14 9-1-1 Emergencies Ranked From Weird To Horrific

Police, fire, and medical dramas have been the Jell-O of evening TV lineups for decades; no matter how much audiences have already had, there always seems to be room for more. But in a world that's lousy with first responder shows, "9-1-1" stands apart by refusing to take itself too seriously, which stands to reason since its creators are seasoned camp purveyors Ryan Murphy and Brad Falchuk ("Nip/Tuck," "Glee," "American Horror Story").

The series follows the professional and personal lives of Los Angeles emergency responders including LAFD Station 118, LAPD officer Athena Grant (Angela Bassett), and several 9-1-1 dispatchers. Woven through the responders' personal drama are ripped-from-the-headlines emergency calls ranging from wacky to wild to horrifying to mundane. No matter how bizarre or traumatizing the call, the responders generally get through them with focus and professionalism, deftly compartmentalizing all of the melodrama in their own orbits.

If we've learned anything from Station 118, it's that things could always be worse. From animal antics to impalements, here are the best "9-1-1" emergencies, on a scale from weird to horrific.

It's good to love your job, and no one in Los Angeles seems to love theirs more than LAX baggage handler Darrell (Thomas Daniel Smith). Unfortunately, good workers are often surrounded by slackers, and Darrell's unprofessional colleagues nearly get him killed, not once but twice. 

In "Christmas Spirit" (Season 3, Episode 10), this deadly-poor judgment comes from his fellow baggage handler as they're loading baggage onto a full catering cart. Not willing to wait for another cart, coworker Wade (Daniel Curtis Lee) jams a set of golf clubs onto the driver's seat, inadvertently pressing the accelerator. From there, things go completely haywire as the golf cart takes off, spinning wildly to Tchaikovsky's "Nutcracker Suite."

Onlookers watch from the gate as heroic Darrell rams the cart with another vehicle, knocking it onto his side. But the celebration is short-lived when Darrell gets sucked into a jet engine. Because this is "9-1-1," he magically survives, but to his own peril. 

In Season 4, Episode 8 ("Breaking Point"), a burnt-out flight attendant, tired of the constant abuse by passengers, takes the emergency slide while waiting to taxi, bottle of champagne in hand. Hero that he is, Darrell tries to help, but the flight attendant lands on top of him, quite literally putting a cork in him as the champagne pops. After Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Chim (Kenneth Choi) free the cork from his throat, Darrell unsurprisingly announces his resignation, proving that everyone has their breaking point.

Season 2, Episode 4 of "9-1-1" ("Stuck") deals with stories about people stuck in all sorts of things both literal and figurative, including a security guard stuck between two buildings, a woman with her head stuck in a tailpipe, and a guy stuck in an escalator. But perhaps most surprising is the call about a talking ATM. Playing out almost identically to a real-life story it's based on, the story begins when an ATM technician gets locked inside the ATM vault before realizing he has left his phone in the car. 

With no way to call for help and his voice muted by the ATM, he does the only thing he can — passing notes through the receipt slot. Unfortunately for the tech, the jaded ATM customers who get them think it's a joke, until he hits them where it hurts by withholding cash withdrawals until someone calls 9-1-1. His Hail Mary works, and thanks to the 118, the sweaty-but-grateful tech is successfully withdrawn from the cash machine.

There are many recurrent themes on "9-1-1," from birthday party disasters to unlikely electrocutions, and one of the best is the series' take on technology-run-amok. But unlike "Black Mirror," the results are more slasher slapstick than existential dread and can often be traced back to user error (or abuse). Such is the case in Season 3, Episode 8 ("Malfunction") when a fulfillment center robot goes haywire.

When the facility's tyrannical floor manager Shane declares bathroom breaks off-limits until the employees can keep up with the transport robots, overworked Jerome is left doing the pee-pee dance. With Shane blocking the bathroom, Jerome quietly relieves himself on Robot Number 3 and gets back to work. Moments later, the abused robot, ungrateful for the lemonade quencher, comes back for its revenge, taking down rows of the massive shelving on Jerome and itself, like some sort of robotic kamikaze. Jerome is crushed and nearly bleeds out under the weight of all that reasonably-priced merchandise, and countless online shoppers are forced to wait an extra day for their packages. Shudder.

