[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 7 Episode 2 “Rock the Boat.”]
If there’s one thing we’ve learned about Hen (Aisha Hinds) over seven seasons of 9-1-1 thus far, it’s to trust her instincts. The latest episode calls that into question—twice!
First, on a call, a man who caused a car accident in which a mother and daughter were injured—he was up and talking—refuses care. Then, he suddenly collapses. As captain while Bobby’s (Peter Krause) away, responsibility falls on Hen. During the investigation, she’s unofficially suspended. To her, it feels like Chimney (Kenneth Choi), Buck (Oliver Stark), and Eddie (Ryan Guzman) don’t have her back. She is cleared (tox results show the man was drunk and on drugs), but she has a new concern at that point: news of a hurricane where Athena (Angela Bassett) and Bobby’s cruise ship should be—it’s missing. She’s determined to find them, even if the LAFD wants her back at work. She should hurry: Last we see the ship, it’s capsized.
Below, Hinds talks about Hen’s decisions, her love for Hen’s relationships with Karen (Tracie Thoms) and Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and more.
I love that Hen has shown she can be captain. She’s good at it. It’s just a matter of whether she wants to.
Aisha Hinds: I absolutely agree. I feel like it comes naturally for her and she has great instinctual thoughts that fit into what the job description calls for, and every kind of emergency or instance sharpens those instincts or challenges them.
Disney/Chris Willard
She was really challenged by what happened on this call and clearly hurt by, as she calls them, the three Judases, and feeling like they didn’t have her back. Is that something she’s still feeling at the end of the episode and will carry over into future episodes?
Yes. She’s still going to be feeling that way because obviously she’s going to be looking at these guys like, “Hey, you should know me,” and much like I think anyone who has been invested in Hen, you learn to trust that she knows what she’s talking about, herself included. When you have an opportunity where others are second guessing her, it leads to her second guessing herself. And so I think it’s something that kind of stings for her, to feel like these people who are a part of her family are considering that she didn’t make the right call in that moment.
I love that Hen realizing something’s wrong with Athena and Bobby’s cruise gave us that Hen and Maddie scene because the show needs so many more of those.
So many more of those. Listen, Jennifer Love Hewitt and I have been having a love affair with the opportunity to work more and more together. We have petitioned for more Hen and Maddie scenes. It was the duo I think that we didn’t know that we needed in this entire show. And here we are exploring this new relationship, which, there’s been glimpses of it in previous seasons, but it’s always been connected to Chimney. I think you’re starting to see their connection, their relationship, and how well they work together and off of each other.
I think they needed that conversation last season around the proposal in order to get to where they are now.
I agree.
Are there any more scenes with the two of them coming up?
Yes, you will see more instances [with] Hen and Maddie together.
Hen tells Maddie not to answer Chimney’s call because she doesn’t feel like being second guessed about Bobby and Athena’s ship. Is it just her still hurting from how he and the others reacted, or does she really think they wouldn’t back her? Hen and Chimney are each other’s ride or dies.
They are each other’s ride or dies. But I think based on what Hen is about to do and given the way that they didn’t trust her, she’s not trusting anyone in this moment but herself and hoping that it pans out. It’s an instance where she’s also trying to regain her own trust for herself and her own instincts. If others that she has trusted and worked with are second guessing her, which has been forcing her to then feel like she might be second guessing herself, it’s that thing that you do to kind of assure for yourself, “I know I’m not crazy and if I could just ride this all the way out, then I’ll prove to myself that I’m not crazy.” I think she just has gut instincts that tell her something is way off, but she doesn’t want to be stopped.
In the next episode, Hen defies protocol in her search for Bobby and Athena and promos have shown the 118 on a helicopter — with Tommy [Lou Ferrigno Jr.] back, which was a surprise.
I know!
What can you preview about what’s coming up?
Hen is a renegade, and it pays off.
What else can you say about Episode 3 and filming it? It looks like it’s going to be really intense for everyone.
