9-1-1 Season 9, Episode 12, “Dads and Cads” Spoilers Ahead
ABC’s procedural drama 9-1-1 is abundant with rich interpersonal dynamics, whether familial, friendly, romantic, collegial, or somewhere in between, but one of the best is the sibling dynamic between Evan “Buck” Buckley and Maddie Han.
While Buck has been on the show since its inception in 2018, Maddie — nine years Buck’s elder and a surrogate mother to him at various points — joined in Season 2. In the eight years since then, the duo has had no shortage of meaningful moments, including in the latest episode, “Dads and Cads.”
This episode sees the Buckley siblings grappling with the unexpected news of their parents’ divorce after 49 years of marriage. Throughout the show, the Buckleys have been far from ideal parents to Buck and Maddie (as emphasized in a specific Season 4 storyline), which has led to both siblings having a particularly complicated relationship with their parents and the idea of family in general.
Something that 9-1-1 excels at, though, and regularly emphasizes with all its characters, is the idea of found family. For a show about L.A.-based first responders — firefighters, paramedics, dispatchers, and police officers — 9-1-1 often makes a point of demonstrating the significant roles that the people these heroes aren’t blood related to can play in their lives. Given each of their strained relationships with their parents, both Buck and Maddie have established found families of their own over the years, and it’s this very concept that comes to a head during a conversation they share in “Dads and Cads.”
Not too long after the news of their parents’ divorce, Maddie pays a visit to Buck’s house. While Buck repeatedly strikes an old tire with a hammer out in his backyard — “You know, that looks oddly satisfying,” Maddie comments, to which Buck replies, “Hitting things with a big hammer…usually is.” — Maddie sips on a vodka-infused lemonade and observes her brother.
“Well, I didn’t know it was that kind of visit,” Buck says when he learns the details of Maddie’s beverage of choice. He tries to reassure his sister that he’s fine with the divorce news, but Maddie fires back with “Well, I’m not.” She goes on to tell Buck how the only thing they could count on their entire lives was that their parents “had each other’s backs,” and it’s this line that triggers the first hint that this conversation will be about more than just blood family.
The concept of having someone else’s back is touched on frequently in 9-1-1, but perhaps most memorably during the Season 2 premiere, “Under Pressure.” This is the episode in which Maddie first joins the show, but it’s also the introduction of arguably the biggest contributor to Buck’s found family, Eddie Diaz. Eddie joins the 118 firehouse as a highly competent but technically still probationary firefighter, and Buck is instantly threatened by him.
Over the course of the episode, however, Buck’s initial (and entirely unwarranted) hostility towards Eddie softens into a feeling of genuine friendship, with the characters being nearly inseparable ever since. This softening towards Eddie occurs after Buck and Eddie have to work together to safely remove a live grenade from a victim’s leg. With the high-stakes procedure complete, Eddie compliments Buck and tells him he can “have [his] back any day,” to which a flustered Buck responds, “Yeah. Or, you know, you could…you could have mine.”
This type of dialogue parallel is par for the course with 9-1-1, and it’s not the only time it happens within Buck and Maddie’s conversation in “Dads and Cads.” After the aforementioned comment about their parents always being there for each other, Buck notes that, despite the divorce, the Buckleys aren’t even fighting — “They’re just giving up.” Maddie wishes they would bicker over trivial matters at the very least, but Buck reminds her that “it’s just…not our parents.”
Something that is their parents, though? — the newly divorced Buckleys choosing to drive cross country in an RV together (they live in Pennsylvania). Buck points this out, and Maddie agrees with a small laugh. In keeping with the earlier hint that this conversation would soon veer into found family territory, while continuing to reflect on his parents’ failed marriage, Buck says to Maddie, “You know, when Bobby submitted us for this Nashville thing, Eddie wasn’t even here. He was still living in El Paso.” He’s referring to the National Firefighting Games in Nashville that he and Eddie just discovered they were signed up for by their late captain, Bobby Nash, sometime before Bobby’s death the previous year.
Midway through last season, Eddie left L.A. to be with his son, Christopher, who at the time was living with Eddie’s parents in his hometown of El Paso, Texas. Eddie and Chris did end up moving back to L.A. in the Season 8 finale, “Seismic Shifts,” but the original move to Texas was intended to be permanent for Eddie.
Maddie correctly interprets Buck’s meaning — “You think Bobby knew he was coming back.” — and Buck nods, adding, “‘Cause that’s what families do.” Now, Buck and Eddie obviously aren’t blood family, but as noted earlier, they’re (together with Eddie’s son, Chris) most definitely found family, one of 9-1-1’s most prominent examples of such a concept. Buck, citing Bobby’s confidence in Eddie’s eventual return to his found family, reiterates a sentiment that Eddie himself expressed all the way back in Season 3’s “Seize the Day.”
While hosting a party for his fellow firefighters in his home, Eddie explains to his and Buck’s teammate, Howard “Chimney” Han, that he doesn’t consider it weird that they all spend over 50 hours a week together at work and yet still hang out off the clock. “What’s that saying? You got the family you were born into and the one you choose? Well, that’s what the 118 is. The family we chose.“
It’s clear from Buck’s words to Maddie in “Dads and Cads” that he shares Eddie’s feelings on the matter. He goes on to explain to her how “No matter how hard it is, or how far apart they are, they find a way home. Even if they have to fight like hell to get there.”
This is yet another instance of 9-1-1 making a dialogue parallel, this time with yet another Eddie line from Season 3. Early on in “Eddie Begins,” we see a flashback to the birth of Christopher. Eddie is in the army at this point, only home for a week for his son’s birth before being sent back to Afghanistan. Chris’s mother and Eddie’s then-wife, Shannon, gifts Eddie with a St. Christopher medallion, the patron saint of travelers, to protect Eddie and keep him safe — and to remind him that he has a family to come home to. “No matter what happens, I’m always gonna fight to come home to my family,” Eddie reassures her, and it’s a vow that ultimately proves prescient when, later in the episode, present-day Eddie recalls this promise while trapped 40 feet underground after a well collapses on him during a rescue.
Eddie ultimately survives this ordeal, putting his words into action as he fights to find a way to save himself and get home to his son and his found family of the 118. The fact that Buck then echoes this very sentiment to Maddie six years later feels very deliberate on the show’s part, especially when you consider next week’s episode, “Mother’s Boy.”
As the promo for the next episode shows, Buck and Eddie get into an accident on the drive home from Nashville, which then somehow results in them being separated from each other and Buck being kidnapped. If there were ever a time for both Buck and Eddie to “fight to come home to [their] family” — in this case, each other — it’s now.
For now, though, back in the conversation in “Dads in Cads,” Maddie reminds Buck, with a sad sort of acceptance in her voice, that they’ve never had with their parents what Buck is describing. “Mmm, no, not with them,” Buck agrees. Maddie jokingly wonders if there’s another family she doesn’t know about, but Buck, fully serious, tells her that yeah, there is — the one she married into.
Clearly moved by this, Maddie says an emotional “Yeah,” and she and Buck clink their vodka-infused lemonades in a toast to their found families — which, as this poignant scene demonstrates, also includes each other. They may be genetically related, but the beauty of Buck and Maddie’s relationship is how they’ve become found family, too.
Now streaming on Hulu: What are your thoughts on Buck and Maddie’s conversation in 9-1-1’s “Dads and Cads?” Let us know in the comments below.
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