9-1-1 / YMMV - TV Tropes

Accidental Innuendo: When Buck and Eddie discuss Maddie's encounter with her old friend Tara, the conversation briefly turns into Buck apologizing for not being able to support Eddie during his own lawsuit situation and then turns into them throwing banters that suggest they'll fight but they end up playing video game with Christopher, which is supposed to be heartwarming (and it is). Their gestures and Buck's lines during the bait part though, it borders on open flirting.
Buck: Now I thought for sure that day in the grocery store you were gonna take a swing at me.
Eddie: Not that you didn't deserve it, but I wouldn't do that. You're on blood thinners.
Buck: Well, I'd still take you.
Eddie: You think so?
Buck: I know! (gets closer to Eddie) You wanna go for the title?
Alternative Character Interpretation:
- There is a good deal of speculation and debate surrounding Eddie's sexuality. While much of it was initially centered around his relationship with Buck, more recent episodes and character developments have caused some fans to speculate that he may be attracted to men. Even within the subsection of fans who read Eddie as being attracted to men, there is disagreement over whether he is attracted to women as well or has just been in deep denial of his sexuality.
  - His relationship with Ana is of particular interest here, specifically, the fact that he admitted to Carla that he was dating her because he thought Chris needed a mother figure (instead of because he actually had feelings for her) and the fact that he had a panic attack when a stranger referred to Ana as Chris's mother. In the scene where he breaks up with her, he mentions that he wanted "the idea" of their relationship to work and that he would eventually feel the way he thought he was supposed to feel about her – language that was noted by queer fans as being very similar to how someone might come out to a romantic partner they have realized they can't have feelings for. People specifically note that the breakup resembles Dani Clayton, a canonically lesbian character, breaking off her engagement.
  - This isn't helped by the fact that Lou Ferrigno Jr., who plays Tommy Kinard, a former firefighter at the 118 who transferred out to the 217 and comes back in S7 as a romantic interest for Buck, said in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter that this storyline with Buck and Tommy in S7 was originally supposed to be between Eddie and Tommy, suggesting that the speculation is not just speculation after all and it was at least seriously considered that Eddie actually is attracted to men.
- Lucy's disappointment in "Dumb Luck" for not saving her because of her own skill but by luck and the subsequent talk with Jonah about her not feeling like she's special. Is she being insecure over being in a new place she doesn't know if she belongs to or a Glory Seeker who doesn't like it when she can't showcase her own talent?
- Connor, one of Buck's former roommates, and his wife who asks for him to be sperm donor in early season 6 may come across as deceitful and opportunistic to some people. They asks for Buck's request after 3 years of no contact, Connor then comes to Buck's loft with words that border on textbook reverse psychology and manipulation tactics ^including. When several weeks later Buck doesn't seem to make appointments with the sperm donor company (because of a series of coincidences, which is valid), they come to his workplace and talk this private matter relatively loudly and forcefully, as if they're cornering Buck to be hurry with the appointment.
- Bucks dream of having Maddie, Bobby, and Eddie's life be miserable had he not become a firefighter; a still-unaddressed desire to be needed and be useful, a manifestation of fear for those he loves dear, or white savior complex and hidden conceit/egotism?
Alternative Joke Interpretation: The first season finale was aired shortly after the second season renewal was announced. The finale's closing credits feature a 911 call from a man asking if the show will be returning the following season followed by clips of the characters making "What an idiot!"-style comments. Are their comments suggesting they were definitely going to get renewed or because checking the status of a television series is not the purpose of 911?
Aluminium Christmas Trees: Did you find the snake call ridiculous? This is what turns up when you google "911 snake".
Base-Breaking Character:
- Josh Russo. Either people love him for his somewhat realistic portrayal of someone who hides his vulnerability behind sass and bitter comments and feel bad for his mugging in Season 3, or hate him for the way he handles certain plot points starting from Season 5, namely dismissing May and Claudette's workplace bullying situation and his relatively way harsh comment on Eddie hijacking Linda's dispatch call saying Eddie's "just a guest in this house" even though the reasoning for the latter situation is justifiable.
- Buck eventually becomes this as the seasons go. His supporters appreciate that Buck is not a perfect character with a sort of complicated backstory and praise his personal growth and emotional intelligence in earlier seasons especially when it comes to his relationship with Eddie and Christopher. Meanwhile his detractors view that Buck's character has become stagnant, facing similar problems of abandonment, feeling not enough, and settling for five-six seasons yet he never seems to learn anything from it while his screentime is constantly high among the main characters. His mishandling of the cheating and relationship with Taylor coupled with his initial cluelessness over the sperm donation either makes detractors hate him more or his supporters frustrated since Buck has been shown to have a better grasp and understanding to his surrounding than how he is written in recent episodes. Some who are more neutral about him remarks that had Buck been disliked by the fanbase, he'd have firmly entered Creator's Pet territory.
