With a crash and a bang (well, several dozen—plus a firestorm), the three-part Season 8 opener of 9-1-1 has come to a cathartic close. What started off as a larger-than-life killer bee disaster, which naturally morphed into a swarming beenado of epic proportion, brought down the plane Sergeant Athena Grant-Nash ( Angela Bassett ) was on—and later forced to commandeer.
With this week’s episode, the ABC first-responder drama dedicates almost all of its 40-minute runtime to landing the plane, eschewing any B or C storylines for the 118’s side-quests that help Athena and the aircraft’s hundred-or-so passengers reach the ground safely. While unwieldy to most, the plot’s gargantuan scope is what Peter Krause , who plays Bobby Nash, credits to showrunner Tim Minear .
“Tim weaves together all these different things: Beenado, Bobby being on Hotshots , having to steal/borrow that fire engine in order to land this plane that was crashed into by the small plane that was covered in bees. He really did a fantastic job weaving it all together,” the actor told Parade in a recent interview. “And there's no place else on TV you can see stuff like this, not even on streaming.”
Related: Everything to Know About 9-1-1 Season 8
Picking up after last week’s cliffhanger —where a glimmer of false hope was promptly snuffed out after the remaining co-pilot once again fell unconscious, leaving the plane’s fate in the hands of Athena and a tween passenger—Episode 3 goes turbo. When further damage to the ailing aircraft makes it impossible for Athena to right its course to LAX, Bobby, after finally getting through to his wife on the phone, must think on his feet to clear a mile-long stretch of freeway for her crash descent.
“I mean, where else do you see this on TV?” Krause reiterated.
“We shut down a section of freeway, rather in the middle of downtown LA,” he went on to explain. “It was a ramp area that's used to get from one thread of freeway to another, where you can circumvent it, and I'm sure for some motorists, it's a horrible detour for them.” So if at some point in the summer, Los Angelenos faced particularly atrocious roadblocks, you know who to blame!
To piece together the crash landing sequence, Krause said the team had to film at multiple locations, tying together both practical and computer-generated effects. The 9-1-1 crew had access to a real plane at a Southern California airport (not LAX) and used the real inflatable slides shown in the aftermath of the successful landing.
While Krause did not actually have a plane coming at him at high speed, that shot was filmed by a “vehicle driving at me with a camera light on it as I stood atop the fire engine.”
“One of the really wonderful things about large television projects like this is all the jobs that it creates, all the people who are employed. There are thousands of people who are behind 9-1-1 ,” Krause said.
Related: 9-1-1 Season 8 Episode 2 Recap: Athena Springs Into Action as a Makeshift Aircraft Pilot Following Plane Crash
Speaking about his co-star Bassett, with whom he has worked for the better part of a decade, Krause said shooting high-stakes scenes side-by-side is “second nature at this point.”
“There are these more extreme stories that we find ourselves in, and then there are these more romantic aspects to [it]. They all kind of fold into one,” he said. “The trust just builds over the years. I enjoy all the things that we get to do together: the romance, the comedy, the action stuff, and when it's all woven together as well.”
It’s what Krause said helps sustain a show over a long period of time, adding that he was “rather stunned” by the increase in fans and subsequent viewership he gleaned over the past several months.
“It's very interesting in your eighth season. More people stop me than ever,” he said. “It feels to me like we've doubled our audience when I'm in public.” He added, laughing, “Eight years later, we’re a big hit again!”
Now commandeered by ABC, the former Fox series has “plenty more emergencies” in store, Krause teased. While the star couldn’t give away any plot details, such as if the Maxwell Fulton case had been finally put to bed, he admitted to a “fantastic" upcoming Halloween episode and the fact that Bobby’s advising gig on the show-within-the-show Hotshots is “not going to go away.”
“Tim has done some surprising things with that,” he said. “It's a bit of a lampoon. It's an exaggerated actor on the show who really wants to be bought as an authentic fire captain, so he's very enamored with Bobby. And that's part of the fuel of why Hotshots will continue to be a part of 9-1-1 this season. Callum Blue, the actor who plays the actor, he's done a fantastic job. And it's really fun to have to deal with this overblown, egotistical actor. It's a really fun element to the show. It could only come into being with Bobby leaving the 118 for a while. And so sometimes you get lucky in television and in the evolution of this show. I think that Tim Minear has allowed himself to be very creative and think outside what the rules of the show are.”
New episodes of 9-1-1 air on ABC Thursdays at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT. Next-day streaming is available on Hulu.
Next, 9-1-1 ’s Oliver Stark Breaks Down the ‘Ludicrous’ Beenado Premiere: ‘It Feels Silly and it Feels Fun’
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