[This story contains spoilers from season seven, episode five of 9-1-1, “You Don’t Know Me.”]
For seven seasons on 9-1-1 and five seasons on its spinoff Lone Star, co-creator and showrunner Tim Minear has consistently found new (and surprising) ways to deepen the relationships in his most successful TV universe to date.
But Minear saved arguably his biggest twist for the 100th episode of the original series, which aired last Thursday. In it, Evan “Buck” Buckley (Oliver Stark), who began the long-running Fox-turned-ABC procedural as a womanizing sex addict, shares an unexpected kiss with Tommy Kinard (Lou Ferrigno Jr.), a former firefighter and current LAFD Air Operations pilot. Since then, this storyline has been the subject of much discussion on social media, making 9-1-1 one of the few network shows to become appointment viewing in today’s crowded TV landscape.
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In this week’s episode, titled “You Don’t Know Me,” Buck goes on his first dinner and movie date with Tommy. Having never explored his attraction to another man before, a noticeably bewildered Buck does not quite know how to navigate his new feelings for Tommy. “This is my first date with a dude, but I’m not weirded out. You know, I mean, I’m an ally,” Buck says to Tommy, without realizing that he is more than just an ally to the LGBTQ+ community now.
Things get even more painfully awkward when Buck and Tommy bump into Buck’s best friend, Eddie (Ryan Guzman), and his girlfriend, Marisol (Edy Ganem), at dinner. After Buck says that he and Tommy are going to catch a movie and then “find some hot chicks” together, Tommy decides to cut their date short, telling Buck that he thinks he is adorable but isn’t quite ready for a real relationship. It isn’t until the end of the episode — after Buck comes out first to his sister, Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and then to Eddie — that Buck asks Tommy for another chance and invites him to attend Maddie’s impending wedding to Chimney (Kenneth Choi).
During a recent break from writing the final three episodes of the season, Minear jumped on a quick call with The Hollywood Reporter to discuss the exploration of Buck’s sexuality, why he chose to have Buck come out to Maddie and Eddie first, the introduction of a new character from fire captain Bobby Nash’s (Peter Krause) past, and the upcoming Maddie-Chimney wedding — which, as far as viewers can tell from the final minutes of the midseason finale, does not get off to a good start.
(Click here to read THR’s interview with Ferrigno Jr., who recently returned to 9-1-1 specifically to play Buck’s new love interest.)
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The 100th episode ended with the much talked about kiss between Buck and Tommy. Why did you choose to explore this bisexual storyline with Buck now? And was there ever any doubt in your mind that this was the right storyline for Buck; did you ever consider giving it to another character?
I’m always thinking about different variations for every character, so it’s weirdly kind of a loaded question because we’re constantly considering what all the options are for all the characters, but it really felt like, “No, this is Buck’s story.” This made sense with Buck. The thing that I liked about it with Buck is that it has kind of a rom-com element. I wasn’t really interested in doing the bravest [coming-out] episode of 1985, you know what I mean? I wanted something that felt contemporary and that didn’t feel like it was weighted with a lot of angst. It’s an awakening for his character, but I think that there’s joy in it, so I just like the rom-com element of it with that character.
It’s hard to quantify [why we chose to do this storyline now]. It felt like it was the right time. I just felt like Buck’s story was starting to feel a little bit like a hamster wheel. I just felt like he needed a slap of something, and I think that this part of him has been coded into the show at least since season two, so I don’t think it comes out of nowhere. I think a lot of the fans who watch the show closely have been following the breadcrumbs the whole time. So I feel like — and sometimes it’s funny — you’ll be writing something, and you won’t even realize that you’ve been setting up something that ends up happening. It just grows organically in some ways.
In this week’s episode, viewers get a chance to see the final minutes of Buck and Tommy’s first date, which goes sideways after Eddie and Marisol find them sitting together at the same restaurant. So much of this episode is about Buck coming to terms with his new feelings and then eventually reconciling with Tommy, who did not want to push him into anything that he wasn’t ready for. How did you want to approach the writing of this episode, as far as this storyline was concerned?