Broken Base:
- People are still debating over whether Shannon's story closure in Careful What You Wish For is justified or not. Some claim that while her leaving Christopher without contacting him at all and attempting to leave again after coming back to his life is unforgivable, killing her is too sudden because the show is not giving her another chance to make amends. Meanwhile, some others are fine with letting Shannon die as a bad mother because there has been enough media portrayals of fathers, especially men of color, being neglecting and abusive in family settings so seeing the script being flipped is a refreshing change. Besides, her death also serves as a lesson about seizing chances as quick as possible before it's too late.
- Buck's lawsuit plot in the first half of Sesson 3 is probably one of the most polarizing subplots of the show. Some think that putting aside his issue of wanting to belong somewhere, Buck suing the firehouse is a stupid move because Bobby has a ground in not letting someone on blood thinner medication to be on duty as it can complicate emergency situations. Meanwhile, despite the good basis for not letting Buck working some others view Bobby was still subjective with the final decision when the doctor handling Buck clears him while Bobby let Eddie work on the very next episode after Shannon's death, showing indirect favoritism.
  - To a lesser extent, Eddie lashing out at Buck on the supermarket during the plot. Some hates how Eddie paints Buck as annoying especially when it's revealed later Buck has severe abandonment issue from childhood and guilt-tripping Buck using Christopher feels excessive. Some others understand Eddie's position; his wife recently died, Christopher was in the middle of a huge natural disaster followed by nightmares after it, and he couldn't talk to the person whom he declared he trust the most when it comes to his son because of a lawsuit that indirectly revisit his trauma against his will so Eddie had reasons to be mad at Buck.
- Maddie leaving LA at the beginning of season 5 due to her postpartum depression was a subject of debate, with some fans believing this was out of character and a poor decision on the part of the writers. Further controversy ensued after 5x04, where Chim punches Buck in a fit of anger after discovering that he's been in contact with Maddie all along. While fans understand that the writing is to compensate Jennifer Love Hewitt's maternity leave and the resolution episode to this plot, Boston, is considered great by the fans, it could have been better told as Chimney is almost being absent from the episodes until Boston. It's made even worse when the very next episode reveals they break up and Chim apologizes to Buck for the punch offscreen.
- The ending of 5x08, which effectively wrote Michael and David out of the show. This was controversial mainly due to the fact that they were one of only two canon LGBT couples on the show. However, it was later revealed that the decision was spurred by Rockmund Dunbar, Michael's actor, refusing to comply with COVID-19 vaccination policies.
- Eddie's decision in 5x10 to leave the 118 after discovering that Chris's fear for his father's safety is causing him to have nightmares. Some fans believed that this decision came out of nowhere and was an example of poor planning and plot development by the writers, while some maintained that it made sense given his recent panic attacks and lingering trauma from the shooting.
- Buck's relationship with Taylor Kelly in general is a fairly divisive issue. Taylor is generally disliked by much of the fanbase, but views on her relationship with Buck range from sympathetic (that she is an okay person, just not right for Buck) to extremely hostile.
Complete Monster:
- Jeffrey Hudson is a depraved realtor who used a drone to spy on six women before breaking their home and raping them while recording each assault on camera. Caught while stalking his next target, Hudson ambushes Sergeant Athena Grant and brutally beats her to a bloody pulp. Escaping his trial during a blackout, Hudson murders his lawyer who helped him and decides to take revenge on Athena by abducting her young son Harry. He seals the boy in the wall of an abandoned house, condemning him to starvation, and then deliberately goads Athena into killing him by threatening her husband Bobby so that she will never be able to find her son.
- Jonah Greenway is a hotshot EMT introduced as an innocuous side character before his true evil nature is revealed. Having been hailed as a hero for saving a bus driver as a child, Jonah became addicted to being praised and decided to engineer events so he would always be seen in that light. Performing malpractice on patients in order to become lauded for "saving" them when they flatline, Jonah leaves a trail of corpses across several cities before arriving in Los Angeles. Continuing his twisted actions, Jonah stops the hearts of anyone he can on his hunt for glory, taking the lives of a motorist, a teenage boy, and 9-1-1 dispatcher Claudette Collins in the process. Kidnapping Hen and Chimney when they become wise to his actions, Jonah shows no remorse for all the death he's caused to satisfy his ego and claims that he is on the same level as a god, deciding who lives or dies. After torturing Chimney to the point of flatlining twice as a display of his "heroism", Jonah's only response to his eventual arrest for the murders is a wide, smug grin.
Creator's Pet:
- Taylor Kelly. Viewers' reactions were negative during her introduction episode in 2x06, particularly due to the fact that she's willing to film and release footage of Bobby being high and depressed to the point of almost committing suicide after eating the spiked brownies to boost her own career. She slowly re-enters the story in Season 4 as Buck's partner-in-crime, becomes his girlfriend during said season's finale, gets her own backstory in 5x07, and becomes the first person who says "I love you" to Buck in 5x09. However, audience opinion of her has not warmed and has arguably become worse since the creators have continued to try and develop her character. Controversial aspects include lack of acknowledgement of her actions in season 2, the general redundancy of having a reporter character (the audience already experiences the emergencies through dispatchers and first responders), the lack of satisfying development of her relationship with Buck, and the fact that the creators keep pushing focus and screen time onto a character who is widely disliked instead of further developing existing, fan-favorite side characters like Karen and Albert^note. Kristen Reidel later claimed that she got more focus in 5A because of scheduling conflict and being the one most available, but "Ghost Stories" erasing 1-2 emergency calls to give her more screen time makes the truth of that claim debatable.
