Damn, I Think Beenado Might Make Me Watch ‘9-1-1’

Full confession — I’ve been listening to and watching more fucking 9-1-1

than ever in the past few weeks, with some family members who shall

remain nameless streaming the first 7 seasons of the Ryan Murphy-produced procedural on a never-ending cycle, trying to catch up before Season 8 premieres on Thursday, September 26. But am I personally invested in it? Nope. Couldn’t care less. Have I actively sought out to watch all the ones I missed? This is ridiculous, folks. I know Angela Bassett is in it, and there’s a chicken, a moose, and a chimney that are somehow the main characters. And then they started airing commercials for “Buzzkill,” the name of the season opener and its “bee-nado” menace. It sounded ridiculous. It looked ridiculous. It’s like I can’t wait to watch it. Damn it, ABC and your local affiliates. You made me want to watch 9-1-1.

The campaign for the 9-1-1 Season 8 premiere began building buzz in July, with a short teaser for the season premiere that began with a siren and the series logo. However, the siren changed to a buzzing bee sound, and as the logo changed to show the premiere date, a swarm of bees flew across the screen, from one end to the other. No big deal, but cool, what a kick-off to a campaign that’s arguably one of the best on television. It cleverly capitalized on the expectation that these teasers were foreshadowing the show’s now-iconic three-episode season opener, without giving much away. What storyline could possibly involve bees, let alone one that spans three episodes?

Then it was late August, and a season 8 trailer offered viewers a little more. The 15-second trailer started innocently enough, a shot of a bee sitting on a flower. Then an ominous, seemingly random fact appeared on screen: “THE AVERAGE PERSON CANNOT SURVIVE 500 BEE STITCHES.” The camera then followed the lone bee as it flew to the right, where, to the horror of bee-phobes everywhere, it joined thousands of bees, gathering in the Los Angeles sky in what can only be described as a “bee-nado.” The swarm flew toward the camera, and a bee-covered 9-1-1 logo appeared, with the phrase “Bee-nado is Coming” underneath. Once again, a perfect trailer that reveals the “what,” but not the “how.”

The “how” of the bee-nado was revealed in another Season 8 trailer released in early September. In it, we see Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), making a 9-1-1 call like she has done countless times before, before cutting to an explosion that causes a truck to tip over and crash into an oncoming car driven by a woman and her son. Then we hear the call, and it’s truly chilling: “My truck is carrying 22 million killer bees.” Enough bees to kill 44,000. Cut to panic as the bees attack civilians, chase Ryan Guzman’s Eddie, and generally confuse 118 people wondering how to stop them, leading to my candidate for humble quote of the year: “Maybe they’ll fly away?” “Not likely.”

Then a longer cut is released, and a larger picture of the bee-induced disaster is revealed. It starts again with Maddie. The only voice calling out is the woman in the car, pleading for help as the bees swarm the entire car (there’s a shadow of Cujo here). The crash is replayed before the cut cuts to scenes depicting mass chaos caused by the killer bees. Outdoor partygoers are forced to flee, and there’s a shot of a person with multiple stings trying to escape the swarm by diving into the water, and “Chimney” (Kenneth Choi) in a bee suit, tending to a dying victim. Then, in a nightmarish twist, a swarm of bees is seen swarming a small private plane, causing it to fly directly into the path of a commercial jet. A plane that Athena happens to be on. The clip ends with Buck (Oliver Stark) calling the swarm a “bee-nado.” The scene, just days before the episode airs, caps off a campaign of slowly revealing Season 8’s 9-1-1 storylines, with expectations steadily rising.