9-1-1 has now officially kicked off its tenth season, and the hit procedural hasn’t wasted any time jumping back into the action, with the first responders dealing with a volcano suddenly erupting in LA. All the while, outside of this disaster, many of the main characters are dealing with major changes of their own. Athena (Angela Bassett), Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt), and May (Corinne Massiah) are all still getting used to their new jobs, while Buck (Oliver Stark) has fully committed to raising his biological son and now-foster child, Theo (Lincoln and Theodore Sykes).
As of the start of the season, Theo has been living with Buck for three months now, and he seems happy. The only problem is, Buck doesn’t know how to discipline Theo, nor does he even make an effort to do so. In the Season 10 premiere of 9-1-1, Eddie (Ryan Guzman) picks up on the ways in which Buck’s leniency is hurting Buck, Theo, and the people around them. It’s a compelling storyline on its own, but most of all, this is an important callback to Buck’s painful childhood as detailed in Season 4’s “Buck Begins.”
Buck’s Parenting Storyline in ‘9-1-1’ Season 10 Ties Back to His Own Childhood
When Buck crossed paths again with Connor (Colin McCalla) and Kameron (Chelsea Kane) last season, the two of them immediately started blaming him for Theo’s behavioral issues, believing it to be genetic. Like Theo, Buck acted out quite a bit as a child, and he was always getting injured. There are separate reasons to believe that Buck and Theo could both have ADHD, but this particular aspect of Buck’s childhood was due to his parents’ neglect. “Buck Begins” revealed that Maddie wasn’t always the oldest Buckley child. She and Buck had an older brother named Daniel who had Leukemia, and Buck was conceived intentionally to be a bone marrow donor for his brother. After a baby Buck was made to donate his bone marrow to Daniel, the procedure didn’t take, and Daniel died.
Bogged down by grief, Margaret (Dee Wallace) and Phillip Buckley (Gregory Harrison) failed to properly parent Buck. Maddie stepped up in their place, but Buck still played rough and engaged in risky behaviors frequently, unintentionally getting injured all the time so that his parents would finally pay attention to him. Both Daniel’s existence and the reason for Buck’s conception were kept from him for his whole life, until he learned the truth in Season 4. Confronting his parents, Buck said, “I have walked through fire every single day of my life because of you… because nothing I ever did was good enough!” Buck has since come to terms with his upbringing, and he has a solid but distant relationship with his parents and embraces the 118 as his true family. Now, though, Buck’s childhood is impacting his own parenting.
Buck’s Lenient Parenting in ‘9-1-1’ Season 10 Comes From a Painful Place
In the 9-1-1 Season 10 premiere, it is revealed that Theo has hurt Buck badly enough to send him to the hospital five times in the last three months, just from playing too rough. Later, while Buck and Theo are over at Eddie’s house for dinner, Theo accidentally knocks one of Christopher’s (Gavin McHugh) crutches out from under him. Theo apologizes right away, but it’s just the latest in a pattern of behavior that will only get worse unless Buck disciplines him. Unlike Buck’s parents, his inability to give Theo structure and rules doesn’t come from a place of neglect. Buck is taking care of a child who has just lost both of his parents, and he wants to give him everything. Additionally, Buck was always treated like he didn’t matter and wasn’t wanted as a child, so he’s going out of his way to make sure that Theo knows that he does matter and is wanted.
As such, in order to truly step up as a parent for Theo, Buck needs to work through his lingering issues from his childhood. Eddie is already in the perfect position to say something to Buck and encourage him to start implementing rules and discipline for Theo, so long as Buck is receptive to it. Beyond that, though, Buck needs to learn that telling Theo “no” sometimes doesn’t mean that Theo will be made to feel the same lack of worth that Buck did as a child. By making Buck a parent, 9-1-1 once again has the opportunity to touch back on the complicated dynamics from the Buckley siblings’ childhood, just like it did during Maddie’s first pregnancy in Season 4.
9-1-1 airs Thursdays at 8:00 P.M. EST on ABC.
