9-1-1 - Pilot

Emergencies: a drowning teenager; a premature baby stuck in an internal pipe; a woman choked by her snake; a girl threatened by burglars.

Character focus: Evan ‘Buck’ Buckley, Bobby Nash, Athena Grant, Michael Grant, Abbie Clark.

The pilot episode heads straight into the world of 9-1-1 with the viewer being guided through a variety of relatively small scale emergencies by Abbie Clark’s narration culminating in her being directly involved in finding and saving a young girl threatened by burglars who have broken into her house while she is home alone.

At the firehouse, Bobby and Buck take centre stage with Bobby confronting Buck over his rather reckless approach to the job - and for using his job as a way of picking up women. Buck’s ability to be a bit of an idiot and quicker with his mouth and kneejerk reactions than his common sense (the bit where he cuts the head off a snake is particularly shocking) is rather overdone but as this forms much of Buck’s character arc it make sense to push it to the forefront early on. Bobby lacks a bit of character here and the scene of him in the church is pretty blunt in its exposition of Bobby’s history (even if there are many more details to come over the series).

Abbie’s home life with her ailing mother is broadly painted in some brief scenes but resigned, slightly sarcastic wit, makes her fun to watch.

Hen and Chimney are very much background characters at this point although small elements of their characters are included or hinted at such as Hen’s friendship with Athena, her frustration with Buck and Chimney’s laid back attitude.

The most thrilling emergency is the trapped baby with various elements interweaving: the rescue of the baby (an astonishingly good model); Athena’s solving of the mystery of where it has come from; Hen’s panic when she realises no one must flush their toilets and Buck’s righteous fury when the mother is put into the ambulance with the baby.

I think Buck’s sexual appetite is rather overplayed in this episode and its good that, pretty quickly, the series tones him down and gives him more dimensions as a character.

The insight into Athena’s family - an integral part of the series moving forward - also throws a plot point in with sledgehammer subtley when her husband, Michael, reveals to their children that he is gay. Again, moving forward, this is developed much more sensitively and with better scripting but, for a pilot which is throwing out it’s main characterisations and format structure as quickly and as clearly as it can, it’s easy to see why this approach was taken.

All in all, a good episode but one which speaks of better things to come.