Watching 9-1-1 means not only suspending disbelief but also embracing the heightened alternate reality in which the show takes place in. This week, the series asks us to accept the standard bevy of improbable situations, along with an insistence that Halloween is the most important holiday of the year. Despite my personal penchant for spooky season, it’s a somewhat tough pill to swallow, as members of the 118 find themselves tormented by the idea of not spending the holiday with their loved ones. In the world of 9-1-1, Halloween seems to trump Thanksgiving and Christmas. To be fair, you don’t get to wear a costume for those!
Hen is certainly in the holiday spirit: “Masks†begins with her dressed (impeccably) as the Tin Man. Karen is the Cowardly Lion, Denny is the Scarecrow, Mara is Dorothy, and Jee-Yun is Toto, which feels a little rude, though she does love barking. It’s unclear why we’re not getting Chimney as the Wicked Witch of the West and Maddie as Glinda, but perhaps the show wanted to avoid free Wicked promo. While everyone is enjoying the Halloween festivities, there’s tension between Hen and Karen because Hen will be working on the actual night. Karen says she should take the shift off since it’s Mara’s first Halloween. “She’ll never forget it if you come — and she’ll never forget it if you don’t,†Karen warns. (I’m suspending disbelief, as promised, but Mara has been through far too much trauma to care that both her moms take her trick-or-treating. Let’s be serious.)
Halloween isn’t just about costumes and parental abandonment, of course — it’s also about all the ways you can be killed or maimed. Athena gives a presentation to a high-school class on the dangers of the holiday, noting that it’s the deadliest night of the year for young people. This is foreshadowing, but it’s also an excuse for the 9-1-1 writers to show off their understanding of contemporary slang. The cool girls who aren’t paying attention to Athena are Sigmas, which I guess is like an Alpha? (I’m in my late 30s.)
Over at the 118, it’s Firehouse Haunt Fest, which has the whole team dressing up and putting together an elaborate haunted house. (I appreciate the effort, but if they have time to do this, surely Hen could take a night off?) Buck has purchased a startlingly realistic mummy from a Hollywood prop house — so realistic, in fact, that it should be hard not to see where this is going. Stationed at the exit of the haunted house and dressed up as a cowboy, Buck invites the kids attending Firehouse Haunt Fest to take candy from the mummy. When he tries to prove it’s a fake by yanking on the mummy’s arm, the appendage pops right off with tendons still attached.
The mummy’s true identity is now a case for the LAPD. And the 118 has a more pressing emergency to attend to: a man named Franklin with his head caught in a pumpkin. He was just trying to do something fun with his daughters — both of whom are decidedly too old for the Pumpkinhead shtick they loved as kids — because since his divorce, he hasn’t been able to spend time with them on actual holidays like Halloween. (I’m suspending disbelief!) What Franklin doesn’t understand is why he was able to get into the pumpkin so easily but now can’t get out. “Gourds can be very unpredictable,†Chimney wisely notes.
The situation escalates quickly, as situations on this show tend to. First, the moldy and rotting month-old pumpkin sends Franklin into anaphylactic shock. (I know it smells crazy in there.) Then he starts to aspirate on pumpkin guts. Acting quickly, the 118 is able to remove the pumpkin and suction the innards from Franklin’s throat, which is really gross, though still better than bees. Before being taken to the hospital, the very swollen man says he’s embarrassed about almost being killed by a pumpkin. Buck says that he’s seen people get injured in much dumber ways, very much the kind of “famous last words†you should avoid on a series that loves punishing people for that sort of thing. Sure enough, Buck immediately slips on pumpkin guts and falls hard on the floor, dislocating his shoulder.
At the hospital, Buck (presumably high on pain meds) tells Tommy and Eddie that his injury mirrors his accidental desecration of a body at Firehouse Haunt Fest — which means, yes, it’s the mummy’s curse. Buck explains to Tommy that after doing additional research back home, the mummy in question was once a man named Billy Boils or William James McCurdy, a ruthless outlaw who was betrayed by his posse. (I’d argue they betrayed him twice, both by turning him in to the sheriff for a reward and by calling him “Billy Boils†thanks to a nasty skin condition.) Those members of the posse all died horribly because Billy always gets his revenge. And though Tommy thinks his boyfriend is being ridiculous, the curse looks a little more plausible when Buck wakes up the next morning with his face covered in boils.
