‘9-1-1’: Tim Minear Explains [Spoiler]’s death & Reveals How Everyone Will be Grieving
[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 15 “Lab Rats.”]
9-1-1 just delivered its most devastating episode yet with outstanding performances from everyone, especially Peter Krause, Angela Bassett, and Oliver Stark. (If only the Emmys recognised more broadcast shows – Krause would be a serious contender.) And in it, the show killed off its first major character.
The episode picks up where Episode 14 left off, with Bobby (Krause), Hen (Aisha Hinds), and Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) under lockdown in the lab, and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) quarantined after being exposed to a super strain of CCHF (Crimean-Congo hemorrhagic fever). On the outside, Buck (Oliver Stark), Athena (Angela Bassett), and Karen (Tracie Thomas) track down the scientist responsible, and the woman brings the antiviral to the lab while Buck and Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) distract the FBI and military. But once the 118 has been evacuated, Bobby locks himself in the lab, revealing that his air supply line tore during the explosion and he, too, was exposed. There’s no antiviral left. “I love you, kid,” he tells Buck before sending him away so he can have time with his wife for a very emotional, heartbreaking goodbye.
“I’m sorry, this isn’t how I wanted to leave you,” Bobby tells Athena. “I’m not choosing to leave you. I chose to save my team because it was the right thing to do. It was never because I wanted to go. I don’t want to go. If I could choose, I would stay with you always.” While they want more time, they don’t have any, and, he adds. “Mine was always borrowed. L.A. was supposed to be my penance, not my home. Then you said yes to a dinner invitation, and I started to live again.” As he coughs up blood, he tells Athena, “I love you, baby, I love you,” then tells her to go because she can’t be there for the next part. But she’s not going anywhere: “I’m here, for all the parts that we have left.” They put their hands up against the glass, the Bobby turns, walks away, kneels in prayer …and the episode ends with everyone crying, alone, and a body bag being carried out, and the last shot is Bobby’s helmet.
Below, showrunner Tim Minear explains that utterly gut-wrenching ending, teases how everyone will be grieving, and more.
Tim Minear: No, it was a creative decision. Nobody wanted Peter to leave, most of all me, but I just felt like we’re going into Season 9 and it would’ve been comfortable to keep everything status quo and happy happy. But it’s a first responder show, and I put these people in life and death situations, except you could probably look at it and say I just put them in life situations because no one ever dies. So it just felt like it was time.
And look, I had considered other possible deaths, but when I was breaking this story and saw that this could be a truly epic goodbye for a character, I just figured it should be the character who’s going to affect every character’s story on the show. And that’s Bobby, and Bobby’s character. It made a certain amount of sense for the arc of his character and that he came here for redemption and that he came here with a death wish, really. And then his whole story is about how he no longer has a death wish. He never feels completely worthy of the happiness that he’s received, but when he makes that sacrifice, he doesn’t want to go, but he achieves the culmination of everything that has been driving that character for eight seasons. So it wasn’t a hard creative choice to make. It was a very hard creative choice to make, if that makes sense.
What can you share about the conversations you had with Peter?
I let him know before I let anyone else know. So he and I knew together for about a month before I told any of the other cast. He understood why I was doing this creatively. Peter Krause was sort of an unfortunate casualty of Bobby’s death because everyone loves working with Peter. He loves working on the show. So it was a really hard personal sacrifice that we’re all kind of making. But he is a pro, and he completely understands why the show would benefit from something like this. And I told him, I said, “Look, I know this is the right decision, because as soon as it started to happen in my head, the whole world of the show felt more real to me. These people felt more real to me.”
And then shockingly, I would say, having done this for many years and having killed off a lot of characters – on Angel, I was know as the Tim Reaper, I just kill the beloved characters all the time, and Peter’s died on other shows – but this time I think we all just felt like we were losing a real person, someone that we loved. And so everyone had deep, deep feelings about this and still do. I mean, it’s still pretty fresh, but Peter’s great. We talk all the time, and I can’t wait to do something else with him. I just think he’s one of a kind.
Peter’s performance in this episode was one of his best on the show. What did you see in him in that final scene?
What I saw in him was a combination of Bobby and Peter. Some of that’s Peter. Some of that is Peter maybe even talking to me. I was there for that. And it was tricky how we were going to approach this because just based on what that virus was and what it does, the thing could have turned into a ghoulish, body horror, horror movie, which is not what we wanted. You have to understand what’s happening, but we also just didn’t want it to be a particularly ugly death, which is what this would be.
And it was Peter’s idea to turn away from Athena and go to that table and kind of get into a prayerful posture. That was Peter. That was all Peter. So I just thought that was a really lovely choice on his part. And it just kept things kind of elliptical and kind of non-linear because what you’re really watching in those last whatever, two minutes, probably would’ve taken place over some hours.
And then the other thing that I really loved about it and hate about it at the same time is that because of the story I had been telling for those two episodes, the characters couldn’t be together. They’re all isolated. They’re all in a plastic bubble or in a tent or Buck’s on the other side of a thing and breaking down, and Tommy’s watching him from a monitor. No one is there to comfort anyone.
