Friends! Readers! Dumbdumbs! Give me your eyeballs or whatever! Right? Like “friends, Romans, countrymen” from Shakespearean emperor Orange Julius Caesar Salad or whatever? You guys get it.
Wait that would be a good “Before & After” Wheel of Fortune puzzle wouldn’t it–Orange Julius Caesar Salad? Except the absolute dipthongs who go on Wheel of Fortune would ruin it, like the puzzle board would already be _RANG_ JUL_US CA_SAR SALAD and then some sentient “Live Laugh Love” throw-pillow from Pocatello, Idaho who collects Marie Osmond dolls and thinks blowjobs make you transgender is all like, “My husband hates my guts and I have regrets about having children I’D LIKE TO BUY AN ‘E’ WITH ACTUAL MONEY THAT NEEDLESSLY LOWERS MY SCORE BECAUSE I CAME HERE TO FEEL SOMETHING NOT TO WIN!!!” Then Vanna White cranks open her sarcophagus (no shade, Vanna is 936 and looks like a million bucks and I have developed midlife-onset cystic backne!) and puts up all the E’s so now it’s _RANGE JUL_US CAESAR SALAD and Idaho is like “GRANGE! JEALOUS! CAESAR! SALAD!!!” and then Pat Sajak leaps onto the BANKRUPT space on the wheel and blows his brains out with a Colt 45. The malt liquor, not the gun, it’s a self-bludgeon is what it is. Anyway Wheel of Fortune??? More like Wheel of DORKtune am I right lolol.
Anyway HULLO! Goddammit how the hell have you been, you old so-and-so’s! My goodness, it’s been A WHILE hasn’t it? *checks calendar* Exactly 15 months, to be exact. Wow, I just like ~*disappeared*~ didn’t I? The mystique! The intrigue! The unmitigated incompetence!
Listen, the TL;DR version is this: Whew! My good bitch have I been through some SHIT! I mean, obviously all of us has on account of *gestures at everything* but I’m talking on a ~*personal*~ level. I won’t bore you with details (that’s what the book I’m writing is for winky-face emoji!), and overall it was a net good! But I needed some time away from, like, everything. It was a whole thing.
But that was then and this is now and the point is, hi, hello! For those of you who stuck around and are reading this in your inboxes after all this time—and especially those of you still supporting me on Patreon—I genuinely and sincerely appreciate it more than you know. And for those of you who bailed, fuck you and your mother too LOLOL JUST KIDDING I love you you’re perfect never change or I will kill you!!!
Anyway, I don’t know what this space is gonna be now, exactly–I’m still figuring that out–but here’s what I do know: lol we live in absolute fucking hell now, right? Like!!! I mean damn, we thought we were living in hell back when I started this thing at the beginning of the pandemic but fucking shit bro! Cut to two years later and lololololol we are about to get nuked maybe? Alexa play “Every Day Is A Winding Road” by Grammy-winning singer/songwriter Sheryl Crow!
Given all of that, I am re-entering this space so we can read about stupid shit and blow of some steam because otherwise I am going to start eating lead paint chips! You too? Very cool!
So to that end, I welcome you to Volume 1 of a new series I’m calling Smooth Brain Gazette *trumpet fanfare, fart noise*
For those of you who are not “terminally online” and are unfamiliar with the phrase “smooth brain,” here is a meme that explains it perfectly (and an article that does, too).
When we’re talking “smooth brain,” we’re talking dumbdumbs, just silky-smooth up there in the cranium, like a dolphin’s back in the brains! And honestly good for them because a secret no one tells you about life is that those are the only people who actually get to be happy.
It’s true! You have to be a full-tilt dipshit in order to be happy, because being alive? Insufferable! A flop! Unsubscribe! Even for those who’ve lucked out, being alive is hard—UNLESS! You are too stupid to understand the human condition or the world in which you live. Then you get to be happy. SMOOTH BRAIN.
Do you see?
