OK, there is such a thing as too much trauma.
It’s customary for series, especially Shondaland ones, to treat trauma and drama as if they’re mutually exclusive, but they are not.
And when you get final moments like that of Station 19 Season 5 Episode 14, your heart sinks to the pit of your stomach for a plethora of reasons, and it makes you wonder how much trauma can one character endure and why that is the primary source of entertainment?
But first, we’ll get into some of the other messiness of the hour.
It’s becoming a bit of a pattern where the installment was light on firefighting, outside of that one call with the woman and her kids, and heavy on personal arcs and intercharacter drama and conflict.
After an endless stream of back and forth, so much that it made what was once an endearing couple insufferable and a lovable character positively loathsome, Travis and Emmett are over again.
But, hey, it’s for real this time! I think.
It’s been hard to follow the course of Travis and Emmett’s relationship and the push and pull. It was frustrating to learn out of the blue that Travis wasn’t as in love with Emmett as he seemed, compared him to his father, dated him out of habit, broke his heart publicly, then kept dating him again and went to his parent’s house for a birthday dinner.
Travis: I’m open to kids with the right person. We haven’t talked about this.
Emmett: We don’t talk about a lot of things.
My mind is still spinning from all of that. It was baffling that Emmett heard what Travis said, stood up for himself, then randomly went back so they could continue some farce of a relationship without much discussion. It was enough to give a person whiplash because it felt like we weren’t privy to things.
In that sense, the setting of the Dixon home, where they pretended to be some happy couple in front of Kitty and Dick, felt bizarre.
The good news is that the awkward dinner from hell was a roundabout, dramatic way to get Emmett and Travis to talk and break up again.
The real pity is that they subjected both men and the audience to Dick and his neverending stream of conservative buzz words and pure ignorance for the sake of evoking ire and being controversial.
Is anyone else exhausted by this rhetoric finding its way into shows so frequently as a conflict point? Isn’t it bad enough to deal with it in real life?
Regardless of your political beliefs or whatever we love to call them, it does no one any favors. Did we need Dixon to force Emmett to do what he should’ve done ages ago?
It sucks that this is what it took to push Emmett and Travis to the point of having a simple conversation about their relationship and why they need to end things. Does that mean without it, neither of them would’ve had the cajones to communicate and go through the motions?
Bless Tricia O’Kelley as Kitty Dixon. The woman was such a sh*t-stirrer, but she was absolutely hilarious, and the best part about those scenes.
Her drunkenly stirring the pot to push conflict was entertaining as heck. Forget Dick; they could’ve introduced us to Kitty sooner.
It’s not a proper family meal until two inhabitants almost come to blows, and that’s what happened when Travis and Dixon kept going at one another. As intense as it got between the two, some valid points were made on both sides.
Dixon is a colossal dick, but he wasn’t wrong when he called Travis out on his commitment issues and humiliated his son publicly. If he weren’t such an asshole, you’d think he was defending his kid for a change.
But of course, Travis laid into Dixon and all the ways he’s wrong, and as out of line as it was for him to mention that Emmett does hate his father.
And it’s disturbing how this man felt that Travis somehow “turned Emmett gay” or that he derailed Emmett’s path when Emmett didn’t want to follow his father’s plan for him in the first place.
But as cumbersome as the plot was, Emmett had a poignant, enlightening moment when he admitted that the irony of Travis seeing his father in Emmett was that Emmett saw so much of his father in Travis.
He could see where he came running back to Travis to get hurt again as he does to his dad. It was a solid moment for him, and Lachlan Buchanan nailed it.
It’ll suck that Emmett is away, but he deserves the chance to explore parts of himself, forge a path of his own, and fortify himself in Florence with this art program. And at least he and Travis left things on a good note for both of them.
I would still appreciate it if we saw actual growth with Travis as much as we get these nuggets for Emmett. At five seasons into the series, it’s glacial progress at best, when it’s not a matter of him taking two steps forward and another back.
Travis: Emmett, you are one of the most beautiful, amazing, generous, bravest souls I’ve been lucky enough to know…
Emmett: But I wouldn’t have gotten this far without you in my life, so I guess I should thank you.
Travis: I am so sorry for so much.
And the situation with Sullivan is redundant. What is the point of putting him on the outs with the house for making a reasonable call?
Sullivan has done some things in the past, and he’s not always the most likable person, but he had every right to report Beckett. It’s absurd that they’re willing to write off his motives as him showing a ruthless streak to take over Beckett’s job instead of showing genuine concern, as a fellow addict, for a man who is not on the top of his game.
Beckett wasn’t drunk on the job that day, but who’s to say he wasn’t on other occasions? It’s evident that he has a drinking problem, and his behavior in the field is alarming.
What’s weird is that no one else has noticed any of it. Even Beckett taking his anger out on everyone else to punish Sullivan is telling, and it’s nuts that he got away with that, but everyone is pissed at Sullivan.
And he didn’t ask to serve as acting captain in Beckett’s place. It’s frustrating that we don’t know or see anything from Ross beyond championing Sullivan, whether he requests it. She has no depth whatsoever, making her feel like a plot device.
She could’ve easily put Gibson in the position since they keep forgetting that he, too, is a lieutenant. It could’ve avoided all of this mess with Maya all over again.
But as unpopular as this opinion may be, if they failed to properly address the investigation into Maya before they gave her a demotion in a single line, then they should’ve opted to push her past the point of dwelling on this again because Sullivan got a temporary captain title over her.
It feels like kicking a dead horse that they never intend to do anything else with anyway.