- Lucy Donato became an even bigger case of this than Taylor. Compared to Jonah who is introduced at the same episode she receives more interview exposures, preemptive words of praise on her character from Kristen Reidel the acting co-showrunner ("Breath of fresh air" comes to mind), an exposition to her backstory, and even jumping ahead on what the show wants to do to her character in the next seasons like wanting to have a cop family dinner scene with her family akin to Blue Bloods. Examples that probably cements Lucy on this status are this interview where the way the article was written implies that Lucy's actress and the co-showrunner did the interview together to hype the character up, something that's usually reserved to main characters, having a character arc about doubts over her ability as a firefighter after a lucky save in "Dumb Luck" that makes Buck teaching her first responders have to accept all the lucky saves they can manage sound more ridiculous in retrospect when it's revealed in Season 6 premiere she has 5 years ahead of experience from him, Chimney at Season 5 finale declares that the team loves her, The co-showrunner talking about Lucy on Season 6 premiere interview over a more well-liked Ravi despite the backlash on the former, and a dedicated explanation to her absence in the first half of Season 6 in a scene where Bobby also decides to pick her as an interim captain over a more experienced Hen during the season premiere ^{even though} while Ravi who is equally absent for the same duration of time didn't receive even a mention to the character throughout the episodes. All of these exposures for a character whose initial role is closer to a plot device so that a conflict can happen in someone's love life, a conflict that ultimately she plays little to no role in.
Diagnosed by the Audience: A large part of the fandom considers Buck has ADHD due his impulsiveness, frequency to talk a lot, childlkie attittude, love of knowing random facts among other things. "Even Oliver Stark supports this interpretation.".
Ensemble Dark Horse:
- Eddie's son Christopher seems to be universally loved by all of the fanbase for his wholeheartedness, as well as being a positive portrayal of people with physical disabilities (in this case cerebral palsy) and played by a real-life disabled actor Gavin McHugh, who has the same condition.
- Ravi's debut at "Jinx," well, jinxing the team and his appearance at "Treasure Hunt" in a combination of Adorkable and (relatively) Only Sane Man are surprisingly well-liked by audience and his screen time on the first half of Season 5 is received positively. When he gets sidelined on the second half of Season 5 for another set of new recurring characters^note, people want him back.
- Tommy Kinard, a former firefighter in the 118 that's present in some of the flashback episodes, returned for Season 7 as a love interest for Buck, but has quickly spawned his own fans due to his chemistry with Buck, general charisma, and sweet/snarky personality. It also helps that his actor, Lou Ferrigno Jr. is also a lot of fun.
Fan-Preferred Couple: Buck/Eddie, aka Buddie, is the most popular pairing in the fandom, even with both of them having multiple canon love interests such as Buck with Taylor or Eddie with his ex-wife, Shannon. The sheer amount of fanfiction and communities devoted to them is staggering and has even been indirectly referenced on the show.
- Wanna know how big the ship is? It's among top 10 most popular ship on Tumblr at the end of 2021. It's also the twelfth pairing/relationship in AO3's "What fanfic was the world writing in 2021?"
Fandom Rivalry:
- The fans of 911 and its spin-off show 9-1-1: Lone Star have frequently been at odds with one another, especially after Tim Minear's decision to temporarily step down from 911 in order to focus on Lone Star season 3.
- The show's move to abc and subsequent cancellation of Station 19 makes the latter's fans hate on 911 in default, the sentiment that 911 fans give back in return for solely blaming the show for the cancellation.
Harsher in Hindsight: Scenes of the cast having onscreen COVID-19 vaccinations in Season 4 became painfully ironic when Rockmond Dunbar left the show because he refused to comply with the vaccine mandate after 5x08.
Hilarious in Hindsight: Since the show started, Italy finally decided on a single number for all emergencies - and the number is 118.
- "You'd think after 14 seasons of Grey's Anatomy people would know this stuff?" Now that the show has moved to ABC, definitely.
Ho Yay: Buck and Eddie, to an extreme degree. This has even been noticed in-universe, from a commenter on a rescue getting livestreamed saying the would make a cute couple to a Christmas elf telling Buck he and Eddie have a beautiful son. Of course, Buck doesn't correct her.
- Buck is repeatedly shown to be extremely distressed at the idea of Eddie being in danger, with digging into the ground with his bare hands in 3x15 when Eddie is trapped underground and putting himself in danger of being shot by a sniper in order to save an injured Eddie in 4x13 being two notable examples.
