9-1-1 Review: Pilot (Season 1 Episode 1)

Emergency is the name and rescue is the game. On the series premiere of 9-1-1, the investment is there from the beginning of Abby Clark’s opening voiceover.

Abby: There are two types of emergencies. First kind, is the one we all have every day. Then there’s the second kind of emergency. The kind that comes without warning.

What kind of emergency are you having today? That question gets us started on this journey, and it carries us through to the end. Are we having an everyday kind of emergency or are we having an unexpected life altering one?

Delving not only into the emergencies seen by these LA first responders but also the emergencies in their personal lives is what keeps us wanting more. These are the things we relate to.

We don’t, however, relate to the drama and excitement of finding a woman being choked by her snake. (Though that is fascinating television.)

As humans, we connect to the struggles that make these people just like us. These people put their lives on the line so that everyone around them is safe, but underneath the uniform they need saving themselves.

Bobby: Only way to survive the job is to find a way to cope with the ones we lose. But in those moments, when you actually save someone, there is no better feeling in the world.

Abby just wants to be the hero in someone’s life because she can’t be the hero in her own. She can’t help or even save her mother from losing her memories.

How many of us have a similar story? How many of us have a family member suffering from Alzheimer’s or Dementia and feel powerless to help?

More and more people are having to take care of their ailing parents on top of leading lives of their own. They have to balance work and family. It’s a hard and often thankless responsibility.

So, its only natural that we seek other ways to give and receive gratitude. We want to save someone or something outside of our personal world because it makes the struggles at home all worth it.

Athena, played by Angela Bassett, would fight for anyone and everyone. However, she can’t even fight for her own happiness. Her husband is gay, and she can’t change that she’s in her forties and stuck.

Athena, like many others in her situation, is probably questioning anything and everything her husband ever said or did. She’s questioning her worth.

So she goes out and proves it by saving lives. Don’t we all do that in one way or another? We want to feel appreciated so we make ourselves available.

When our personal lives are going way off course, we all tend to bandage it up by making someone else’s life stay on track. We help so that we don’t have to focus on what we need. It’s easier to fix someone else’s problems than to fix our own.

Then there is the combined story of Bobby, played by Peter Krause, and his protégé, Evan Buckley or Buck, played by Oliver Stark. These two go out and save lives because they need it to keep themselves away from their addictions. They try to put more good into the world instead of taking from it.

Buck: I was a punk. I still am.

Everyone has something they are trying to mask or hide. We either do so by helping others in our job or everyday life or we do things just to keep our minds off our problems. Either way, we aren’t doing ourselves any favors by ignoring the core issues in our lives.

This pull of the audience to evaluate their own lives and their struggles is what will put this show on top. We all try our best to ignore our problems and put them aside in order to do something more satisfying or rewarding. Having a show that helps us not only identify that in ourselves, but to also deal with it can make a big difference.

Our friends and loved ones can tell us about our shortcomings until they are blue in the face, but something about TV drives lessons in just a bit deeper. Maybe it’s because we don’t actually know the person telling us, we have no history or baggage with them. Their opinion or words mean more because they are coming from a completely honest part of them.

So, when Athena or Bobby or Abby learn something, we are going to take notice and apply it to our own lives.

These characters pull us in because while they may seem like super humans to the people they serve, underneath it all they are just as broken. They save the lives of others in the hopes that it will somehow save them. However, if we need help to be saved then who helps them?

Some of us may even be asking whether or not the answers for these characters are the same answers we need ourselves. There’s a thing or two to be learned from the journey of these heroes.

It’ll be interesting to see how each of these characters balance their personal demons/struggles while maintaining their work load. Will any of them crack under pressure? By adding a human side to each of these stellar characters, 9-1-1 goes above and beyond any other shows like it. Instead of reading like a drama, it reads like a reality series.

While there are so many positives about the premiere episode, not everything can be. The biggest issue that I think this show will run into is making sure that they don’t get caught up in the many storylines and forget to move the story forward.

There are so many first responder characters in the background that also have a story to tell, and it can get clouded out by those stories being told about the core group. While the personal lives and issues are what make the show great, they could also be the downfall if not handled properly.

Let’s just hope that the emotions and investment presented in the premiere continues throughout the season. Some of the best shows have ensemble casts and 9-1-1 could be one of them.

What did you think of this episode of 9-1-1? Share your thoughts with us in the comments below!

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9-1-1 airs Wednesdays at 9/8c on FOX.

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