This week’s episode of 9-1-1 has viewers reflecting the sentiment of the title — “Holy Mother of God”, indeed. While we gain more insight into Bobby’s relationship with his estranged family, there are also direct implications to what fans have been clocking for years: Buck’s potential feelings for Eddie. The back half of the procedural’s eighth season has sure been delivering, and we’re here for it.
This episode is also special for another reason, as it marks star Aisha Hinds’ (who viewers know as firefighter Hen Wilson) directorial debut.
Keep reading for a recap of everything that goes down in “Holy Mother of God”.
A Mega-Church Mega-Emergency
The first emergency the 118 is called to is at a mega-church, where a self-proclaimed “faith healer” by the name of Sister Ann (Lesley Ann Warren) is performing a healing for a large crowd of followers. However, in the middle of her service, the churchgoers begin dropping like flies.
Not long after, our favorite crew of first responders arrives at the scene. The crowd has seemingly lost their minds, and as the rest of the firefighters attempt to evacuate the building, Bobby (Peter Krause) figures out the cause to be carbon monoxide poisoning after learning there are gas generators being run inside the building. After clearing everyone from the church, they then notice a woman hanging off the giant cross atop the roof.
Ravi (Anirudh Pisharody) and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) attempt to secure the structure while Buck (Oliver Stark) starts trying to coax her down. She hesitates to take Buck’s hand, reminiscent of the rollercoaster emergency back in the first season, but with Sister Ann’s words grounding her, she finally obliges.
After the 118’s work is done, Ann approaches Bobby, who has been acting cagey throughout the emergency. It’s revealed that the two know each other, seemingly on a first-name basis. The conversation is tense, and the rest of the crew picks up on it.
Noticing their confusion, Bobby drops the bombshell that Sister Ann is his mother.
Bobby Faces His Past
All we know about Bobby’s mother comes from last season, where we saw in a flashback that she and Charlie, his older brother, left Bobby’s abusive father while Bobby chose to stay. Not long after this, his father died, leaving Bobby to blame himself.
After this shocking revelation is revealed, Athena (Angela Bassett) admits she was under the impression that Bobby’s mom wasn’t still alive due to the fact that he never talks about her. While overseeing the construction of their new home (finally!), Bobby tells her it’s because he doesn’t want anything to do with his mother. He explains the last time they had spoken was before he married his first wife, and after the tragic fire that took her and his kids’ lives, she only sent a half-hearted letter in the mail. Despite this, Athena tries to convince him to mend his relationship with her, alluding to the fact that a higher power may be the reason he was called to the church.
Later on, Charlie (Sean O’Bryan) shows up at the firehouse to talk to Bobby. We learn a bit more about his life as they exchange updates, and it seems like he’s spent the better part of his adult life parading around with their mother. Bobby boasts about his marriage with Athena and his step-kids (May and Harry, we miss you), and their relationship seems much less strained than Ann and Bobby’s. Charlie invites him and Athena to lunch with their mom, and Bobby considers the invitation. Charlie also notes that their father would be proud of him, which strikes a chord. In case anyone’s forgotten, their father was also a firefighter.
Under the impression that Ann is the one who invited them to lunch, Bobby and Athena show up to her hotel room before they go out. Charlie lets them in, and Ann introduces herself to Athena, who is cordial to her mother-in-law. They begin to strike up a conversation, but it’s made tense when Athena brings up the fact that they’re building a new home, and Bobby notes that their old house was burned down. His mother makes a jab at his starting of the apartment fire, which admittedly made me clutch my pearls a bit.
It’s clear at this point that Bobby is irritated, and rightfully so. When Ann begins to strike up more conversation with Athena about her work in the church, Bobby is quick to get defensive when his father is brought up. He accuses her of walking out on them, and all plans of lunch are squashed when it’s revealed that Charlie was actually the one who set everything up.
In a stunning monologue performed by Peter Krause, Bobby tells his mother that although he’s worked hard to forgive the people in his life and move on, she’s someone he doesn’t think he’ll ever be able to forge a relationship with again.
Later on, the 118 responds to an emergency that brings to light how Bobby’s mother may feel about her situation. After this, Bobby returns to the church his mother has been setting up shop in to apologize. He watches her deliver a powerful speech about how she is a fraud, and that the “healings” she initiates truly have nothing to do with her. Suddenly, before he gets the chance to reconcile with her, she faints onstage.
At the hospital, Bobby and Athena wait for news on his mother’s condition. Bobby comes to the realization that the resentment he had been holding for his mother came from a place of misunderstanding. Bobby talks to Charlie, who lies and says this has never happened before, which he knows isn’t true. It’s then that Charlie tells him their mother has terminal cancer.
