[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for Station 19 Season 7 Episode 5 “My Way.”]
The Station 19 family, for the most part, stands together in the ABC drama’s 100th episode, an hour that fittingly shows the dangers and realities of their jobs—and the cruelest parts, emphasized with the budget cuts coming.
As Station 19‘s milestone episode begins, work is a somber place—Maya (Danielle Savre) tries to act like normal and show off baby photos, but no one’s having it—and tensions are high. Vic (Barrett Doss) doesn’t even look at Maya’s phone. Ben (Jason George) and Travis (Jay Harden) are sniping at each other over the former’s back. (Ben also is hiding that he’s self-medicating, which will obviously become a problem.) Vic finds out Crisis One is being shut down due to the budget issues. (Travis tries to come up with a way to save it, but she says she’s glad it’s done.) Maya tries apologizing to Beckett (Josh Randall) about giving him a bottle of whiskey, but while he says they’re all good, it’s clear they’re not.
The only bright spot? Andy’s (Jaina Lee Ortiz) pinning ceremony! After Maya reminds her of the captain they know she is and that she doesn’t have to live in her father’s shadow, Andy asks her to be the one to pin her. But the ceremony is just getting underway when they’re all called to an emergency—at the Space Needle! And as they realize on their way, Jack (Grey Damon) is the one to send them, on his first day at dispatch.
Disney / James Clark
Then, of course, everything that can go wrong does go wrong. Travis lowers Vic to the outside elevator, where people are trapped, and one panicking passenger kicks the med bag out the open door. When she calls for extra hands, Maya’s about to lower Beckett down when he seemingly goes on his own and falls, and she catches him just above the elevator. Ben and Sullivan (Boris Kodjoe), after finding an active fire, run out of water. With their oxygen tanks almost empty, Ben asks Sullivan about his plans to propose (on a Tuesday, off-shift, just the two of them, calm, quiet, and nothing extravagant or elaborate). Ben then asks Jack over the radio to help look after Pru and “tell Miranda she was worth waiting for.”
Andy comes up with a solution just in time, and she, Travis, and Maya help Ben and Sullivan walk out of the building. But Sullivan doesn’t see the ring box fall out of his pocket as he walks over to Natasha (Merle Dandridge); she’s the one to stumble on it later. Once outside, Beckett thanks Maya for saving him and admits that he didn’t trust her to have his back, which he knows is his fault.
Then, the mayor gives a press conference and attributes the elevator rescue to the firefighters’ quick thinking and faster response. Vic speaks up to correct him: Crisis One, and the skills she learned with it, helped her talk to and calm down the passengers. She calls him out on cutting it from the city as a resource. “We want to help you!” she shouts in front of the press. “But thanks to him, we won’t be able to help anyone.” Travis tries to stop her, but she ends up walking off. Once back at the station, Andy sends her home and tells her she’s lucky she still has a job.
Maya finds Carina (Stefania Spampinato) and baby Liam waiting for her in the bunk room, and she learns the doctor’s appointment didn’t go as they’d hoped. Carina can’t get pregnant, and the eggs she has left are not viable. She’s sorry for putting Maya through this when she didn’t want kids in the first place, but Maya tells her that she didn’t want to have a family until Carina showed her what a family is. She also comes up with a solution: Carina gets pregnant using Maya’s eggs.
On the roof, Sullivan joins Natasha, who has realized that she’s been stalling on them because she is terrified that someday he’ll want her to play small. “I promise that I will never be so stupid and try to make you play or feel small, okay?” he tells her. And that’s when she shows him she found the ring. With that, he proposes: “Will you play the biggest part in my life and please finally marry me?” She says yes!
Vic, meanwhile, is at home just staring blankly ahead, ignoring her phone (Ruiz calls upon hearing Andy sent her home), and we are very worried about her.
The 100th episode ends with Andy’s pinning ceremony, take two! “I can’t say I remember a time where I’ve done a ceremony twice for the same captain but if ever there was a captain deserving of twice the accolades, it’s Andy Herrera,” Natasha says. “I have never met a leader so capable, so sure and simultaneously willing to ask for help, and so passionate, not just about the job but about the people that she serves with.” Everyone, including Jack in attendance, applauds, and Maya pins her badge on her.
“When my dad was promoted to captain, he was the first Latino to be a captain in SFD. It was so inspiring watching him lead, always humble, always with his sense of humor intact. By the time I was six, I knew I wanted to be a firefighter,” Andy says. “Every day that alarm goes off, we’re responding to someone’s worst day, their most terrifying moments, and what we do is hard, on the body on the mind, and too often on the soul. We don’t always get along or agree, but that’s what families do, and firefighters, we’re family first. I am so proud to call you my family. I’m even prouder to answer the call with each of you beside me.”
The episode fittingly ends with a montage of Andy over the years and a standing ovation for her in the present.
What did you think of the 100th episode? And what do you think is going on with Vic? Let us know in the comments section, below.
Station 19, Thursdays, 10/9c, ABC