So I am on a quest to rid my brain of as many things wrinkle-brain as possible. And since this Substack was founded on the premise of smooth-brain (what is more smooth-brain than Real Housewives, after all), I thought it only fair to share with you whatever I could find that efficiently smashes the brain beneath a steaming Rowenta jacked up to the hottest setting, like the one for fine linens. And reader? My good God, have I found a thing.
It is a little television progrum that is somehow in its fifth season and somehow features some of our most august and refined acting talent in the entire history of the medium despite being fully and actively insane. It is:
Fox Broadcasting Company’s 9-1-1.
Oh reader. This show. THIS SHOW! I asked my friend Sam for smooth-brain ideas a few weeks ago and she was like, “wait a minute have you watched 9-1-1 bitch oh my god you will scream.” She has never been less incorrect! I know hyperbole is my brand but I need you to take me literally and seriously when I tell you that during the pilot of this progrum I screamed, I heaved, I bellowed, I caterwauled, I shrieked from beneath the blankets of my bed as if I were having my skin tags removed with a Husqvarna chainsaw.
No offense to Executive Producer Ryan Murphy or to Fox Broadcasting Company or to anyone involved! You’ve all done a great job! Hats off! But this show is A B S U R D. Please allow me to introduce you to this seminal piece of televisual artistry.
Our setting: El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Angeles de Porciuncula, often shortened to Los Angeles, People’s Republic of California, United States of Tara.
Our milieu: A 911 call center and the emergency situations alerted thereto.
We open on an ominous hero shot of the rough and tumble Los Angeles streets as a woman pointedly asks us, the viewers, in a voice freighted with meaning, “What’s your emergency?”
OoooOOOOooooh! Oh okay, I am getting the impression that housefires and car accidents are not what we do here we at Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1! No no, we are doing ~*life*~ and ~*the world*~ and ~*the human condition*~ in here! We cut to this disembodied woman’s embodied life and !!!
Ladies and gentlemen, Television’s Connie Britton™! *applause*
And she’s like, “my emergency is that I’m home on a Friday night drinking alone while I fuck around on my phone because I’m 42 and my boyfriend dumped me because my whole life revolves around my mother with ‘late stage Alzheimer’s’,” and like lol okay DRAG ME Television’s Connie Britton! Replace “mother with late stage Alzheimer’s” with crippling self-doubt and “dumped” with haven’t known the touch of a man since Q2 of fiscal 2019 and lolol IT ME, amirite? Honestly this is A LOT for the opening of a show that is basically Rescue 911 shot on an ARRI Alexa instead of a Radio Shack camcorder but okay, 9-1-1, talk your shit!
Anyway, Television’s Connie Britton’s character’s name is Abby and with all due respect her life can’t be that difficult because her “late stage Alzheimer’s” mother—played by Eddie Z’s Blinds & Draperies’ Mariette Hartley—is somehow still coherent enough to crack wise about Christian faith healers when she takes her meds so!
AbbyConnie babes no offense but you might as well get back on Hinge because whoever told you your mom is “late stage” was lying on your ass. My Nana died of Alzheimer’s and when she was late stage she spoke literal gibberish like a baby and then out of nowhere would say a thing that made sense but didn’t? Like she’d turn to me and be like “Oh hello you’re the little boy I rode horses with after school!” and then just narcolepsy into a deep sleep mid-sentence, and then my aunt would shrug and be like, “Let’s go to Big Boy.” Like I just think this writer’s room could do a bit more Alzheimer’s research, is all I’m saying!
In any case, we follow ConnieAbby to the 911 call center, which is in a beautiful historic office building and I’m sorry are we in a 911 phone bank or a fucking Nordstrom?
Did you see that beautiful glass ceiling?! Those polished brass columns?! Did you know that 911 is one of the most underfunded entities in this entire decrepit “country” that doesn’t even have a goddamn healthcare system?! I didn’t either but I Googled it and oops, the first result was this Vox story in which subject matter expert Rebecca Neusteter, Executive Director of the Health Lab at the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs, is like:
“The 911 system has been completely undervalued, underfunded, and under-resourced for 50 years. The technology is terrible. The training, benefits, and occupational standards are subpar. Call takers have not been set up for success institutionally.”
