911 season 8 fall finale recap and review: "Wannabes"

It’s definitely not easy for the 118 in 911 season 8, episode 8. What went down in the fall finale?

Caution: This post contains SPOILERS from 911 season 8, episode 8

The fall finale promised to be an exciting one with Callum Blue’s Brad shadowing Bobby. We knew he was going to cause some problems, but I don’t think we quite expected the problem that he would bring.

I’ve got to say that the series certainly brought us an ironic moment at the start of the episode. Brad showed the 118 a recent episode of “Hotshots,” and the 118 had some opinions to share. One of those was how unrealistic the chatting was in the scene, which we all know 911 is guilty of doing. This is not a realistic show, but it’s good to see everyone is being good sports about it.

Brad proves himself to be problematic in 911 season 8, episode 8

The first call of the night is the one we saw in the promo. When there’s a big pipe explosion, the 118 is called out to save people trapped in their cars. They’re all so focused on the woman trapped in the car filling with water that they didn’t notice another victim trapped in her car.

Brad did, and he decided to play hero. Of course, that meant carrying her out of the car as you would in a bad action movie. It’s not surprising after the call that Bobby gives Brad a dressing down. Had that victim had a spinal injury, carrying her out like Brad did would have made it worse. It’s first responder 101 to wait for the professionals to give the all clear.

It leads to Brad doing some grunt work, which allows Brad and Eddie time to talk. Eddie wants to get an autograph for Christopher, and Brad offers to meet Eddie’s son in person. That would be great if Christopher still lived in the state. We learn a little more about Brad, including that he has a son who is grown but doesn’t talk to him.

You can tell that Eddie fears that Brad’s life will become his own. Will he be able to take steps to prevent that from happening? I do have to say that Eddie’s parents aren’t helping at all. They don’t keep Eddie updated with Christopher’s life at all. They need to do better, but then I’ve never rated Eddie’s mom.

Brad’s celebrity status causes problems on calls. People are more interested in seeing him than seeing the first responders at work. This is realistic for the world around us. We put so much focus on meeting celebrities and worshipping them, but it’s the actual first responders who are the real heroes.

Bobby does, however, use Brad’s celebrity status to his advantage. It ends up being a twist of fate, though. A suicidal fan ends up giving Brad a pep talk to prevent Brad from going down a dark hole. We get that reminder that we’re all placed in people’s lives for a reason. There’s also the reminder that we have no idea what other people are going through.

I wasn’t really sure what to expect with Brad shadowing Bobby, but this episode turned out to have some great moments and great lessons to learn.

Athena deals with a YouTuber who tries to do good

Don’t you just hate people who don’t return their shopping carts? They end up taking up parking spaces, and when it comes to a busy time to shop, it can be difficult to find somewhere to park. And getting out to move someone else’s cart can hold up traffic. Well, as much as I get annoyed, I wouldn’t exactly start a YouTube channel that shames people for it.

Others do, though, and that’s something Athena deals with in 911 season 8, episode 8. At first, she’s called out to deal with assault, which isn’t what the kid is doing. While Athena is clearly annoyed by the kid, there’s no much that she can do about him. Well, she ends up completely on his side.

You see, the kid is assaulted to the point of almost dying. Athena makes it clear that he never deserved it, and he didn’t. It’s not like he was actually threatening people. If people didn’t like being shamed for not returning their cart, well, they should probably just return their cart! It wasn’t even the cart part that made them look bad. It was their threats of assault against the kid.

The benefit of this kid putting everything on YouTube is that the content is available for Athena to look through and start questioning suspects. It was always going to be someone this kid shamed and embarrassed. Too many people lack accountability, and this episode proves that. People are so bothered about their own image, but they’d rather blame the people showing their bad behavior rather than accept they need to change.

Sure, putting your shopping cart away is just a small thing, but sometimes, we just need to do something nice. It also wasn’t about the carts but about doing better as a person. It was about order.

The irony was that it wasn’t any of the people he shamed that ended up with the kid getting assaulted. It was actually the guy who pushed the carts from the nest to the front of the store. Getting people to return their carts meant that the older guy didn’t have a purpose and it put his job at risk. He couldn’t have that, could he? So, assault was the better answer. Well, I guess he doesn’t have to worry about job loss while imprisoned, does he?

Will Eddie move back to Texas in 911 season 8?

As Eddie realized just how much he was currently missing out on and what he could miss out on in the future, he had a choice to make. He could continue missing out, or he could sacrifice his own happiness in LA and move back to El Paso. The latter is what he started to think about doing.

We don’t get to know just yet. That’s something for the midseason premiere to potentially answer those answers. Eddie is looking at houses out there, though. It’s going to be a stressful winter break!

911 returns on Thursday, March 6 at 8/7c on ABC. Catch up on the series on Hulu.

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