- A good amount of their relationship is tied to Eddie's son Christopher and how Buck acts like he's Christopher's second father. From Eddie's "There's nobody in this world I trust with my son more than you" toward Buck, Buck building a customized skateboard for Christopher, and it ultimately culminates with Eddie making Buck Chris's legal guardian should something happen to him, over his relatives and then-current girlfriend. There are also many, many moments with Eddie, Buck, and Chris that, without any other context, read like two dads parenting their son together.
  - Also—the scene in S3 where Buck sees that Chris survived the tsunami, and his reaction when he sees Eddie and Chris together, as well as Eddie's reaction when the woman with Chris said that he was calling for Buck the whole time.
  - Two standout scripting decisions in the will scene (Eddie entrusting Buck with the most valuable thing in his life and calling the other by their real name) are then later modified and used in TK and Carlos's wedding proposal scene at Lone Star Season 3 Finale.
- When they have actual conflict, they act like exes. The fight they have at grocery store in 3x05 has Eddie bringing up how much Christopher misses Buck to say how Buck's decision to sue the fire department was stupid, something a married couple in the middle of a messy divorce may say. Eddie in 5x11 says "Buck, you need to move on. I have." to Buck when the latter tries to convince Eddie to talk to him when he sees Eddie doesn't look too good and to convince Eddie to come back to 118, something exes who try to go back together usually say.
- It's gotten to the point where in interviews, it's being actually acknowledged and talked about. It's also been revealed that the actors for both Eddie and Buck apparently read fanfiction for the 9-1-1 fandom, only fueling things further. Additionally, Buck is revealed to be bisexual in S7, and it was also revealed in an interview with the Hollywood Reporter with Lou Ferrigno Jr., who plays Tommy Kinard, Buck's romantic interest, that his storyline with Buck was originally supposed to be between Tommy and Eddie, implicitly suggesting that both characters are not straight. The implications for this on future storylines does remain to be seen, but...
Iron Woobie: Eddie has signs of high-functioning depression, and considering what he goes through since Christopher was born, it makes sense. Afraid whether he's not a good father for Christopher, he enlisted twice to take time preparing himself while providing for the family (in which he was heavily injured while trying to make sure his dead comrade went home to his family) but it ended up destroying his marriage in Shannon leading to her leaving to take care of her mother, Eddie's parents are toxic in a way that they implied his decision to move to LA after Shannon left was "dragging Christopher down" and constantly criticize his parenting choice even though they did a bad job on it too by how Helena describes Ramon not being present during all of their three children's birth is "dodging the bullet", Shannon asked for a divorce when Eddie tries to salvage their marriage and her death shortly after still affected his self-confidence in being a good parent and partner, his son almost died in a tsunami, he almost got buried alive, he almost died from a sniper attack, he got taken hostage with Buck... yet he's still able to do his job well, crack jokes, be snarky, and be a good support for his best friend Buck. However, everything came crashing down in Fear-o-phobia when he learned all his comrades during his military days died, leaving him with survivor guilt that led to his breakdown.
Jerkass Woobie: Joanne, Tanya Kingston's older sister. After Tanya's disappearance, she is shown acting out, including being brought home in a police car and being nasty to her mother in a flashback, and even calling the police on Athena and Bobby in the present day. Her being prickly is understandable:
- Her little sister Tanya disappeared with barely a trace after letting Tanya attend an illicit party with her and her friends and not keeping an eye on her.
- She has spent years feeling and hiding her guilt because she doesn't want to admit that she and Tanya snuck out after bedtime, letting everyone believe that Tanya was snatched directly from her bed.
- Her father dies shortly after Tanya's disappearance.
- It is mentioned in the episode Athena Begins that Joanne and Tanya's mother died when Athena was in law school, when Joanne would have still been a young woman, leaving her the last surviving member of the Kingston family.
- To top everything off, she ends up realizing that when her childhood friend Reggie Jr. asked her about Tanya's disappearance at the time, he wasn't asking out of sympathy like she thought, but because he was the one who murdered Tanya and wanted to know what the Kingstons knew.
Lady Mondegreen: After Survivors, some parts of the fandom thinks Buck calls Eddie "Eds" when Buck pleads for Eddie to stay with him in the firetruck due to how fast Buck says "Hey just, you just stay with me, OK?" and the scene's rather chaotic background noise and sticks with it.
Memetic Mutation:
- After the second part of Oliver Stark's interview with ''Hello! Magazine'' released following Season 5's midseason finale, fans start to call Eddie the "'huge wrench' that derails Buck and Taylor's relationship" because some potential conflict between Buck and Taylor can be traced back to him.^note
- Buck is in the room!^note
- 9-1-1 otherwise known as "The gay firefighter show."
  - Alternatively, "the funny wee woo show".
Misblamed:
- Kristen Reidel, the appointed co-showrunner, becomes fandom's easy target to blame for Season 5's diminished quality with how unprofessional some of her responses have been during midseason finale interviews. However, fandom forgets that while Kristen plans storylines for the season Tim Minear as the main showrunner still gets the final say in whether to approve the concept she created, meaning while Kristen still plays huge part in creating some bad plot points and decisions, Tim shares some of the blame for approving those.
