Buck, Sweetheart, Honey, Baby Duck, You Being In Love With Your Best Friend Has Nothing To Do With Your

Okay, but imagine this: Eddie feelings realization brought about through another lookalike/doppelganger storyline. I know this sounds out-there, but considering the whole Shannon/Kim storyline was an actual thing that existed in the show— and we know how much the writers love doing parallels and they've been doing some very fanfiction-esque stoylines with 8b— I don't think this is completely outside the realm of possibility so stay with me on this completely ridiculous stream of thought for a bit.

Now I was not and am still not really a fan of the whole Shannon/Kim doppelganger storyline but I think if they did it again in a very specific way with a Buck doppelganger it would be so interesting. With the Shannon/Kim doppelganger, the importance of it is for Eddie to finally get closure for himself. To say the things he never got a chance to say to her so he could move on from that relationship. I think a Buck doppelganger can also be used as a way for Eddie to say all the things he couldn't say to Buck before he left. Only, this doesn't serve the purpose of Eddie finding closure and moving on, but as a catalyst for him realizing the full extent of his feelings.

In the present day, Eddie finds himself back in his hometown— a place he tried so hard to run away from— to be there for his son. He built an entire life for himself back in LA and now he's gonna have to start all over again. So he puts himself out there, attempting to meet new people and make new friends. In the process, he ends up meeting a man who looks and sounds a little too much like his best friend. And he knows it's a bad idea; he has had to live with the reality of just how bad an idea this is for months following what happened with Kim. But he misses his best friend so bad. Sure, they talk and do video calls to stay in touch, but it's not the same. He's not there with him in El Paso being a consistent presence in his life, and he feels so lonely without that presence. So he befriends this Buck doppelganger. They hit it off and start to spend more and more time together, and eventually, either Eddie decides to come clean or Buck's doppelganger finds out about his resemblance to Eddie's best friend, prompting Eddie to explain the whole situation and apologize for lying.

Maybe at this point, his Buck had already gone through his 8x11 storyline. He's already been confronted with the idea that his feelings for Eddie aren't platonic, and he's doing everything to push that train of thought aside. He can't entertain the idea that he is in love with his straight best friend, as he likes to say. He needs to distance himself from whatever feelings might be there. Which also includes distancing himself from Eddie. He doesn't answer his calls as much, doesn't make an effort to reach out, finds other distractions so he has an excuse for why he wasn't available to talk, etc. And it's driving Eddie crazy. He's never felt so disconnected from Buck, and it's starting to have an effect on his ability to function at this point.

So when Eddie tells him all this and Buck's doppelganger asks him what he would say to him right now if he could, Eddie throws all caution to the wind.

He says all the things he's been wanting to say, even the things he didn't know he wanted to say. He tells him how sorry he is for leaving. That he knows how deep Buck's abandonment issues run and how painful it is to have another person in his life leave him. How much he would give to have been able to stay and spare him that hurt. Hell, the thought of asking Buck to leave with him had even crossed his mind more than once, but how could he ever ask that of him? Los Angeles was his home. The 118 were his family. He built a stable foundation for himself that he'd never had throughout most of his life. Eddie wasn't going to be the one to take a wrecking ball to that stable foundation. As much as Eddie would like to be, he isn't worthy of that kind of consideration. Who would throw their entire life away to be with him? He would never ask him to make that choice. Just as he knows Buck was never asking Eddie to make a choice between him and Chris. But Eddie felt like that was what he was doing at the time— making a choice between what he wanted and what was best for his son. A choice had to be made whether he liked it or not, and he would always choose his son. But, if pressed on it, he would have to admit that if the choice were between Buck and anyone else? Buck would win every single time. He would say that he missed him and he wanted him to be a constant in his life again, in both their lives again. That the distance being put between them, both literal and figurative, was killing him.

And as he's listening to this— to his newfound friend pouring his heart out to him like he's his best friend— Buck's doppelganger makes the realization that everyone else in their lives has, waits for Eddie to finish what he has to say, and says to him:

"Wow. You must really love him."

And that is the moment. Eddie hears those words, processes them, thinks about everything he just said, everything they had been through together, and realizes.

Oh.

That's what this thing between them has been. That's what all this heartache and loneliness and panic he's been experiencing in the last few weeks has been about.

"Yeah, I do."

