Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for 9-1-1 Season 10, Episode 4.9-1-1 opened its tenth season with two especially compelling storylines: a volcanic eruption and a Buddie fight. While the volcano emergency was resolved in three episodes, it looked like Buck (Oliver Stark) and Eddie’s (Ryan Guzman) argument would go on for longer. On the surface, they were arguing because Eddie had given Buck parental advice that he wasn’t ready to hear. The deeper issue at play, though, seemed to be that, once again, Buck and Eddie were having conflict over the more ambiguous and undefined parts of their friendship that the two have not yet been ready to put to words.
The solution here seemed to be a simple one: Buck and Eddie needed to redefine the terms of their dynamic and their places in each other’s lives, whatever that may look like, because what they’d had before was no longer enough. Instead, 9-1-1‘s latest episode, Season 10, Episode 4, “Imposter Syndrome,” wraps this argument up way too quickly with an unearned off-screen resolution. While this is disappointing for multiple reasons, it’s ultimately a symptom of 9-1-1‘s biggest problem at the moment: every time the show sets up a substantial storyline for Eddie, it ultimately sidelines him and fails to deliver.
‘9-1-1’ Needs To Stop Making Every Buddie Storyline About Only Buck
Since returning from Texas at the end of Season 8, Eddie hasn’t gotten a proper storyline of his own. Occasionally, 9-1-1 will lean into the fan-favorite pairing of Buck and Eddie, but every Buddie-centric storyline as of late always changes direction to become about Buck. When Buck pointed out last season that Eddie hadn’t “even looked at a woman in a year” and pushed him to find someone, it looked like 9-1-1 might focus on Eddie and actually answer this question, potentially by giving him a storyline about his sexuality. Instead, the episode became all about Buck’s hookups with a married couple. When the two had a fight and then got into a car accident in “Mother’s Boy,” the whole episode became about Eddie having to save Buck, and only Buck got to experience lingering effects from this trauma in the coming episodes.
- Meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
- The discipline to stay present when the department is at its worst.
- A tolerance for weight that does not get put down at the end of the day.
- Each episode covers roughly one hour of the same emergency-department shift, in order.
- Noah Wyle has now won the lead drama actor Emmy for it twice, in 2025 and again in 2026.
- It reunites the ER team of Wyle, John Wells and R. Scott Gemmill, thirty years on.
- Reliability above brilliance, every single shift.
- Faith in a structure that is visibly imperfect.
- The stamina to treat the hundredth patient like the first.
- Fifteen seasons and 331 episodes, from 1994 to 2009, created by Michael Crichton.
- It holds the record for the most Emmy nominations of any drama series, with 124.
- George Clooney, Julianna Margulies and Noah Wyle all broke out of County General.
- A willingness to feel all of it rather than seal any of it off.
- Colleagues who become family, with everything that costs.
- Comfort with mess, in the OR and everywhere else.
- Shonda Rhimes’ series passed ER to become the longest-running primetime medical drama
on US television. - It is on season 22, with ABC having already renewed it for a twenty-third.
- Ellen Pompeo has played Meredith Grey across three decades of television.
- Thinking harder than anyone else in the room, then defending it.
- A high tolerance for being disliked while you are right.
- Interest in the puzzle that outlasts your interest in being comfortable.
- Eight seasons built on Sherlock Holmes: House and Holmes, Wilson and Watson, and an
apartment at 221B. - Hugh Laurie taped his audition in a hotel bathroom in Namibia while shooting another film.
- By 2008 it was the most-watched television show on earth, with an audience around 82
million.
- Humor that never curdles into cruelty.
- The honesty to admit you are still learning how to do this.
- People you can lean on, and the willingness to be leaned on.
- Nine seasons from Bill Lawrence, filmed largely inside a real decommissioned hospital in
North Hollywood. - Working doctors have repeatedly named it the most accurate medical show on television.
- Zach Braff, Donald Faison and Sarah Chalke returned for an ABC revival that premiered in
February 2026.
There was no exploration of how the car accident affected Eddie, or the lingering impact that the racism and homophobia directed at him throughout that episode had on him. Even when Eddie got stabbed in the Season 9 finale, he recovered off-screen, and his pain was used to fuel Buck’s storyline of choosing to foster Theo. Season 10’s Buck and Eddie fight was set up to focus on Buck and Eddie’s dynamic, but it could have also explored their own separate parenting issues. Instead, in “Imposter Syndrome,” the storyline becomes all about Buck having problems with Theo (Lincoln and Theodore Sykes), because he still refuses to even try to parent him. Eddie is sidelined the whole episode, and he and Buck make up mostly off-screen, ending their argument with a brief conversation where Eddie has to comfort a self-deprecating Buck instead of having his own feelings acknowledged.
Eddie Diaz Deserves Better From ‘9-1-1’ Season 10
Image via ABC
Image via ABC
Image via ABC
Image via ABC
Image via ABC
Image via ABC
Image via ABC
Image via ABC
Image via ABC
Image via ABCEddie Diaz is one of the most captivating characters on television right now. He has a deeply compelling backstory, a fierce love for the people in his life, and an unshakable belief, on a fundamental level, that he doesn’t deserve good things. There is so much for 9-1-1 to explore when it comes to Eddie’s character, from his grief over recently losing Bobby and his abuela (Ana Mercedes), to his complicated relationship with religion, to why dating has never come easily to him. He hasn’t had a proper storyline with Christopher (Gavin McHugh) since either of them moved back to Los Angeles, and the show hasn’t given any focus to how Eddie felt about having stepped in for Chimney (Kenneth Choi) to primarily serve as a paramedic alongside Hen (Aisha Hinds) over a season ago.
The Buddie dynamic is certainly an important one, but Buck and Eddie have not been given the same treatment by the narrative, and every one of their shared storylines now always becomes about Buck. 9-1-1 needs to start focusing on Eddie’s side of these storylines as well, but he also needs to get some deeper storylines of his own. Eddie already doesn’t get enough to do, but when he does, 9-1-1 does not linger on him long enough to explore his feelings and the deeper implications that these storylines have had on him. In its tenth season, 9-1-1 is still underutilizing one of its best characters, and it needs to finally do right by him.
9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8:00 P.M. EST on ABC.
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