9-1-1 (2018-)

Rozmowa ze scenarzystą po zakończeniu 4 sezonu. Nie chciało mi się tego nawet w całości czytać, a co dopiero tłumaczyć, więc wrzucam po angielsku.

It was never any question for me that Eddie was gonna survive; it was a question for Ryan Guzman, who I forgot to call to tell him what was coming up. (Laughs.) The scripts went out and I got a call from him: “Are you firing me?” I was like, “No, no, no!” And then I started getting texts from the cast too: “You’re not killing Eddie, are you?” So, it was a question for Ryan, but not for me. Ryan is too pretty to die.

By the end of the episode, Eddie doesn’t have a sling and seems to have physically recovered. But will you really dig more into the psychological aftermath of that traumatic event? What does this mean for him and the people around him going forward?

I think Eddie’s been through war. He’s been through a lot. I don’t know that he’s gonna be scarred in the way another firefighter might be scarred, but Eddie has his own unresolved issues—most of them are around Christopher (Gavin McHugh) and whether or not he’s been a good dad [since] he lost Shannon. There definitely will be things to explore with Eddie, but I don’t know if he’s gonna be particularly traumatized by what he went through in that moment, although that’s not to say that it couldn’t happen because it could.

We can’t talk about the important people in Eddie’s life without talking about Buck. It was heart-wrenching to see Buck’s reaction to Eddie’s shooting, but it was moving to see his reaction when Eddie told him about potentially becoming Christopher’s legal guardian if he dies. Can you talk about the decision to go with that ending? How does that strengthen the relationship that they already have?

It’s interesting. The reason I decided to go with that particular story was there’s always been something about how Eddie sees how protective Buck is for his kid. Eddie is always going to do the thing that he thinks is gonna protect Christopher the most, and just like at the end of the tsunami when he tells Buck, “There’s no one I trust with my son more than you,” that’s something he meant even then. The thing that I found fascinating about that scene is not that Eddie decides [after the shooting], “I want to put in my will that you would be Christopher’s guardian.” It’s that he has done it six or eight months before and he just hadn’t said anything to Buck, and I don’t think he would have ever said anything to Buck if he didn’t feel like Buck needed to hear it. He trusted he was doing the right thing, but he just didn’t want to burden Buck with it. He’s not planning on being killed in the line of duty or something and not being there to raise his son; he’s just doing the responsible thing and planning for worst-case scenarios.

Yeah, it’s come up specifically and continuously. I always get bagged on by the fans for stuff like this, but all the conversations that the fans have are conversations that happen in the writers’ room. It’s interesting because we had Eddie’s character in Season 2 and from basically the moment that Buck laid eyes on him—and it’s mostly in the way that we introduced him, with a particular song and putting his clothes on in slow motion—that may have started it from jump street. But you can’t plan when actors have chemistry together, and I think that Ryan and Oliver have a ton of chemistry together.

Now, how you want to define that chemistry, I think, is its own kind of evolving thing, which is almost why I don’t want to define it because the show’s not over. So, I’m not even really sure how to answer that question. I know that there’s a contingent of fans that would like a certain outcome and the [relationship] has a life of its own in fandom in that . But I do think that, look, at the very least, these are two guys who have a deep spiritual bond with each other. And by the way, I have seen it on television before—I’ve seen it in Band of Brothers. It’s that kind of out there, on the front lines. Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) have it as well, so if there’s more than just that kind of chemistry between Buck and Eddie and a lot of people see that, I’m not gonna deny what they’re seeing. But I know that’s not a satisfying answer to your question.

Well, let me ask you this then: Because of the way that the show has been written and the fact that there have been so many nods to Buck and Eddie’s dynamic, this show has been accused of—and I don’t use this word lightly—queerbaiting the viewers.

Yeah, I’m aware of that.

What do you have to say to the viewers of this show who feel that way and who feel like they’re being strung along by the writers?

I’m actually not sure how to respond to that, to be honest with you. The show is not deliberately queerbaiting the audience, but what I also don’t want to do is to not keep writing these characters the way I see them, and whatever it is they’re taking out of the portrayals of these characters is being generated somehow on the page and the way that the scenes are being performed. Like I said before, it’s almost got a little bit of a life of its own, and I don’t want to strangle that because I think there’s something that’s kind of alive about it, and in a way, I don’t apologize for it either.

One of the other surprising storylines was the decision to put Bobby (Peter Krause) and Athena (Angela Bassett)’s seemingly rock-solid relationship under the microscope, and things got pretty heated by the end of the penultimate episode. Things were resolved extremely quickly, which seems to be a trademark of this franchise, but what was the biggest thing that you wanted people to take away from that storyline?

To me, that was also a very realistic thing. When you’re comfortable in a relationship, you take the other person for granted sometimes. I’m not saying that Athena was particularly taking Bobby for granted, or Bobby was taking Athena for granted, but it was an interesting way to explore the idea that Athena and Bobby are grown people who have kind of [already] formed who they are. They don’t need the other person to complete them necessarily, and they’re coming into these kinds of second relationships at a point in their lives where they’re kind of already fully cooked. You have to sort of accept the person for who they are; you’re not gonna change that person at that stage of their life. You have to learn how to navigate and understand them a little bit, or hopefully they can navigate and understand you a little bit too.

I don’t think that there was a real crack in the foundation; I think it was a slight fissure. Pressure builds up in every relationship. The things that make you attracted to the other person are also the things that frustrate you. I just think it’s a truism, and it’s true for them too, and sometimes, whatever pressure is building or whatever the thing that is causing the frustration is, all it really needs to be is brought out into the light. It just needs to be acknowledged, the other person needs to feel like they’ve been seen and heard, and eventually, you’ll end up fighting about the same thing down the line. (Laughs.) It makes you understand that this is who you’re dealing with, and you’re not projecting onto them expectations that they should be somebody that they’re not.

This finale, like the three preceding ones, ends on another hopeful note but leaves a few unanswered questions for this fall. We have Albert (John Harlan Kim) becoming a firefighter, Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) quitting her job and dealing with what seems to be postpartum depression, and Hen’s journey to becoming a doctor while also looking to expand her family with Karen (Tracie Thoms). What can you preview about those three storylines as we move into Season 5?

Albert is finding his own place in the world and he’s taking inspiration from those around him, so he’s not just gonna be a satellite to this life. He wants to be a part of this life, so that’s gonna be a story.

Maddie is suffering from postpartum depression, and sometimes, there are physical and medical reasons for this sort of thing, and it’s a story that we want to tell. With an actor like Jennifer Love Hewitt, you can tell these kinds of stories and do right by them. I was worried when we were doing the domestic violence story with Maddie on a show like 9-1-1 that’s sometimes like a cartoon. Is it going to seem exploitative? Is it going to seem trivial? And I don’t think it did. I think we managed to tell that story in a way that is still [like] the show that we were making and not being exploitative with the subject matter, and I wanted to try to accomplish the same thing with the issue of postpartum depression. So, that will definitely throw a wrench into the beginning of Season 5 for Maddie’s story and the show as a whole.

Hen just has a lot going on. (Laughs.) The thing I love about Hen is that she is a character that is aspirational. She’s always looking to expand her horizons. She’s not willing to settle and feel like she’s done growing, she’s done learning, she’s done becoming. She’s never finished with the future, and I think that family is the last word for the whole show, but certainly for Hen. I love the way that her family is expanding, with the foster kids, her bringing her mother into the picture.