S02.E16: Bobby Begins Again

[Clanstarling]

3 hours ago, ramble said:

I imagine most jobs every day minutia  would make for uninteresting tv. I think too much realism could bog a show like this down. While I like the characters I love the crazy calls. And if they treated the crazier calls with realism there would be far too much death, dismemberment and permanent damage. I don’t mind some sad stories but I’d tune out if it continuous. 

I was nice to see Eddie McClintock on the show. He played the restaurant owner who set the fire. He was Pete on Warehouse 13. Endless wonder! 

Thank you! I was trying to place him and just couldn't.

[iMonrey]

Quote

If this were a Jack Webb production I would agree. But this show literally began with a probationary firefighter stealing a truck for a sexual liason on a city street in broad daylight.

Good grief, I had forgotten all about that. But the show seems to have made an effort to be less over the top and more down to earth this season. We're not really seeing the crazy stuff that seemed to be its forte in Season 1. Possibly the network or the producers heeded the criticisms that it was a bit too silly and tried to make it more realistic. (In other words, maybe they've managed to muzzle Ryan Murphy's worst impulses.)

Edited May 2, 2019 by iMonrey

[mojoween]

Ok so two questions - do palm trees really eat people and if Los Angelenos apparently know not to take the freeway, who are all those people driving on it?

I’m assuming Baby Hulk isn’t really trying to get out of his father’s shadow by playing a firefighter and a SWAT officer?

[sweetandsour]

People in the LA area (or any congested southern California area) will still take the freeway if they're going far.  Like if you're leaving work, but live 30 miles away, you're not necessarily going to take surface streets the whole way there. I know a lot of people who have long commutes and know all of the places it may make sense to get off X freeway, take surface streets, and then get back on that freeway at Y on-ramp later, or when to switch to a different freeway altogether.  (As far as why people don't "just live closer to where they work," that's a whole other story and not as simple as it may sound.)  If you're not going that far, it's reasonable to take surface streets the whole way.

I thought it was a mistake in the storyline from the very beginning to have so many people perish in that fire, and I still do. They did take great pains in this episode to say that Bobby's responsibility only went so far, but it's not just about all of the people who died (as staggering as that is). They showed us all of these other people who may have survived but were also badly burned.  While I don't doubt by now that Bobby has saved enough people to make a good dent in that subpopulation of victims, too (not just the deceased), I wish the surviving people who had been hurt had been acknowledged more.

I also had a moment or two of side-eyeing when they explicitly brought up the AA step of making amends.  We already knew that Bobby's way of making amends was to save as many lives as the fire took, but I mean ... those are not the people affected by the St. Paul fire.  Sure, sure, there were a bunch of other reasons the fire got so big and hurt so many, and he's doing something positive, but that's not really making amends (to me), even if he's only responsible indirectly and to a certain degree. If someone says they're making amends for being an awful person to a relative, ex, old friend, etc. by being a good person to other people, and not making amends to the person wronged, I don't consider that amends.

[Raja]

.  A few weeks ago due to one sinkhole  the an entire 5 mile radius in Culver City/West LA  sent into gridlock and it took an hour to travel that last mile cross the major street that was the source. Where once upon a time the local emergency crews and delivery drivers knew the short cuts around today everybody has a traffic app that sent folks down every possible escape route. Just saying some days jumping on the freeway from on ramp to off ramp is the right move, on others it is not. But that is too complicated for a 5 second gag scene.

[TaurusRose]

On 4/30/2019 at 9:36 AM, DearEvette said:

Other than the ending I thought that was pretty good.

I was sure is was just going to be one long angst fest.  But of the three 'begins' episodes we've seen so far, I thought this one was by far the lightest in tone.  Which is weird considering Bobby's backstory is so harrowing.

Chim got a lot of good one liners and the chicken call-out was really amusing  with the one firefighter making kissy noises at chicken and the other one saying "what are you gonna do kiss it to death?" And Bobby just cracking up at the utter absurdity of it all.

