Last week, we finally got to see Vic Hughes climb out of that dark hole she’s been in recently (in part thanks to a lovely heart-to-heart with Travis that I’m still not over), and while her job and Crisis One seem pretty safe at the moment, there are still a lot of questions regarding budget cuts looming over our firefighters’ heads. While “Give It All” points to how that conflict might be resolved, the episode also spends a lot of time allowing Maya space to dive deeper into what’s going on with her brother and how it affects her family. Plus, there’s a woman with a nail stuck in her arm! A little something for everyone. Let’s talk about it.
Don’t you dare ruin Maya’s beautiful life, you hear me?!
Maya Bishop has a lot going on; we know this. She’s nearing the end of her hormone treatment, and she is a mess. To pile on, she’s still processing running into her brother Mason at the Pride parade. While out on an inspection run, she decides to pay him a visit. The situation is much worse than she ever anticipated.
Mason is now living in a house with the group of men he was protesting with at the Pride parade — it’s a real incel party in there. The worst part is, he seems to be really into it. As the siblings argue about what’s happening — Mason was never a hateful person, and Maya doesn’t understand what’s changed — he begins to unleash a whole bunch of hate-filled, bigoted rhetoric about how men can’t be men anymore. Maya calls him brainwashed and wants to help him. They never knew what having a real family felt like growing up, and she wants to show Mason what that feels like. She wants him to move in with her, but it’s clear that will never happen. It’s not just because Mason has this insane notion that he matters to the people in this group and he’s never mattered to anyone before (clearly, how they so easily brainwashed the guy), but because the moment he finds out that Maya is bisexual and married to a woman, he unloads his most hateful words of all. He tells her she is poisoning this country, that she shouldn’t be allowed to have children. How she doesn’t punch him in the face, I’ll never know. Instead, she takes it all in and has a realization: Mason is somehow even worse than their father ever was, and there is no hope for him. “You can never be a part of my life, not like this. You’re not allowed to touch the beautiful life that I’ve created because you would ruin it.” When she realizes she is late for her trigger shot (she’s about to have her egg retrieval), she tells Mason goodbye — a very final kind of goodbye — and leaves.
She’s a mess at the station, trying to salvage this last shot. It winds up being Beckett who finds her in tears, trying to give herself this injection. Beckett winds up being the exact perfect person to walk into that room. Not only is he experienced with fertility shots — he and his ex-wife tried IVF for a while — but when Maya tells him she cut off her brother, he assures her she did the right thing. And it’s not because it’s just something comforting to say, either— it’s because he’s been through something similar. Not long ago, we watched him cut off his family to protect his sobriety. He knows all about ambiguous loss. “It was either him or you,” he tells her before he helps her with her shot. Now, if you had told me when Beckett first showed up on Station 19 that one day I would be 100 percent endeared to him and completely obsessed, I would’ve laughed and laughed and laughed. But now who’s laughing? Beckett is an angel person; please protect him at all costs. I mean, walking away from that conversation with a “for what it’s worth, you’re already a great mother”? Be still my heart, truly.
It’s a hard day for Maya, but there is a silver lining. When it comes time for Carina to defend herself in her malpractice suit, she too has a major realization: She did everything she could to ensure the safe delivery of that baby, and more importantly, this suit will not help that child nor her mother. Instead, when she is finished with her testimony, she gives Nina’s mother her contact info and tells her to call her — Carina wants to put her in contact with people who can actually help her with appointments, finances, and care for Nina. We don’t know if Carina’s offer will be taken up just yet, but it certainly seems headed in that direction. All of this means, with the lawsuit behind them and with the Mason stuff put to bed, Maya and Carina can concentrate on building their beautiful life together.
Please stop having gender-reveal parties, your local fire department is begging you.
The major call of the week, as it so often does, leads to some real introspection for ol’ Andy Herrera. Station 19 is called to a nearby area of the forest, and when they see smoke billowing up over a group of trees, they assume that’s what they’re here to handle. Andy is immediately stopped by a few women from the Tulalip tribe, who impress upon her that she has it all wrong: They have a permit to be there; they’re performing a prayer circle for a member of their tribe in the ICU. The man with that permit arrives just in time to clear everything up: He’s Elliot Henderson, a captain at the fire station on the Tulalip Reservation, and he’s the one who called in the SFD — he took one look at a gender-reveal party happening next to them and just knew they were a fire hazard waiting to happen.
