Is there any better way to kick off a season of 9-1-1 than with sheer chaos and calamity?
We’re on the cusp of the fall TV season, which means that fans of 9-1-1 will soon discover just how wacky, harrowing, or outright absurd the beloved network procedural will begin its ninth season. Returning this Thursday, October 9, 9-1-1, a show about Los Angeles-based first responders, is notorious for its epic opening emergencies, with each subsequent season becoming increasingly creative in an attempt to outdo the last.
Over the years, the first responders, led by Angela Bassett’s police sergeant Athena Grant-Nash and Peter Krause’s fire captain Bobby Nash (who sadly won’t be joining the fold in Season 9 because the character was controversially killed off last season), have truly seen it all. There’s been everything from a 7.1-magnitude earthquake (Season 2), a tsunami at the Santa Monica pier (Season 3), a mudslide that took out the Hollywood sign (Season 4), and a ransomware attack that triggered a citywide blackout (Season 5). Season 6 opened with a blimp crashing into a soccer stadium, Season 7 had a capsized cruise ship, and Season 8 orchestrated an aptly named “beenado” that caused a midair collision between two aircraft.
For 9-1-1 Season 9’s opening emergency, we already know from various promos (including last week’s official trailer) that the members of Station 118 will be dealing with mishaps in space. Yes, you read that right — space. These humble firefighters, police officers, and dispatchers will have to contend with a literal out-of-this-world emergency in the first several episodes of Season 9, and as insane as that may sound, I’m extremely excited about it.
Because the thing is, this is what 9-1-1 does best. In my experience, the biggest, flashiest, most dramatic plots in TV shows are usually reserved for the season finales. And it makes sense — shows want to be remembered during the hiatus, and what better way to stay in viewers’ minds than to save their best material for last?
What sets 9-1-1 apart, though — and what I consider a major asset of the show overall — is its preference for season openers rather than finales. The pattern began in 2018 with the show’s sophomore season. In the lead-up to the Season 2 premiere, 9-1-1 expertly flipped convention on its head by promising viewers old and new that there’d be big spectacle and even bigger stakes right out of the gate — and this gamble paid off.
Just from a public reception standpoint, Season 2’s three-part earthquake arc garnered a higher average rating on IMDb than anything from the first season’s entire 10-episode run. Even now, eight seasons later, the earthquake episodes remain some of the top-rated in the show. Numbers aside, I hold particular fondness for this arc because it’s essentially a proof-of-concept for 9-1-1, one that showrunner Tim Minear clearly felt was worth revisiting annually from that point onward.
This arc also established the formula that has pervaded the majority of 9-1-1’s subsequent season openers: the first episode is a reintroduction for all the characters, and it ends with a tease of the bigger crisis to come, a crisis that carries into the second episode and ultimately gets resolved by the third. In Season 2, this manifests as Bassett’s Athena skidding her patrol car to a halt just before the overpass she’s driving on crumbles to the ground right in front of her, closing out Episode 1 in shocking fashion and setting the stage for Episodes 2 and 3.
There’s something both ritualistic and deeply comforting about shows we love establishing and then continuously adhering to their own patterns. In 2021’s WandaVision, for example, nearly every episode included a decade-specific original theme song for whatever sitcom reality the titular Wanda and Vision were currently living in. For Jane the Virgin, once the lead character Jane lost her aforementioned virginity early in Season 3, the onscreen title card changed each week to reflect an element from the upcoming episode.
With 9-1-1, the multi-episode opening emergency is its oldest and most reliable feature, and I couldn’t be happier about that. Understanding a show’s tendencies makes it easier — and frankly more enjoyable — to engage with theories and speculation, particularly in multi-month gaps between seasons.
9-1-1 Season 8 concluded in May, and I promptly spent the summer racking my brain trying to predict which direction Season 9 would take for its first three episodes. (I should note that if episode titles are anything to go by, the big emergency will actually span four episodes this time (Episode 4 is titled “Reentry”), likely due to the space storyline becoming too unwieldy for a usual three-episode arc.) I’ve had a lot of fun brainstorming with the rest of the fandom these past few months, thanks in large part to the certainty that yes, the show will once again go big and be bombastic in its first few episodes.
