Spoilers ahead for the 9-1-1: Nashville series premiere.
Viewers tapped into Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1 universe were promised a soapier take on the franchise’s winning formula of intense and often ridiculous rescues paired with juicy interpersonal drama at the fire station with 9-1-1: Nashville. The series premiere definitely leaned into the Dynasty crossed with Succession element showrunner Rashad Raisani teased ahead of the show’s debut.
The drama surrounding the Harts with Blue in town and his mother, Dixie, looking for him to worm his way into his stepmother’s pocketbook via his father, is the kind of delicious storytelling that’ll set this procedural on fire. But the big series opening rescue lacked compelling stakes thanks to the world’s slowest tornado and a reused moment from 9-1-1.
Key Takeaways
- The newest firefighter drama in the franchise has its own look and feel
- 9-1-1: Nashville stirs the pot with Blue’s drop into the Harts’ world
- The procedural needs to step up its game with the rescues
Country Appeal, Gold Digging, And The Long Lost Son Trope
9-1-1: Nashville embraces its big city feel with a country aesthetic to great effect in its premiere. The show isn’t looking to be raw and rugged. It’s aware it’s polished and shining beneath lights as bright as the ones Cpt. Don Hart (Chris O’Donnell) and his son, Ryan (Michael Provost), were under at the rodeo they competed in. Their Nashville is glamorous, affluent, not at all down-home, but still full of that Southern charm viewers expect.
The premiere only leaves room for the characters to be fleshed out in broad strokes. But there’s enough there to understand the heart of the first big story the show is telling. It has the kind of setup that soap fans love. The Harts are a wealthy family with ties in the community that are based in firefighting, rodeo, and derby racing. In comes Blue (Hunter McVey), Don’s son, whom he fathered when he and Ryan’s mother, Blythe (Jessica Capshaw), were separated and headed for divorce.
Blue comes in like a missile, upending everything Ryan knew about his parents and the life they made for him. While Ryan was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, it’s clear he’s a man who prizes earning your place. Blue immediately getting to insert himself into their work and personal lives is likely to chafe as time goes on. Especially, if Ryan catches wind that Blue’s mother, Dixie (LeAnn Rimes), wants her son to get the Harts to empty their pockets for him.
The hook of the scorned woman using her grown child to shake his father down is ripe with story possibilities. As Ryan adjusts to being an older brother, Don tries to make up for lost time, and Blythe stands her ground against Dixie’s manipulations. The other characters didn’t get as much meaningful screen time, but Taylor Thompson (Hailey Kilgore), a firefighter with a beautiful voice looking to make it big as a singer-songwriter, and Roxie Alba (Juani Feliz), a former trauma surgeon turned firefighter, have a good presence and potential. However, where 9-1-1: Nashville succeeded with its characters in its premiere, it struggled with its rescues.
Incident Calls Needed More Stakes
The call that introduces the audience to Blue was solid and laughably ridiculous in the best way. He’s in the middle of a shift at the strip club where he works, having been chewed out by his boss for giving a woman a lap dance, when a bachelorette party crashes their boozy pedaled vehicle. Decked out in a rip-away firefighter costume, Blue leaps into action and is just securing a makeshift tourniquet on the bride-to-be when the 113 rolls up to the scene. That’s how Ryan finds out he has a brother.
The set-up—paired with shots of Blue “Mr. Smoke Show” Bennings bearing arms in a white tank top, his father looking on wide-eyed with pride, and his brother trying to man the scene business as usual—was satisfyingly over the top. Blue immediately quit his job because Ryan, before he knew who he was, offhandedly mentioned the department could use someone like him, and Don bypassed protocol to give him a job against Ryan’s wishes.
In comparison, the other calls were less notable. The incident with the birthday girl who got pulled into the sky by a kite was meant to highlight dispatcher Cammie Raleigh (Kimberly Williams-Paisley), but it didn’t reveal anything about her to viewers. Kane Brown’s cameo involved fallen scaffolding at his concert, and a tornado hurtling right toward the scene, with the 113 pressed for time to save everyone stuck under said scaffolding.
But, for as pressing as the matter was, the scene itself was dry. The tornado hovered in the background with no real shift in the weather to indicate it was mere minutes away from the people in its path. And the concertgoers’ involvement, led by Brown, in helping to lift the scaffolding when time was running out, was reminiscent of 9-1-1, when bystanders lifted the fire engine off Buck. However, there was no heartwarming feeling or sense of true camaraderie because we didn’t know this community yet, and the lack of urgency, despite the tornado, made it feel like they weren’t really risking anything.
Every call doesn’t have to be a showstopper, but the series opener should have some stakes that the audience can feel. Unfortunately, the cliffhanger with Ryan and Blue climbing the scaffolding to help a man stuck up there just as the tornado comes closer didn’t move the needle in that department. It’s the Hart family drama that’s likely going to pull viewers in for episode 2, not how this call is going to end.
Final Verdict: 9-1-1: Nashville is deliciously soapy with room to get even soapier as Dixie schemes and the Harts deal with the emotional fallout of Blue’s arrival. Tune in for that mess because Don’s guilt over allowing Dixie to keep him from Blue, Blythe’s determination to keep her family intact, and Ryan’s struggle to deal with suddenly having a brother have so much potential for good storytelling. The incident calls may not be what draws you in, but that could change as the series finds its footing.
9-1-1: Nashville airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET on ABC. Next day streaming is available on Hulu.
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