‘9-1-1’: Who Broke Up, Who Breaks Down & Who’s Still Lying? (RECAP)

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[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 5 Episode 13 “Fear-o-Phobia.”]

The latest 9-1-1 is a rough one on relationships — and it’s not exactly easy to see the bright light at the end of the tunnel. (But hey, at least we got to see Peter Krause‘s Captain Bobby Nash make the weakest excuses possible to avoid spiders on a call, not that we can blame him.)

Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) are back in Los Angeles, but quite a bit happened between when we last saw them in Boston and their returns. And there’s only so long that Evan “Buck” Buckley (Oliver Stark) can keep lying about that kiss he shared with the 118’s newest firefighter, Lucy Donato (Arielle Kebbel), right? Plus, Eddie Diaz (Ryan Guzman) really isn’t doing well. Let’s recap the pain.

The Off-Screen Breakup

Maddie reunites with her brother, Buck, and Chimney with his best friend, Henrietta “Hen” Wilson (Aisha Hinds), and both drop a bombshell: Maddie and Chimney broke up! It turns out that around St. Louis, they realized it was over. The other times they fell apart, it felt like outside forces — ex-husbands, pandemics — were responsible, while this time, it was like the call was coming from inside the house. After not talking for six months, they grew, but they did so apart. It was a mutual decision and what they think is best for their daughter, Jee-Yun.

But when it’s Maddie’s first day alone with Jee-Yun in six months, Chimney worries, checking his phone constantly during a visit to the 118. Saying he’s “scared” would be an “understatement,” he admits. And so it’s no surprise when things get a bit chilly after Chimney checks if Maddie gave Jee-Yun a bath. She didn’t think it was necessary, she says, then the next time she’s at Chimney’s watching their daughter, she remembers what happened the last time.

FOX

However, the last time we see them, it’s Chimney coming home to find Maddie giving a Jee a bath. He smiles, she’s laughing, and we can’t help but wonder if there’s hope for a reunion sooner rather than later.

The Breakup Still to Come?

Taylor (Megan West) moves in with Buck (since he decided taking that step made more sense than telling her about the kiss with Lucy), and since they now have an extra couch, she suggests seeing if the new firefighter needs one. “We haven’t really interacted, she’s kind of a little bold, so I don’t know what her tastes are,” Buck babbles.

Then, when Buck admits he might not have asked Taylor to move in if he’d known Maddie would need a place to stay, he also ‘fesses up about the dumb things he’s done in his love life lately. Yes, he loves Taylor, and she’s been there for him with Maddie and Chimney gone, but he knows that he may not have asked her to move in for all the right reasons. Maybe he was just scared of being left again, he admits.

FOX

Later, Buck admits to Taylor that he kissed another woman, but he stopped it, realizing what a mistake it was. “I’m really, really sorry,” he says. “It didn’t mean anything. I was drunk and stupid.” When he tells her when it happened, she puts the pieces together. That’s “not entirely” the reason why he asked her to move in, he says. She goes to leave, but she’ll be back, she tells him. “I don’t have anywhere else to go,” she reminds him. “You made sure of that.”

When Taylor returns, Buck apologizes again. She tells him she doesn’t care that he kissed a random girl in a bar, but she is upset that he asked her to move in with him and then told her. Does she think he trapped her, he asks. Did he? He’s not sure. But he does tell her he’s glad she’s there and wants their relationship to work. She does, too, so she make him promise no more lies. But he still hasn’t told her he kissed Lucy, so… Come on, Buck!

The Breakdown We’ve Seen Coming

Eddie, who looks like he hasn’t slept in months, tells his therapist that he knows he shouldn’t have blown up at Bobby like he did. As his therapist notes, Eddie spends his time managing other people’s pain — as an army medic, firefighter, and father — but what about his own? He can’t just put his feelings into a box because at some point, it will blow open and take him and anyone else around him with it. (Oh, we have a feeling we know where this is going…) The recommendation: Talk to someone who shares the pain. Think about the first trauma and talk to someone who can understand what he’s been through.

FOX

A call involving a woman who can’t feel fear hits close to home to Eddie, as he listens in over the radio. And so when he goes home, he picks up a medal in a box and has a flashback to his army medic days. He calls one of his fellow soldiers … and then his son, Christopher (Gavin McHugh), hears noises from his room and calls Buck, worried.

When Buck gets to the house, he bursts into Eddie’s bedroom and finds the place trashed and holes in the wall. Eddie is sitting, crying on the floor, holding a bat. “They’re all dead,” he cries. “Everybody that I saved. They’re all dead.”

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After Buck puts Christopher to bed, he joins Eddie in the living room. Eddie admits he “just kind of lost it. … I was supposed to reach out to some of the people I served with, part of my therapy.” He hadn’t kept in touch with any of them since he moved to L.A., and of the four people he pulled out of a helicopter alive, one died in the country, one died in a car crash, one overdosed and the last one, whom he’d tried to call, shot herself last August.

“I pulled them out,” Eddie tells Buck. “But I didn’t save them.” So why did he take a baseball bat to everything he owns? “I’m afraid,” he says. “That I’m never going to feel normal again.”

9-1-1, Mondays, 8/7c, Fox