Commentary: All hail '9-1-1's' 'Bee-nado' event and the power of network procedurals
The advertising worked.
Despite never having seen an episode of “9-1-1” prior to its Season 8 premiere, the first responder procedural shot to the top of my must-watch list after seeing its “Bee-nado” promo on TV. And online. And even on an unaffiliated streaming service. The three-part event concludes with the episode “Final Approach,” premiering Thursday on ABC.
Kicking off the season in September was the aptly titled “Buzzkill,” which opens with a pilot losing control of his small plane after flying into a massive swarm of bees. It puts him on an imminent collision course with a larger passenger plane.
The episode later reveals that a jackknifed big rig unleashed 22 million killer bees into L.A. when it crashed on the 4th Street Bridge. After arriving on the scene to assist those affected by the traffic incident, including a pair of passengers with bee allergies who are trapped in their bee-swarmed car, one firefighter looks up into the sky and says, “It’s a bee-nado.”
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The over-the-top events artfully channel the killer bee hysteria of the 1990s as well as the campy made-for-TV sci-fi disaster movies of yore, making “Bee-nado” both a bit bonkers and strangely comforting.
The storyline gets more delightfully wild — in the most stereotypically L.A. way — as the episode progresses. Without spoiling anything more, "Buzzkill" utilizes Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Flight of the Bumblebee” as a memorable needle drop.
But reciting the twists and turns of the plot isn't necessary to explain why the “Bee-nado” event highlights the unique strengths of broadcast network television.
Created by Ryan Murphy, Brad Falchuk and Tim Minear, “9-1-1” is an hourlong drama series following the intersecting lives and emergencies of firefighters, police officers and 911 dispatchers. More than 100 episodes of the L.A.-set show have aired since its 2018 premiere, which means the core characters have been fleshed out with years' worth of storytelling.
But “Buzzkill” is completely newcomer-friendly. Watching a swarm of killer bees cause a plane crash is easy to follow, whether you know a character’s name is Athena Grant or you refer to her as “the cop played by Angela Bassett.” It’s part of the reason the procedural format continues to thrive in an ever-changing television landscape. The success of shows like "Law & Order," "CSI," "Criminal Minds" and "NCIS" has birthed major TV franchises. Even "9-1-1" has its own spinoff.
Procedurals endure because the format is familiar, accessible and addictive. More often than not, these shows are episodic — meaning most episodes tell self-contained stories rather than serve as chapters in a single narrative. This makes it easier for casual viewers, who may not catch every episode, to dip in and out of the show. Meanwhile, faithful viewers are rewarded with serialized elements, like character developments and relationships that evolve over the course of seasons.
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The second episode of the three-parter, titled “When the Boeing Gets Tough,” involved minimal bees, but the central emergency was just as gripping and outlandish. After a plane’s captain is sucked out of a hole in the cockpit created by a midair collision, the passengers have to tend to each other with some emergency telemedical guidance. One makeshift lifesaving procedure required medication for erectile dysfunction to be delivered via nebulizer.
Shows like “9-1-1” are appealing because they can put characters through increasingly improbable if not quite impossible situations — the kind that might ensnare a new fan eight seasons in — while relying on friendships, romances and other more ordinary storytelling devices to hold one's interested between disasters.. Plus, over-the-top emergencies like dam breaks, earthquakes, tsunamis and a pirate attack on a cruise ship, at least when told in the procedural's vernacular, are an escape from the more mundane horrors of daily life.
With streamers and premium cable networks cornering the market on “prestige” dramas that prioritize serialized stories told over a winnowing number of episodes and seasons, broadcast network shows like “9-1-1” are a pleasant reprieve.
Here’s hoping the conclusion of the “Bee-nado” event provides some closure on the fate of the killer bee super-swarm. It's time for a new disaster next week.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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