Ok DAMN, Rebecca Neusteter, Executive Director of the Health Lab at the University of Chicago’s Urban Labs, READ BITCH!!! Can someone Google this for Ryan Murphy? Why are you filming your shit in a Cheesecake Factory, my guy?! This show is already a mess and I hope it never improves.
Anyway Television’s Connie Britton is in the luxuriously appointed Trask Industries offices that have been repurposed for a fucking 911 call center when–ope! Suddenly she gets a call, and we’re off! It’s something perfectly normal, a woman in Beverly Hills whose son hit his head on a diving board—which I stipulate for contrast’s sake because the four other 911 calls in this pilot are so utterly batshit fucking bonkers cuckoo insane you won’t believe it, so please enjoy the normalcy while you can.
In any case, as ConnieAbby is giving CPR instructions over the phone, suddenly there’s sirens! And doors bursting open! And our ragtag crew of life savers hits the scene!
This is our Los Angeles Fire Department contingent, led by Peter Krause from my favorite show of all time, Six Feet Under, and listen: If this motherfucker doesn’t come bludgeon me to death with a fucking fireplace poker like that dude in The Staircase, I swear to God. This son of a bitch was hot enough when he was still in the bloom of youth on Six Feet Under but now that he’s old and ever so slightly craggy and in an LAFD uniform? I don’t think any gay men subscribe to this so I’ll spare you the gay porn fanfic about wanting him to open that uniform and piss on me while mocking my deepest emotional traumas but suffice to say, Daddy Krause if you don’t come bash out all my teeth with a cast-iron skillet in Jesus’ name!!!
Anyway, Daddy Krause IS NOT HERE TO FUCK AROUND OKAY?!?! He starts barking out orders and suddenly there’s this guy, Great Value Kellan Lutz, doing CPR on the the dead kid begging him in hushed tones to breathe, just please breathe.
I mean his name is actually Oliver Stark but… you know. Come on. Let’s cut the shit. I have eyes! That is Great Value Kellan Lutz! Anyway, the kid barfs up some pool water and undies or whatever so it’s on to our NEXT 911 call: A woman who has decided to do suicide by jumping off of what appears to be an oil refinery????
You know how it is when you’re young and it all gets to be too much, you throw on your cool velour jacket and somehow scale the local oil refinery to end it all. Who among us?! Daddy Krause’s fine ass certainly gets it, I’ll tell you that much!
Daddy Krause is all “I know I can help you, let me buy you a cup of coffee and I’ll tell you all about it,” which is probably not the tack I would have taken? Like I’m just not sure “Hey how about you don’t suicide and I’ll take you to Starbucks for a Chantico Drinking Chocolate!” is as compelling a reason to climb back down an oil refinery as Daddy Krause thinks? But hey, he’s the firefighter here, not me, surely he knows what he’s do–oops nope she said “lol fuck your coffee oldhead!”
K bye! Now we are treated to a monologue by Television’s Connie Britton about how left out she always feels once the phone goes dead (??? MA’AM!), but she’s interrupted by a woman who calls 911 from the drive-through to complain about only getting five chicken nuggets. And Television’s Connie Britton has had it! She has had it!
She bellows “EAT YOUR NUGGETS, GET SOME PERSPECTIVE AND GET OFF MY GODDAMN LINE,” and if some drag queen doesn’t recreate this for “Snatch Game” I honestly don’t know what anything is for.
Anyway now it is time to get to know our other characters a bit, which means–uh oh! Guys, Daddy Krause is at church! Telling a priest about how he’s a recovering addict, you see, because everyone has to find their way to cope with the constant loss of being a first responder. Some drink, some gamble, and some, he ominously says, ARE SEX ADDICTS and SMASH TO a fire truck! Racing through the streets of downtown Los Angeles! Cutting off cars at every corner!