He explains that Ann didn’t want Bobby to know she was sick, but that after the church call, he took it as a sign that perhaps he should know. After telling Bobby that their mother would like to see him, Bobby comes into her room. He says he knows about the cancer and tries to convince her to stay in L.A. for treatment, but she insists that it’s too far along and there’s nothing that can be done. The pair share a very touching and tender moment together, full of apologies that they both clearly regret saving until that moment.
Bobby voices what he’s come to realize, which is that, “Sometimes all you can do is save yourself.”
Buck Struggles on His Own
Meanwhile, this episode also focuses on Buck’s attempts to adjust to a life without Eddie.
We open on an overwhelmed Buck surrounded by movers as they help him get his things into his new home (which used to be Eddie’s if you recall). He shows up at his sister Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and her husband Chimney’s door, asking to sleep at their place. Maddie only opens the door wider — a silent Buckley sibling moment that shows us how much they love each other.
However, the hole Eddie’s absence leaves isn’t only at home. While on the mega-church call, Bobby mistakenly keeps calling Ravi “Eddie”, which is bound to stir up some emotions on Buck’s end.
Before getting ready for another night at Maddie and Chimney’s house, Maddie tells Buck that he can’t keep avoiding sleeping in his new place forever. The issue, according to Buck, is that it still feels like Eddie’s house rather than his. We can see how this would be difficult for someone like Buck, who lived in the apartment of his girlfriend who left him to travel the world long after she decided not to come back. He admits to Maddie that he’s having a hard time without his best friend, and she implores him to do something he probably doesn’t want to: make new friends.
Sure enough, Ravi gets dragged into Buck’s search for a connection equivalent to the one he has with Eddie. At the firehouse, Buck approaches him and attempts to make small talk, which Ravi takes with a grain of salt. He then asks if Ravi wants to hang out, and the whole scene is awkward in just the right way. On seeing his coworker’s hesitancy, Buck points out that it also took him a while to warm up to Eddie, to which Ravi questions how long. “Almost a whole shift,” is Buck’s meek response. Mind you, Ravi’s been at the station for four years.
Ravi ends up at a bar with Buck anyway, only to be subjected to his drunk rambling about Eddie. Fed up after multiple rounds of shots, he goes to retrieve some beer and runs into none other than Buck’s (fairly recent) ex-boyfriend, Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr).
Bringing him over to talk to Buck, Ravi manages to make his escape now that he is distracted. With nothing better to do, Tommy and Buck begin to catch up. Buck recounts Maddie’s abduction and Eddie’s departure, to which Tommy reveals that Eddie stopped talking to him after he dumped Buck (Buck’s look of satisfaction does not go unnoticed). He then says he’s recently moved into a new place, and asks if Tommy wants to come over.
This leads to them sleeping with each other, but not before Tommy breaks their make-out session to ask if Buck is living in Eddie’s house. In the morning, it seems as though the two are willing to get back together and give their relationship a second go. That is where they’re heading, but then Tommy says he isn’t worried about Buck breaking his heart (his reason for ending the relationship the first time around) because the “competition’s out of the way.” If you just did a double-take, so did everyone else.
Confused, Buck presses him on what he means before realizing he’s referring to Eddie. Yes, they went there. Buck immediately grows defensive, finding it absurd that Tommy would think such a thing. His argument is that Eddie is straight, to which Tommy doesn’t seem convinced of. After a flustered slip-up from Buck that upsets Tommy, he leaves.
As he often does, Buck turns to Maddie with his dilemma. She asks if there’s a possibility that he is in love with Eddie, to which he insists he isn’t. “It wouldn’t be so crazy,” she tells him. I didn’t say it, she did. Although it could be a case of denial, Buck has trouble even conceiving this possibility, shutting it down but admitting that his absence is still hurting more than he anticipated and that living in his house is making it harder.
He realizes that he hasn’t unpacked his things because that would make the fact that Eddie (and Christopher) aren’t coming back all too real. After admitting this, and the fact that he only slept with Tommy as a distraction so he wouldn’t feel alone, Maddie tells him that maybe he needs to learn how to be alone again. This seems to be a common theme for Buck.
However, he takes it in stride. His last scene of the episode seems to be some kind of new beginning, with him accepting the fact that he’s on his own and embracing it. He unpacks his boxes and settles onto his couch and into this new chapter of his life.
Athena Gets Called to Port
This episode ends with a brief lead-in to the 9-1-1 and Doctor Odyssey crossover, which lands Athena back onto a cruise ship after her and Bobby’s scare last season.
She gets called as backup to detain a suspect at Long Beach, only to pull her cruiser right in front of The Odyssey. While we don’t see any of what she gets up to on 9-1-1, she’s clearly dismayed at the sight and is in for a wild ride.
Catch new episodes of 9-1-1 on Thursday nights at 8/7c and stream the next day on Hulu.
