The 9-1-1 crew is celebrating a wedding! Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) and Chimney (Kenneth Choi) are finally tying the knot. But then it all goes horribly wrong … because of course it does, this is 9-1-1.
“There Goes The Groom” opened with Buck (Oliver Stark) and Eddie (Ryan Guzman) arriving at the wedding totally disheveled, and informing the bride that her groom’s whereabouts were “complicated.” So what happened? Well, it turned out Chimney didn’t go to his own bachelor party and everyone was freaking out.
Where did Chimney go?
As it so happened, Chimney had mysteriously developed that most beloved of drama show ailments, amnesia. He was sitting in his car looking very unwell and thinking he was supposed to be somewhere when a man came along and carjacked him. Oh no! The carjacker threw Chimney’s phone into the road, and when he went to retrieve it he was nearly hit by a bus.
Chimney, not thinking right at all, decided to get on that bus. “I think I’m late for work,” he told the driver, but he didn’t mean his firefighter work. Meanwhile, Maddie and the others attempted to track Chimney’s location using an app, but all they found when they arrived was Chimney’s phone, thrown out of the window by the carjacker.
Chimney hallucinates
Things got worse as Chimney started to hallucinate on the bus. He imagined Doug (Brian Hallisay) Maddie’s abusive and very dead ex-husband, stabbing him. Luckily, this was only a short encounter, and Chimney continued on his way to wherever he was going.
Maddie accessed some traffic cameras (still in her wedding dress!) and was able to observe Chimney getting on the bus and hallucinating his conversation with Doug. She realized that things were wrong in more ways than one: Chimney wasn’t only AWOL, but clearly in serious medical distress.
Chimney got off the bus at the old location of the karaoke bar where he was once employed, still talking about being “late for work.” People stopped to try and help him, but Chimney had no idea what was going on. Then he hallucinated his dead foster brother Kevin (James Chen), and headed off to parts unknown.
Chimney’s illness
It turned out that Chimney had contracted viral encephalitis from a man he’d helped in a previous callout, and it was badly affecting his brain. The team had to find him before he started suffering from permanent brain damage.
Chimney staggered down the street and then, in true 9-1-1 fashion, encountered a disaster when a car crashed into a market. His firefighter training kicked in and he was suddenly back to his old self, helping victims of the crash. When someone asked if he was a doctor, he replied that he worked at a karaoke bar.
The team followed Chimney’s trail to the scene of the crash, but he’d already left. He was in an alley, talking to his hallucination of Doug, who was trying to get him to fall asleep and die. But then a hallucination of Kevin showed up, and he was a much better person for Chim to talk to. Kevin encouraged Chimney to get up and go home, but Chimney was so out of it all he could do was stagger onwards.
Eventually, he reached the home of Kevin’s parents and asked where Kevin was, only to be gently told that he was dead. They took Chimney to the hospital for urgent treatment, and Chimney woke up in a hospital bed with Maddie watching over him.
The wedding at last
Chimney apologized for missing their wedding, but Maddie and their daughter were just happy to see him alive and well. Chimney tearfully asked Maddie to marry him, but Maddie told him with equal emotion that he had to remain in hospital for another three weeks.
So the couple decided to just get married in the hospital with all their friends and family present. Maddie wore her beautiful wedding dress, Chimney remained in his bed, and they finally became officially husband and wife.
There was another touching moment still to come, though. Buck and Tommy (Louis Ferrigno Jr) shared a kiss, thus ensuring Buck accidentally came out to the rest of the crew, all of whom seemed pleased and happy for him.
The episode ended with Chimney asking his new wife a question often asked by 9-1-1 fans: “Why do they call me Chimney?” Well, we may never get an official answer to that. We did get a truly heartwarming wedding episode though.
(featured image: ABC)
