If You Went Into 9-1-1: Nashville Expecting A Copycat, Then You Missed All The Fun

If you headed into 9-1-1: Nashville expecting it to be a carbon copy of either 9-1-1 or 9-1-1: Lone Star, then you were probably left feeling a little underwhelmed.

But if you went into it with zero expectations and a fresh mind, I bet you walked away feeling more than satisfied with what they brought to the opening hour.

The show feels like a hodgepodge of yesteryear’s shows — like Dallas and One Tree Hill — but mixed with something even campier, all dressed up to fit perfectly in the year 2025. And it works for what it’s trying to be.

9-1-1: Nashville is taking itself very seriously one second and then letting its hair down the next, which can give you whiplash at times, but the power in the series will clearly lie with the emotional stakes.

And that’s something it does have in common with the mothership, otherwise known as the crème de la crème of the franchise.

I won’t pretend this show will be at the Emmys next year, but it’s not trying to be that either. It’s trying to be an enjoyable procedural drama, and when you look at it through that lens alone, it succeeds.

Don Is The Daddy… And Nobody Really Cared

Instead of a traditional review, I’m breaking down the top four things I took away from the premiere. Please let me know in the comments what your biggest takeaways were and whether they aligned with mine.

Don being Blue’s daddy was ruined in the promotional campaign, so instead of gasping at the surprise, you were more or less waiting for the scene and the fallout.

But what was most surprising about the whole thing was how unsurprising the show treated it.

It was a shock to Ryan, who is very much giving stereotypical bratty, only child, rich kid vibes, but Blythe already knew, as did Blue, who’d already contacted Don off-screen.

Instead of letting these shocks play out in real time, the audience was told everything through information dumps, and I couldn’t help but feel there were some missed opportunities.

Don casually dropping the news that Blue was his son to the team, then briskly moving on, just lessened the whole thing, especially since this secret seems to be the driving force behind at least a quarter of this first season’s drama.

I’m all for not dragging things out because it would have been very obnoxious if they dangled the secret over our heads for weeks, but it’s also downplayed so much in the opening hour that the impact is slightly lessened.

LeAnn Rimes Stole The Show

Hopefully, it’s just because they tried to cram too much into the opener, not because they’re content to let the secret be treated so uneventfully.

Now, perhaps the Blue estranged son reveal was anticlimactic, but LeAnne Rimes’ introduction was anything but.

To say Ms. Rimes stole the whole damn show would not be an overexaggeration, and she was barely even in it!

Dixie Bennings (what a name, by the way), appearing on-screen in all her chain-smoking, heavy poured glass of wine in the afternoon glory, lamenting about her lost career while slamming the likes of Shania Twain and Carrie Underwood, was perfection.

Dixie’s filled with animosity and anger because it’s clear she’s not living the life she thought she would. She’s weaponizing her position as the most important person in Blue’s life to right past wrongs.

The wrongs everyone else caused, of course, because Ms. Dixie? Well, everything was done to her and not because of her own actions. Never that.

LeAnn Rimes has turned herself into a solid actress over the years, and this role was tailor-made for her, as she gets to play a manipulative mama who loves her son but perhaps not as much as she loves getting retribution.

It’s going to be so much fun seeing her scheme her way through the season, and seeing her go toe-to-toe with Blythe.

Dixie was THEE highlight of the hour.

The 9-1-1 Universe has almost a decade of emergencies under its belt at this point, and I’ve often wondered over the years how the various series will keep the emergencies feeling fresh.

9-1-1: Nashville Has Some Compelling Accidents

There are only so many car accidents we can see on a show like this.

Nashville was smart to immediately play into the touristy angle with an emergency involving a rowdy group of women celebrating a bachelorette on a party bike that then careened into an intersection with almost catastrophic results.

That felt like a perfect introduction to Nashville for those who may only see it as Music City.

The opener also had the heavily promoted tornado, and it was a good move to bring in Kane Brown and center an emergency around a concert gone wrong, another staple of the city.

The 9-1-1 shows aren’t known for showcasing the cities if we’re being honest. The cities serve as a backdrop, but they aren’t characters in and of themselves like in other shows.

I don’t foresee Nashville bucking that trend. Still, the emergencies did a decent job of conveying what the city is like.

The Supporting Cast Has Promise, But We Need More

Whether or not a local Nashvillian would agree may be up for debate.

I’ve never been shy about my issues with the struggles to incorporate the main cast equally on 9-1-1. If you were a fan of 9-1-1: Lone Star, then you are probably well aware of the Owen Strand problem.

The problem is that Owen dominated episodes and storylines so much that, at times, it felt like the rest of the cast was wasted, there only to prop up whatever Owen had going on.

Could that happen with Nashville? It certainly could if everything revolves around the Hart family, and the opening hour sets things up to make you think that could be the case.

But let’s give it a few hours before we christen it the Don Hart Show.

Aside from Don, Blythe, Ryan, Blue, and Dixie, the cast is rounded out by dispatcher Cammie, doctor Roxie, and firefighter/aspiring singer Taylor, who all have nice introductions, even if they don’t have much to do.

The best of 9-1-1 has always and will always lie within its found family dynamics. I wasn’t feeling that here, but again, we’ll need more episodes to parse through the relationships and see them play out.

Alright, fanatics, what did you make of the 9-1-1: Nashville premiere?

What worked for you? What didn’t work?

Let me know in the comments, and if you enjoy opinion pieces, there are plenty more like them right here!

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