The Maya and Sullivan camaraderie was refreshing; catapulting them back to this point is annoying, especially when, this time, Sullivan hasn’t done anything wrong, and Maya comes across as immature when she can’t push past this, keeps diverting her anger elsewhere, or she can’t spend as much time on any other aspect of her life.
She has every right to be pissed about the demotion, but we didn’t need to toss her getting pissy about Sullivan into the mix again.
Half of the time they spend on Maya’s anger over a story arc that hasn’t been explored as thoroughly as it should be could also go to her having some deeper conversations with Carina about their child plans.
At the moment, it feels so disjointed. It was only an installment ago when Carina shuddered at using Jack as their sperm donor, and now she’s championing him and trying to convince Maya.
Maya: You look happy, I guess you got what you wanted.
Sullivan: It’s just temporary.
It’s confusing how she reached the point where she made such a quick turnaround. The problem with this story arc is that they barely have time to discuss these matters. It’s like they have tidbits of incomplete conversations squeezed into stolen intervals of time at work or when one of them is on their way out.
Of course, that’s assuming they have the conversations at all. Somewhere along the way, it’s like these two shifted from a married couple who wants a child to one who’d like a child and a third parent.
But it’s so murky how they present this that it’ll inevitably lead to confusion down the road. They want someone they know as the donor, and they also would like that man to be in their child’s life, but they also don’t want him to be a parent.
And in that sense, it’s still hard to grasp why they couldn’t agree on an anonymous donor and make Jack the godfather or something. We all know that the entire station will be involved with their kid regardless.
They’ve also put a lot of stake into nature as some guiding force in making this decision while simultaneously downplaying nurture when attempting to express why they need things a specific way.
Jack is attractive, kind, and has several other traits, no doubt, he’s no stranger to hard times and a traumatic past. He’s also an orphan who doesn’t have much information background, so wouldn’t that be something to consider?
And Carina and Maya haven’t sat down to discuss all of this alone, let alone speak with Jack. But if they choose Jack, it’s made this a hamster on a wheel-type of an arc that is drawn out needlessly.
On the Jack side of things, it’s always like they struggle the most to find something to do with his character, so he got sucked into this one.
His grieving Dean is far more compelling, and it would also be lovely if we saw him meet a woman, build a healthy relationship, and eventually develop a family of his own.
Deep down, it’s something he wants and craves, and he doesn’t deserve to be pulled into the messy, conflicted angle of fathering his ex-girlfriend and her wife’s child with strings attached to his role.
Andy has made such progress and grown so much in her time away from Station 19. In many ways, Station 23 was a blessing and a curse for her.
But it is heartbreaking to see her catch flack from the others, mainly when things played out the way they did.
It’s not her fault that Ross shut down 23. From the way things sounded, Ross would’ve considered closing it anyway, so it’s something that would have been unavoidable with or without Andy.
One woman doesn’t have that much power. And Andy never hid the fact that she missed her station. Also, they treated her like crap for most of her time there.
Andy’s conversation with Ross made sense. She knew the captain would return, so it was reasonable for her to wonder where her place was in all of that. And with the captain back, understandably, she wanted to go back home.
It’s terrible that the station 23 crew vilified her for something she had no control over or didn’t intentionally instigate. They were hotheaded and drunk, but Andy didn’t deserve that.
But it was most disturbing when everyone from the crew walked out on her and left her alone in a bar buzzed. Rarely does a scenario pop up where that’s standard behavior for anyone, especially when leaving a drunk woman alone.
It’s surprising that Deja, another woman, didn’t think twice about it. But Theo abandoning Andy like that is the most shocking of all. We’ve seen that even when he’s upset with someone, he doesn’t lose his head or sense of concern.
Jeremy’s interest in Andy was apparent from the moment he saw her. But as time went on, he became more suspicious because he was “too nice.”
By the time they were stumbling out of the bar together and near that dark alley, it was nauseating because of an awareness of what we could expect.
Andy stood firm in not wanting to have sex with him, even though they kissed some, and she seemed to enjoy his company at first.
But it was no surprise when he got forceful, and it was horrific to witness those final moments as his behavior took a turn for the worst and escalated.
Andy managing to get away was a relief, but as Jeremy lay there gasping for breath after a potentially fatal throat chop, you couldn’t help but think of how this could go wrong for her.
Jeremy assaulted her, but all people will talk about is how they left the bar together, slightly drunk and all over one another. The series spends so much time peppering in blatant sexism and misogyny, often without directly addressing any of it, that this storyline feels like another angle for them to approach that again.
Jeremy: Why are you being such a bitch?
Andy: Why are you being such an ass?
It was traumatizing to witness on its own, but it’s made worse knowing how bad things can get for Andy because of this direction taken.
She’s already a woman who has gone through it all. Every season they heap more trauma onto her. She’s lost her father and best friend, found out about her mother being alive, dealt with things with Sullivan, got shipped to a misogynistic house away from others, lost Dean, and much more.
They made real progress with Andy, and she’s shown signs of genuine growth as a character and as someone who has made peace with her past a bit and has moved forward in an attempt to be a better person.
Her willingness to abide by the pact she made with Jack was a sign of that, but now she faces a new set of traumas that can set her back significantly. And if it doesn’t do that, it’s a hell of a plot device to move her storyline forward. I don’t think it was a necessary one at all.
But you can’t deny the shocking, horrific nature of that cliffhanger and the myriad of emotions it evoked for Andy. If shock value was the intention, they succeeded, I just hate that it’s like this.
Over to you, Station 19 Fanatics. Are you shocked by that ending? Sound off below!
You can watch Station 19 online here via TV Fanatic.
Jasmine Blu is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. Follow her on Twitter.