In January 2023, after coming home from a really terrible birthday trip where all my friends were sick (it was no one's fault! we tried our best!), I was stuck in a deep depression. Everything sucked, and I needed something to hang onto. TV is my comfort food, and it's been there for me before. (Don't ask me how many times I watched MASH in 2021.)
After years of seeing Peter Krause and Rob Lowe staring out at me from the tiny thumbnails on Disney+, I finally watched 911, and then 911: Lone Star. The shows were on their 6th and 4th seasons, respectively. I watched everything in about 3 weeks. I actually finished Lone Star season 3 right before season 4 premiered on January 24th, so I could watch it live.
I'm not a doctor, but I truly believe a network procedural is part of a balanced diet. Prestige TV is great. Right now, I'm rewatching The Wire, still, maybe, the best show of all time. But it's a show I watch slowly; I need breaks. I'm on episode 8 of season one, and I'm worried about Wallace.
The Wire is my dinner; 911 is my snack. I can eat the whole bowl in one night.
There are two shows: 911 is set in LA and is currently airing its 8th season. 911: Lone Star is set in Austin and is currently airing its 5th (and last) season.
(We know for sure there will be a new 911 set in a new city with a new cast, but the current Lone Star showrunner is pushing hard for a spinoff with the main couple, TK and Carlos, that would probably be in a new Texas city and focus on Carlos as a Texas Ranger. Please cross your fingers for me because I need it.)
911 starts with Buck’s first day as a probie, and he’s kind of the heart of the show. We’ve watched him grow up from a dumb kid stealing firetrucks to pick up women to season 7, when he came out as bisexual. His new boyfriend is actually the firefighter whose place Buck took when he first joined the house.
We also have Hen, the soft butch paramedic, and her wife, Karen, a literal rocket scientist. They are both brilliant; Hen almost became a doctor. Their son, Denny, is the biological child of Hen’s ex, who causes drama of course. They’ve spent many seasons trying to grow their family and are currently in a battle with an LA councilwoman over the child they want to adopt.
The main team is rounded out by Bobby, the captain, who is currently retired and a tech advisor on a firefighter TV show called Hotshots. He’s married to Athena, a police sergeant and Hen’s best friend. There’s Chimney (no, he won’t tell you how he got his nickname), who is married to Buck’s sister, Maddie, who works 911 dispatch. And Eddie, an army vet and widower dad, currently fighting over custody with his parents. Buck met Eddie and his son, Christopher, and decided he was going to be best friends with both of them, and now Buck is officially in Eddie’s will as guardian for his son.
(Yes, Buck/Eddie is the biggest ship in the fandom. Yes, they're called Buddie.)
911: Lone Star is a completely separate show, except for one crossover episode and a minor crossover cameo. Rob Lowe plays Owen Strand, a 9/11 survivor who rebuilt his house, so when a whole house goes down in Austin, they ask him to do it again. In the first episode, his son, TK, proposes to his boyfriend, who says no because he’s cheating, and TK, an addict in recovery, overdoses. Owen saves him, and they move to Texas.
They build a new team with Paul, from Chicago, who transitioned on the job; Marjan, from Miami, who is a daredevil and famous on Instagram; Mateo, from Austin, a dyslexic probie who can’t pass the final firefighter test; and Judd, the sole survivor of the Austin firehouse. Judd’s wife, Grace, is the 911 dispatcher who ties the show together.
(In the first season, Liv Tyler plays the paramedic captain who is searching for her missing sister. She finds her in the season finale, then never returns. Gina Torres plays Tommy, the new paramedic captain. TK transfers to EMS in season 2, and then Nancy rounds out that team. Nancy is the most criminally underwritten character on this show, but at least we know she's bi!)
Carlos is a beat cop. He and TK hook up (TK: "I couldn't wait that long." Carlos: "Yes, I remember the 15 minutes after we met.") in the first episode. TK doesn’t want a relationship; Carlos has already decided TK is his soulmate. They get it together in the season finale. The thing I appreciate most about them is they go through it, because this is a prime time soap, but they go through it together.
AND NOW THEY’RE MARRIED.
A procedural, for me, is about the characters first. That's how I fall in love with a story. But let's do a rundown of some of the wild and wacky rescues these characters encounter.
On 911: tsunami, Ferris wheel under water, capsized cruise ship, Eddie trapped at the bottom of a well, Chimney with rebar in his head, the whole team under a collapsed overpass, an entire zoo loose on the streets, the captain's house burns down and THEN he has a heart attack, oh and by the way, it's not his first house fire. Did I mention the BEE-NADO?
On 911: Lone Star, we've seen a volcano under a golf course, wildfires, minefield, a bull trapped in a car, Carlos kidnapped by a serial killer, Owen accidentally joined a Nazi biker gang, train derailment, gas cloud, dust storm, solar storm, ice storm, frog! storm. The next episode promises Rob Lowe with a lasso on top of a moving firetruck.
These shows are silly in the best sense of the word. Sometimes, that's exactly what you need. And at the heart, there is love. There is the family you make. It also helps that this is a Ryan Murphy franchise, and everyone is just ridiculously attractive.
In one of my group chats recently, someone asked, "How are you dealing with all this?" My honest answer: I'm not, but my silly queer firefighter shows premiered their new seasons last month, and that's getting me through. I wrote this introduction in case you need a silly queer procedural to get you through "all this."
(And if you want fic recs, just lemme know.)