While I like them going out on the various calls, I don't mind these little detour episodes.  9-1-1 is episodic enough that it can handle these type of shows, it isn't a show that carries on any long narrative from episode to episode.  And even when it does the storyline concludes pretty quickly.

Now about that ending.... that was pretty dumb.  It is a no-brainer to realize that Bobby isn't going anywhere.  I suppose they could suspend him?  Relieve him of his command for a period of time and bring on some other captain to create drama.  But I would hate that, this isn't that kind of show. 

I'm also still trying to figure out what he is guilty of from a work standpoint?  It can't just be about what happened to his family and the people in the building.  As his other chief laid out in a litany there was a perfect storm of fucked-upness that contributed to that building fire.  Bobby being drunk and leaving a space heater on is correlation, not necessarily causation. The same thing could have resulted with him not being drunk.  So was there was some level of dereliction of duty that wasn't made really clear?  I gather  from the 'those guys don't trust you' comment from his boss that maybe after the  events with his family his alcoholism went into high gear and it resulted in him being negligent on the job and they covered it up for him to keep him on the job and get him transferred?

I love this (the part in bold)!

[oceanview]

On 4/30/2019 at 9:42 PM, Empress1 said:

I agree. I first became aware of him on Six Feet Under and I thought he was fantastic in that (actually, that is a very well-acted show overall). IIRC he was nominated several times for Emmys for his work on that show but did not win.

I was trying to remember the name of Six Feet Under, so thank you.  I loved that cast and show.  Several actors became more well known from that series. and there were some wonderful older character actors who showed up also

[tvgoddess]

On 4/30/2019 at 12:43 PM, Aliconehead said:

He did confess to everything.  His chief even said he was drunk/stoned and left a space heater unattended which started the fire. However it should have flipped a breaker before that, there were wiring issues, the sprinklers did not work, the alarms were dead and not hard wired.  There was a whole list of things that all contributed and if they were working correctly 140 would not have lost their lives.  As it was the building was an accident waiting to happen. 

While i agree Bobby shares some blame, he does not hold it all.  I wish they would have not had the space heater cause it.  The back story would have worked just fine guilt wise if Bobby had simply been high/drunk and unable to save his family and others if an electrical fire had started it. 

Yeah, he actually confessed and was pissed off at the report. 

On 4/30/2019 at 7:40 PM, oceanview said:

Excellent idea.  I totally agree.  Guilt of not saving his family is enough 

I think I said the same thing in the last episode thread, that they went too far with Bobby's backstory. Still, I love him and he's my favorite character so I was completely fine with seeing more of how he got to where he is. If anything, I wanted it to be a little bit darker. They kind of glossed over him losing his kids but then I guess it would be complained about that it would be too much like the episode in Season 1.

[methodwriter85]

Bobby's wife was from The 4400...I always mistake her for Nicholle Tom but her name is Laura Allen.

[tvgoddess]

8 hours ago, methodwriter85 said:

Bobby's wife was from The 4400...I always mistake her for Nicholle Tom but her name is Laura Allen.

She also kind of reminds me of Laura Harris of early 24 fame.

[jhlipton]

On 5/3/2019 at 6:54 PM, sweetandsour said:

People in the LA area (or any congested southern California area) will still take the freeway if they're going far.  Like if you're leaving work, but live 30 miles away, you're not necessarily going to take surface streets the whole way there. I know a lot of people who have long commutes and know all of the places it may make sense to get off X freeway, take surface streets, and then get back on that freeway at Y on-ramp later, or when to switch to a different freeway altogether.  (As far as why people don't "just live closer to where they work," that's a whole other story and not as simple as it may sound.)  If you're not going that far, it's reasonable to take surface streets the whole way.

Los Angeles, unlike most major cities, is a bunch of "exurbs" clustered together by a need for water.  The Metro trains are OK, but only connect about half of the exurbs to each other (going from the south to the east is not really possible).  taking the surface streets (if there any that are direct -- there's none that parallel the I-5) would take forever.  So we just grin and bear it.