- Several BuckTaylor shippers blame Oliver for being a bad actor who ruins emotional scenes between Buck and Taylor with facial expressions that don't show he's in love with her. In reality, Corinne Massiah, May's actress, says in one post-season livestream that the crew forbids performers from improvising and Kristen Reidel confirms in at least one interview that Buck was meant to be unhappy in his relationship with Taylor.
Moe: Christopher Diaz and his adorable smile is a national treasure that needs to be protected at all cost.
Narm: While the scene where Eddie breaks up with Ana in 5x03 gets the somber tone it wants most of the time, it quickly gets a bit funny with Ana's butchered pronunciation of "Adios, Edmundo."
Nightmare Fuel:
- "The Devil You Know" reveals that Athena's missing childhood friend was actually sexually abused and murdered by Athena's other childhood friend who used to "chase" her when she was young, and this has happened to 6 other girls over the span of 45 years, the root cause hidden in plain sight.
- Eddie's breakdown in Season 5's "Fear-o-phobia". It starts off off-screen when we hear things being smashed and shots getting fired. Christopher reaches Eddie's room, finds it locked, and bangs on the door yelling out to his dad amongst destructive noises behind the walls. Buck gets a phone call from a panicking Christopher for help, and when he reaches Eddie's room it's eerily quiet. Buck busts the door open, and seeing the room destroyed and bullet holes in the wall Buck shakily calls Eddie's name, no doubt fearing Eddie may have committed suicide.^note Seeing Eddie sobbing on the ground isn't much more relieving either.
Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: "Home Invasion" has one emergency where the two civilians involved are brother and sister. However, the way the actor and actress play the script makes it look like they're lovers instead.
Portmanteau Couple Name: "Buddie" for the incredibly popular Buck/Eddie ship. On the canonical side, we have Bathena (Bobby/Athena), Henren (Hen/Karen), Madney (Maddie/Chimney), and Tevan (Tommy/Evan)
Replacement Scrappy: Jonah was seen as this to Chimney. With Chimney absent while he was trying to find Maddie, Jonah was brought into the 118 to be his replacement, and got a lot of dislike for being blander than Chimney and for stealing away focus from the already Out of Focus Ravi and Albert. Chimney's eventual return somewhat mitigated this, but people were still hoping for some kind of twist to Jonah's character to make him even remotely interesting. The reveal Jonah had a hero complex and was a psychotic serial killer ended up getting a positive response for that very reason.
Romantic Plot Tumor: Buck's romance arc with Taylor in Season 5 was already disliked due to Taylor being a Creator's Pet and being an overall toxic relationship on both sides, but it reached new lows for many with the introduction of Lucy. Her introduction turned it into a pointless Love Triangle that eats up screen time, not helped by it largely amounting to Buck acting like a terrible boyfriend to Taylor, Lucy implicitly flirting with Buck in every appearance, and Taylor being antagonistic to Lucy unprovoked. To say people were happy when Buck and Taylor broke up is an understatement.
Ron the Death Eater: Several Buck's fans frequently give this treatment to the rest of the 118 during the lawsuit arc by depicting them in fanfic by ignoring him or outright abusing Buck when he comes back to the firehouse after the lawsuit, with Eddie receiving the most damaging characterization by writing him as being physically abusive and toxic the most because of the underground fighting he participates in, ignoring the fact that the fighting is to show that Eddie has been hiding his trauma for too long without a healthy way to cope. There's a reason why the fandom are vigilant when it comes to reading fanfic that sets in post-lawsuit timeline.
The Scrappy:
- Claudette managed to grate on a lot of people's nerves thanks to her awful treatment of May. While she's meant to come across as a Sink or Swim Mentor who is tough on May because she thinks May has "potential", she just comes across like The Bully to many who is allowed to get away with shit more than she should, not helped by Josh defending her when May tried calling her out. While the episode "May Day" tried to give her some Hidden Depths to make people sympathize with her, it fell flat for many since she would be unceremoniously killed off shortly after before anything could be done with it.
- Lucy gained dislike from the outset due to instigating the Romantic Plot Tumor and being a blatant Satellite Love Interest for Buck, with little actual character or relevance outside of that. Not helping matters is complaints that her kissing Buck wasn't what caused Buck and Taylor to break up, Taylor proving herself untrustworthy was, making many feel Lucy's entire narrative purpose was a waste of time. She was so hated that majority of her scenes Arielle Kebbel, Lucy actress, said would appear in the show ended up on the cutting floor, making Chimney's "We love Lucy!" comment in Season 5 finale very unearned because of the minimal screentime. She ends up being Put on a Bus in the first half of Season 6 from an injury, but the character still draws hate after a shot uses a behind-the-scene photo of Hen and Karen's vow renewal that crops Ravi but keeps Lucy in it.^note Lucy ends up moving to air rescue near the end of Season 6 but then the actress signs a deal to be a main character in "Rescue: HI-Surf", a lifeguard-themed procedural drama, thereby erasing any chance of her returning unless the new show tanks.
