I must have glanced past the listing for 911 in the TV Guide a hundred times without really seeing it, or maybe I assumed it was a documentary show about chasing criminals or something else I didn’t want to watch. But a few weeks ago, I saw a short interview with Angela Bassett (What’s Love Got to Do with It, Waiting to Exhale, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, etc.), about losing her costar in the final episode of 911 for the season, and I got curious. Angela Bassett is on a TV show? And her co-star died? Or just the character he played on the show? I can’t even remember if I saw this information on YouTube or in the “news” on my phone, but I was interested enough to go a-googling and found out that, yes, Angela Bassett has a TV show, called 911, and it had just finished its eighth season, and her husband on the show, played by Peter Krause (Parenthood, Six Feet Under), had been killed off and “everyone” was shocked.
I was intrigued enough to look for episodes of 911 in the Free on Demand section of my DVR, but there were only five episodes available, from the middle of season eight, and I decided that I didn’t want to drop into the show at the last minute with no idea what was going on. I took a minute to be annoyed that the Free on Demand thing has so few episodes available now (it used to have whole seasons and previous seasons), but then I mostly forgot about it. You don’t want me to watch your show? Nu? Fine.
Not long after that, I was looking for coverage of the French Open in the guide on my TV (rather than the hard copy TV Guide that still comes to my house every week), and I checked ESPN and ESPN 2 and the page of channels before and after them, and I noticed the numbers “911” as they passed by. It turned out that WeTV, a channel I don’t generally watch, had a marathon of episodes from 911 all day long, and I thought, eh, why not record a few episodes, and if I’m not interested, I can erase them later.
I set the DVR and then went back to searching for the French Open. Except that the tennis got boring very quickly (I’m not a big fan of clay court tennis, I don’t know why), so I started watching one of the 911 episodes as it was recording, and I was hooked. I raced to set the DVR to record the rest of the episodes in the marathon, and then I spent the next few days watching episode after episode, in between naps. I wasn’t able to start watching from the first episode of the show, or even the first season, so there were a lot of mysteries left unexplained, but I was riveted anyway. Then the next week, I discovered that WeTV does a 911 marathon every Tuesday. So, every week now, I happily spend a couple of days watching a season or more of this show that I didn’t even know existed a few weeks ago.
I’m sure that part of the attraction of this show is that I’m on summer vacation, and with everything going on in the world I’ve needed a good, fictional distraction. But there’s also something about the people that draws me in. First of all, I love the character Angela Bassett plays. She’s a police officer (the 911 call center, the police, and the fire department in Los Angeles are the three focal points of the show), married to a firefighter, and she is never the damsel in distress, but she’s also never made out to be superhuman either. She has her flaws and her strengths, like a real person. Then there’s Aisha Hinds’ character, Hen, a paramedic/firefighter/medical student married to another strong woman (played by Tracie Thoms, from Rent and Cold Case, and a bunch of other things), and I love how these women have created a family together, embracing Hen’s aging mother, mothering an adopted son, taking in foster children and generally being the emotional home base for a lot of the other characters on the show. And then there’s Jennifer Love Hewit, who plays a 911 operator/former nurse/former victim of domestic violence. A million years ago, Jennifer Love Hewit was one of the beautiful up-and-coming actresses in Hollywood, and then she seemed to disappear, or at least I didn’t see her in many things, but now here she is, playing a woman with a lot of resilience and vulnerability, and, maybe most important for me, she’s not a skinny little thing anymore. On this show, women come in all sizes and have real lives, full of love and romance and conflict and drama. Lots and lots of drama. Both the women and the men on this show are portrayed as real people: sometimes confused, always imperfect, but also kind and generous and smart and brave. I love that in a show about unreasonably heroic behavior (and there are some wild storylines that put the heroes in life threatening danger very very frequently), none of the characters is impervious to pain or struggle.
