RECAP: ‘9-1-1’ Season 9 Episode 16 — “Where There’s Smoke”

9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 has a lot going on. It’s overly dramatic, with some great 118 ensemble scenes, a premise that underdelivers, and a pivot that leans toward cliché more than anything. There’s some good in it that tries to tie together a lot of the elements from Season 9 so far, but it doesn’t come together as smoothly as it could have.

The episode starts on a promising note. An angry mob of people surrounds the 118 firetruck, yelling at our crew about their failure to prevent their apartment building from catching on fire. Quick flashes to a hearing puts Chimney (Kenneth Choi), Eddie, Hen, Ravi, and Harry in front of an internal review board as they go over what went wrong during this case.

But the premise of 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 is more dramatic than it turns out to be at first. Faulty smoke alarms keep bringing the 118 out to this same apartment building, but the team can’t find any smoke or fire. There’s seemingly nothing actually wrong with the place.

Things get dramatic fast in 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16.

But the 118’s continued presence at the building whenever an alarm goes off is starting to irritate the residents. After the fifth time, Chimney assures a woman and her kid that there’s no fire in the building. But lo and behold, the sixth time they’re called out there, there is a fire. But this time, the alarms didn’t go off.

The review board starts grilling the 118 hard in 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16. Their efforts are extreme just for some annoyed apartment residents. No one dies before they’re called in front of the board, so the board’s intense shakedown of the 118 feels unnecessary.

Instead, the hearing is more about questioning Chimney’s captaincy, citing all the things that have happened under his watch this season. Things like the field amputation, Hen collapsing at a building fire because of her illness, and Buck’s (Oliver Stark) substance abuse are used as evidence of Chimney’s less-than-ideal first year as captain of the 118.

Chimney’s story goes in interesting directions before the episode pivots.

Exploring Chimney’s feelings on his captaincy is a valid direction to take, if only the episode stuck with it. While we do get some great 118 ensemble scenes as they band together to save Chimney’s job by investigating the apartment building, 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 instead pivots in an entirely different direction that loses focus of a great Chimney-centric premise.

Blueprints of the apartment building reveal a room the team didn’t search originally. Under the cover of darkness, the team breaks into the building only to discover a hidden room full of undocumented migrants, who are all in need of medical attention. The next sequence in 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 takes us back in time to when the migrants first arrived at the apartment building under the eye of the apartment building manager, who’s been shady the entire time.

The manager traps the group in that hidden room for an undetermined amount of time, which leads the leader, Esteban, to take matters into his own hands by using a lighter and a cloth to create just enough of a fire to set off the alarms in the hopes that the fire department would discover them.

The story loses focus throughout 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16. 

But as we know from the 118’s many stops to that apartment building earlier in 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16, the hidden door keeps the group from being found, until the 118 sneaks in at night and finds them nearly overcome from smoke inhalation. At the hospital, the group’s undocumented status is waved aside by Detective Hooks (the shady detective from the previous episode), who decides that their cooperation with his investigation into the deceased building manager means he can help them stay in the country.

This easy, hand-wavey conclusion to something as serious as immigration, especially in today’s political climate in which ICE kidnaps people from the street and their homes, feels incredibly disingenuous, especially by having a cop be their savior. And the fact that we’re unlikely to follow up with Esteban and the other migrants makes the pivot into this storyline feel very performative. There is a somewhat of a cliffhanger in 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 with Detective Hooks, who makes a mysterious phone call after agreeing to help the migrants. So, maybe this will come back into play, but it seems unlikely.

A new character named Sam joins the 118 in 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 while Buck recovers, but his presence ultimately doesn’t add much. He accidentally accuses Chimney of punching the building manager in front of the review board, complicating Chimney’s life, and then goes to his house to apologize in person, which feels like a lot of screen time for a one-off character. Meanwhile, Buck is supposed to be recovering and preparing for his disciplinary hearing, which was emphasized as a mandatory step he must take to keep his job.

Buck’s storyline feels rushed and underdeveloped. 

But the majority of 9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 features him assisting in the investigation into the apartment building and delivering pick-me-ups to dispatch. And by episode’s end, he’s back in uniform and eagerly sending Sam off to a different station so he can have his spot at the 118 back.

This quick turnaround in Buck’s story about substance abuse is disheartening to see, especially since the hearing seemingly happens off-screen. It makes him worry about still having a place on the 118 losing all its tension, and undermines the seriousness of his addiction. When all is said and done, this particular Buck plot point is going to feel like a blip on the radar.

9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 is a hodge-podge of ideas that struggle to come together to form a coherent episode. There’s tension lost in the overly dramatic pop and circumstance of the review board for a case that didn’t see any loss of life except a corrupt building manager, as well as the addiction recovery for Buck. A halfway look into Chimney’s time as captain could have given the episode more depth by linking all the previous episodes together into one seamless narrative, but instead opts to dabble in clichés.

9-1-1 Season 9 Episode 16 is streaming now on Disney+ and Hulu, with new episodes every Thursday on ABC, and is available on Disney+ and Hulu the next day.

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