Tim Minear talks about combining his two first-responder shows.
When we recovered from all the drama and joy at seeing Buck and T.K.
ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: Had you always planned to do a crossover episode since you startedLone Star?
Jordin Althaus/FOX
TIM MINEAR:Oh, sure.
The web connection was interested in that idea.
It was challenging, but we did it!
Yeah, we considered it both ways.
Right, that makes a lot of sense.
It’s all those things.
It’s who’s available to come play in this sandbox.
Remember, I’m making both shows at the same time, so all these people are already employed.
Then we just all thought that seeing Buck and T.K.
together would be super-fun.
We needed somebody in that mine shaft with him who gives him permission to leave his ghosts behind.
When he’s talking about his survivor’s guilt, she just trumps it.
This is an episode that is earning all of its emotional beats.
I’d watch a whole crossover episode where T.K.
goes to L.A. and just hangs out with Buck.
The ending was hilarious when T.K.
assumed Buck was into him
T.K.
assuming facts that are not necessarily in evidence.
But it was a great way for us to tip our hats to the Tarlos relationship.
Production-wise, how much of a challenge was it to merge the two shows, especially during a pandemic?
It was incredibly challenging.
The pandemic makes making the show at all challenging.
The other reason that that’s something like this is challenging is because we have standing sets.
That’s for characters' homes, we have a firehouse, we have the call center.
So none of my standing sets that I built for my show could I use in this episode.
Otherwise everything was on a location, and so that makes it more challenging, certainly.
I don’t think he thinks that anymore.
In a weird way, him feeling invincible was kind of a downer for him.
Is that something we’re going to explore more this season?
I’m not saying how quickly that’s going to happen, but there is definitely a story.
We’re setting up Owen being able to take a step into the future.
I wanted to ensure that everybody’s character got service in this what’s a big event episode.
Coming up, you’re going to see a lot more exploration and deeper dives into the other characters.
We’ll find out about Marjan [Natacha Karam] coming up quite soon.
No pieces will be left on the game board.
Do you plan to do more crossover episodes going forward?
Maybe Austin comes to L.A. and they all just go to Disneyland and nothing goes wrong.
It’d just be one really nice episode.
[Laughs] That’ll be one thrilling hour of television.
“Let’s go ride that ride one more time.”
9-1-1airs Mondays at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox, with9-1-1: Lone Starfollowing at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