I wanted it to feel real. For me, the way the last episode wound up is that Buck didn’t even know what he was doing until he knew what he was doing, and I think Oliver just played the hell out of it. Everything that I wanted to express with the writing, he expressed with the acting. I think you could really see that it was a lightbulb going off for him on some level because I wanted to make sure that in episode four, if you went back and watched it again, you would see that it was all laid out, it was all set up. That episode is told entirely from Buck’s point of view. I mean, Eddie is kind of an obstacle, but really, he’s not an obstacle because even Eddie is saying, “I’ve been trying to get [Buck] to come to this basketball game forever. How did you talk him into it?” Eddie is not actively excluding Buck from anything. We’re just in Buck’s head for that whole episode.
By the time you get to the end of episode [four] and when the lightbulb goes on for Buck, I just wanted to make sure that I followed on with an episode that didn’t just get him to a place where he completely had himself figured out. It felt real to me that he wouldn’t just suddenly put on a rainbow flag pin — and suddenly he’s a different guy. He can’t be a different guy. But the thing that I really wasn’t interested in is playing sex shame with him, so I went down a slightly nuanced route, which is that Buck just thought he was so evolved, such an ally and so progressive that when the bullshit comes out of his mouth when he runs into Eddie, that that’s really what he’s questioning in some ways. But really, he’s questioning everything.
I just knew that I needed a scene with Maddie, and I needed a scene with Eddie. Those two things were important. So strategically, I wanted to get Tommy out of the picture for the bulk of the episode so that [Buck] could deal with the other people in his life and circle back around to that moment at the end of the episode where he sits down with Tommy and says, “You said I wasn’t ready. I don’t know what I’m ready for, but I’m ready for something. I’m just sure what that is yet.” But he feels safe with Tommy. So even though he doesn’t know exactly what road he’s stepping onto, he’s willing to roll the dice.
Why did you choose to have Buck come out to Eddie and Maddie in this episode? I feel like Eddie and Maddie react to the news a little differently; Eddie seems more taken aback than Maddie, at least at first.
I’m not even sure that I would agree with that because Maddie is maybe even more surprised than I expected her to be, even though I’m not saying I was disconnected from the writing of that scene. I think Maddie is a little bit thrown. She even says, “I didn’t think this is where your interests would lie.” I think Maddie comes around very quickly, and so does Eddie.
I think Eddie is a little taken aback because he’s so in his own head. He’s dealing with his own stuff. If you look at the way that scene is constructed, we really are coming into [it with] Eddie just being completely distracted by whatever’s going on in his own life. And then once Buck gets his attention, he gives Buck his attention, and it takes a second. And I always thought it was funny that Eddie is saying, “Wait a minute. Tommy’s gay?” [Eddie is] not even thinking about Buck for a second, because he’d been hanging out with the guy, and as Buck says, “That never came up.” And he says, “No, not that it would have mattered.”
So I think with these people in Buck’s life, they don’t have to consider whether or not they love their brother and friend. They just have to kind of shake their head for a second and go, “Oh, okay, so that’s where we are now. Alright.” These people love each other unconditionally.
Are we going to see Buck come out to other people in his inner circle in subsequent episodes?
These felt like the two people that the story required to get read into that story. Other characters will get read into it, but I’m not sure that there’s going to be a momentous coming-out — and I don’t even know if you’d call it coming out, but I’m not sure that’s required for all the characters. But I’m also not done telling the story, so as you know, with me, I’m just laying down the track in front of the moving train.
When I spoke with Ryan Guzman at the start of the season, he told me he was really interested in continuing the Eddie-Marisol relationship, and he asked for Edy Ganem to come back to play out that arc. As you alluded to earlier, Eddie is dealing with his own issues in this week’s episode. After asking Marisol to move in with him, he discovers that she previously went to nun school, which throws him for a loop in a funny way. Why did you want to focus on establishing that backstory for Marisol in this episode?
I was focused on Lone Star for a couple of seasons. When I came back, these other characters had been introduced, and I was going to do a story with Natalia [Buck’s ex, played by Annelise Cepero, who was written off in between seasons]. The actress was actually not interested in coming back or had other priorities, so that was an amicable parting of the ways. It just felt like to come into the new season with both of these paramours just disappearing from the screen, that just wouldn’t do.