Lo and behold, he’s right. The gender-reveal fireworks go off, and a fire starts and spreads quickly … eventually even blowing up the car with all the extra gender-reveal supplies in it. This couple are a menace to society, which you know immediately from the size of that woman’s flat-brimmed hat, but also because they don’t really seem concerned with the fact that they just lit a forest up. The fire is complicated, but Captain Henderson ends up being a huge help to 19. Apparently, they can afford all types of extra training thanks to government grants and a lot of support from the community. They invite Andy to join the prayer circle ceremony, and she leaves inspired. This whole time she’s been trying to figure out this budget crisis on her own, but now she realizes that is not the way to do it: She needs help, and she has a community of people who want to support her. She gathers 19 and tells them she wants to be the kind of captain who can ask for help when she needs it, and that time is now. As the others start brainstorming, they come up with another idea inspired by the Tulalip — what if Vic could find a different source of funding for Crisis One? Dean always wanted the program to be bigger than the Seattle FD — why not try to find some national-level grants? If SFD doesn’t have to foot the bill for Crisis One, it would free up some budget space. It just might work. And even if it doesn’t, it’s just nice to see 19 pulling together as a team. What little cuties!
Ma’am, you have a nail through your arm.
While most of 19 are off dealing with the gender-reveal nonsense, Ben, Beckett, and Travis are left back at the station. Mostly, they’re just spending their free time testing out Ben’s new energy levels thanks to his testosterone shots, but before long, drama arrives on their doorstep, as it so often does.
Theo and his new private EMT partner Dominic show up with a woman named Paula in the back of their Aid Car, and she has a nail through her arm. And not like a little, dainty nail — a huge nail. There’s a lot of blood. Anyway, she doesn’t want them to take her to the hospital because of some workers’ comp issues, and wanting to help his patient as best as he can, Theo decides to take her to 19 for help.
Paula is a hoot — honestly, I’m still cackling at her telling Travis that she will be mailing the removed bloody nail to her ex-wife without even a note — but her story mainly functions to help some of our firefighters’ stories along. First, it’s clear that Theo is still not comfortable with his new job in the private EMT business. He’s bucking all the rules by bringing Paula to 19 and not reporting any of it, and as Dominic reminds him, they could both get fired. Theo can’t help himself! Speaking of Dominic, this little excursion to 19 throws Dominic right into Travis’ path, and there is an immediate spark between the two. Even Theo notices, and you have to love him for setting up scenarios for the two guys to spend time together. Then of course, there’s Ben Warren’s part in the whole thing. Because of Paula’s injury, Ben gets to pull out all of his surgeon moves: He has to administer local anesthetic, he performs an ultrasound-guided removal on the injury — Ben is very much in his element throughout all of it, and I don’t know about you, but I’m taking note.
Firefighters, they’re just like us (h-word).
It’s Beckett who decides they should all have a post-shift gathering at Joe’s Bar. There are three things I love about this scenario: 1) Beckett wants to voluntarily hang out with 19? He really is a changed man. 2) Didn’t you love it when Vic gives him a look at his suggestion, still worried about him and his sobriety? They are friends, and I cannot get enough of that. 3) You also have to love seeing everyone partake in mocktails in support of Beckett — he’s a part of the team! Can’t take it back!
Several interesting things happen at Joe’s. Travis admits that he loves Vic so much that he would marry her if it wouldn’t trap her in a sexless marriage, and Travis and Vic’s friendship remains unrivaled on this show. But don’t worry — Travis does spend most of his time hardcore flirting with Dominic, and it is very much reciprocated. They don’t take it further than that, but you know it’s coming. There are some couples who are very much in the mood post-shift, though. Ben, all amped up from his nail removal and also all the T he is on, cannot keep his hands off his wife. Bailey is into it, but she does fear for the future of her joints, and that’s fair. Her complaints do finally lead Ben to confide in his wife about the testosterone, and Bailey’s all like, ya ding-dong, you think I didn’t already realize that? I! Am! Bailey! Actually, she’s very sweet about it.
Elsewhere, Sullivan and Ross had almost zero screen time in this episode, but we do see them falling into bed because, sure, why not? More important: You know who else tumbles into bed together? Vic and Theo. They have a nice little chat at Joe’s about how their relationship ended and how happy Theo is to have Vic back to her old self, and then, that’s right, they wind up having sex. That’s going to be complicated!
