‘9-1-1’: Oliver Stark on What Buck’s Relationship Status Means Going Forward
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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for the 9-1-1 Season 7 premiere “Abandon ‘Ships.”]
Listen, if there’s one ‘ship we’re not ready to abandon, it’s Athena (Angela Bassett) and Bobby (Peter Krause), though they do have some things to work out in the 9-1-1 premiere. Fortunately, all is well for Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Karen (Tracie Thoms), as well as Chimney (Kenneth Choi) and Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt)—though multiple people need to tell him that!—and we’re not at all attached to Buck (Oliver Stark) and Eddie’s (Ryan Guzman) love interests, which is a good thing in one case.
Early on in the premiere, Buck tries to make plans with Eddie over the weekend, but the other man is busy chaperoning, with Marisol (Edy Ganem), his son Christopher’s (Gavin McHugh) first date. When Eddie suggests he invite Natalia (Annelise Cepero), Buck reveals, “We broke up. I don’t know why I thought it was such a great idea dating a death doula.” As Eddie points out, “to be fair, you had just died.” But that was the problem, Buck explains: “That was all she ever wanted to talk about: death, death, death. Got kind of boring, to be honest with you.” (We kind of saw this coming, given how they met and their first date.) Eddie then welcomes Buck “back to the world of the living,” telling him, “you were missed.”
In Season 7, “in his personal life, [Buck’s] just open to doing the things that make him happy, finding what it is that he wants to be and the things that make him feel good and being in pursuit of them in a way that carries no shame with it,” Stark tells TV Insider. “And he will go after the things that make him feel good.”
The breakup with Natalia “is part of the reinvention of Buck, I think, that he’s moving forward and leaving all the things that we have previously seen of his life,” Stark explains. “He’s starting to leave those behind and develop into a new him.”
So might that mean he picks out his own couch? He was without one for some time after his previous ones came with (ex-)girlfriends, then in the Season 6 finale, he’d asked Natalia to help him get one. “I’ve shot a lot in my apartment this year, and I have not shot on the couch yet, and I don’t think I’ve even looked in that direction of the set,” Stark admits with a laugh. “I don’t know what couch is there. I think it’s probably the same one.”
Disney/Chris Willard
Meanwhile, Athena and Bobby are on their honeymoon on a cruise—the trouble has just started there, with hijackers boarding at the end of the premiere—and from the start, she’s not on board with it. She’s seen The Poseidon Adventure, she explains to Frank (Eddie McGee) during a therapy session. (Shelley Winters was nominated for Best Supporting Actress at the Oscars that year, she points out. Did she win? “No, she did not,” Athena says, clearly still bothered, as are we about Bassett’s Oscars loss.)
But she then admits that while she loves her husband, their life together is a whirlwind, but take away that, the chaos, and she’s not sure what’s left. Who are they when it’s just the two of them? And so while Athena might not be a fan of Norman (Daniel Roebuck) and Lola (Romy Rosemont) when it turns out that the couple from Season 2’s “Buck, Actually”—back together after she was arrested for flashing morning freeway traffic to get him to see her—is on the ship, she eagerly agrees to join them for drinks. Bobby’s able to tell that Athena’s trying to avoid him, but soon both are caught up in whether Norman killed his wife (she was kidnapped, by those who, armed, board the ship at the end).
Elsewhere, Chimney, upon seeing how absolutely miserable a couple is on a call, decides that he and his fiancée Maddie should make a change. Their conversation about the matter highlights just what makes them so great together. “I saw a future that I never want to have, a couple who have been together for 35 years,” he begins. “Sounds like you’re un-proposing,” she remarks. He’s not, he assures her, but rather, as he sees it, they became “complacent” and “calcified.” “I mean, they must have been in love once, right?” he asks. “One would think,” she agrees.
So, to make sure that doesn’t become them, he thinks they should start dating—not other people, but each other. He wants the “honeymoon life.” And it’s sweet, but it’s easy to see that this won’t last. And it doesn’t. After another call teaches Chimney not to force things, he decides that he and Maddie don’t need to date. Rather, they have a wedding to plan … and now a hot tub out back.
“I don’t think” they need to worry about getting complacent, Choi agrees with us, “but Chimney will always worry. Chimney is just a ball of nerves and anxiety. He hears one thing on a call and it sets him in one direction. He hears another thing. He’s like a lost little puppy dog, which I think is part of his charm. But for me, as a viewer, sometimes I just want to shake him and slap him in the face and say, ‘Cool out. Just relax.’ But that’s part of his charm, is he wants everything to be as perfect as it can be, which usually makes things worse.”
Finally, it turns out Christopher’s been talking to five different girls from his class. Eddie brings Buck in to help, and it’s the other firefighter to whom Christopher opens up a bit. As he sees it, they’ll all end up leaving in the end, like his mother did, even before she died. It’s heartbreaking to watch Eddie listening to this. But thanks to the letter Eddie gives Christopher that Shannon (Devin Kelley) left for him—we see her reading it to him—it does seem like things are looking up, with Chris setting up the framed photo of mother and son he’d had face down on his desk.
What did you think of the Season 7 premiere? And did anything feel different to you with the move to ABC?
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC
