elly-24

Social workers — I think social workers often get a bad rap in media, because we have a tendency to see them taking kids away from families in media, but they’re actually there to HELP. My school even has a social worker attached to it that we can call in to meet with families for a variety of reasons, including assistance for things like grief counselling, translators, general counselling, etc. Yet another resource that Eddie either doesn’t know about or hasn’t used, and yes, social workers are overworked and underpaid and it would probably be hard for an individual to get set up with one, but again, it's that planning ahead that is completely lacking here.

Something that we see over and over again with Eddie is that he has to do things for himself, often to the detriment of himself or people around him. He’s not a guy that easily seeks out help (see season 3 fight club, season 5 breakdown, talking to any of the numerous parents in his social circle about being away from their kids, etc etc.) It starts early, here, and continues throughout the series.

We know he gets Chris into a school that’s better suited to him, but it takes a long time and really requires him to blindside Shannon to get her there for the interview. Again, he couldn’t have researched schools before moving? He couldn’t have found this place sooner? You’re moving Chris out of the state already and now you’re moving him to a second school in under a year? What kind of consistency is that providing for him?

And then at the end of Season 7, Chris moves back to El Paso. What kind of school was he at there? We could have had even a LINE about him sending his parents Chris’s school documents (IEP/504) that would show actual good parenting.

At what point was it decided that Chris was staying in El Paso for the start of the school year? Schools with specialty programs often have a cap on how many students they can admit, and special education resources are also underfunded; did he have any support there? Did the school know that he was coming and would they have had time to assign or hire a support worker/support staff? Did anyone take him to the school before the first day so he could find his way around? Did teachers know he would probably need extra time to move between classes? Was the school accessible? If it had a second floor, did it have an elevator? The funding for special education resources in my province is based on butts in seats (ugh, the worst, and the funding models are not accurate), so if he wasn’t enrolled right away or there on the first day, the school would be fighting to get someone in or forced to have an aide/assistant/support worker split their time between multiple students to allow him to get at least some support.

And Eddie bringing him back for the “apology” for Buck but never actually going back to El Paso? How much school did that kid miss? We don’t have timelines on this show because damn why would we, but depending on when it is, Chris could have missed 2-6 weeks of school at the end of the school on what is essentially a whim of his dad’s? We don’t see either of them go back to El Paso between the apology and the finale. Perhaps it’s implied but…

And now that Chris is back in LA? Is the school that Shannon and Eddie worked so hard to get him into holding his spot? (in fairness it is unclear what grade that school goes to, but because Eddie never mentions having to find a new school in LA, I assume he’s still at the same one, and there are schools that go from kindergarten to grade 12).

If Chris did have support at his school in El Paso and you pulled him without notice, who were the kids missing out on support because that aide/assistant/support worker was waiting to find out what was going on with their charge? These things that he does impact people outside of him and Chris.

There were moments of Eddie being a great dad— therapy after the tsunami, talking to Chris about his own therapy in season 5, also the implication that Chris is still in therapy during that conversation. But there are more instances of Eddie leaving the hard stuff to other people, especially Buck having to have so many talks with Chris about dating and his mom and people leaving, Eddie blaming his parents and Buck for Chris going to El Paso instead of acknowledging it was his actions that caused Chris to leave, Eddie making Buck Chris’s legal guardian in his will without talking to him (or presumably Chris) about it — does Chris even want that? Why are your feelings about his care after your death more important than his?

The one time we hear that Eddie has to have a tough conversation with Chris (about Bobby’s death), he’s angry that he had to have that conversation with Chris. He’s angry that someone else didn’t do it for him. We actually see more anger from him about that then we do sadness for Bobby dying.

In Season 9, when Chimney comes over for beers after he and Eddie fight, there is zero mention of Chris — no “Chris is out at the movies”, “Chris is in his room”, etc. For someone who spent so much of Season 8 being really put out that his kid doesn’t want to see him, it’s weird that the first time we see him at home in season 9 there is no mention or sign of his kid.

A lot of this is actually a larger, overarcing issue of 9-1-1 treating kids as props for their parents on the show, and their storylines are there to further their parents’ in some way, but the few plot lines that Chris gets work to emphasize that Eddie doesn’t know how to be a dad and isn’t doing anything to fix that.

We rarely see him talking to other parents on the show — my kingdom for a scene in season 8 where he would have talked to Hen or Karen or Maddie or Athena about being separated from their kids (the one with British guy had no emotional impact because we didn’t even know he had kids before then and we don’t care about him). We don’t see him reading parenting books or taking classes or anything like that. And especially as Eddie’s plots seem so… repetitive, why not branch out in some way like that? Why is the solution “get Chris a mom figure” as opposed to “Eddie learns to be a better dad”?

Season 8 was particualrly egregious for not talking about people unless they were on screen — Hen never mentions Denny’s accident after the episode it happens in, whereas in season 6 when Karen got injured in the lab blast, Hen’s first scene back at the fire house establishes that she’s been off work for a month looking after Karen. This ‘feature’ of season 8 serves to make Eddie look like a terrible dad because we get so few mentions of Chris without Chris being on screen before he decides to pack up and move to Texas. We don’t see what Eddie has done or is doing to try and repair their relationship.

(We see the birthday party and the facetimes but that is when Chris is on screen so they don’t apply to the above point).

The halloween mention of Chris is one of the weirdest ones because it seems like Eddie is sad that he’s missing out on a singular experience with Chris and not, you know, living with him? He’s sad because he’s missing something. It’s about Eddie — again.

He’s become an incredibly frustrating character because the character growth they afforded him in earlier seasons has in many ways been walked back, and he comes across as selfish and self absorbed, not caring about how things turn out unless they turn out badly for him.