On the bright side, Buck won’t need a mask for Halloween (Eddie says this, not me, I would never). The 118 is getting ready for a busy night, with Hen making a call to Denny about being extra careful and keeping an eye on Mara and Jee-Yun. Denny brushes off her concerns, saying, “It’s Halloween, not the Purge.†What did I say about famous last words? Over at the 9-1-1 call center, a similarly reckless Maddie says she’s looking forward to the chaos of the night as a distraction from not being able to trick-or-treat with her daughter — again, it’s like these people don’t even watch the show. At least Josh has the good sense to warn her to “be careful what you wish for.â€
The night starts off lightheartedly enough with aggrieved vice-principal Mr. Pearson calling 9-1-1 to demand firefighters extinguish the bag of flaming dog poop on his porch. But would you believe the situation soon takes a turn? When his home is egged, Mr. Pearson decides to chase after the teens in his car. (They’re the rude Sigma girls, obviously. Again, I’m old, but I feel like those kids would be too cool for low-level Halloween pranks.) On a call to 9-1-1, the vice-principal refuses to give up his pursuit even as Maddie urges him to return home. It’s a real moments-before-disaster situation, and sure enough, he has soon lost control of his car and driven it right into someone’s front door, presumably without even offering the customary Halloween greeting.
RIP to Mr. Pearson, but there’s a much bigger crisis: His car has pinned Denny to the house, and he’s in bad shape. (The only thing more dangerous in the 9-1-1 universe than working at the 118 is being the loved one of a person who works at the 118.) Arriving at the scene, a frantic Hen insists on taking control. Seems like a bad idea to me, though I can’t deny that her “He’s my son, Chim — give me the damn morphine!†is iconic. Internal bleeding means Denny will need an emergency transfusion, and thankfully Karen and her type A blood are right there to assist. It’s an undeniably emotional moment, but watching Denny flatline (however briefly) is pretty grim. I would have preferred more of Buck’s wacky mummy curse and less of the Denny-in-peril plot. Maybe I just feel like Hen and Karen have suffered enough already this season — and Karen still isn’t a series regular, which makes it seem extra unfair.
Denny survives, of course, so we can all be grateful for that. At his bedside, Hen expresses her guilt over not being there to protect him on the famously important holiday of Halloween. Karen, however, admits that she felt relieved to know Hen was working, and points out that Hen was there for the most important moment, saving Denny’s life. When the Sigma girls show up with candy for the boy who got injured as a result of their prank — I’d put the blame more on Mr. Pearson, but he’s been sufficiently punished — Athena has a better idea. She has them lead a new presentation about Halloween safety to their classmates. I guess it’s never too late to start preparing for next year.
But what of Buck’s boils? At the hospital, Tommy remarks on the beautiful camaraderie of the 118, which spurs Buck to action. He realizes that Billy’s curse is really a cry for help: The outlaw was abandoned by his posse, and that must have been really painful. Buck dons a suit and forces Tommy to do the same (good-boyfriend alert) so he can give a speech at Billy’s grave. It’s a sort of meandering moral that’s essentially a paraphrase of the song “People†from Funny Girl, but it ends with Buck saying that he’s in Billy’s posse now. Hopefully, that means this is the last we’ve seen of those boils, though I wouldn’t be surprised if the mummy returns. Horror fans know they always come back for more.
Call Log
• The highlight of any Halloween episode is the costumes. My pick for best in show is Hen’s Tin Man getup, which was so accurate I thought the silver paint would make her a case of the week. The worst is Maddie’s cat ears — why bother at that point? I’d also like to shout out Bobby’s Cap Dracula, mostly because he puts on an accent that sounds more like Gru from the Minion movies than Transylvanian.
• It’s great to give Aisha Hinds so much to do two weeks in a row, but I can’t say I loved Hen’s conflict with Karen, which felt needlessly shame-y. All of these firefighter-paramedics have terrible work-life balance. They’re on a show about their jobs!
• Buck-Tommy watch: Finally, some good food. I loved seeing Tommy in caretaker mode and found myself newly charmed by his insistence on calling Buck by his government name. Also charming? Buck complaining that his boils mean “my own boyfriend won’t even kiss me†and Tommy quickly interjecting, “Oh, that’s not true.â€
• I’ll say it: Buck as a cowboy kind of did it for me. So did Eddie eating a Ring Pop.
• Bless Angela Bassett for always bringing it, but 9-1-1 loves giving her the silliest story lines when she’s not front and center. I can’t decide which is worse: the clown-car sobriety check or her last line of the episode being “And that’s no cap.â€