Notes on '9-1-1' Season 8 Episode 15: "Lab Rats"
On that main character's shocking death and where 9-1-1 goes from here
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This post contains spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 15, “Lab Rats.”
This post discusses sensitive subject matters, so please read with caution.
I’m already breaking my own rules with this post.
I didn’t take any notes when I watched “Lab Rats.” I’m glad I didn’t because I wouldn’t be able to see the paper through all my tears by the end. But I also wish I had. I don’t see myself rewatching the episode, written by Kristen Reidel, Molly Green & James Leffler and directed by Dawn Wilkinson, any time soon.
For those who may not know, after eight seasons of them defying death at every turn, 9-1-1, ABC’s first responders procedural drama, killed off a main character.
9-1-1: Contagion, the show’s latest two-episode event, culminated with the death of the 118’s Captain, Bobby Nash, played by the incredible Peter Krause.
Frankly, I’m still in shock. I’m chronically online and saw all the potential spoilers. I’ve spent the last week convincing myself that anything but what happened in “Lab Rats” would happen. I couldn’t believe it, and I still don’t.
I wish that 9-1-1 could keep all of its main characters forever. But since it can’t, and now anything is possible, I want to try to find a silver lining or at least try to understand why this show had to lose this character like this and at this time.
When I started this newsletter, I set out for it to be a place to write about all the nostalgic movies and shows I liked and romantic comedies that I loved. I wanted to write about the stories that made me think a bit deeper or feel a bit stronger. I wanted to write about stories that brought me joy and expand upon why they did.
I quickly learned that nostalgia and romantic comedies were in too narrow a net. I wanted to write about more — all the TV I watched every week, or the new (to me!) book I couldn’t put down. So, I started to pivot this newsletter to be that.
A few months after that, I wrote one of my favorite essays. It was about 9-1-1 quietly — in all of its extra loud emergencies — becoming a comfort show for me.
Even now, as I plug some photos from “Lab Rats” into this post, I realize how odd that may sound from the outside. In the above photo, Howard “Chimney” Han is going through organ failure, while Henrietta “Hen” Wilson is trying to save him after she went through an impromptu surgery in a lab with a deadly virus. Oh, did I mention that what got them in this mess was a fire with an additional explosion?
It’s a lot. It’s so much that I find myself questioning how any of them made it out of there alive, with or without Athena Grant-Nash arriving with the antiviral.
But that’s the thing; that’s what I wrote a little bit about in that essay from last year. I never know how, but I always know the 118 will make it through whatever life-threatening situation. Just a few episodes ago, Maddie Han survived a serial killer slashing her throat. Not only that, she ran up a flight of stairs with that injury to save Chimney from dying at the hands of the same serial killer.
On practically any other show, Maddie would not make it out of that basement.
But, she does. The main characters always live. They live through the consequences and the pain and the tribulations. They make it through every hurdle and every setback and every impossible situation together.
I don’t want to rehash my words from that other essay too much. But moments like Maddie pulling off the impossible make it so that when I watch 9-1-1, I never really wonder if a main character is going to make it out of a life-or-death situation. It’s more about how they’ll react to it and how it’ll impact them.
Unfortunately, that truth persists with Bobby’s deeply sad death in “Lab Rats.”
I wonder how the 118 family is going to make it through this. After countless defiances of death, it catches up with them in the most devastating way.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to rewatch those final 10 or so minutes again.
Hearing Bobby tell Buck, “You’re going to be OK, Buck. Remember that. They’re going to need you. I love you, kid,” broke my heart. (It may feel needless to say, but the 9-1-1 cast turned in absolute ace performances across the board here. Oliver Stark, you are incredible!) I thought Bobby and Athena’s final exchange was beautiful yet so, so sad. It held so much poignancy. I can’t even type, “If I could choose, I would stay with you. Always,” without tearing up. (Peter Krause and Angela Bassett, wow!)