And who is recklessly driving this firetruck? Why it’s Great Value Kellan Lutz, aka Buck, who has commandeered a fire truck to chase down a woman he’s tryna smash on some kind of Grindr-for-Straights app. Sounds like something that would get you A–fired and 2–put in jail but okay! Who gives a fuck about any of that though because PLEASE read the conversation these two idiot Young Hots are having in this app.
Better hurry, Mr Hose, I’m on fire. Better hurry, MISTER HOSE I’m on fire!!!
I screamed.
Anyway, these two dumb Young Hots fuck in the fire truck and afterward have this very weird conversation.
Which I guess is the only way the writers could think to address Great Value Kellan Lutz’s very small port wine birthmark, a thing that didn’t need addressing in the first place but someone at the network was apparently like “HOW EVER WILL OUR VIEWERSHIP PROCESS THIS HORRIFYING PHYSICAL DEFORMITY?!” Given that we live in hell, I am CERTAIN the word “representation” came up at least once in regards to this birthmark and I truly cannot wait to be dead.
Anyway after the lady Young Hot leaves, Great Value Kellan Lutz says this while buttoning up his fly in the golden Los Angeles dusk.
This is the stupidest episode of television I’ve ever watched and I hope it runs for 436 seasons.
So now we’re at the firehouse and because this is a televisual depiction of a firehouse I’ll give you one guess as to what the paramedics are doing at said firehouse.
Yes duh they are making a-spicy meat-a-ball-a because cooking Italian food is literally all firefighters do on TV and in movies, it’s in the bylaws. While they do that, Firefighter Han is talking about how he met his current girlfriend on a special app that is just for people who only like to fuck first responders and I’m sorry HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
ROMANCING THE UNIFORM DOT COM.
Anyway, Great Value returns with the pilfered fire truck and everyone’s pissed! Daddy Krause gives him what-for about being a NE’ER-DO-WELL YOUNG HOT and all the other firefighters are like 😤 and then just as they dig into their meatballs oops! The fire alarm goes off! We cut to Television’s Connie Britton taking the associated 911 call and you simply will not believe why she has had to summon the Fire Department:
And Television’s Connie Britton’s like:
I bayed at the fucking moon like a goddamn wolf.
So the firefighters go over to the apartment of this stoner guy who has reported hearing a baby crying inside the wall because, to reiterate:
Of course they don’t believe him because he’s high and also because this entire notion is fucking dumb! BUT THEN–they indeed hear a baby crying in the wall! And Firefighter Han is like, be real, pothead, you’ve got a tape recorder hidden in the wall don’t you? Which, sir WHAT? No offense to Han but between Romancing the Uniform Dot Biz and this tape recorder thing I’m not sure he’s LA Fire’s best and brightest! Anyway, The Stud, the Black lady lesbian firefighter, whose name is Henrietta but everyone calls Hen because having two characters on the same team named Hen and Han is good writing, has a perfectly reasonable explanation for how a baby would be in a pipe in the wall:
Oh ok! I wasn’t really buying it before but that checks out! Then Daddy Krause explains that newborn babies have bones that can “bend and compress like sponges” which seems like it cannot possibly be true but probably is because newborn babies are wildly fucked up. Little goblin-ass fucking rubber-ass shits, man fuck a newborn baby for real.
Anyway, now everyone’s on board that there’s def a toiletbaby in the wall and Great Value Kellan Lutz is like “LEMME AT IT” because as you know by now he’s a YOUNG REBEL! So he runs through the room with a fkng ax and everyone is like HEY WOAH HOLD ON COWBOY THERE’S A TOILETBABY IN THEM THAR WALLS!!! They then send him down to the truck for tools and you will just absolutely not believe who pulls up in a police cruiser just as he gets there????
ANGELA MOTHER FUCKING BASSETT!!! THAT’S WHO!!! And she is absolutely fucking MURDERING a pixie cut!!! She is Aileen Wuornosing this pixie cut!!! Lizzie Borden took an axe and gave her family 50 whacks and that is also what Angela Bassett has done to this pixie cut! Have you ever had a day where you just KNEW you looked good? Like you peep yourself in the mirror and you’re like “listen fuck you I am EATING THIS”? Well bad news hoe YOU LOOKED LIKE FUCKING SHIT! You have never looked as good as Angela Bassett and never will you ugly-ass bitch fuck you!