And this realization does not just magically fix everything. It's a starting point. He still has to work through what happened with Chris, and this revelation may be a central point to helping him get there. Because it forces him to examine everything about his life up to this point. His relationship with Buck, his relationship with his family, his relationship with Shannon, his relationships with women and his sexuality in general, and his relationship with religion. And once he does all of that, he can make the decision to choose something different, for himself and for Chris. They can reconcile. They can move back to LA, back to their found family with the 118 and Buck. He can love his best friend and choose to make him a part of their family.

I also like the idea of doing a parallel between Shannon and Buck as love interests for Eddie because I do think their relationships share similarities despite all of their differences.

Despite the fact that I do absolutely think Eddie loved Shannon, I do not think he was ever really in love with her. He had a genuine care and love for her, yes, but so much of that care and love was tied up in her relationship to him as the mother of his child, not just as his wife. Her relationship with Eddie will always be a part of who he is, undoubtedly. She was a friend to him, someone he loved, the first person he was ever intimate with, his wife, and the mother of his son. She played so many important roles in his life, and she can be all of those things and still not be the love of his life, nor even someone he necessarily loved in a romantic sense at all. Because they were still just kids when they got together and had Chris. They were still trying to figure out who they were and what they wanted to do with their lives when they got pregnant and rushed into marriage and parenthood. All the decisions that followed that were messy and difficult and their relationship shifted completely overnight. Would they have ever gotten married if they didn't have Christopher? My guess is probably not, but we'll never know for sure. When Kim says to Eddie "I guess she was the love of your life," he doesn't say, "she was," he says, "I think she was." He knows he loved her, but he is unsure if she was ever "the one". In hindsight, I think he looks back on their relationship with rose-colored glasses a lot of the time. He talks about how they were together as if the glimpses we saw of them constantly fighting and leaving each other and avoiding big conversations never happened or weren't as prevalent. They did love each other, but they did not love each other in the ways that either one of them deserved.

Compare that with Eddie's relationship with Buck, and I would argue he has played all of these same roles in Eddie's life that Shannon did, but in a much more harmonious and stable way. He's also the only other character to take on all of these roles in Eddie's life to the extent that he does. They are best friends, they love each other, Buck has become a parental figure of sorts for Chris and would legally be his guardian if anything happened to Eddie, and he has a closeness with Eddie and has done things for him/with him that romantic partners often do. Despite their rocky beginning, they became fast and inseparable friends. They've had each other's backs through nearly every single trial and tribulation that they've faced for the past 7 years. Buck seamlessly fit into both Eddie and Chris' lives as well, all three of them spending so much quality time together. They have been mistaken for a couple before. Buck heard that Eddie was struggling with childcare for Chris and provided a solution without needing to be asked. He helped Eddie find a solution to accommodate Chris' disability when he wanted to try skateboarding. He fought like hell to try to keep Chris safe when the tsunami hit. Whenever they've had major accidents/NDE's in the line of work, they are always each other's primary concern. Eddie made the decision on his own to change his will to make Buck Christopher's legal guardian if anything happened to him, and he is unwavering in his conviction that he would be the only other person besides himself that would fight like hell to make sure Chris has everything he wants and needs. Which could mean nothing, but as a single dad, Eddie's main concern when it comes to dating and marriage has to be how it will affect his son; what kind of parent would the other person be to him? Buck was there for Chris when Eddie got shot. He was the first person Chris ran to when he was angry with Eddie. He was there for both of them when Eddie went through his breakdown. He was there for Eddie when Chris decided to leave. He offered to help Eddie find a new place to live in El Paso. He was present for nearly every showing of his place to find a subletter— this one is actually ridiculous, like there's no way those folks didn't think they were together. And the big one, he chose to give up his apartment to sublease Eddie's house so that Eddie could leave without worrying about expenses. The entire episode we see him struggle with and unintentionally sabotage Eddie's move. The last thing he wants is for another person to leave him, but he willingly and happily put what Eddie and Chris needed over what he wanted in the end. It is one of the most selfless and loving things he could do and he did it.