And then I just really felt it was important to be definitive about it, which is why then I went to the body bag and not just the body. I think I am going out on the security camera point of view. So it’s very cold. It’s very clinical. It’s not warm at all. I got similar reactions when I killed a bird on Lone Star once. I’m like, then Rob Lowe walks in and looks down the bird’s down the bottom of the cage, isn’t that funny? No one though it was funny. I thought it was great.
What was important to have with Bobby’s moment with Buck and his goodbye with Athena? Because the “I love you, kid,” and then “if I could choose, I would stay with you always” were particularly heartbreaking.
I felt like Buck is, in a way, his surrogate son, or probably more realistically, Bobby is Buck’s surrogate father. So Buck, I think, needed to hear something from Bobby before the end. And Bobby and Athena, I mean obviously I wanted it to be a scene between them and I didn’t want him to get hit by a bus or have a thing dropped on his head or he expires in a coma or something. It needed to be face-to-face.
Will this be the last time we see Bobby or will Peter be back? There’s flashbacks, dreams, hallucinations. There’s always a way to bring back a character who has died. So are we going to see him again?
This is not even his last appearance this season.
What can you preview?
That you’re going to see him before the end of the season, that you’re going to see him in some of these ways that you have enumerated. I don’t want to mislead anyone. He’s dead.
How is Athena going to be handling her grief?
At first, not well. In fact, I would say that that would apply to all the characters.
What are we specifically going to see from Athena?
You’re going to see Athena try to achieve a miracle that she didn’t get with Bobby.
Are we going to see Eddie find out on screen?
You will not see him find out on screen, but you will hear what is experience was when he finally opens up to somebody.
Is this bringing Eddie back to L.A. permanently?
I mean, Eddie is going to be coming back for the last couple of episodes.
What can you say about Buck, Hen, Chimney, and Eddie grieving and who’s leaning on whom?
Well, they’re all leaning on each other, and yet they’re all kind of fractured at the same time. Finding an equilibrium for that grief, it was very important for me that I had a run of episodes after the event so that the audience could try to get their bearings with the characters to grieve with the characters. So all the stages of grief will be represented in the last three episodes with all the characters.
What can you say about specifically who’s sharing the most significant scenes when it comes to that going forward?
Well, there’s three episodes. They’re all going to get scenes. I would say at the center of it, though, is Chimney, who is feeling particularly … he’s got the survivor’s guilt big time. There’s a moment in there, in the episode tonight, where he gets Bobby to promise to look after Maddie because he just assumes he’s not making it out of here. And you can see even through that goddam face mask, that is the moment that Bobby makes the decision that if there’s a choice to be made Chimney’s walking out and he’s not.
That’s what I thought.
100%. So when he says, “I promise I will not let anything bad happen to your family,” he already knows what’s coming. So you have Chimney having Bobby make that promise, and he can’t really do the same for Bobby because I’m not sure Athena’s going to be open to a lot of comfort from the man who’s alive because – not that she blames Chimney, but that’s going to figure in a lot to the last three episodes.
Because you talked about what Bobby meant to Buck, who is Buck leaning on more, Maddie or Eddie?
Buck is trying to lean on himself. Because Bobby says to him, “You’re going to be okay and they’re going to need you,” and that’s going to confuse Buck. He’s not going to quite know what to do with that. Everyone’s going to be just a little off their equilibrium in these last three.
So when Buck does open up to someone, who is it going to be?
He’s going to open up to everyone on some level. Yeah, you’ll see. You’ll see, Meredith.
How much is grief going to be a part of the show? Because it’s hard to imagine them going back to work even though they have to.
Right. And that’s why I felt like I needed a run of episodes to let that breathe. … Every episode [through the finale] is about this.
Speaking of the finale, if these were your episodes 14 and 15, what are you doing for that?
Well, we’re going to do a real 9-1-1 emergency finale. I think we have, I don’t want to say fun, but I think we have fun conceit in Episode 17, kind of a thing we haven’t really done before, which will then lead to a mass casualty event. And even in their grief, they’re first responders, they got to put that aside and work together to save people. So I think what you’ll see in the last three episodes, yes, grief, love, loss, sadness, and rallying and victory.
As painful as it’s going to be, the 118 is going to need a new captain. Are we going to see Hen stepping in as interim again? Bobby does say to Buck that they’re going to need him. Is someone new coming in? How are you handling that?
You’re asking about all questions that will be answered in Season 9.
So, you’re giving them time to accept what’s happened.
Yeah, I’m not solving that problem right away for the rest of this season. There is an interim captain there who is not going to be the captain going forward, but the last three episodes are not about who’s in Bobby’s chair. The last three episodes are about the chair is empty.
Was there ever a question of the episode ending on anything but Bobby’s helmet?
Yeah, there was actually. Initially it was just going to be the body bag.
Oof.
And I know, exactly, the reaction that you’re having is the reaction that I was going for. People did not seem to like that, which is why I knew it was probably right. But when we were editing the episode, we found that shot, and I’m just like, “Put it at the end.”
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
Original article at TV Insider.
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