Anyway, Angela Mother Fucking Bassett is fucking PISSED, and goes into the building to regulate while her colleague gives her the rundown on what’s happening.
I’m sorry, there is nothing funnier than the phrase “gave birth on a toilet” I just can’t believe this show is real.
So AMFB and her colleague go knocking on doors looking for people to beat the shit out of–er, sorry, question, I meant to say people to question, it’s just so hard not to reflexively expect mortal violence when talking about the LAPD ha ha!!!! Oh we have fun here in America.
Meanwhile, the firefighters cut the pipe out of the wall—sending shit water everywhere which literally NO ONE acknowledges—and they look inside and–AHHHHH!!!!!! THE BABY’S FUCKING GOBLIN HEAD!!!!
Why is it so fucking white and hairy!!! IT LOOKS LIKE A SCROTUM. But listen get over it because what happens next is they SQUIRT LUBE INTO THE PIPE AND START FINGERING IT AROUND THE BABY’S HEAD, and sorry to the straights but I need you to know they use the EXACT PRECISELY SAME motion we homosexuals use to lube an asshole which is why I shrieked when Daddy Krause then said “Get it up there, get it up there!” Like come on! What’s he gonna say next, “Now open up boy, just breathe and push out and let me in, that’s a good boy” (Fuck I’m so hard.) Like! What is this, Cruising?! But you don’t even have time to process any of this information because then you see the toiletbaby’s little goblin feet!!!!
AHHHHHHH!!!!! And then Daddy Krause says “This is gonna be a scoop and run!” and excuse me sir! SIR! WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT MEAN WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON IN HERE ON THIS DAY! Even The Stud is like:
AND THEN!!!!
AHHHHHHHHH;SLDKFJNAPOIUR123-897162T9374Y1UP[23O;KLJNMA;.KDFLJNpaeifudh08q79W67-poqihe; q/wklndjqw[=0e0tpro] [pqoweiruipoqweupo[qweihrnlk agjvnapoidfupaweoifu!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Meanwhile AMFB has found *ominous music cue* A TRAIL OF BLOOD THAT LEADS HER TO THE TEEN TOILETMOM WHO JUST TOILETBABIED!!! And listen, she is fucking TIRED of the toiletbaby-related fuckshit.
AMFB rushes the teen toiletmom to the ambulance just as Great Value Kellan Lutz gets there with the toiletbaby and he’s like “Fuck that hoe she’s a toiletmother!”
And AMFB is like:
I WILL LIGHT YOUR WHITE ASS UP LIKE THOSE CLOTHES I BURNED IN WAITING TO EXHALE LET THIS TOILETBITCH IN THE AMBULANCE.
I cheered.
Anyway it’s easy to see why AMFB is so angry all the time because now we are at her house the following morning with her husband and kids, and listen, I don’t think all is well at the Mother Fucking Bassett residence because BITCH.
My God, if anyone ever got that look on their face simply because I offered them a waffle I would simply ~*pass away*~ Goddamn, what did he do?! Well! The tea is, it turns out Mr. Mother Fucking Bassett is a man of ~*secrets*~, secrets he wants to ~*reveal*~ to their ~*children*~! And AMFB is like “YOU BETTER DON’T.”
But he does anyway and it turns out!!!
Mr. MFB is an avowed homosexual!!!
“Avowed homosexual” is one of my favorite phrases, which I learned when my poor, put upon father was supposedly passed over for a promotion for not being, “Black, a woman, or an avowed homosexual” which lolololololol LIE NOBODY SAID THAT TO YOU RUSH LIMBAUGH. And if they were dumb enough to do so and you didn’t sue them for millions that’s on you, homie, don’t blame the Black woman avowed homosexuals! In any case I got to learn the hilarious phrase “avowed homosexual” and my dad got to retire as a nice old man who volunteers driving super-olds to the doctor and propagates conspiracy theories on Facebook so in the end it all worked out.
