Fandom on the Rocks

Karma comes for everyone this week, and apparently she has access to bullets, tanning beds, dump trucks, and one extremely motivated tiger. On 9-1-1, 1x08 "Karma's a Bitch," the universe is balancing its books — sometimes with satisfying absurdity, and sometimes with emotional devastation. This episode we break down: 🌳 A bullet lodged in a tree, some deeply questionable DIY arborism, and perhaps the most elaborate “fuck around and find out” senario in Season 1. 🐅 A terrible dentist, a very goo...

Season Five ends the only way Glee knows how: with everyone making enormous life decisions, several timelines that absolutely do not add up, and Rachel Berry apparently deciding that the Broadway dream she has spent five seasons screaming about was actually just a side quest. This is 5x20, "The Untitled Rachel Berry Project." This episode, we break down: 📺 Rachel’s sudden pivot from Funny Girl to television, the fastest pilot development process in Hollywood history, and the growing suspicion t...

The full moon is out over Los Angeles, which apparently means everyone is legally permitted to lose their goddamn minds because what is happening here. 1x07 “Full Moon (Creepy AF)” gives us synchronized yoga labor, a face-eating maybe-zombie, a deeply enthusiastic tapeworm extraction, and Henrietta Wilson making a choice so bad we would personally like to revoke her full moon privileges. This episode we break down: 🌕 Buck Buckley, noted scientist, explaining that the full moon makes gravity he...

Love is in the air in Los Angeles, which naturally means fake plane crashes, emergency tracheotomies, a man superglued back together (yeah, we know), and possibly the most cursed welcome-back cake in workplace history. 1x06 “Heartbreaker” is where 9-1-1 really starts feeling like 9-1-1: wildly sincere, deeply ridiculous, and absolutely determined to turn every possible expression of love into somebody’s emergency. This episode we break down: ✈️ A proposal so catastrophically ill-conceived it l...

This week, 9-1-1 asks whether we ever truly know the people closest to us and then immediately reveals enough secrets, lies, and catastrophic personal history to make everyone reconsider the question. 1x05 “Point of Origin” finally opens Bobby Nash’s ominous little black book, introduces us to the magnificent Karen Wilson, and sends Buck and Abby on a first date involving a missing mother, an electrified swimming pool, and an impressive amount of unresolved sexual tension. This episode, we brea...

Four episodes in, 9-1-1 crashes a passenger plane into the Pacific, sets the water on fire, traps people inside a sinking fuselage, and casually establishes the blueprint for every enormous disaster the show will throw at us later. But beneath all the spectacle, 1x04 "Worst Day Ever" really is an episode about the people who keep running into emergencies because not doing it just isn't an option. And it's about the moment three coworkers finally start becoming something that looks a lot like fam...

Content note: This episode includes discussion of suicide and attempted suicide. In 1x03 “Next of Kin,” 9-1-1 takes its first big swing at found family and uses a piece of rebar through Chimney’s skull to get there. Meanwhile, Athena and Michael face the terrifying aftermath of May’s suicide attempt, Abby is forced to confront what caring for her mother can realistically look like, and a bouncy castle finally proves that children’s birthday parties are inherently hostile environments. This epi...

9-1-1 on the Rocks has survived its first shift, and unfortunately, Buck has already acquired significant workplace trauma. This week on 9-1-1 on the Rocks, we’re covering 1x02, “Let Go,” an episode about all the ways people try to hold on when everything around them is falling apart. Buck learns that wanting to save someone doesn’t mean he can, Abby welcomes the relentlessly competent Carla Price into her home and immediately recruits her as a best friend and romantic adviser, and Athena tries ...

9-1-1 on the Rocks has officially entered the firehouse. Welcome to the inaugural episode of the newest Fandom on the Rocks podcast. We’re kicking off our brand-new recap series of 9-1-1 with 1x01, “Pilot,” the episode that introduced us to our beloved 118. We dive in on Abby Clark, who is very clearly being positioned as the emotional entry point of the show, Athena Grant’s immediate Angela Bassett-ness, Bobby Nash’s ominous little black book, and Buck Buckley’s straight hair, terrible judgmen...

What happens when three people with strong opinions, an alarming number of notes, and absolutely no ability to watch television casually go back to the beginning of 9-1-1? Welcome to 9-1-1 on the Rocks, a new podcast from Fandom on the Rocks. We’re here for the big feelings, the baffling choices, the slow burns, the plot holes, and whatever other insane thing network television has decided to throw at us this week. This time, that means fires, floods, earthquakes, cruise ship disasters, improb...

This week on Glee on the Rocks, we cover 5x19, “Old Dog, New Tricks,” the Chris Colfer-written detour that somehow works because it’s old people, puppies, and just enough Rachel to keep the season’s chaos limping forward. Rachel tries to rebrand her image after Broadway gossip exposes her Funny Girl mess by hiring Santana as a ruthless publicist and inventing an animal-rescue charity event called Broadway Bitches, complete with a disastrous pap walk that ends with her getting dragged down the s...

We are once again asking the 9-1-1 writers’ room to be brave. Be bold. Be intentional. In this Fandom on the Rocks bonus episode, we’re looking ahead to Season 10 of 9-1-1 and laying out our very reasonable, completely measured, not-at-all-unhinged wishlist for what we want from the next season. Some of these wishes are mild-mannered expectations. Some are pipe dreams. Some are pure crack. All of them are delivered with love, frustration, and the deep spiritual exhaustion of two people who are...

