TL;DR: 9-1-1 season 9 episode 10 is a frustrating mess that sidelines Eddie, retreads emotional ground, and makes deeply questionable choices with a vulnerable character. What should’ve been a powerful, character-driven hour instead feels repetitive, insensitive, and alarmingly out of touch with why fans fell in love with this show in the first place.
9-1-1 Season 9
I didn’t sit down to watch “Handle With Care” expecting perfection. I’ve been around this block with 9-1-1 long enough to know the show oscillates wildly between emotionally devastating brilliance and full-blown soap opera nonsense. But I did expect basic narrative competence. What I got instead was one of the most frustrating, tone-deaf, and baffling episodes this series has ever produced. And yes, I’m including the episodes with runaway zoo animals and flaming roller coasters.
9-1-1 season 9 episode 10 doesn’t just stumble. It faceplants, rolls downhill, and somehow takes its most compelling character with it. This is the episode where the show proves it desperately needs to course-correct, because the cracks that have been forming all season finally split the pavement.
Let’s start with the emotional core that should have anchored this hour: Eddie Diaz. Or rather, the complete absence of any meaningful Eddie Diaz storyline despite the episode literally revolving around something that should matter deeply to him.
Eddie, played by Ryan Guzman, has been quietly sidelined all season, which is wild considering he’s one of the most psychologically rich characters the show has ever created. A single father. A veteran. A man shaped by Catholic guilt, emotional repression, and a lifetime of being told what he’s supposed to be. Season 9 has flirted with the idea of unpacking that. Flirted. Like the show keeps making eye contact with the idea and then immediately looking away.
“Handle With Care” brings back Abigail, a teenage girl the 118 previously rescued from an abusive household where her parents attempted an exorcism. On paper, this is an incredible narrative opportunity. Eddie is the perfect character to engage with this story. His complicated relationship with religion, shame, and authority figures mirrors Abigail’s trauma in ways that feel almost too obvious. This could have been the episode where Eddie finally gets to confront his past in a way that matters.
Instead, 9-1-1 turns Abigail into a plot device with a crush.
Rather than allowing Eddie to serve as a mentor, protector, or even a mirror for Abigail’s healing, the episode reduces her to a jealous, infatuated teenager whose primary function is to generate awkward romantic tension. That decision alone is bad. The fact that the show doubles down on it, all the way to a deeply uncomfortable cliffhanger, is worse.
Before we get there, though, we need to talk about the other major storyline, which somehow manages to be both emotionally manipulative and completely redundant.
Chimney, portrayed by Kenneth Choi, spends the episode haunted by nightmares about Harry Grant dying on the job. On a human level, this makes sense. Bobby’s death last season left a crater in the emotional landscape of the show, and fear doesn’t disappear just because time passes. But structurally, this storyline is spinning its wheels.
We literally just watched an episode about Athena needing to let go and trust Harry. Now we’re doing it again, but louder and with less nuance. The episode opens with a dream sequence that’s unintentionally hilarious, capped off by Athena yelling like she’s scolding a cat that knocked over a plant. That tonal whiplash sets the stage for a storyline that spends far too much time hammering home a lesson we already understand.
The metaphor-of-the-week call, involving someone whose overprotectiveness causes harm, is so on-the-nose it might as well look into the camera and shrug. And then the episode makes a genuinely jaw-dropping misstep by dragging Captain Gerrard back into the conversation.
Without even appearing on screen, Gerrard gets a soft retcon that borders on offensive. Hen compares Chimney’s fear-driven benching of Harry to Gerrard’s past behavior, as if racism and misogyny are interchangeable with trauma-induced anxiety. That’s not just sloppy writing; it’s an erosion of the show’s own moral framework. Gerrard didn’t fail because he was afraid. He failed because he was prejudiced. Treating those as equivalent cheapens the damage he caused and absolves him in a way that feels deeply wrong.
Yes, Harry eventually proves himself. Yes, there’s a sweet family moment involving Bobby’s old pocket knife. And yes, those scenes mostly work in isolation. But they feel like a rerun of last week’s emotional beats, delivered with diminishing returns.
Now let’s circle back to Eddie, because this is where the episode truly loses the plot.
Abigail’s fixation on Eddie is framed as harmless at first, but it quickly becomes unsettling. She shows up at his house uninvited. She displays jealousy over Alex from the LAPD SMART team, played by Aimee Teegarden. The show flirts with the idea of setting up a romance between Eddie and Alex despite them having virtually no on-screen chemistry or shared history beyond professionalism.
What’s more interesting, and what the episode pointedly ignores, is Buck’s reaction to Alex’s presence. There’s something there. Something complicated. Something emotionally loaded. Naturally, the show does absolutely nothing with it.
Instead, we get a dinner scene where Eddie’s son Christopher, played by Gavin McHugh, teases Eddie about whether he finds Alex attractive. Eddie deflects. He doesn’t answer. And for a brief, fleeting moment, it feels like the show might finally say something meaningful. Is Eddie struggling with his sexuality? Is he simply closed off? Is he afraid to articulate what he wants?
The episode doesn’t care. It moves on.
The handling of Abigail becomes actively uncomfortable when she’s framed less as a vulnerable, unhoused teenager and more as a “temptation” Eddie must gently rebuff. If Abigail were a teenage boy, I have zero doubt the 118 would’ve rallied around him. Instead, she’s sexualized, othered, and ultimately villainized.
Yes, villainized.
The episode ends with Abigail kidnapping Christopher. That’s the cliffhanger. That’s where we leave things for a month.
It’s an astonishingly bad choice. Not only does it reinforce harmful tropes about young women being manipulative or dangerous when expressing attachment, but it also robs the character of her humanity. Abigail isn’t treated like a traumatized kid who needs help. She’s treated like a threat.
This is where the misogynistic undertones stop being subtext and start screaming.
9-1-1 has always been a character-driven show. That’s why people stuck with it through nine seasons, genre absurdity, and tonal chaos. We forgive the explosions because we care about the people running toward them. But this episode makes it painfully clear that the show no longer knows what to do with its own characters.
Bobby is gone. Eddie is stalled. Buck is circling the same emotional runway without taking off. The younger generation is repeating lessons already learned. And the show seems more interested in shock-value cliffhangers than in emotional truth.
“Handle With Care” isn’t just the worst episode of season 9. It’s a warning sign. 9-1-1 still has all the pieces it needs to be great, but it needs to remember who it’s for and why it worked in the first place. Big emotions only matter when they’re earned. Trauma only resonates when it’s treated with care.
Right now, the show is dropping the ball. And unlike its characters, it doesn’t get a siren and a second chance by default.
