The Three-Part 9-1-1 Bee-Nado Event Explained In Six Parts

ain’t no way Angela Bassett wasn’t landing that airplane

I. Bees

9-1-1 opened its eighth season with a much-hyped, three-part bee-nado event, kind of like how its seventh season opened with a three-part event about a honeymoon cruise going sideways due to pirates and a hurricane. The action began quickly, with a truck filled with bees crashing on the highway and unleashing a swarm throughout Los Angeles. The first episode was littered with bee-related emergencies and ended — and began, because foreshadowing — with a small airplane getting blown off course because its pilot was blinded by the bees. That small airplane then crashed into a much larger passenger plane. The pilot of the larger plane flew out of a hole that was ripped in the cabin. Angela Bassett was on the plane.

II. Angela Bassett had to fly that plane

Buddy, you know she did. The co-pilot was also incapacitated so she recruited a child who was flying with his father to celebrate the memory of his dead mother. The child knew what to do because he had flown planes in a game he played on his VR headset. He was up there punching buttons and yoinking levers with the confidence of Tom Cruise in… I mean, in any Tom Cruise movie, really. Or in real life, I suspect.

I love this child very much.

Other things were happening, too. In no particular order:

— a man on the plane had a cardiac event and had to be saved with Viagra that was crushed up and administered via nebulizer

— a high school student on the plane had to have her leg sliced with a hastily made prison shiv — this will make sense in a sec — to reduce swelling and restore circulation to her toes

— Angela Bassett was in the cockpit holding two simultaneous conversations via speakerphone, one with a flight instructor who was walking her through an emergency landing and one with the fireman husband she just survived that honeymoon pirate hurricane cruise with last season

This show does nothing if not everything all at once.

III. Guess why Angela Bassett was on that airplane

Did you guess “because she was transporting a prisoner who had information that would take down an Epstein-style trafficking operation that went to the highest levels of society, and they had to get on this plane at the last minute because many people were trying to prevent this prisoner from revealing this information, and also the prisoner being transported was in jail because he murdered Angela Bassett’s character’s previous fiancé via many years earlier but she’s also the only one he can trust”?

Congratulations if you did. He’s the one who made the prison shiv that saved the girl’s leg. Again, foreshadowing.

IV. Wait, what about the bees?

It brings me great pleasure to inform you that there was not a single damn bee in the second and third episode of the bee-nado trilogy, despite literally all of the advertising for the whole season focusing on the bees. Just zero bees. The whole thing was just a way to get Angela Bassett into the cockpit of a mangled airplane that she’d have to land with the help of a child so the man who murdered her fiancé could take down powerful sexual abusers.

Which means… I suppose… that the bees… were a honeypot to lure us all in?

V. Angela Bassett landed that plane

She did this despite:

— multiple holes in the roof

— a broken rudder that made it impossible to turn

— the original co-pilot being unconscious and the flight crew delivering non-stop CPR to keep him alive

— her new child co-pilot freezing up and revealing he had never once successfully landed the plane in his VR game

— the only landing option being the LA freeway that had been cleared with a prop fire truck her fireman husband had stolen from the set of a 9-1-1-style show he is serving as a technical advisor for within the actual 9-1-1 show

Network television is back, baby.

VI. There were still 20 minutes left in the episode after the dramatic freeway plane landing

This left enough time for Angela Bassett and her new husband and the man who murdered her old fiancé to go recover the little black book of the Epstein-type person. This is where you’re probably thinking “Hmm, I wonder if a crooked federal agent whose name was in the black book showed up and tried to shoot Angela Bassett’s new husband but the man who murdered her old fiancé leaped in front of the speeding bullet to save both of them.”

Yes, obviously. Duh. Also, immediately after all of this went down in the third part of the three-episode event, Gina Gershon showed up on Doctor Odyssey and flirted with Don Johnson one week after he made out with Shania Twain.

Everyone is doing great. Angela Bassett, Don Johnson, children with VR headsets, everyone. But especially me.

STUFF I TYPED

— my season finale Slow Horses Incompetence Index, which was rebranded as the Competence Index because almost everyone did a good job and wrecked my bit

— my Five Spot newsletter, which was about a silly song that is still in my head today

STUFF I CLICKED ON

— Harrison Ford insists he is a silly goose and I am starting to believe him 

— Fat Bear Week ended with justice 

— a good blog by Kathryn VanArendonk about how cool it is that Slow Horses was given time to grow into the show it has become, which pairs well with another blog with a great title — Just Give Me A Damn Second, Netflix — about streaming services making a zillion shows and then canceling them before people have a chance to see if they are good

— another blog with a wonderful title — Who Gets To Be A Daddy? — that was a fun and interesting read for me, a straight white dude who gives off vibes closer to Your Idiot Son than anything else

— I am so jealous that Pablo Torre got to see the secret Prince documentary 

— Mafia grandpa denied parole after conviction for trying to smuggle cocaine inside frozen fish

— some dude in Italy rented 1100 cars and sold them all and then skipped town, which is absolutely a plot that was schemed-up between the hours of 2:00 and 4:30am

— speaking of criminal masterminds 

— there is still time to steal the Criterion van

— let’s all chip-in and buy the Minnesota Twins

— suspected Pee Bandit 

— a lot of raccoons

— “Limp Bizkit’s fraud lawsuit rattles music industry”

— many of you have already seen the incredible portrayal of Gronk in the Aaron Hernandez show but I need to share it anyway because it’s too important to risk anyone missing 

— whoops

— Fran Drescher will play Timothee Chalamet’s mom, which is… awesome

— hero wasp

— Stevie Wonder rules 

— Walton Goggins posted more pics of himself in character as Baby Billy from The Righteous Gemstones and I am sharing them again because they make me so happy

waltongogginsbonafide

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Okay, that’s all for this week. Please subscribe and share and try to avoid a situation where you have to land a mangled airplane on a freeway.