I really felt like even as a viewer, I didn’t really know anything about Marisol. I saw the call that she was introduced in, but I didn’t really get a sense of who she was as a character. So instead of laying out a lot of screen time and exploring who that character was, I just leaned into the idea that Eddie didn’t really know who she was either because I didn’t. [Laughs.] So it was kind of hard to write that. That’s why I went down that path.
I think it was Kristen [Reidel, the former 9-1-1 showrunner, who remains a writer and executive producer] who pitched the idea that she was formerly a nun — and that just tickled me. It felt like the kind of thing I might do on Lone Star with a hairless cat, or it just felt like an amusing kind of runner that I wouldn’t normally see. But it really felt, to me, like it could help me learn more about Eddie, because normally with these ancillary characters who aren’t first responders or who aren’t part of the core cast, but who come in to be supporting characters for our main characters, they’re there so that we can learn more about our people. So it just felt like this was an interesting way to humorously engage with Eddie’s history — him being a Catholic and what that meant to him, and to hit on just his entire past, including his youthful marriage to [his late ex-wife] Shannon [played by Devin Kelley] after she got pregnant.
How much of Tommy and Marisol are we going to see in the back half of the season? Are either of them going to stick around into next season?
They’re going to stick around to whatever degree they’re going to stick around. Again, I’m not quite done by telling the story of season seven. I know it seems like I should be. Definitely I’m sure the studio thinks I should be, but I’m still writing. There will be a complication in at least one of those relationships.
In this week’s episode, we also get a glimpse of Hen (Aisha Hinds) and her wife Karen’s (Tracie Thoms) latest attempt to expand their family. What were you hoping to accomplish with that storyline?
I definitely wanted to make good on the promise from the last season where Hen and Karen were talking about adding to their family. I just didn’t want to go down the exact same route with an adorable little moppet like we did before. So you meet Mara in this episode, and she’s a troubled kid. I just thought it was an interesting way to explore what [Hen and Karen’s] commitment was to bringing in a potential new family member into their lives. It’s no more complicated than that, really, for Hen and Karen.
On Tuesday, Deadline revealed the casting of Malcolm-Jamal Warner, who is set to guest-star in four upcoming episodes as Amir, a nurse in a hospital burn unit who is connected to Bobby’s past. Given that we have already explored so much of Bobby’s past right before he moved to Los Angeles and became a member of the 118 — including how he lost his family in Minnesota — what new layers of Bobby’s story will we be exploring through his interactions with Amir?
We’re shooting that now. I’m still working on the script. We’ve seen flashbacks [of Bobby’s past], obviously. I touched on it a little bit in the cruise ship story. He mentions to [his therapist] Frank [played by Eddie McGee] cryptically that he moved here after a loss. I knew I was interested in going back to that well, and exploring a little bit of the tragedy that created the Bobby who’s on our show. I wanted Bobby to be able to engage with somebody who maybe had a connection to that. I don’t think I’m really giving anything away, because when you see Malcolm, and even when you read the synopsis for that episode, it’s pretty clear what we’re going to be drawing from for that story.
I cannot tell you how excited I am about having Malcolm-Jamal Warner. I actually called him, and I pitched him the character before I’d even written anything. I was a little bit like I am with you — I hadn’t slept in a while, and I thought I sounded like an idiot. “Okay, well, I’m not going to get Malcolm-Jamal Warner, because I was just babbling like a fanboy, and I’m just sounding like an idiot.” But he agreed to do the show, and boy, is he something. I’m so excited for him to be on this show. He is a real actor. He and Peter together are just going to be absolute fire — not to make a bad pun. That wasn’t a pun. (Laughs.)
The midseason finale ends with our first glimpse of the Maddie-Chimney wedding: Buck and Eddie show up late, looking completely disheveled, and Chimney is nowhere to be found. What can you tease about the upcoming nuptials?
Episode six is going to be special. It’s a Chimney-Maddie episode, obviously; it’s their wedding. In one word: chaos — absolute chaos. But I also think [there will be] tears, emotion, surprise, appearances from characters from the past. I think it’s going to be something special.
9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8/7c on ABC. Episodes stream the next day on Hulu. The show will return from its midseason break on May 2.
