#falling apart at the seams bc of two dumb firefighters by me

[kitkatpancakestack]

Friend. That episode scrambled my brain. How are you holding up? I need to talk about Buck in this episode. Dear, wonderful, pulls-no-punches Buck. Buck in THAT scene — The Talk.

Or, can you talk to me about Buck? (What with my scrambled brain and all.) The way the shooting — their shared trauma and the will — Eddie's act of profound love for Chris AND Buck, for their family — have this physical presence around them, inside of this cherished bubble they built. The inherent tension between these two things — the fear of loss and the love. How Buck is the one who alludes to them, is the one to begin to push. But neither of them are willing or able to sit fully with them just yet. About how Eddie folded like a cheap suit at the gentlest of prods, and the choices Buck made about where to push. And where not to.

Can we talk about the layers of subtext in every single word of The Talk? "Is that enough?" "I've been Ana..." "...like a ready-made family...I'm not sure I'm ready for that..." *Buck's face...* The way Buck evoked his own experiences, as if they have value, because he knows he matters now, because Eddie told him he's not expendable...

The way Eddie remains a stubborn fixed point in his denial (this is not going to last), but Buck is watching, thinking thoughts and connecting dots.

Anyway, this is me rambling in your ask box to get you to talk to me about Buck.

*pours two cups of coffee* @yramesoruniverse always good to see you thanks for stopping by, and you don't even need to ask I'm ready at the drop of a hat to get weird and meta about these firefighters.

I think these two episodes fundamentally shifted something in my brain, for sure. There's a lot of calling-back happening, subtle mentions and locations and props that niggle at your memory a bit to think where have I heard this before and given how similar S4 Eddie was to S2 Buck, I am interested to see additional implied parallels from this season to S3.

You want to talk about Buck, let's talk about Buck. Let's talk about the deliberate placement of him, once again, in opposition to Ana. Let's talk about how him and Ana, in that one scene, do not interact at all. I mean, there's no quick niceties, they don't even make eye contact to acknowledge the other's existence, which I think is an enormously effective and sneaky way to show how these two people have become proxies trading places in Eddie's life, for all intents and purposes serving the same function, which is why they have thus far been contrasted separately, and why it feels so tense when they are in this moment together. And it felt like a test. Ana failed. Buck didn't.

Let's talk about the shooting and the guardianship, especially the guardianship, how they have not been explicitly and thoroughly addressed. Idk if it's just me but it feels like there's a heaviness to all of Buck and Eddie's scenes, this unmentioned thing taking up space that they are painstakingly dancing around.

There's so much in that Talk scene at the station. So many layers. It's funny; they don't talk about their love lives until it starts to disrupt the real family unit they got going on between them and Chris. This is married behavior. This is what partners do, as a team with a kid to think about. You need to tell me if something is wrong. This is one significant other telling the other one that their problems are starting to cause waves and they need to touch base with each other, get back on the same page. And the way Eddie folds, because he knows, because he and Buck are partners, because they built this thing between them and it requires ongoing love and dedication to maintain.

Buck inserting himself as Ana? Buck and Eddie having this conversation about what real love should look like? That fucking pause before Eddie looks up at Buck, like something is going on there but I cannot pinpoint exactly what. There's so much I haven't even begun to unpack.

It is literally driving me insane. The subtext has become text. I don't even....what is the protocol for this?