Anyway, back to AMFB and her Gay-Ass Husband. It has not gone well! Not only are the kids like “the fuq?” but it ALSO turns out AMFB didn’t know about Gay-Ass Husband until two weeks ago herself! So now she is ready to rip off this man’s head and shit down his neck because he “humiliated her in order to not humiliate himself.” Whew! Look, this is not the kindest, most progressive reading of the coming out process, especially for non-white queer people, but going down this road got us this moment where AMFB loses her shit and starts hitting Gay-Ass Husband while screaming DON’T YOU TOUCH ME in the most AMFB voice you can imagine.
So honestly, the ends of this slightly regressive treatment of queer issues justified the means. 5 stars, no notes.
Now we are back with Television’s Connie Britton and her supposedly late-stage Alzheimer’s mom having a perfectly lucid conversation about how applesauce sucks ass, and our return to ConnieAbby of course means–you guessed it! Time for another 911 call! And this one, as promised, is even more unhinged than the last two. Television is a visual medium so let’s just let the images do the talking.
NAME ME a better show. NAME ME ONE. Also nothing is funnier than these Connie Britton reaction cutaways. It’s giving camp.
Anyway, the fire department arrives and Daddy Krause breaks open the door with his thick arms and yells:
I got down on all fours and backed my open ass up to the screen.
So the LAFD folks get to the living room and it is full of enormous snakes just crawling around wood beams and decorative tree branches and shit, and Han is like “I can’t do snakes, ever since that scene in Conan the Barbarian,” and Great Value Kellan Lutz is like, “Who’s Conan the Barbarian?” Because reminder! He is very young, you see! And Han is like “ARNOLD SHWARZENEGGER 1982 GOD!” And Great Value replies that as far as he’s concerned?
Remember how I said Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1 is tackling ISSUES?! We are getting inTO the generational divides between Gen Z and Gen X and their impacts on the dynamics of the 21st-century workplace! Did I tell you or did I tell you!
Anyway they finally find this stupid bitch being strangled by her pet snake and no I will not be moderating my tone because having snakes for pets is fucking weird! It’s weird! It’s weird and stupid and gross and she’d be less creepy if she fucked corpses I hope she dies! But of course their job is to save people, so Daddy does the only natural thing which is to *attempt to pry the snake off her neck* And The Stud is like, “The writers Wikipedia’d snakes and here are some facts about why you’re being very dumb right now.”
Meanwhile this stupid snake bitch is like:
Then Han, WHO IS THE ONLY PERSON IN THIS ROOM WITH ANY FUCKING SENSE, is like “Just kill it” and even The Stud is like NO IT’S A LIVING THING IT’S JUST DOING WHAT’S NATURAL and I’m sorry but you gotta get the entire fuck out of here. Go sit in the other room and think about what you did cuz we’re not doing that PETA-ass shit with snakes!! The only good snake is a dead snake fuck you! Anyway in the end Great Value Kellan Lutz goes rogue and hacks the snake’s head off with an axe and then he and the dumb snake lady fuck on the roof. Like you do!
Daddy catches them and fires Great Value Kellan Lutz once and for all, and Great Value’s like “But wait I think I’m a sex addict!” You thought Daddy was just casually talking about sex addiction to that priest, but once again the writers of Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1 have hit you with a ~*literary device*~! You been foreSHADOWED bitch!
Anyway Daddy gets MAD.
(*cums*)
He fires Great Value with a very deep speech about the nature of firefighting, and it is this: “Your kit weighs 60 pounds right? So you figure out how to leave all your other baggage behind you except that 60 pounds, THAT’S THE JOB!” and if this motherfucker doesn’t fist my whole ass till stomach acid is leaking out of my nostrils I swear to almighty God.
Also I couldn’t get a good screenshot that showed it off? But Daddy kinda got cake!
I mean, for a white guy? Idk man maybe I’m just biased bc I think he’s fine but still! He’s in his 50s! I’m only 43 and my ass is a concave rectangle with cellulite on it so good for him and good for us! I tuned in for heroism and was served cake instead and what a blessing it has been. I love cake!
