And at the end, during his breakdown, I felt the audience was very cheated not seeing how Buck helped him calm down. How Buck put Chris to bed, did they talk? Did Chris ask if his dad would be ok? Those are moments I felt would have had a good emotional impact on the audience. Not to mention we missed Eddie apologize to Bobby? He told Frank he’d already apologized for what he said to Bobby in a previous episode but that’s something I think would have been a good scene for us, the audience.

Next up we have Buck and Taylor’s moments. Nothing about them was good in my opinion. If Taylor had come back and instead of just overlooking that Buck cheated and said we’re done I’d be telling a different story but because she just says it’s fine just no more lying? It also felt manipulative on her part saying Buck was trapping her, telling her about the kiss after moving in. Yes, he lied. Yes he panicked when she started to look sad so instead of telling her he kissed Lucy he asked her to move in. That doesn’t mean he was doing it because then she would feel like she couldn’t walk away. He was scared of losing her but I don’t think he meant to make her feel trapped. Also, who doesn’t have another place to go? She has no friends that she could crash with? Say hey my boyfriend cheated on me can I stay here? Or hell, she has a good job, she could get a hotel at least temporarily until she and Buck worked out who got the apartment. Now I get she doesn’t have a place of her own anymore, nothing that’s just hers, but it doesn’t mean you can’t go to someone for help. Like a friend. Unless they are leading us to believe Taylor doesn’t have anyone else in her life.

 Saying where can I go felt disingenuous to me. She said she didn’t care he kissed some rando, that maybe she didn’t need to know at all. Why? It felt odd to me that she left angry and came back I don’t care. But if that’s true and say she has no friends than I’d say that moment tells us Taylor is afraid of being alone just as much as Buck is. That if she does end it with no friends, where can she go? Outside say a hotel. And now that she’s had someone consistent in her life she doesn’t want to lose it.

And then, and then, after Taylor says no more lying and let’s be honest, Buck is STILL lying to Taylor. That REALLY bothered me. He told her he kissed some random woman. But he kissed someone not so rando. Lucy is his new coworker, field partner. He sees her every shift. Hen knows, Chimney knows, Maddie knows. It’s only a matter of time before it gets around to Taylor. I don’t see this playing out well in future episodes. I still suspect a breakup between them, yes they say the love each other but I’m still not sure Buck knows what real love is. Like Maddie said, he settles. He’s never had a healthy relationship out of love. And Taylor, he got back with her after Eddie was shot. After a trauma. After he thought he might lose someone dear to him. He rushed into a relationship because he fears being alone. And though Eddie didn’t die that was traumatic for him. After this episode I’m not even sure we can call their relationship table anymore, as it’s going forward based on lies.

Now let’s move on to Lucy. I still don’t like her. I still think she took advantage of Buck at the bar, much like a man trying to get a woman drunk so she’ll sleep with him. Her character is stand-offish with not a lot of likability. A character like that needs something the audience will like, connect with. And this episode has the writers writing her almost like a combination of Buck and Eddie. Working some random cool job in the past so she knew what to do with the man with the shark phobia who panicked underwater and came up too fast. She had an admittedly cool solution to the sudden pressure change that was causing his problems. But it felt like back when Eddie was new and offering up an innovative solution that wasn’t by the book. What I mean is we’ve had character’s like her and with more likability. There’s nothing all that original about her and learning more isn’t giving her more likability. And she seems surprised Buck is avoiding her. Though, Buck probably hasn’t yet mentioned he has a girlfriend and avoiding her isn’t helping so that’s not all on her.

So what did I think went right with the episode?

First off, though I think they spent too much time on the calls, they were good calls. Reminiscent of the early seasons. Though the call with the pet spiders was terrifying and definitely one of my worst nightmares. But they were interesting and we got some cool action from our 118 crew. Buck and Ravi slowly making their way to the woman with no fear about to jump while Hen talks to both distract and tell her she’s not crazy was gold. Good suspense, interesting dialogue, they even tied it into Eddie’s story. I thought that was done beautifully. The spider call was creepy and suspenseful. The shark call was high intensity.

While I was sad Maddie and Chim broke up, by the end of the episode I understood why. I enjoyed their story throughout the episode. We start to see some of that tension between them. But also we see trust being rebuilt. We saw how worried Chim was when the bathroom light was on when he got home but the relief and joy when he saw Maddie and Jee were fine and having fun. He saw that Maddie is really doing better and saw she could handle being alone with Jee again. I hope maybe they can work their way back together. Get to know each other as the people they are now.  

And finally. Eddie. I loved a lot about Eddie’s story this episode, though I still feel cheated. We see him talking to Frank who, of course, asks him about what he’s afraid of. Eddie, of course, avoids. His advice was to talk to someone who had been through what he’d been through. But Eddie didn’t tell him that they were all dead, though it seemed he didn’t know about Mills yet, maybe some of the others. And calling Mills, learning about her death, seemed to be the final straw and he broke. I think Ryan’s performance was spectacular here. He had raw emotion, the way he delivered his lines, I just loved everything about it. I’d already guessed that Chris would be the one to call Buck, which I think means a lot as he could have called 911 but he called Buck. And Oliver too gave a great performance. His face was so happy to see Chris calling but the minute he hears something isn’t right his expression changes. And how gently he was with Eddie, just over all great acting. And of course Gavin is great but he’s always great in my opinion. I’m looking forward to more moments between Buck and Eddie following this. Hopefully we get to finally see them have a conversation about Eddie being shot.

Overall, not a bad episode. 6.5/10 Biscuits

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