- Marisol is particularly disliked; her coupling with Eddie in season 6 is largely agreed to have no buildup with her basically being a Satellite Love Interest, and her lack of a last name (leading to some to call her Marisol Nolastname), Eddie mentioning her repeatedly as basically a babysitter for his son in season 7, and her attempted backstory as an ex-nun are frequent points of ridicule by the fanbase. This is complete with a scene in 7x05 where Eddie visualizes Marisol as Mary, the Mother of Jesus. Marisol's actress also has a history of agreeing with homophobic/transphobic rhetoric on social media, making both her and her character very unpopular.
Seasonal Rot: Many fans can agree that Season 5 starts a remarkable decline in quality. Emergencies become anticlimactic and less engaging, character subplots are either unevenly distributed in terms or screentime allocation, come completely out of nowhere, repetitive in terms of concept, overly hyped while being unoriginal, poorly conceptualized, or a combination of these.
Ship-to-Ship Combat: Buck and Eddie-related pairings heavily suffer from this as both of them are being the only two main characters who haven't had a conclusive love interest for 5 (4 for Eddie) seasons, but most of them usually involve Buddie.
- The most severe example of this is Buddie vs BuckTaylor which is mainly fueled by Megan West liking tweets that indicate she shipped Buddie up until Season 4 finale aired, exacerbated by her interacting with loud minority BuckTaylor shippers who made fun of Christopher just because he's Eddie's son.
- One of the contributing factors in 911 and 911 Lone Star fans' feud with each other is Buddie and Tarlos. Buddie shipper accused Tim of trying to appease them by making another white x Latino pairing with rushed development^note because fandom thinks he has no intention of making Buck and Eddie end up with each other while Tarlos shippers accused Buddie shippers of shipping the two only to want to see two white^note men kiss and are sick of making two different characters about Buddie just because of superficial similarities. The show giving the two pairings similar directional choices as both shows go on ^note doesn't help.
- Now emerging between Buddie shippers and the new BuckTommy shippers in the aftermath of season 7, episode 4. The latter taking the stance that BuckTommy is canon rather than Ho Yay, while Buddie shippers now see an opportunity for Buddie, assuming that Eddie is also bi.
Spiritual Successor: A third of the show focuses on the lives of a team of paramedics, which has drawn some comparisons to popular 60s series Emergency!.
Strangled by the Red String:
- The final episode of season 1 shows Bobby and Athena going to a romantic date, even though they barely interacted for most of the season and when they did their interactions come out just friendly and platonic. The latter seasons make a better job developing their relationship but the lack of build up at the beginning is still remembered by the fandom.
- Buck and Natalia the death doula in Season 6. Let's say their love story, for something touted to be the relationship for Buck, is as short and rushed as they can get. ^{to summarize...} IN THE SPAN OF FOUR EPISODES. Buck's death is merely an excuse to introduce Natalia as she's a death doula, nothing about their journey to be together from start to finish is original even within the show, nothing is known about Natalia except for her job emphasizing her role in the show as a blatant love interest, and Buck repeating mistakes done in past relationships, a superfluously written romance through and through that doesn't make Buck grow as a character. Oliver Stark's cookie cutter response to the relationship on interviews only aggravates fanbase even more. They break-up off-screen as revealed by the first episode of season 7, with Buck stating that the reason was that Natalia was only interested in talking about death. So...
- On the other end of the Buck and Natalia's spectrum is Eddie and Marisol in Season 6. After an episode where he's having fun with Buck and Christopher, he's suddenly confronted by Pepa about having a girlfriend/wife before it's too late, Eddie misses Shannon and the relationship he had with her after visiting Shannon's grave, and then in an episode titled "Love is in the Air" he meets Marisol the DIY girl on Home Invasion's forgettable emergency who has the least interaction with Eddie out of all the latinas he interacted with in the season. However, viewers are expected to see that Marisol is "exactly what Eddie's looking for," despite no onscreen interaction before and after that reunion. While Buck and Natalia suffer from unnecessarily complicated buildup, Eddie and Marisol suffer from the lack of it. This is especially frustrating for fans since compared to other main characters Eddie has very little subplot going on for him this season, the love interest being there just to give him something resembling happy ending for the season finale. This is only furthered by the point that in 7x04, Eddie asks Buck to babysit Chris for him with his reasoning being that he's already asked Marisol twice that week to do so in order to go out with Tommy Kinard, including at least one time he went to Vegas with Tommy, spawning the joke that Eddie only dates in order to find childcare for Chris.
Squick: In the episode "Karma's a Bitch", the spa owner was stuck in a tanning bed for a good while before he died, and when Hen tries to perform a chest compression, his skin melts on her gloves.
- In "Full Moon (Creepy AF)," Bobby and Buck are in an ambulance with a man who is having horrible stomach cramps. It then turns out that the man has a tapeworm, which we then see squirming out of his ass.
