What do I know about this series going into it?
I’m aware of the existence of a show with this name, and assume based on said name that it is about either a police station or a fire station.
While clicking through to the episode, the poster shows the main characters surrounded by fire. So probably not a police station, but let’s not jump to conclusions.
Recap
Firefighters standing in an almost literal sea of fire. “Bishop” is trapped and the others are trying to save her. They call out orders to each other, through which I learn a few names: “Captain Herrera”, “Andy”, and “Maya” (who I think is Bishop).
We flash – either back or forward, it’s unclear – to somebody giving birth.
Return to the forest fire: air support arrives, with a helicopter dumping a load of water on the area, putting out the fire. Bishop is safe and reunited with the others.
But the fire’s still going on elsewhere in the forest. The team discuss the situation: “Hughes” and “Sullivan” – one of whom is also called “Vic” – are looking for a guy they previously heard blowing a whistle. So Captain Herrera starts giving out orders, with a dozen names rattled off in quick succession. I manage to write down “Larssen”, “Wiggins”, and “Culler”, but it’s just too fast. I also learn that the show is set in Seattle.
Meanwhile, in a hospital in Seattle, a firefighter named Ben is escorting an unconscious colleague on a gurney. The unconscious one is Ruiz: there is a flash-I-assume-back to a party celebrating when Ruiz was promoted. While they take Ruiz in for treatment, Ben meets Maya’s partner, a doctor in the hospital. She’s pregnant, but Maya doesn’t know yet.
A call comes in: a woman’s going into labor and they need someone to deliver the baby.
Back at the fire, “Chief Ross” calls for another water drop over the radio, but they don’t have reception due to the hills blocking line-of-sight. She sends two guys to find “Powell”, who has a satellite phone they can use.
Hughes and Sullivan have found and begun treating the unconscious guy. He wakes up; the firefighters tell him that “Eliza” told them he was out here, but I didn’t catch his name. He has severe burns.
At the hospital, Maya’s partner suits up over Ben’s objections, and is going to help him deliver the baby - turns out she’s an obstetrician. This is far less exciting than what’s going on in the forest.
Two firefighters come over a ridge, discussing their lives. One of them wants to see the world, and says the other is living in the past. Ah, these are the ones who were sent to get Powell’s satellite phone. She’s putting out a fire that’s threatening a cabin, when a fire tornado approaches her from behind. They call out warnings, but she can’t hear them - and then when she finally does notice on her own, she runs in entirely the wrong direction, right in the tornado’s path. It sucks her up and spits her out into the wall of the cabin. She should be dead from that, but I bet she won’t be.
The two guys give up on trying to reach her and run away. As they flee, we’re treated to another flash: one of the two in an art gallery with a man and a woman. He and the other man kiss; I’m not sure how the woman figures into things. Return to the present and he’s just standing there staring into the middle distance, so it’s clear these are flashbacks.
Elsewhere, Ross and “Beckett” are fighting the fire, and Ross has her own flashback, remembering her wedding to Sullivan. Return to the present and she too is just standing there staring, which is a very stupid thing to do in this situation. Focus, people, focus!
Their hose is sucked up into the fire tornado and, Ross in her reverie is almost sucked up as well, before Beckett pulls her down and saves her life. They flee and meet the rest of Station 19, who confirm that I was completely wrong earlier: Powell is dead.
They’re trapped. And the trees above have caught fire. They take protective cover under heat-reflective foil. There’s a check-in, so I finally have the full roster of characters: Ross, Bishop, Hughes, Montgomery, Beckett, and Sullivan. Plus the burn patient from earlier.
Meanwhile, Maya’s partner and Ben have reached the car with the woman in labor. Turns out it’s outside the city and threatened by the fire, and the baby is crowning. So Ben is going to fight the fire to defend the car, while Maya delivers the baby.
Bits of tinfoil begin tearing off of Station 19’s shelters due to the fire and the wind. The patient, Bill, is starting to panic, which is the perfect time for Sullivan to space out and flash back to when he gave some speech opening an organization for veterans who become firefighters.
Back to the present, there’s a second check-in, but this time Andy doesn’t respond. She might be dead. A branch lands on Vic’s foil shelter, tearing it and setting her arm on fire. Flashback to her giving some kind of speech during which she sees a ghost. The ghost calls her Hughie, so this is Vic(toria?) Hughes.
After the flashback, the heat has died down, and they come out of their shelters. There’s another check: Natasha Ross, Bishop, Hughes, Montgomery, Dom, Sullivan, Beckett, Herrera.
Herrera – Andy Herrera - doesn’t answer; her stuff is there but her body (if she’s dead) is gone.
Meanwhile, while Maya’s partner delivers the baby (it’s getting annoying that I don’t know her name yet), Ben starts a small fire to clear the brush around the car, to create a buffer zone without any fuel for the large fire when it reaches them. Maya’s partner has a flashback to when she and Maya are being photographed while holding their two – no, three! – children, one of whom is at least a teenager. She looks very young to be flashing back to when her kids were teenagers.
