[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for 9-1-1: Lone Star Season 5 Episode 8 “The Quiet Ones.”]
Uh-oh, the one person that Carlos (Rafael Silva) should be able to trust might be the one person he shouldn’t on 9-1-1: Lone Star!
The latest episode began to dig deep into Carlos’ investigation into who killed his father, and an informant, in his dying moments, told him that his father suspected that another Ranger had burned a handful of CIs: Campbell (Parker Young), his partner! If you ask Young, as TV Insider did as part of our 9-1-1: Lone Star aftershow, First Response, Carlos shouldn’t trust that information.
“I’m his partner,” Young stresses. “I’ve proven to him that I’m a solid dude. I make good recommendations when it comes to how he might handle situations with his husband and when it comes to anniversary gifts and things like that. So yeah, I think that I’ve proven myself to be a trustworthy gentleman, and I think that you should take my side, give me the benefit of the doubt over some dying criminal.”
Kevin Estrada / FOX
But, he allows, he can see the other side. “Our job as Rangers is to take the information that we’re given and to just follow the investigation, follow the clues where they lead, and that’s a massive bomb that’s dropped into Carlos’s lap,” says Young. “I have to believe that if I was in the same position, I would do the same thing because if he were to tell that to me, well, he just showed me his hand, and if I am, in fact, as bad as this dude is saying, then Carlos has to be very, very careful because quite frankly, his life could be on the line.”
According to co-showrunner Rashad Raisani, Carlos’ gut is telling him that there may be more to the story, even if part of him does believe the information—especially after he thought he knew who killed his father in the Season 4 finale and confronted the man, only for him to be an undercover officer.
“Carlos, I think, learned from that experience, don’t fly off the handle, keep your cards close to the vest. Do it right. Don’t be too hasty. Make sure you’ve got all your ducks in a row and then make your move,” Raisani explains. “So I think in his mind at the end of Episode 8, he does believe it’s Campbell, but a little part of him has some misgivings about, is it too neat? Does it all make sense? Would this guy really have done that? He’s going to take his time to get all his facts in place.”
After all, the point of the arc was to “make them brothers and then hopefully make it feel like it was a very intentional betrayal and a hurtful betrayal on Campbell’s part,” he adds.
This potential lead in the investigation comes as Carlos and his husband T.K. (Ronen Rubinstein) are once again not on the same page about kids—but it’s a much more immediate concern than in the past because now, T.K. wants them to take in his half-brother Jonah, with Enzo (Henry Ian Cusick) going to prison. (Enzo wants to send Jonah to boarding school in Switzerland.) But T.K. does come up with that plan rather quickly (has he thought it through?) and Carlos is too immersed in his investigation to give it the consideration it deserves. This is “the central conflict for T.K. and Carlos this whole season,” says Raisani.
“It’s always been their conflict really; T.K. wanted to be a dad and Carlos didn’t really, even before his father was murdered. And then once Gabriel is killed—I mean, the crux of Episode 8 is about T.K. saying, ‘Look, I know I said I’d wait to have kids, but you have to agree with me, Carlos, that this is a clear and present urgent situation that my little brother is about to be sent abroad to a boarding school.’ And Carlos is like, ‘Hey, dude, this is a clear and present urgent situation for me. My dad was murdered.’ And especially as that episode progresses, ‘I’m getting closer to who did it and this is the last moment in the world I’m going to look away from this very important life mission I have,’” the co-showrunner details. “So we really thought it would be a great way to put their hottest conflict points directly in conflict with each other in these episodes.”
So, no, T.K. hasn’t thought this through. “T.K. is a very emotional but also very kind person and the details actually don’t matter to him. It’s like Nietzsche said, I think it was, if somebody has a why, they can always figure out the how,” Raisani says. “And I think for T.K., it’s like, this love is strong, we will figure it out. I don’t care. We’ll figure it out.”
In happier news, Tommy (Gina Torres) ends the episode on track to get the cancer treatment she should; the experimental one, with a 97.8 percent efficacy, isn’t covered by the AFD … until Owen (Rob Lowe) rallies the 126 to find budget cuts to make that possible. Tommy then refuses to accept it unless comprehensive treatment is covered for every single first responder in the city. With the hearing live-streamed to millions thanks to Marjan (Natacha Karam), the mayor has no choice but to agree to those terms. But she still has breast cancer, and so this doesn’t mean there isn’t still a battle ahead of her.
Kevin Estrada / FOX
Raisani agrees. “She’s not going to get off the hook that easy. I’m cutting Episode 11 right now, and I can tell you this battle is not over and the hardest fight is yet to come,” he warns. “It’s cancer. All the treatments in the world, the best treatments in the world are not guaranteed. And I think part of what makes it so painful when things don’t work out is that when the odds were in your favor, it feels almost like you got cheated, like it could have never happened. And so her crucible is not over for her, unfortunately. There’s still more to come there.”
What makes it especially difficult is that this is something Tommy can’t control. She can do everything right, and it may still not go her way. That played into why it’s her going through this.
“I had a friend who unfortunately passed from brain cancer and I’m a type A control freak, and he looked at me one time very late in his illness, and he said, I hate to think what would happen if you had this, because the thing that cancer does, it strips away all of your control, everything that you thought you could—your meals, your schedule, your body, your body functions, they all start going away from you. And that was his ultimate spiritual test that he went through,” Raisani shares. “And I think that always lingered in my mind as we were approaching this Tommy story, is to watch what happens to somebody who’s such an alpha dog and such a master of the universe lose control of just the most basic things.”
Watch the rest of the aftershow above for much more from Young about Campbell and joining 9-1-1: Lone Star.
9-1-1: Lone Star, Mondays, 8/7c, Fox