Now, it’s worth acknowledging that to some fans, multi-part emergencies are the bane of their 9-1-1-watching existence. I’m not of this mindset because I genuinely believe the show on the whole prioritizes its characters over its plots, especially compared to other network procedurals (and yes, I know some of the latter half of Season 8 begs to differ), but I do see where these viewers are coming from.
There’s the lingering concern that whenever the show presents a large, complicated emergency, the focus will be on the details of the disaster rather than the individual characters caught up in it. While this fear has been proven in certain instances with 9-1-1 (look no further than Season 8’s much-maligned, two-part “Contagion” storyline), overall, I think some fans are selling the show short with this assessment.
When it really comes down to it, 9-1-1 masterfully incorporates personal ramifications into all of its biggest arcs, particularly its season openers. Season 3’s tsunami storyline is the best example of this, with the second and third episodes of the arc considered the unequivocal peak of 9-1-1’s eight-year history (Season 3, Episodes 2 and 3 hold the two highest IMDb user ratings across all 124 episodes of 9-1-1).
The tsunami storyline revolves around Oliver Stark’s firefighter Evan “Buck” Buckley as he desperately tries to locate Christopher (Gavin McHugh), the physically disabled eight-year-old son of Buck’s best friend, Eddie Diaz (Ryan Guzman), after they both get caught up in the first wave. The other characters in the show, including firefighters Howard “Chimney” Han (Kenneth Choi) and Henrietta “Hen” Wilson (Aisha Hinds), and dispatcher Maddie Buckley (Jennifer Love Hewitt), alongside the aforementioned Bobby and Athena, also have parts to play in this disaster, but Buck and Chris are undoubtedly the emotional centrepiece.
This brings up another common criticism that some fans levy at the opening emergencies. Particularly since Season 5, these big arcs have centered around Athena (and/or Bobby). Unlike the previous concern, I do occasionally share this frustration that Athena constantly gets prioritized in the opening emergencies, but I also recognize the unavoidable reality that Angela Bassett is top-billed and therefore the star of the show, at least as far as contracts are concerned. This means that yes, her character is going to get a lot of screentime, especially during the big-budget, eye-popping disasters that dominate the pre-season marketing.
As with the comfort I feel knowing that 9-1-1 will do something crazy and creative when it returns each fall, I’ve found that the best way to enjoy these episodes is to just go in expecting them to focus on Athena over everyone else. I came across a tweet this summer from user @Jennahope616 that chastises fans for dismissing these storylines: “I continue to be thoroughly unimpressed by how much this fandom does not appreciate having Angela Bassett doing an action movie at the beginning of every season.”
This Twitter user is absolutely right — we, as the fans of ABC’s 9-1-,1 are insanely lucky to be treated with a high-quality action movie starring Oscar-nominated Angela Bassett in our show every year. There’s plenty of time for personal storylines with the other characters throughout the rest of the season’s 18 episodes, but for now, we’ll get the most out of the opening emergencies if we embrace them in all their insane, dramatic, Athena-centric glory.
Plus, sometimes we get lucky and the opening emergencies shine a spotlight on someone in addition to Athena — like the upcoming space storyline, which will give Hen plenty to do, seeing as she’s the one who invites Athena to join her in space, not the other way around.
Simply put, 9-1-1 is known for its opening emergencies. It’s undeniable that Minear and his team understand how to kick off a new season in a manner that instantly reminds audiences why they love the show, and some of these episodes have even proven to be 9-1-1 at its absolute best.
As we dive into Season 9 this week, I have full confidence that the show will give us something great with its space emergency to start things off — regardless of how the rest of the season ultimately plays out.
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And that’s more than okay with me.
What are your thoughts on the 9-1-1 season openers? Let us know in the comments below.
First Featured Image Credit: ©ABC