Only mom bloggers could transform something as wholesome as children's birthday parties into overthemed, monetized Stepfordian nightmares. In Season 4, Episode 10 of "9-1-1" ("Parenthood"), one mommy blogger learns that when you live for likes, the line between entertainment and humiliation can become all-too-blurred, as her son's micromanaged birthday goes completely off the rails. Instagrammer Beth Reidman (Gloria Votsis) hosts a cringe-laden 12th birthday party that's more for her sponsors than her kid. Bryson (Hudson West) wanted paintball or laser tag, but instead, he got Old McDonald right down to the Mommy & Me overalls and neckerchief.

Beth seals her fate when, after trying and failing to get Bryson to play "Pin the Tail on the Donkey," she releases him to the trampoline. When the rusted-out springs can't hack the pressure of Bryson's tween stress-jumping, the hooks come undone, projectile launching across the yard and pinning Beth to the donkey on the side of the barn like some kind of hillbilly stigmata. She's transported to the hospital — barn door and all! — atop the fire engine.

Thankfully, Beth's selfie-hand is expected to make a full recovery, and it seems it was all worth it when her humiliation goes viral.

Weddings can be a stressful time, and plenty can go wrong. But Savita and Prem's wedding in the "9-1-1" episode "Point of Origin" (Season 1, Episode 5) serves as a reminder that no matter how bad that catering disaster or drunken groomsman toast may seem, it could always be worse. When the floor collapses and drops the wedding guests and party two stories, the 118 arrive to find 16 DOA and counting, mainly due to crushing and impalement. While conducting the rescue, Bobby comes to realize the cause of the disaster: flimsy construction of a DIY third story by the building's owner.

It's an absolutely devastating scene based on the real-life Versailles Wedding Hall Disaster in Jerusalem that resulted in 23 deaths and 380 injuries. The ensuing investigation faulted a cheap, corner-cutting construction technique called Pal-Kal for the disaster, which resulted in the conviction of four engineers and the building's three owners. The technique has since been banned, but not before it cost many lives in pursuit of profit.

One of the things "9-1-1" does better than most responder fare is character development, and over the course of the series, few characters undergo more dynamic development than Evan Buckley. When Buck is first introduced, he is very much a stereotypical thrill-seeking playboy (emphasis on boy), until he meets 9-1-1 dispatcher Abigail Clark. Despite a 16-year age gap, Abby and Buck form a tight bond, and under the guidance of Captain Bobby Nash, the support of his house, and the love of a good woman, he starts to find out he's made of a lot more than just charm and slick moves.

Unfortunately, first heartbreak is some of the worst heartbreak, and Abby devastated Buck when she took off for Ireland and epically ghosted him, leaving Buck alone in her old apartment until he read the writing on the wall (and it took entirely too long for him to read it). 

Years later, Buck comes face-to-face with old wounds while responding to a catastrophic train derailment when he sees Abby at the site of the wreckage (Season 3, Episode 18, "What's Next?"). Abby is mostly unharmed, but her fiancé is trapped in the highest point of a train car that's now completely vertical. Abby pleads with Buck to save her fella's life, and because he's a big damn hero, Buck risks cutting through the side of the unsecured train car to do it.

In the hyper-connected modern world we live in, technology could be our downfall — at least, according to "9-1-1." With ransomware attacks hitting everything from water treatment plants to hospitals, the thought of an almost apocalyptic siege seems less far-fetched these days than it once did. That's exactly what happens in Season 5, Episode 1 of "9-1-1," when a highly sophisticated ransomware attack sends Los Angeles into a state of anarchy.

Demanding a cool $25 million, a hacker unleashes hell on the city, taking down the power grid and air traffic control, attacking phone networks, uncaging zoo animals, and driving smart cars into the water. Amid the chaos, the 118 handle a daring water rescue and a death-defying helicopter-off-roof scenario à la "Superman" (1978). But their most terrifying rescue plays out like a scene from "12 Monkeys" (1995) when, days into the blackout, they're called to an eerily-abandoned Hollywood Boulevard, which has been overtaken by creatures great and small.

Since the attack, the zoo's residents have been keeping animal control busy all over the city, including a pair of unhinged alpacas terrorizing a couple of retail workers. To get to the scene, the 118 walk past the Roosevelt Hotel to the Babylonian Arch, encountering two species of vultures, a gang of emus, a giraffe, an arctic wolf, several camels, and even an elephant. Eventually, they face down the fluffy villains armed only with a bag of chips, proving no scene is too wild for "9-1-1" first responders.