Juan Carlos Coto wrote and directed this episode and it showed. He's very good about throwing in subtle character moments and there were plenty of them here. The firefam scenes were to die for!
I liked that they kinda mixed up who was interacting with who, since we see a lot of Hen/Chim, Buck/Eddie, etc. Buck and Hen's friendship is great and you can tell he really admires her and looks to her for guidance. And she, despite going through some really tough stuff in this episode, took the time to give him good advice- he has to discover what happiness means for him on his own and can't rely on others for validation, something he's always struggled with. I'm curious where they'll take his storyline, as I presume it's gotta be somewhat big to be going so meta and deep. I have an idea about where it may go but we'll see if it comes to fruition.
Eddie and Chim didn't really have a storyline in this episode but I liked the locker scene where it was clear that they were worried about their respective partners/best friends but still wanted to give them space. Juan Carlos Coto tweeted that the little look Eddie gave Chim to signal him to ask Buck if he wants to go to breakfast too was Ryan and Kenny's idea and made the whole scene work, which I agree it did, as it served as reinforcement of their care and respect and then was a nice segue into the Buck/Hen conversation.
I just love Hen and Karen, they love each other so much and are so supportive of each other. I think it's pretty obvious Hen is gonna choose to stay a paramedic over med school, as I don't see any way she'd be able to remain a main character on the show otherwise. I look forward to seeing more of her/their storyline, and as always it was great to see Denny.
The Bobby and Athena in Florida plot is kinda interesting and it looks like next episode will be only about them which is cool. I just hope they focus more on their relationship than the actual solving the crime thing, as it seems pretty obvious Junior's dad did it. This isn't a police procedural and really shouldn't be treated as such imo. There are plenty of those kinds of shows out there.
Maddie helping the new recruit in the call center was nice though I don't really see a point to his character yet. I guess just a young replacement for May since she went off to college?
My only real criticism of this episode is that the build up to the emergencies, especially the love tunnel one, was WAY too long and wasted precious screentime. I believe I saw they had to cut some of the happiness convention stuff which actually served a purpose in Buck's storyline so I wasn't happy (see what I did there lol) about that. Yes this is an emergency show, but the emergencies are really only interesting in so far as they have action/suspense and/or play a significant role in the character storylines imo.
Overall a decent episode that covered a lot. If they cut back on the extraneous emergency build up details a little bit they'll be golden.
I liked that they kinda mixed up who was interacting with who, since we see a lot of Hen/Chim, Buck/Eddie, etc. Buck and Hen's friendship is great and you can tell he really admires her and looks to her for guidance. And she, despite going through some really tough stuff in this episode, took the time to give him good advice- he has to discover what happiness means for him on his own and can't rely on others for validation, something he's always struggled with. I'm curious where they'll take his storyline, as I presume it's gotta be somewhat big to be going so meta and deep. I have an idea about where it may go but we'll see if it comes to fruition.
Eddie and Chim didn't really have a storyline in this episode but I liked the locker scene where it was clear that they were worried about their respective partners/best friends but still wanted to give them space. Juan Carlos Coto tweeted that the little look Eddie gave Chim to signal him to ask Buck if he wants to go to breakfast too was Ryan and Kenny's idea and made the whole scene work, which I agree it did, as it served as reinforcement of their care and respect and then was a nice segue into the Buck/Hen conversation.
I just love Hen and Karen, they love each other so much and are so supportive of each other. I think it's pretty obvious Hen is gonna choose to stay a paramedic over med school, as I don't see any way she'd be able to remain a main character on the show otherwise. I look forward to seeing more of her/their storyline, and as always it was great to see Denny.
The Bobby and Athena in Florida plot is kinda interesting and it looks like next episode will be only about them which is cool. I just hope they focus more on their relationship than the actual solving the crime thing, as it seems pretty obvious Junior's dad did it. This isn't a police procedural and really shouldn't be treated as such imo. There are plenty of those kinds of shows out there.
Maddie helping the new recruit in the call center was nice though I don't really see a point to his character yet. I guess just a young replacement for May since she went off to college?
My only real criticism of this episode is that the build up to the emergencies, especially the love tunnel one, was WAY too long and wasted precious screentime. I believe I saw they had to cut some of the happiness convention stuff which actually served a purpose in Buck's storyline so I wasn't happy (see what I did there lol) about that. Yes this is an emergency show, but the emergencies are really only interesting in so far as they have action/suspense and/or play a significant role in the character storylines imo.
Overall a decent episode that covered a lot. If they cut back on the extraneous emergency build up details a little bit they'll be golden.
