#ali 911

- god i love abuela and pepa

- being with eddie is what’s best for christopher. that being established so early on is so important to me. this episode changed the show fundamentally. i stand by that.

- eddie is a car guy. or at least he knows the inside of a car. i can’t remember if he ever worked as a mechanic in the gap between the army and LAFD. or he just knows about cars bc that’s something that a lot of people know about.

- I love this arc so much.

- “was evan buckley in that fire truck?” - my roomate when the truck blew up. also her “let me triage him” (we’re both in healthcare)

- they lowkey could have made his leg crush look better. it lowkey looks like he could just wiggle out with the way they did it. obviously not actually crushing oliver starks leg with a truck. but you know what i mean

- “shoot me if you have to” bobby i swear to god

-the fact that eddie is actively grieving throughout this episode is so crazy. but also he put his grief on hold because he had to be there for christopher.

- god “we’re out of time cap” god god this fucking show

- buck is so hurt. i can’t emphasize how fucking bad this would be. he was so close to just. fucking dying. If i was on shift and i heard that report of buck coming in thinking Oh Fuck. I’m thinking rnhabdomylosis. hyperkalemia (like maddie said) which can make your heart stop. tissue perfusion is fucked. he’s gonna go into shock if not already. he’s probably gonna code. it’s crazy that he didn’t code (go into an unstable rhythm/loose his pulse/fucking die). anyways.

- buck panicking when he wakes up. he’s so young. he’s so young and he’s so hurt.

- “he didn’t know if i would ever work again” the way he didnt care about anything else is devastating.

here is my hot take of the day that will probably piss off a lot of people but it’s just my opinion on how the fandom has reacted to female love interests for buck and eddie, specifically ana, and how members of the fandom have been reacting to those reactions.

i’ve seen a lot of posts saying stuff like “you only dislike ana because she’s coming in between buddie” and i’m here to say: so what?

now, i would like to preface this by saying i don’t dislike ana as a character and have a massive crush on gabrielle walsh, but to be completely honest i don’t have much of an opinion on ana except for that i think she’s pretty and i don’t like her and eddie together.

do you want to know why? because she does not have a personality outside of her relationship with eddie and her connection to christopher. there is literally not enough information about her as a character to even develop a strong opinion on her. the only substance we have that we can develop a strong opinion on is how she impacts the main characters.

here is a list of the things we know about ana:

she was christopher’s english teacher

she’s latina

she has a family member named edmundo

she told eddie that christopher has limitations and that there are things he won’t be able to do

she got her doctorate and is now a vice principal

she’s a good cook

she’s dating eddie

that is the extent of what we know about ana flores. is any of that worthy of hating her? no. but is any of it worthy of being really emotionally invested in her? also no.

now here is a list of things that have happened with other characters as a result of ana flores:

christopher fell off the skateboard (not directly her fault but it was made very clear that eddie blamed her and yelled at her about it)

christopher got mad at eddie (on two separate occasions)

eddie didn’t notice his own son sneaking out of the house

eddie acted like a completely different character for an entire episode

don’t get me wrong, i think she’s had some good impacts too, but those are the things that the story has highlighted. not to mention the fact that eddie now has a canon significant other and it is less likely that buddie will become canon any time soon.

now, are any of those things worthy of hating her? no, mostly because the majority of those things were not her fault, but the way that the storylines were written, they were directly connected to her influence and presence in the story as either christopher’s teacher or eddie’s girlfriend.

the fact of the matter is that ana has gotten zero development as a character and currently has very little substance outside of being eddie’s girlfriend. and this is not a new thing that the writers have done. see: ali.

ali is introduced not as a love interest but as an emergency victim. we see her interact with buck and eddie for two episodes, don’t see her for six episodes, then see her in the last episode of the season only for her and buck to break up. her sole purpose as a character was to be buck’s girlfriend for half a season and then break up with him.

here are the things we know about ali:

she designs hotels (i think? something like that)

her boss sexually harassed her

she was trapped in a high rise during an earthquake with buck and eddie

she dated buck for an unknown amount of time

she travels a lot for work

she helped buck find an apartment

she broke up with buck after his leg got crushed by the ladder truck

none of those things really merit any kind of a strong opinion on her. i don’t even think she was mentioned for the majority of season 2B unless it was plot relevant that buck had a girlfriend.

love interests that are not main characters are not well developed characters because they don’t need to be. they’re not people, they’re plot devices for main characters to develop or for storylines to progress in a certain way.

look at the actual well developed romances on the show: bathena, madney, henren, even buck and abby although it was just one season. all of these relationships are between two main characters or a main character and a prominent supporting character. henren slightly less so, but they’re established as a couple at the beginning of the show and get their fair share of storylines, so they still have development.

it’s very difficult to be invested in a relationship between a complex well developed character and a fairly one dimensional undeveloped or under developed character, and it’s also difficult to be invested in a character that has a very one dimensional personality.

ana has basically no flaws outside of the skateboarding incident, so what else would people be disliking her for if not for that she’s coming in between buddie? and if people are disliking her for coming in between buddie, then that’s completely valid. i’m very emotionally invested in buddie and really want them to become a couple, so i’m kind of annoyed that they’re bringing in a female character who has no personality except ‘love interest’ and making her be eddie’s girlfriend.

now, i’m not saying that means it’s totally okay to say “ana is a horrible person and i hate her because she’s coming in between my ship” because all evidence points to her not being a horrible person and it’s definitely not okay to say that. but it is completely valid to say “i really don’t like this character being on the show because they’re not developed and are coming between a ship that i’m very passionate about” and that doesn’t make you sexist or racist or whatever else people are saying, as long as that’s genuinely why you don’t like her.

these are fictional characters, not real people, and it’s valid to not like a fictional character because they’re preventing a storyline from happening that you really want to happen.

most importantly: THIS DOES NOT GIVE YOU ANY RIGHT TO ATTACK GABRIELLE WALSH. she is not a writer on the show, she did not write ana this way, she did not choose to have ana be eddie’s girlfriend, she is not the reason why buddie is not together. she is an actress who was hired to play a role and she is doing an amazing job with what she has been given. if you’re going to dislike any real people, dislike the writers because they’re the ones who are writing the story this way.

to sum up a ridiculously long post: if you love ana flores, great! if you hope her and eddie are endgame and have a very long and happy relationship, then you do you. if you’re kinda eh on ana and don’t feel strongly either way, that’s totally fine! if you really don’t like ana, that’s also totally fine! if you like ana as a character and think she has potential but you don’t like her and eddie together, awesome! if you’re secretly praying for lena to come back and for her and ana to be girlfriends (like me), then please come talk to me because i would be so here for that.

you are entitled to your own opinion, but that does not give you the right to insult other people or call them names for their opinions or to harass the actress who is just doing her job. respect other people’s feelings and decisions and remember that these are fictional characters whose sole purpose is to create an interesting and entertaining story, and if you dislike a character because you feel like they’re getting in the way of an interesting and entertaining story, you’re 100% entitled to that.