  - Don't even get us started on the crazy that eats another guy's face!
- In episode 10 "A Whole New You," Buck and Chimney find the guy that's been using Buck's identity to get dates. When we first see his trailer, they at first believe that he has the windows blacked out, but it's actually flies. The next scene shows the guy has been dead for weeks, maggots already eating at him. And then he gets drained... Ew...
- In "Awful People", the leader of the Westboro expys starts coughing and collapses after harassing the family of a fallen soldier. When the team gets to him, they discover has a colonoscopy bag that is clogged, but refuses to let any non-white person touch him, and aspirates, or as Chimney eloquently puts it "literal diarrhea of the mouth".
- In "New Beginnings," a woman is going for a face-lift but a leak in the gas line causes the entire operating team to pass out mid-surgery with the woman waking up. When the team shows up, the woman sits up in the bed and her entire forehead flops down off her skin.
  - That's followed by the team finding a nearby construction worker who passed out from the gas...and landed right on a saw. Which is still sticking out of him when they wheel him out.
- "This Life We Choose" has a beauty blogger showing how to properly squeeze what she believes is a pimple on her face. It was actually a botfly larvae, and when she realizes what's been expelled from her cheek she falls off her chair and breaks her collarbone. Her audience In-Universe finds this unbelievably gross, as seen in their live reactions ... although they think the EMTs who come to collect the woman are really hot.
- One of the calls in the season 3 premiere "Kids Today" concerns an elderly man whose children call 9-1-1 when he locks himself in his room after they express concerns about a rash on his stomach. Turns out said rash is a flesh-eating STD. Not only that, but everyone in the retirement home seems to have gotten it.
- In the episode, "Malfunction", in the beginning, when the skating show goes south, someone falls on the ice. But what really makes this scene gross is a close-up on the person's fingers getting sliced off by the skating blade.
- In "Starting Over," a woman comes to her hair salon complaining about her extensions giving her headaches. Her stylist takes a look at it and faints. When the paramedics show up, they find out why: the woman has maggots coming out of her scalp. It turns out that, because he couldn't get actual hair via messed-up supply chains, the stylist was buying hair from a mortuary.
They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The blackout in Season 5 premiere could have been an interesting disaster opening, and the show initially went on a right direction by briefly touching upon its various repercussions to daily lives such as hospitalization and electricity. However, some emergencies were mediocre with little relevance to the actual blackout (escaped zoo animal is an obvious example) and Jeffrey and Athena's subplot sours an already divisive opinion regarding the show's cop content.
Tough Act to Follow: Many fans regard Season 3's opening disaster as the best season opening the show has to date, if not ever. The wide-scale nature of it, everyone having their own personal stake and time to shine be it the main or recurring characters, the emotional tension and cliffhanger, everything about it is pretty much universally liked. Whenever new season comes, fandom will see whether the opening episodes will be "as good as the tsunami episodes."
Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
- Abby. Her job as a dispatcher and taking care of her mother suffering from Alzheimer, while having their own kind of responsibility, makes her lose sight of what she really wants in her life and viewers are supposed to feel pity for her at one point. However, her relationship with Buck comes off as predatory with how she decides to contact Buck after she sees his turmoil over the roller coaster rescue from television using his number she got from dispatch record, a form of privacy violation. She decides to travel around the world to find herself after her mother passes away, but she doesn't outright tell Buck whether the relationship should continue or not, stringing him along regardless of the intention. Even after she returns to L.A., she doesn't try to contact him until they're forced to meet in an emergency. The eventual breakup, while giving them both closure, ends up making her look self-centered in comparison with the way she handles everything before it.
- Buck and Maddie's parents. They were depressed after Daniel's death to the point of Margaret having suicidal thoughts over it. However, they were also emotionally distant from their children leading Maddie and Buck having to take care of each other, hid the fact that Buck had an older brother who died, and conceived Buck purely to try and save Daniel's life, and were constantly verbally abusive with passive-aggressive comments. Buck is quick to declare that they must be forgiven purely because their first son died and other than a few tense words from him they are instantly forgiven for being horrible parents. Though he does make it clear that he can only forgive them so quickly because he can't feel betrayed by someone he never had any expectations for in the first place. Margaret especially comes off as extremely self-centered in how she grieves, to the point that she at times seems to think she's the only person who lost Daniel, and her husband completely enables her.
The Woobie: This is not Tim Minear's show if the show doesn't dump lots and lots of trauma to his characters. Some of these characters tread the line between this and Iron Woobie.
- Chimney, just by the sheer amount of stuff he's put through to name a few; Losing his foster brother Kevin in a fire that he feels responsible enough because his hesitation to save a pregnant lady indirectly causes Kevin's death, the rebar accident early in Season 1 where his girlfriend at the time dumps him and later he finds with her new boyfriend in the same episode he admits to having PTSD from the accident, getting stabbed by Maddie's abusive husband, having to find out his biological brother Albert almost dying the same day Maddie gives birth to their daughter, panicking over Maddie running away because she accidentally drowned their baby (that he finds in a bathtub) that leads him spiraling for a week, and having his heart stopped twice by some paramedic with hero complex. It's a miracle that he still manages to have an relatively upbeat attitude.
