Stream It Or Skip It: ‘9-1-1′ Season 8 On ABC, Where Los Angeles’ First Responders Have To Deal With A Massive Swarm Of Killer Bees

9-1-1 started its seventh season with a happy event: The honeymoon of Athena Grant and Bobby Nash. But it soon went into crazy mode when the newlyweds leapt into action to save passengers on their sinking cruise ship. That seemed pretty extreme, even for a show that has been giving viewers crazy rescues since 2018. So what could top a sinking cruise ship in the eighth season? Bees, of course!

‘9-1-1’s Brian Thompson Talks Captain Gerrard, His 118 Return, And Season 8: “If This Was My Last Job, I Would Be Very Satisfied As An Actor”

Opening Shot: A private plane takes off, flying over Los Angeles.

What Time Is ‘9-1-1’ On Tonight? How To Watch ‘9-1-1’s Season 8 Premiere Live On ABC And Hulu

The Gist: The pilot is having banter with the air traffic controller on the ground when all of a sudden a massive swarm of bees appears; it covers the plane and gets inside the cockpit. As the pilot swerves to change course, he’s alerted to a nearby plane.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Squad 118 is under a new captain after Bobby Nash (Peter Krause) got reassigned; the new captain, Vincent Gerrard (Brian Thompson) is about as hard-ass as it gets. Hen Wilson (Aisha Hinds), Howie Han (Kenneth Choi) and Eddie Diaz (Ryan Guzman) seem to take it in stride, but Evan Buckley (Oliver Stark) is having a really hard time. As it is, it seems like Capt. Gerrard has it out for him.

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In the meantime, LAPD Sgt. Athena Grant-Nash (Angela Bassett) is called into her captain’s office; two federal agents are looking for her to transport a prisoner from Arizona back to Los Angeles. The wrinkle is that the prisoner is the man who killed her fiancé 30 years prior. Athena is angry that the man is getting an early release because of his testimony, but she’s surprised when her captain informs her that the prisoner specifically asked for her.

A truck with a massive number of bees on its trailer gets into an accident, busting the bee enclosures open. The angry bees swarm the driver and sting him to death. Maddie Buckley (Jennifer Love Hewitt) fields a 911 call from a mother who’s afraid of her daughter getting stung because she’s allergic. Maddie walks the mom through trying to keep the bees out, but when a couple do enter the car, Maddie finds out that the mom is also allergic — but she only has one EpiPen.

We see where Nash has been reassigned; he’s the technical advisor on a firefighter-centric TV series, and he’s essentially considered to be a nuisance to the show’s director. But the show’s star (Callum Blue) wants Nash to be his muse, like Jake LaMotta was for Robert De Niro on Raging Bull .

The 118 squad is called to the scene of the accident, and Buck comes up with a solution to calm the bees and get the mother and daughter out of the car. But because he went off on his own without informing the captain, Gerrard punishes Buck for his “creative thinking.” The squad is then called to a perfume launch event that’s been invaded by bees, who attack the assistant (Bailey Gavulic) of the woman who launched the brand (Amy Pietz) after her boss sprays her with the floral-smelling perfume.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? 9-1-1 is a more extreme version of Emergency! and Adam-12 . A more recent comparisons is Station 19 .

Our Take: As 9-1-1 ages, the nature of the show makes it fairly inevitable that the emergencies faced by the 118 squad, as well as Bobby, Athena and Maddie, are going to become more extreme. Last season, Bobby and Athena deal with a cruise ship disaster. What can be even more extreme than a sinking ship with thousands of people on board? Millions of killer bees, of course! And they’re angry as hell!

The series, created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear (Minear is the showrunner), has never been subtle. There is time to explore the loves of the main characters, and it’s been interesting to see the relationship — now marriage — between Bobby and Athena grow over the show’s run. We’ve also gotten insight into the lives of the people in the 118 squad and Maddie, as well, and we get plenty of that in the Season 8 premiere.

But extreme rescue situations are what this show is all about, and you can’t get more extreme than trying to fight what the show is calling a “Bee-nado.” Is it ridiculous? Of course. But if you’re watching 9-1-1 or any of its spinoffs not expecting the ridiculous, then you’re watching the wrong franchise.

The story that’s more intriguing is Athena transporting her fiancé’s killer back to Los Angeles. As she finds out when she’s on the road with him, there are people after him that are willing to kill anyone who gets in their way. But we wonder if that’s going to be the focus of that arc or if it’s going to be more about how the plane covered in bees we saw in the cold open interacts with the plane Athena and the prisoner are on. Hopefully, both aspects of the story will be integrated, and as we’ve said before, we’ll watch Bassett do just about anything, so we’re looking forward to seeing how that arc progresses.

Bobby’s story seems a bit incongruous, but we’re pretty sure it’ll connect back in with either the bees, the danger Athena is in at the end of the episode, or both.

Sex and Skin: Nothing in the first episode.

Parting Shot: Athena finds out what happens after the plane she’s on collides with a plane full of bees.

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Amy Pietz as the perfume company founder, simply because we’ve liked Amy Pietz since Caroline In The City (going on 30 years now!), and love seeing her whenever she pops up on a show.

Most Pilot-y Line: We love that Hen has an extensive glasses collection (we do, too), but it feels like her glasses change from scene to scene, even if the squad’s location hasn’t moved. Perhaps that’ll be changed in post-production.

Our Call: STREAM IT. 9-1-1 is what it has always been, which is a show with great actors put in insane rescue situations. At this point, for it to be anything different would be strange.

Joel Keller ( @joelkeller ) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com , VanityFair.com , Fast Company and elsewhere.

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