Back in the forest, the rest of the team leap to the conclusion that Herrera went for help (irresponsibly without telling them) rather than that she was sucked up by the fire tornado. They’re at a loss for what to do, and Beckett panics and runs off despite Ross ordering him not to. While panicking, he too flashes back.
The rest of the team chase after him, and almost immediately run into another fire crew – with Herrera there, alive and well. Turns out she did go for help, irresponsibly without telling them. This crew is called “Tulilap Fire”, I think, and with their help and additional reinforcements from other towns in the area they get control of the fire.
Suddenly Andy collapses. They evacuate her in an ambulance.
As they return to Seattle that night, one firefighter – I can’t tell which – says she’s leaving and asks Beckett to come with her, but he refuses.
At the hospital, Maya’s partner finally tells her she’s pregnant, and with twins. But they’re not reacting as if these are their fourth and fifth kids. And given that two of the kids we saw in the flashback were about the same age… have these been flashforwards all along?
There’s another flash… back, forward, whatever. One firefighter says “I can’t imagine my life without Andy” – is he about to propose to her? But oh no, Andy catches him kissing another woman, and the other woman finds the ring, which he then turns around and gives to Andy, then he’s behind Andy – what the hell is happening?
Andy wakes up in the hospital, surrounded by her grateful team.
Three months later, the crew throw a going-away party for Hughes, who is the one who was leaving and wanted Beckett to come with her. Herrera (I think) is mad at someone else at the party for budget cuts. (Ben) Warren is leaving the team too, to finish his surgical residency, which Herrera isn’t happy about.
Another flashforward, this time to Warren’s kids graduating from college one after another.
Station 19 seems to have a tradition where each firefighter who leaves writes their name under the table in the breakroom. Hughes breaks down crying and can’t do it, so they all get under the table with her to help.1
Later, at the airport, Hughes is surprised by Beckett: he’s going with her after all.
In the future, Herrera is the chief of the whole Seattle fire department, and Station 19 has a new captain; eventually I see that her tag says Bishop.
Unresolved questions
I actually don’t have any unresolved questions this time. That doesn’t mean I understood everything; it just means that whatever I understood, I understood completely – and whatever I didn’t understand, I didn’t understand at all.
Ratings
Story: 5/10. Firefighters fight a fire. Simple. Straightforward. I might’ve scored it higher, but the fakeout with Andy disappearing and not bothering to tell anyone – combined with the writers very obviously failing to justify that decision in character – was handled badly.
Writing: 7/10. Compellingly written for the most part. The death of Powell midway through did a good job of establishing the stakes; I don’t know how prominent a character she was, but I wrongly assumed until then that, even in the finale, this wouldn’t be a show where named characters died.
There were a few minor flaws, and one major one. In the end it turned out that victory for the main characters meant “surviving until help arrives”, not “stopping the fire”.2 There’s nothing wrong with a plot that revolves around just staying alive until the rescuers get here, but it’s better to firmly establish that this is the case; otherwise viewers may mistake the ending for a deus ex machina.
Production: 8/10. Good acting. Good music. Good CGI, for the most part, on the fire tornado and on the fires themselves.
Characterization: 2/10. They’re firefighters, fighting a fire. The flashbacks or flashforwards – I’m still not clear on that – establish factual elements of their lives but I never got to know who they are on a personal level.
Clarity: 3/10. The plot was easy to understand; that 3 is almost entirely plot.
I’m certain I got names wrong in the recap. There were far too many characters, all wearing exactly the same uniforms, with helmets so I couldn’t distinguish hair color, and grime all over their faces so I couldn’t identify facial features. Through the end I had no clue who was who.
And I still don’t understand the nature of the flashes. Each character who had one did so while staring off into space, which meant they were actually seeing the images we were seeing. That would seem to preclude them from being flashforwards. But then some of them clearly had to be flashforwards: an older Warren watching his kids graduate from college, Maya and her partner with their kids having grown up. And yet some didn’t make logical sense, like the one with Andy where her boyfriend is in two places at once. Were they all imagining the future?
Closure: 8/10. I don’t think fighting this fire was a uniquely difficult experience that made it worthy of the ending of the series; surely in seven seasons they’ve fought at least one wildfire before. But I’m open to being wrong about that.
Beyond that, however, the episode clearly made the effort to give longtime viewers the comfort of knowing what will happen to these people now that the series has ended: Some main characters leave the fire department; others leave the city altogether; for still others we get a glimpse into a very promising future. That’s enough for a good closure rating.
Do I want to watch the series now?
I have a rule for television shows in general: no matter how well made they are, I don’t watch them unless they feature something unique, something that sets them apart from all the others in the same genre. There are two genres where this rule is strongest: fantasy (nothing is more boring than your standard “Sword of X to defeat the evil of Y” palette swap) and the first-responder trio of hospital/fire/police (why should I be interested in this particular precinct more than any other?).
While this episode of Station 19 made a very good showing for itself, I didn’t see anything that made it special. It’s well-written, but its fundamentals are no different from every other fire department show out there.
Emotionally. She doesn’t need help holding the pen.
Yes, they did stop the fire, but that was in the denouement; it was clear from musical and camera cues that the real victory was the arrival of reinforcements.