Anyway, Great Value is fired and we’re now on to our final 911 call of the night. And boy howdy, is it something else.
A nine-year-old girl is home alone (why?!) in the brand-new house her family moved into so recently it is still full of boxes (the fuck?!) and now someone’s trying to break in and this stupid little girl doesn’t know her new address yet (WHERE THE ABSOLUTE FUCKING CHRIST IS HER MOTHER?!?!) and her phone doesn’t have GPS despite being a whole-ass smartphone with a touchscreen and everything (sure! fine!), so Television’s Connie Britton is trying to figure out how in the fuck to do literally anything for this child without an address to send the cops to. I was under the impression that 911 automatically knows where you are when you call because otherwise WHAT IS THE POINT??? But that is, apparently, NOT how 911 works on Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1! Public Enemy did try to warn us, all the way back in 1992!
Anyway, while AbbyConnie is frantically trying to figure out where the fuck this stupid kid lives, the robbers have made it into the house. I need to reiterate something: WHERE–and I cannot stress this enough–THE BALLS-DEEP FUCK IS HER MOM?! In my day we started babysiting ourselves as soon as we were weened off Enfamil and spent the day down in the ravine behind the subdivision playing chicken with active freight trains (true story!), but nowadays parents don’t even let their kid go to another kid’s house unless a team of Navy SEALS has been contracted to stand guard while they play Hi Ho Cherry-O so I am just EXTREMELY unclear what kind of white, suburban, QAnon-ass mom is leaving her nine-year-old home alone in the year of our lord 2022! TV writers gonna TV writer I guess!
In any case, Television’s Connie Britton gets hooked up with Angela Mother Fucking Bassett who’s patrolling the Winnetka section of the Valley today despite having been downtown yesterday? (Does the LAPD not have precincts?!) And LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL she tells AMFB, “It’s a brown stucco house” and AMFB’s like “You have got to be kidding me” because it’s the Valley and every house is a brown stucco house! Hasn’t Television’s Connie Britton seen E.T.?! Well I’ll tell you who has, and it’s AMFB cuz she says this:
She’s had it! Now, if you’re among the people taking in AMFB’s quandary and screaming “CALL THE GIRL’S MOTHER WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH ALL OF YOU” don’t worry, 9-1-1’s got you! AbbyConnie calls the mom and you just truly will not believe this.
You just really won’t.
THE MOM FORGOT HER PHONE AT HOME, WHERE SHE LEFT HER NINE-YEAR-OLD DAUGHTER, ALONE, IN A HOUSE FULL OF BOXES, WHERE SHE DOESN’T KNOW THE ADDRESS, IN A CITY THEY HAVE JUST MOVED TO.
I screamed my absolute goddamn fucking head off. If my supermom sister-in-law watched this show she would call CPS on this entirely fictional character so fast there’d be smoke coming off her iphone screen! Anyway look at Lilly’s face as she hears her mom’s phone ring across the room.
She’s like, “Oh okay I’m bout to DIE die.”
But! AMFB has a plan! She calls The Stud and is like “hey can I borrow a fire truck?” You know, like you do! And The Stud is like “give me five minutes,” despite being in downtown Los Angeles 26 miles and 48 minutes away!
Fine!
FIVE IMPOSSIBLE MINUTES LATER, AMFB pulls up to the firetruck in Winnetka and you can probably tell by her “I will cut you from ear to ear” face whompst is behind the wheel of said truck.
Great Value Kellan Lutz!!! But wait, isn’t he fired?! You know what else they’re not afraid of in the writer’s room at Ryan Murphy’s 9-1-1 is plot twists that subvert expectations!
As for AMFB, she is not here for the fuckshit, so she gives Great Value two direct pieces of advice: “No heroics” and:
This show. The perfection of this show cannot be underestimated.
