Some of the best television episodes center on holidays: Valentine’s Day proposals, New Year’s Eve first kisses, and Christmas deaths. 9-1-1 Season 8, Episode 5, “Masks,” is not much different, delivering their most gut-wrenching Halloween episode yet – while teaching a valuable lesson about appreciating those around you.
The episode starts with Hen (Aisha Hinds), Karen (Tracie Thoms), Mara (Askyler Bell), Denny (Declan Pratt), and Jee (Hailey and Bailey Leung) dressing up as the “Wizard of Oz” gang for Halloween. After Chim (Kenneth Choi) and Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) take several (hundred) photos, Hen and Karen are seen discussing Hen possibly getting this year off for Halloween in the kitchen. Karen thinks it will be necessary for Mara to have Hen there for her first Halloween, and Hen agrees to ask Bobby (Peter Krause) about it.
Athena (Angela Bassett) is on the other side of things, lecturing high schoolers about the dangers of not only driving drunk or high – but driving at all on Halloween. In the middle of the talk, two teenage girls are seen giggling to themselves on their phones, completely disregarding Athena. The teacher simply tells Athena she isn’t alone, and since she doesn’t speak “sigma,” she shouldn’t worry too much.
Later, the 118 is setting up for the Fire House Haunt Fest, and Bobby says it took place at the 126 last year, which was very sneaky and adorable of the writers to add that 9-1-1: Lone Star Easter egg.
Spooky Sigma’s
They’ve got ghosts, spiders, lights, and streamers when Buck (Oliver Stark) brings out the pièce de résistance: an old dummy he got from a movie studio down the street from his apartment. Bobby fears the children may think it’s too scary, but Buck is convinced this is just what they need.
We get a sequence where children outsmart the 118 during the Haunt Fest, with Hen and Chimney dressing as a killer doctor and Jason Vorhees, respectively. Eddie (Ryan Guzman) plays a wolf that the children roll their eyes at, and Buck is a cowboy with a suspiciously familiar mustache. There’s also Cap Dracula: Bobby in a vampire costume, charming at least the audience at home watching (me), if not the audience at the firehouse.
Then comes the first twist of the episode: the body Buck brought as decoration is an actual dead body. Buck accidentally snaps the body’s arm off and sees tendons, freaking out when he realizes it’s actually a man. 911 is called, duh, and Athena shows up with her team to haul the body off, but not before a sweet moment between her and Bobby, where they exchange “home safe” goodbyes.
Here’s where we arrive at the first emergency: a father, trying to celebrate Halloween with his two daughters, gets a massive pumpkin stuck on his head. Bobby instructs Buck to find something to ease the constriction around the man’s neck, and we’re gifted one of the most ridiculous parts of this episode: Buck walking into the room yelling, “Lube flying in!”
Quickly after, we find out that Dad bought the pumpkins a while back, and the bacteria in the pumpkin is starting to cause a reaction, restricting his breathing and swelling his head and face. After an intense moment where they use a buzzsaw to get him out of the pumpkin, he is safe and apologizing for the mess he’s made.
Buck tells him not to worry about it and promptly slips on the pumpkin guts, dislocating his left shoulder. Because of this, Buck ends up in the hospital having his arm reset.
You Break It, You Buy It (Or Have Yours Broken In Return)
Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) arrives at the hospital while Eddie sits beside Buck’s bed, flipping through a magazine. Naturally, Tommy thinks Buck is joking when he begins telling him about a curse he believes he’s become part of. Because he ripped off Billy’s left arm (the real-dummy dead body, if you’ll remember), Billy is coming after him and injuring him in the same way. Tommy and Eddie laugh about this, and Buck sits in the hospital bed, perplexed and upset.
At home, Hen explains to Karen that she spoke with Bobby about getting Halloween off, and he gave her an unfortunate ultimatum: either she gets the night off to be with Denny and Mara, or Chim gets the night off to be with Jee. As a result, both Hen and Chim end up agreeing to work.
Over at Buck’s, Tommy is trying his hardest to get Buck to relax and heal, but Buck is not having it. Instead, he intends to discover everything he can about Billy Boils, the Not-Real-Real Dead Body he found. In the morning, Buck wakes up to boils on his face. Eddie comes over and treats Buck’s boils, laughs at him again about the “curse,” and bets Buck five dollars the boils will be gone by his next shift.
[Narrator Voice] They were not gone by his next shift. Eddie loses five dollars.
Their shift begins, and they spend most of the time dealing with minor incidents until Maddie receives a seemingly innocuous call about a principal (Jack Impellizzeri) finding a paper bag of… fecal matter… on fire on his porch. Maddie scolds him for calling 911, dispatches the 118 to extinguish the fire, and moves on.
The 118 treats a zombie who was decked in the face, Athena unloads a literal clown car full of drunk clowns, and Josh (Bryan Safi) is dressed up as who we can only assume is off-brand-didn’t-get-the-rights Ted Lasso — deep sigh.
After some hijinks, Josh gets a call from the principal from earlier stating that two students egged his house, and he’s chasing them — in his car. Josh asks them to stop and slow down, as a crew is on their way when the call cuts out after a loud crash.
Take Your Kids to Work Day
The 118 arrives on the scene to find, you guessed it, the two teenage girls from Athena’s class, unhurt and begging the team to help the victims of this accident. We learn that not only did the driver crash into a house, but he’s got a child pinned to the house. Chim spots Jee and Mara on the scene, and that’s when we find out the child is Denny.
In a heart-shattering sequence, we witness Buck and Eddie building a structure to hold the roof while Bobby wenches the car out, as Karen and Hen try to save their son. At first, Denny feels leg pain, and we can all assume his leg is broken. Then, though, he starts having stomach pain, his blood pressure is no longer detectable, and they lose Denny’s pulse.
As Hen does CPR, she’s told the blood Denny needs for a transfusion is fifteen minutes out, and she improvises. Denny and Karen share a blood type, and despite Chim’s warning that it’s incredibly risky to do an in-field blood transfusion on a child, both Hen and Karen are deadset on saving their child. After a few heartwrenching seconds, Denny’s pulse returns, and he wakes up to greet Hen and Karen before he’s taken to the hospital.
At the hospital, members of the 118 and Tommy sit in the waiting room awaiting an update from Hen or Karen. Hen then texts the group chat –consisting of Bobby, Athena, Buck, Eddie, Hen, and Chim – that Denny will be okay, and he wants the team to stick around and sign his cast. In the middle of this, Buck claims he’s figured out how to break Billy’s curse on him. Cheers all around.
An A- Bloody Nightmare
Hen and Karen circle back to Hen not being around for the kids as much as she’d like. After this scare, Karen ensures Hen that she’s there for the important moments. Karen states that during the moments they feared they’d lose Denny, all she could think was, “Thank God you were at work.”
The girls from the crash and Athena’s class arrive at the hospital to give Denny their Halloween candy, which is sweet, but a man did, in fact, die. Athena brings them back to the school and presents with them, this time, about the dangers of being reckless on Halloween.
As Buck stands at Billy’s (new) final resting place, he gives a voiceover speech about the importance of family, loved ones, and being there for each other. There are clips of Athena at the school, Maddie and Chim flipping through Halloween pictures, and Mara signing Denny’s cast.
Near the end of the voiceover, Buck says his most prominent line: “I can’t imagine anything more painful than going through life alone,” as Eddie packs up his decorations and looks longingly at a photo of himself and Christopher (Gavin McHugh). Buck tells Billy that he’s not alone anymore, apologizes for messing with him, and leaves the cemetery with his boyfriend (which he calls Tommy for the first time tonight!) in tow.
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