This week on Glee on the Rocks, Rachel Berry gets everything she’s ever wanted and immediately decides it’s not enough. In 5x18, “The Back-Up Plan,” Rachel risks her Funny Girl dream for a TV audition she is wildly unprepared for, Kurt and Blaine get pulled into the deeply weird orbit of rich socialite June Dolloway, and Mercedes and Santana quietly become the only people in New York making choices with even a shred of common sense. This episode we break down: 🎭 Rachel Berry speedrunning career...

This week on Glee, Rachel Berry finally makes it to Broadway — and naturally, everyone else is forced to treat it like the moon landing. In 5x17, “Opening Night,” Rachel spirals over bad buzz and opening-night nerves, Sue takes a deeply unnecessary field trip to New York, Kurt’s loft becomes a site of multiple crimes, and Will Schuester pops in just long enough to cry and leave. It’s Rachel’s big moment, and Glee makes sure absolutely no one gets out alive. This episode we break down: 🎭 Rachel ...

This week on Glee, everyone gets tested — emotionally, medically, and our patience. In 5x16, “Tested,” Blaine spirals over a cronut-based body image crisis, Kurt enters his gym bro villain era, Artie discovers that sleeping with everyone at film school has consequences, and Sam Evans somehow becomes the only functioning adult in New York City. Yes. Sam Evans. Bless him. This episode we break down: 🥐 Blaine vs. the Cronut Industrial Complex 💪 Kurt Hummel’s sudden transformation into That Guy fro...

We made it to the season finale of Teen Wolf, but will the pack make it out? In 3×24 "The Divine Move," the pack go toe-to-toe (and claw-to-sword) with the Oni, but controlled this time by Void. They're taking every territory on the board — the Sherriff's station, the animal clinic, the hospital — and by the time they get to the school, our pack's had about enough. While Derek and his small gaggle of ex-Alphas go face-to-face with Void and the Oni, Scott, Stiles, Lydia, and Kira head inside, an...

In Teen Wolf 3×23, “Insatiable,” the pack is technically moving forward, but everything that matters is coming undone. There are two Stiles and only one real one, and while our Stiles survives the oni test, the relief barely has time to land. Void Stiles still has Lydia, our Stiles remembers everything the Nogitsune did while wearing his body, and it’s becoming clear this possession has caused real, irreversible damage. Whatever is happening to Stiles isn’t just supernatural — it’s killing him....

This week, Glee attempts a Very Serious Episode™ and somehow still makes it mostly about Rachel Berry. In 5x15, “Bash,” Kurt is the victim of a brutal hate crime, Blaine gets the worst phone call imaginable, and Burt Hummel shows up to remind everyone how emotions are supposed to work. Meanwhile, Rachel declares war on NYADA because accountability is oppression, and Sam and Mercedes try to navigate race, dating, and New York City while Glee makes deeply questionable choices about everything. Be...

In Teen Wolf 3×22, “De-Void,” the pack is still trying to keep Stiles alive while the Oni keep dropping in like it’s a scheduled appointment. Sheriff Stilinski shows up at the loft hoping to save his son, and Void Stiles responds by calmly pressing every single Dad Trauma button he can reach. Meanwhile, Noshiko confirms what we’ve all been dreading: the Nogitsune isn’t just haunting Stiles — it’s multiplying the problem. Void Stiles pulls the last tail and unleashes a swarm of flies that spread...

Teen Wolf said “What if we combined wartime tragedy, supernatural lore, AND your unprocessed emotions?” and 3x21, "The Fox and the Wolf" was born. This episode is a two-lane highway — half of it is Void!Stiles wreaking absolute havoc in Beacon Hills, and the other half is a 1943 flashback that turns the entire Nogitsune story into a tragic origin romance you absolutely were not emotionally prepared for (we weren't). In 1943 we meet young Noshiko (played by Arden Cho, living her best multi-role...

⚠️ Big content warning: this episode deals with suicide, abusive institutional mental health care, dubious sexual consent, and violence. Please take care of yourself. Stiles checks himself into Eichen House after seeing an MRI that matches his mom’s… and absolutely no one (including us) thinks this is a good idea. While he’s trying to survive the world’s worst psych ward — complete with Oliver, Morrell, Brunski, a broken pay phone, a hidden corpse, and one very determined Nogitsune — the rest ...

This week, we hit Glee’s big reset button as the show abandons Lima for New York — and immediately forgets how the big city works. In 5x14, "New New York," Rachel Berry gets chauffeured through Manhattan like she’s allergic to the subway, Kurt and Blaine enters their domestic sitcom era (complete with cursed pajamas and a SodaStream), and Artie learns that accessibility in NYC is a myth. This episode we break down: 🛋️ Blaine’s fatal mistake: bringing home a couch from the street (never pick up...

This week on Teen Wolf, Dr. Deaton is in fact the world's only veterinarian, Derek and Chris accidentally become besties, and everyone else is having an absolutely terrible time. In 3×19, "Letharia Vulpina," Stiles is missing (again) and we see some wonderful familiar faces. Fall sports are back at Beacon Hills and everyone's running cross country. Uncle Peter is back and he hits on Natalie. Jared-the-almost-bus-vomiter is back, except this time he has a Suspicious Package. (No, seriously. It ...

"Fandom is a participatory event. In one way or the other." Welcome back to Fandom on the Rocks, where there’s never a plan — only chaos, retcons, and a lot of feelings about 9-1-1. In this 9-1-1 bonus episode, we dive headfirst into Season 9, the emotional hangover of losing Bobby Nash, and yeah, that was a whale swallowing a billionaire kayaker. From the four-part fever dream of a season opener to Athena’s latest flashback, Emily and Alison pick apart every questionable creative choice, all wh...