- Hen feels this way during her back story in "Hen Begins." She gets stuck with a fire chief who turns out to be a sexist jackass who forces Hen to do all the cooking and cleaning around the fire station. And then when she gives a huge speech to the entire station about how she wants to be treated with respect, all she gets is a sarcastic clap from the Jerkass chief.
  - It does turn out good for Hen in the end when she gains the respect of her team after she rescued a little boy from drowning, and the other firefighters file a bunch of complaints about the chief, which causes him to get fired.
  - The ending of "Malfunction" puts Hen back in the Woobie seat, as she accidentally runs the ambulance into a civilian car and fatally wounds an innocent young woman. She practically has to be dragged aside to let the other EMTs be the ones to work on the victim, and collapses bawling into Athena's arms when she sees that all her colleages' efforts aren't enough to save the woman.
- That poor boy from "New Beginnings" was kidnapped and forced to live as someone else for six years by someone clearly not in their right mind. The length and his young age when it began actually meant he had fully believed the kidnapper was his actual parent and completely forgotten his real one by the time of the episode.
- Poor Maddie. She was married to an abusive asshole named Doug who viciously beat her up over the stupidest things (Decorating their Christmas tree wrong or accidentally breaking a wine glass) She then moves to LA to get away from him, only for him to find her, stab her boyfriend, and kidnap her and take her to a cabin in the mountains with the intent on killing her. Luckily, Maddie decides that she's had enough and fights back, winding up killing Doug in self-defence.
  - Buck offered her a chance to escape and she was only hours away from going with him only for Doug to brutally beat her. Maddie feared if Buck saw her he would confront her husband and either kill him or get killed himself. So she purposely made him think she was pushing him away in an attempt to save him, all the while meaning she had to further endure Doug's abuse for years.
- While we're talking about the Buckley siblings, Buck had it bad. "Buck Begins" reveals he is conceived solely to cure his older brother's leukemia, only for the stem cell transplant to fail. This kickstarts a cycle of emotional abuse and neglect he and his parents have where he needs the feel to get reckless and injured just to get their attention, starting his lack of self-worth and abandonment issue, with only Maddie as his emotional support. When he has the opportunity to escape his parents, the circumstance above prevents Maddie to come and join him, making Buck feels betrayed by the only person who cares for him. His Buck 1.0 persona in retrospect feels worse when it's revealed that it's his way to find attention that doesn't involve hurting himself.
  - However, even before his begins episode, the writers seem to love giving him lots of emotional trauma. His first experience on love and romantic relationship ends badly with Abby ending things without actually breaking it up for him, his leg gets crushed under a firetruck in 2x18 which makes he and Ali break up because she can't see him getting hurt while Buck is still on "Firefighter is the only thing I have!" mindset, his journey to recovery doesn't end really well as he gets pulmonary embolism that prevents him from working as firefighter because he's on blood thinner treatment, Eddie's attempt to cheer him up by letting Buck and Christopher play almost ends up disastrous since he and Christopher are on the pier during tsunami in which he almost lose Christopher, and he almost lose his best friend twice in 3x15 when Eddie almost gets buried under a well and in 4x13 where Eddie is shot in front of him, giving him survivor guilt that doesn't help his already present issue,
  - Season 5A is not very kind to him; Maddie leaves because of her Post-partum Depression, Chimney punches him for not telling him why Maddie disappears and then leaves by himself, for which Buck feels responsible he tries transferring (a decision rejected by the team), he is held hostage along with Eddie by an escaping prisoner held at gunpoint and at one point thinks Eddie is getting shot again, Taylor runs to sort out her problem a la Abby (but Buck chases her this time), and then Eddie leaves because Eddie feels working in a high-risk job is not good for Christopher's fear of losing another parent.
- Maddie's co-worker, Josh, becomes this in "Fools." He goes on a date with a guy who he met on a dating app, only for said date, along with another guy, to brutally beat Josh up and steal his wallet, phone, and keys. That alone is horrible in itself, being a real-life fear those in the LGBTQ+ may have. But then said date shows up again as part of an armed crew taking the 911 call center hostage; turns out he only chose Josh as a date to steal Josh's work ID for complete access to the call center.
- Poor Christopher has to lose his mother in an accident and almost lose his father on three dangerous situations. The fear of losing the only parent he has left rears its ugly head on 5x10 when he breaks down over possibly not having chance to have a perfect Christmas with his father.
- May, considering everything she went through: First, being bullied and attempting suicide, then deciding to take up a position as a 911 operator due to own fears of her mother getting hurt on the job, her brother going through his own rough cycle after being kidnapped by a criminal who was obsessed with Athena, and then to add it all to it, dealing with a jerkass boss who's obsessively always attempting to Kick the Dog on her.

YMMV / 9-1-1

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