This is not an HBO-type show, where everyone and everything is morally ambiguous; the heroes on 911 are all genuinely heroes and genuinely striving to be better people, though they are often challenged along the way. I’m not a huge fan of all of the gory disasters on the show, and how impossible some of them are (our two heroes go on a cruise to escape their hectic lives and end up being attacked by pirates and almost drowning as the ship sinks into the ocean), and I often find myself covering my eyes during the rescues, just waiting for the worst of it to be over. And, yes, sometimes the plot resolutions on the show are a little too fast, or too simple, for my comfort. But overall, these characters are people who make me feel hopeful about the world, and hopeful about the people who live in it. These people are kind, and funny, and down to earth, and I’m not being asked to identify with bad guys, or to forgive heinous behavior. There’s enough of that in the real world, thank you very much.
But now, a few weeks into my 911 marathon, as I get closer and closer to the current season, where I know ahead of time that one of the main characters is going to die, I’m dreading it. I’ve become attached to these people, and I’ve gotten used to how the characters can put their lives at risk multiple times in every episode and still defy death. Of course, it’s unreasonable to believe that people could go through this many life-threatening events and come out relatively unscathed, but season after season that’s what they’ve been able to do, and the idea that reality is coming to get even my fictional friends just sucks. And yet, I’m still watching, because I care about these people, and because, in a weird way, I feel like I need to be there for them in their time of need. It’s kind of like the way I watched videos of Israelis in their safe rooms and underground shelters during the recent war with Iran, because I felt like if I shared in their struggle I could remove some of the pain, or something.
Now that I think about it, I don’t even know if WeTV will be able to show episodes from the latest season of 911, or if I’ll have to piece the story together from the few episodes available on Free on Demand, but either way I will keep going, and maybe hoping that now that I’m watching the show the outcome will be different. I mean, that’s how the world works, right?
If you haven’t had a chance yet, please check out my novel, Yeshiva Girl, on Amazon. And if you feel called to write a review of the book, on Amazon, or anywhere else, I’d be honored.
Yeshiva Girl is about a Jewish teenager on Long Island, named Isabel, though her father calls her Jezebel. Her father has been accused of inappropriate sexual behavior with one of his students, which he denies, but Izzy implicitly believes it’s true. As a result of his problems, her father sends her to a co-ed Orthodox yeshiva for tenth grade, out of the blue, and Izzy and her mother can’t figure out how to prevent it. At Yeshiva, though, Izzy finds that religious people are much more complicated than she had expected. Some, like her father, may use religion as a place to hide, but others search for and find comfort, and community, and even enlightenment. The question is, what will Izzy find?
rachelmankowitz 
This sounds like an excellent series. Real-life has us become entwined in attachments and unpleasant scenarios. Depicting the heroes as believeable human beings is a beautiful tribute to those individuals who gave their all to protect and save the public.
That show really must be good!
It is!
Interesting follow-up to this. I got hooked on the one-season show “Dr Odyssey” and Angela Basset had a roll on that show. Her character was not happy about being on a ship and when she was asked why, they played clips of the ship episode of ‘911.’ It was interesting, to say the least. And she was great on Dr Odyssey, too!
I watched Dr. Odyssey and I either missed Angela Bassett’s episode or blanked when she was on. That’s awesome!
The episode was called Casino Week. She was great.
I’ll have to find that! Thank you!
I love this show. The humaneness, caring, and heroism, of most of the characters is what keeps me watching it. 🤗
Yay!!!!!!!
I’ve been seeing news stories about people experiencing a Mandela-type effect from the last election. Perhaps it is possible that in your universe that the characters from the show have a happier ending!
What’s a Mandela-type effect? Now I’m really curious!
Basically the Mandela Effect is where a large group of people remember something differently than “reality”. Some posit the reason is alternate timelines. (This site has some interesting examples: https://www.scienceofpeople.com/mandela-effect/ ). Perhaps in some of the other timelines Bobby lives a long, happy life with Athena!