Yes. Obviously you’ve seen Episode 1, and it just increases in intensity. By the time we get to Episode 3, it was really a wonderful trajectory that we all got to have in shooting these three episodes together and feeling like we’re part of this feature film almost. It’s like a trilogy that we’re putting out for our three-part premiere. It was a lot of fun and the intensity just continued to increase from episode to episode and scene to scene, but it ultimately ends in a very fulfilling way
After that is Episode 100. Congratulations! Kenneth told me how you remembered there were some episodes he wasn’t in and then everyone figuring out their numbers.
[Laughs] Yes. Kenneth should be the one to say that because Kenneth probably has the least episodes clocked on his work card than any of us. We were in the middle of shooting the 100th episode and we started to realize, “Hey, wait a minute, you weren’t in that episode where I was doing this.” “You weren’t in the episode that was happening here.” “Wait, were you in the ‘Hen Begins’ episode? You weren’t.” “I wasn’t in ‘Chimney Begins.’” We started to really number the episodes that we were actually present in and worked in. And so it turns out and of no surprise to me that of all those guys, I am the hardest working actor on this show outside of Angela Bassett. She literally is factually and actually physically present in all 100 episodes up to the 100th episode. I think Peter and I tie for maybe 98 and then the rest of the guys, they are slackers. [Laughs]
Talk about reaching that milestone.
It’s like a dream come true and obviously a really big deal, especially in this landscape of television now where shows are not hitting that 100th episode mark as often. When we started the show, it was something that we talked about in theory like, “Man, how many more of these do we have to do to get to 100 episodes,” but not really realizing what it would take and when we would get there and then all of a sudden, we look up and here we are shooting our seventh season and our 100th episode, and it felt kind of really emotional and exciting and invigorating all at the same time. It was a joy to just all walk down memory lane throughout the seasons and the episodes that we worked on together, and it just fortified what we have built as our family. We’re just hoping and looking forward to maybe 100 more together. It’s really an amazing feeling.
Disney/Chris Willard
One thing I especially liked about this episode was Hen opening up to Karen because, first of all, love that relationship. And I like how real their relationship is because Karen doesn’t just tell her what she wants to hear and instead says the others didn’t betray her. And it’s to Karen that Hen says, “I didn’t save him either.” What is coming up for them as a couple this season and how is fostering going?
I, too, love that relationship for so many reasons, and I love the number of kind of storylines that their relationship is layered with. I love that they get to explore the dimensions of their relationship in the ways that they do and their exploration to expand their family and the myriad ways in which they try to pursue that. I love the challenges that we both individually and collectively faced and had to sort of overcome, whether it’s deciding whether we’re going to change our career paths or stay with it or decide are we going to foster more children or are we going to stand down? It’s been quite a journey with them trying to figure out how to navigate the expansion of their family and if it’s something doable for them.
This season, we’ll again find them in a place where they’re figuring those things out. Last season, we saw that there was an opportunity to foster a little girl whose grandmother had decided she was willing to put her into foster care. That’s where we were left off, with this possibility, and Karen was really excited about it and checked the temperature of Hen to see, would you be on board? And they both were. Hen wants to support Karen’s heart and vice versa. That exploration continues and they’re met with some news that could kind of throw a monkey wrench, but then we have to figure out, is there a pivot or is there an alternative? I love that we do these stories that give voice to parents and families out there who are also trying to explore ways to expand their own families, and we can put onscreen some of the challenges and avenues and obstacles that come in the way of that and then hopefully offer hope for the alternatives that can be explored.
Looking ahead to Maddie and Chimney’s wedding, it feels like Hen has to be Chimney’s best woman.
Duh.
What can you say about what we’ll see when that comes up and how she’s going to handle that role and the bachelor party?
I know! Hen has her hands full. That’s what I’m going to say about that because as we saw last season, Chimney has gone in so many different directions when it has come to this proposal and this wedding and this marriage. But one thing I think she knows for sure is that Chimney loves Maddie and Maddie loves Chimney and I think that is her kind of guiding light. That’s her guiding force. And so all of the things that happen within that, we try to just come back to that place and so it’ll be a very interesting episode, and let’s just hope that we get them hitched.
We talked about Hen and Maddie scenes, but when are we getting Hen, Maddie, and Athena scenes?
New petition going out instantly. Do we have any that I can think of? Not that is isolated with just the three of us, but we do have a moment, I think, that is in the 100th episode where we’re all together.
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC