There was a whole actual plot in the season four premiere of 9-1-1: Lone Star. Romantic entanglements, drama, Rob Lowe buying a motorcycle, all of it. And you are welcome to watch for yourself and read other recaps elsewhere and do whatever you like with that information. I would never get in the way of you having a little fun. But we are not going to talk about that here. We are going to focus, as we usually do, on one of the ridiculous emergencies the first responders on the show get called in to deal with. Sometimes it’s a yard blowing up or a bus launching into a building. This time, it’s a flying toilet. A portable one. At a fair. With a person stuck inside it. What a lovely television show.
Context will help, in small doses. Here’s what you need to know:
- We open on a county fair in Texas
- Foul weather is coming in the form of a huge storm
- A young couple is walking around, the girl holding a giant stuffed bear and the guy talking about some disgusting fried fair food he just ate and is chasing with ice cream
A really solid foundation to build upon. Also, as they’re walking around, the guy says this…
… which is, by itself, just about enough to get a B or B- on a short story assignment in a creative writing class. But that’s not the point. The point is that, just after this, there is some rumbling. First, from his tummy, on account of the fried fair food, which leads to this statement and a frantic dash to the row of portable toilets.
And then more rumbling, this time from the skies as the storm approaches, which leads to… well, this.
A few notes here:
- Yes, he is still in the portable toilet
- It is also sweltering in there due to a rapid rise in temperature from the storm
- The storm also sucked water out of a nearby pond and sent hundreds of frogs into the sky, and then the frogs all fell from the sky and one of them got lodged in a man’s windpipe and his daughter called 911 and said her daddy couldn’t talk because he had “a frog in his throat”
Perfect. No notes. Prestige television at its finest. Anyway, the kid calls 911 from the toilet. Also, the toilet has splash-landed in some body of water and he’s still stuck in it and it’s filling up with water laced with poop and chemicals. Also, the lady he’s talking to on the phone Googles the portable toilet to see if there’s an emergency hatch and, I swear to god, this is the name of the portable toilet company.
So Rob Lowe — Rob Lowe plays the captain on 9-1-1: Lonestar, which we have established many times but is still a lot of fun to type, so here we are — and his crew show up at the fair to try to help this poor doofus. But they can’t find him. All they know is that there’s a kid stuck in a portable toilet that flew away in a storm and landed in water somewhere and if they don’t find him soon he’s going to drown. And this leads to Rob Lowe saying a line of dialogue that has to be a very early contender for Television Sentence of the Year.
It’s so good.
Are you ready?
Are you, honestly?
Because here it is.
Here’s what I need you to do: Click on that image and save it to your phone and/or computer and send it to one or many of your friends. Do not explain it. Just send the picture with no words. It’ll be fun. You deserve to have a little fun.
But we’re getting off-topic. We have a missing toilet that is filling up with water and a scared young man with furious bowels stuck inside. They have to find him. But where could it be? A lake? A pond? A river? What body of water could he have flown into?
Hmm.
Hmmmmmmmmm.
GUESS
GUESS WHERE THE TOILET LANDED
GUESS
…
….
…
DID YOU GUESS “IN THE FREAKING DUNK TANK”?
I BET YOU DID NOT
DO NOT LIE TO ME
LOOK AT THIS
So, a few more things, via bullet point once again:
- I am not joking at all when I say that this stupid reveal made me laugh harder than almost anything from almost any actual comedy in the last few months
- They cut him out with a chainsaw — let’s be very clear here: “they chainsaw the portable toilet that flew through the air and into the dunk tank” — and hit him with the defibrillator to save his life
- There are better shows on television but almost none with more episodes that feature airborne portable toilets, which is something worth noting somewhere
But now you’re wondering, “Hey, what do you think your first words would be after the fire department chainsawed you out of a portable toilet that flew into a dunk tank with you in it and almost caused you to drown in chemically treated water that may have had your own poop in it from the fried fair food you ate and chased with ice cream?” It’s a fair question. And the answer is, well…
Just a beautiful piece of business all around.