Of course, I wish that the 118 family wasn’t so spread out when Bobby died.
I wish that they could have been together, like they so often are in times like this. I wish that Ravi Panikkar and Karen Wilson hadn’t talked for the first (!) time in this context. I wish that Hen and Chimney didn’t find out from a stranger. I wish that Eddie Diaz weren’t in another state while a member of his chosen family died.
On the other hand, I understand why showrunner Tim Minear did this big, bold swing as “a creative decision.” Minear told TV Line that “…for the health of the show and in order to give all of the characters more story, something like this needed to happen.” You will not find me pushing back on the fact that losing Bobby Nash will spin these characters in a million different directions.
I agree that there is a lot of story there to unpack — Buck feeling like he needs to step up while confronting his understandable abandonment issues, Chimney living with surivivor’s remorse because he got the antiviral instead of Bobby, Eddie grappling with the fact that he wasn’t there to help in any way he could, Athena Grant-Nash losing another man she loves and having to live in the house they were building to grow old in together. And that’s not even all of it!
I only wish that 9-1-1 hadn’t waited this long to instill “real” stakes, which Minear has cited as a reason for Bobby’s death in the TV Line interview, when it comes to life and death. It’s that much harder to grapple with Bobby’s death, knowing what these characters have survived over the past seven and a half seasons.
But even that makes Bobby Nash’s death so much more devastating. Why him?
And that brings me to why I love TV so much — why I love 9-1-1 so much.
I don’t think I always realize how much time I spend with shows, their characters, and their stories until something like this — some milestone — happens.
I remember where I was when (SPOILER!) Derek Shepherd died on Grey’s Anatomy. If you’re a fan of that show, it felt like the world tilted on its axis. I opened any social media app to people, myself included, grieving this character. That show premiered in 2005, and the episode in which Derek died aired in 2015. Years were spent alongside Derek and his relationship with Meredith. It mattered when he died. It mattered when (SPOILER!) Zeek Braverman died on Parenthood.
After years of weekly catch-ups with these characters, they start to feel like real people. TV has that intimacy that I so adore, and good stories with good characters know how to sink into your bones and heart and never really let go.
So, yeah, it’s painful when you have to say goodbye. It’s why I still cry when I do my yearly rewatches and (SPOILER!) Stefan Salvatore dies at the end of The Vampire Diaries or (SPOILER!) Joyce Summers dies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season 5. And don’t even get me started on This Is Us and Jack Pearson — all the ugly tears.
And I know that whenever I rewatch 9-1-1 now, I’ll always cry when Bobby Nash dies. I know I’m going to cry a lot during his funeral when the show returns on Thursday, May 1. Because, at the end of that day, that character made an impact on me, and I’ll feel that for as long as the show continues and even after it ends.
I should mention that I’ve seen all the theories floating around (The virus isn’t that deadly, and the rat will be the key! Bobby has been buried alive, and the team will rescue him! This is all some elaborate cover-up like on Criminal Minds!), and I’m inclined to believe all of them. I want to believe them. Some of them sound fun! Also, believing in them means delaying the more probable outcome.
The 118 has lost its fearless leader, and 9-1-1 will never be the same because of it.
And I’ll never be able to listen to Hozier’s “Work Song” the same way again.
I’m curious to see what the show’s new era looks like without Bobby Nash because I can’t quite envision it right now. But I think that speaks to the character’s overwhelming strengths. So, I want to end with just a bit of Peter Krause’s letter. I highly suggest any 9-1-1 fans read the entire thing. It’s great.
“I’ve heard that many fans are upset by this loss and they have a right to be. It is a loss. That said, it was more than a bold creative choice on a bold show. Bobby Nash was written in sacrifice and he was built for this. First responders risk their lives on the job so that others can see another day. His story arc honors them. We at 9-1-1 salute all the incredible men and women who do these dangerous jobs and strive to keep us safe.”
Until next time,
💌 Shelby