(The people who are experiencing something like this with the election are on Tic Tok. I am not on there, so I can’t verify what they’ve said.)
So interesting! I used to love the choose-your-own-adventure books when I was a kid.
I’ve not heard of this show until now. Off to explore and try to resist.
Don’t resist! Or, at least, tell me if you find another good show instead.
One the whole family loved was the Korean comedy/drama ‘Crash Landing on You’ on Netflix.
That one was great!
I’m sure I have a bit of short term memory loss but I got swept up in your description of the show and forgot about the part where you mentioned that Peter Krause’s character dies. 🤦♀️ Maybe don’t watch that episode and then it didn’t happen. I’m just kidding but I wish I could change what’s happening in the world and the loss of normalcy is overwhelming.
Magical thinking gets a bad rap, but I really enjoy it.
I have never even heard of this TV show, so presume it is not shown in the UK, or I don’t have the right streaming service. Glad to hear how much you enjoyed it though.
Best wishes, Pete.
It’s an American broadcast show, on ABC here, so it will probably make its way to you eventually.
Like a few of you other commenters mentioned, I never have seen this show although I do recall hearing about it. Not in as much detail as you provided though. Had I, I might have started watching it. You make it sound inviting. Inviting enough, I think I will look for it and see what it’s all about.
I find pretty often TV shows have rushed plot solutions and sometimes pretty unsatisfyingly so. Probably because of the time constraints and their needing to appeal to the lowest common denominator of television viewer. I wonder if that’s part of the problem with the world today. We’ve reached to trying to satisfy lowest common denominator of human.
And finally, I have to ask, there is still print version off the TV Guide? Used to be one of my favorite things to get in the mail!
I’ve been addicted to TV Guide since forever and can’t let go. The ritual of going through it and circling the shows I want to watch, or record, brings order to my life, even though now they bundle two or three weeks into one issue. I keep thinking I’ll give it up, but no.
I still subsrcibe to a printed weekly TV guide for the same ritualistic reasons. It is delivered in the post every Wednesday
Every time it arrives I feel lucky!
I like that. I’m all for order. I suppose I do the same thing when I see the TCM listings the first off every month and I set my DVR for the movies I don’t want to miss. But that’s online. We’ve given up too much to electronic coverage. Good for you for hanging in there with a real printed guide!
I feel so much better once I’ve set the DVR for the week!
it’s funny how we can connect with these characters. I did, too, binge-watching ‘bones’ for a couple of years. 911 is a good show. Engaging.
I loved Bones!
The producers of TV shows know how to set the hook into viewers. I like shows with heroes rather than the intriguing morally ambiguous as you put it.
I took a class in TV writing a million years ago and learned some of the tricks, but I’m still a sucker for a good hook.
We haven’t had a TV since 2007 and don’t miss it. We used to be fans of some TV shows, but they changed some of the characters, and some characters just got irritating!
I was the kid who read the cereal box during breakfast just to keep from being bored and I know I would be watching shows on YouTube, on my tiny phone screen, if I lost my TV.
Your dog is ambiguously moral, and loves you. 😉 😉
Sounds great! I’d hate to pop into a few random episodes, see that a character is gonna die, the start at S1E1 and really grow to like that character. Ooof. 😢
Jezebel? Nice Dad 😂👏
After watching a few seasons, starting late, I’m now watching from the pilot episode and so many mysteries are becoming clear!
I enjoy melodrama because it’s good versus evil and good wins. The opposite is farce, which I don’t care for at all. So I enjoy and appreciate your review of the show and especially your narrative about watching. (And the canine commentary.) The more I see Angela Bassett at work, the more I admire her expression of her talent. Thanks for the insightful precis and the engaging crafting of your experience with the series.
It’s such a relief when I can trust the writers’ moral universe and not worry that they’re suddenly going to unmask themselves as, you know, satan or something.