Anyway, AMFB’s whole scheme is to find stupid Lilly’s stupid house by blaring Great Value Kellan Lutz’s siren until Television’s Connie Britton can hear it over the phone (LOL okay!), and when Great Value Kellan Lutz and AMFB get there guess who’s just rolled up the driveway? LILLY’S DUMBASS MOM!!! With a big tray of lattes!!! Run her over with the fire truck! Instead, Great Value runs up to her and is like “You can’t go in there” and this dipshit is like “Wait why is there a fire?!”
NO YOU DIZZY BITCH YOU LEFT YOUR FUCKING 3RD GRADER HOME ALONE AND NOW SHE’S GETTING BURGLED TO DEATH!!! I mean, this bitch! Republicans want to make it illegal for gays to adopt again and meanwhile we’ve got this dumb straight leaving her kid to DIE while she gets a caramel macchiato! I hate it here.
Speaking of which, while her dumb mom is horsing around in the driveway, the burglars have now gotten hold of Lilly! So Television’s Connie Britton has to think fast, and her plan is to “help the burglars escape” and lead them to AMFB and like lol as if! Who’s that dumb? Well I’ll tell you who, it’s these burglars, who totally fall for it and end up on the business end of AMFB’s firearm.
But this is TV, where cops have respect for the dignity of human life and only shoot you if it’s the absolute last resort, so the burglars bolt and the race is on! One runs off and the other gets on a motorcycle that has never at any point been established previously! A high-speed chase ensues, but you know how motorcycles are—they’re wily and can easily evade a police cruiser! However will they catch motorcycle burglar?!
I’ll tell you how. They’ll do it like this.
Yes that’s correct: Great Value Kellan Lutz blasts him off his motorcycle with the fire hose and I am here to tell you that while it may not translate to static images and prose it is the funniest fucking shit I have ever seen in my fucking life. I had to pause the show so I could breathe into a paper bag. Even AMFB couldn’t believe this shit.
Screaming, crying, throwing up 738 out of a possible 5 stars.
Great Value Kellan Lutz and Television’s Connie Britton do a masturbatory “oh my god you saved that girl!” “no YOU saved that girl!” “no YOU!” “no YOU!” And everyone’s like re-evaluating their lives or whatever, and as she watches dumbass Lilly get reunited with her dumbass parents who quite honestly belong in a maximum-security federal prison, AMFB’s reminded of the value of family, so she calls her husband and this is the conversation they have:
Um… ok?????????????? Lolol no offense guys but this was an extremely abrupt tonal shift! Fuck a life lesson on the job, I guess, AMFB chooses hatred always. I respect it!
Great Value Kellan Lutz takes the fire truck back and of course, who’s there to greet him but Daddy Krause and uh oh Daddy mad! But then Great Value is like “You know what, I get it! I was a punk! But a punk who knows what it all means now” which lol where’d you get that line from, your LiveJournal? Daddy Krause makes a face like “I would do literally anything to be dead right now” and gives him his job back.
Guess Great Value Kellan Lutz saved more than just Lilly by blowing a burglar off his motorbike with a fire hose. He also saved ~*himself*~ Wow.
Now, you may be wondering what happened to the second burglar at Lilly’s house and the answer is fuck if I know because after he ran off the show simply ~*did not address him in any way*~ So presumably Lilly and her family will die tonight! Bye!
And now we get our outro, which OF COURSE is scored to Queen’s “Under Pressure.” Because they’re FIRST RESPONDERS, they’re UNDER PRESSURE you guys. Television’s Connie Britton hits us with some bullshit about how “there’s nowhere she’d rather be” than “in the middle of the danger” and like, I’ma need you to calm down ConCon, you work in a Restoration Hardware full of telephones! Then we get a very artistic sunset hero shot of Los Angeles under “Under Pressure” and I miss LA every day of my life and am also debilitated by mental illness so I teared up cut to black roll credits!
So there you have it, is your brain completely devoid of wrinkles now? I know mine was, just smooooooth as wax paper. Ahhhhhhhh.
Well okay then. I’ve enjoyed catching up with you all. Join me next week for our next installment of Smooth Brain Gazette! Until then, EAT YOUR NUGGETS AND GET SOME PERSPECTIVE.
Ok I love you bye bye!