9-1-1

The Gravity of the Absurd

Are we really meant to take this seriously? That’s what I kept wondering during those opening episodes of *9-1-1*. When Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk, and Tim Minear launched their show in 2018, it presented itself as another first-responder drama—but within minutes it turns into something else entirely. A baby flushed through plumbing. A bouncy castle lifted skyward on a gust. It edges into cartoon territory, honestly. Yet here we are, nine seasons and more than 140 episodes later, and I’m still tuning in.



I used to blame my loyalty on fatigue—the kind of “blank-screen” viewing you crave after a brutal Tuesday. Still, there’s a particular chemistry to how this show moves. The camera rarely slows, racing over L.A. streets with an oversaturated, frenzied energy that keeps the city looking like it’s perpetually on the brink of collapse. And sometimes it is. When the much-promised tsunami hits Santa Monica Pier, the water doesn’t just crash—it swallows the sun-soaked boardwalk, turning the amusement arcade into a drowned wasteland. You watch the Ferris wheel sink, and even though it’s obvious network television, the panic is almost tangible. The show’s trick is treating even the most preposterous setups as if they’re life-or-death scenarios.



None of that spectacle works without a human anchor, and that weight rests heavily on Angela Bassett. As LAPD Sergeant Athena Grant, she doesn’t just enter a scene—she stakes out every inch of it. Look how her posture stiffens when a suspect lies, or how tightly she clamps down on her jaw to keep personal grief from derailing her command. Bassett has always conveyed intensity through physicality, but here, within the constraints of network format, she distills it into tiny gestures. Collider was right to note she “can do more with silence and stillness than most actors can with an entire monologue.” It’s baffling the television academy overlooks performances like this merely because they show up between ad breaks.



Maybe the show never wanted to choose between soap opera and disaster thriller. Whether that feels like a flaw or a strength depends on how much melodrama you can stomach. The dialogue does wobble toward cliché sometimes, and the writers aren’t always sure how to juggle the sprawling cast. Still, when Peter Krause’s Bobby Nash lets his shoulders drop, burdened again by his past trauma, the campy noise fades away. What remains is a quietly tender sketch of people racing toward chaos because they haven’t figured out how to repair the wreckage in their own lives. That alone is enough to keep me watching.