One of the key similarities that I've noticed between Eddie's relationships with Shannon and Buck is what they get into their most heated arguments about. In both of these relationships, the big fights that each pair has centers around the other person leaving and how that effects them and Chris. Yes, Buck ready has pre-established abandonment issues, but Eddie's issues with other people leaving really only come up in the context of his romantic partners and how them leaving will affect his son. For Eddie and Shannon, it was Eddie running away from his responsibilities as a husband and father twice by enlisting in the army and Shannon doing the same once he came back into their lives. When she attempts to re-enter their lives, the main point of contention is whether or not she'll even stay if Eddie allows her back in. Ultimately, she does decide to leave once she's back in their lives, if only temporarily, to find out who she is as a person independent of her role as a wife and mother when she realizes she's not ready, and I don't blame her for that. But then she dies and that loss is permanent. Eddie doesn't get closure until he meets Kim and gets to say how he feels. How hurt he is that Shannon left seemingly without any consideration for him. She left a note for their son, but left nothing for him and that is devastating. His first major fight with Buck is over the lawsuit. All three of them are forced into a situation where they cannot be in contact because of Buck's decisions, and their confrontation over it is one of the few times we see Eddie so visibly upset. It's not exactly a "leaving" situation per se, but the outcome is similar. Eddie cannot contact his best friend for help, with his own personal issues and with what's going on with Chris. They both miss him; it feels like he left them and Buck made the choice to put them in that position when he didn't have to. The second time they have a big fight, it's over Eddie leaving. More specifically, over Eddie's perceived lack of care about Buck's feelings on the matter. And I say perceived because he obviously does care, it does matter to him that he's leaving his best friend behind. But he can't fully acknowledge to what extent he does and he won't allow himself to because his feelings come secondary to what he thinks he needs to do as a father. I feel I should also note that despite Buck's abandonment issues, it is so telling how he acts in response to Eddie leaving vs how the rest of the 118 act. They all consider Eddie family just as much as Buck, but the degree to which he's crashing out over it would suggest to me that there's more to their relationship than they realize. The proposed scenario with the Buck doppelganger is meant to be the moment where he finally allows himself to be fully, completely honest with himself about what he feels, what he wouldn't say. And in the aftermath, he has to reckon with what that means for him, for Chris, and his relationship with Buck.

Another things of note when it comes to Eddie's relationships: Every time we see Eddie in a relationship with a woman, we often see him run away from it or sabotage the relationship when things start to get more serious. They never work out because there is always something wrong on his end. By contrast, Buck and Eddie are both actively struggling with Eddie leaving. Neither one of them wants him to leave and that is apparent with the shift we see in their behavior. Idk maybe we'll get a gay Eddie storyline. To me it seems like the most logical endpoint for his character. I mean, the guy literally said that he feels like he needs to "perform" when he's out on dates with women... Plus, Tommy did essentially imply that he clocked him in the most recent episode and if there's anyone I'm gonna trust to know he isn't straight, it's the openly gay man who also repressed his feelings for men for decades and almost married a woman.

Tldr; all this to say, Shannon was Eddie's first love and Buck will be his last.

Do I think any of this is actually gonna happen in the show? No, I highly doubt it. But it was a fun little thought experiment about how I think this scenario would play out. I know this is ridiculously long, so if you read to the end, thank you!

Eddie's going to leave his parents' house after a huge blow up fight with his mom and he's going to be alone in his truck and he's going to look longingly at the passenger seat and sigh because Buck should be there.

And then he's going to call Buck on his drive home and Buck will have Eddie's back when he tells him about the fight. And when Eddie gets home he'll park the car and sigh and close his eyes and Buck will still be talking and Eddie will pretend Buck's in the car with him (where he belongs) for just a few seconds and then he'll tell Buck he's home and they'll hang up and Eddie will be alone again.

And he'll realize that the person who has always had his back is over 800 miles away and he misses him more than he ever thought he would. And it'll hit him like a ton of bricks that Buck is the first person he calls after a bad day and after a good one. That Buck is the voice he wants to hear when he's spiraling. That the reason it's been so hard to look directly that his relationship with Buck is because it's something beyond friendship. He loves him to the core.

i think this will either go one of two ways. either A) they see the backlash, realize it's not going to go away, and reverse bobby's death, (cmon you're gonna risk losing angela basset?) saving the very little face they have left for their very popular show. or B) they won't have the balls to tell Tim Minear to change the story and he runs the show into the ground. either the show will become incredibly grief stricken and depressing that it's not fun to watch anymore or they're going to move on so quickly from Bobby it feels unnatural and the show will feel incredibly soulless.

Angela Bassett has already said she doesn't see a world where Athena and Bobby don't end up together at the end of the show. the interviews have revealed that literally everybody (the cast, the crew, the execs) did not think this was a good idea. we know there were multiple endings filmed, that the execs had to talk Minear out of a 4 minute helicopter chase scene in the middle of an episode when they couldn't even be bothered to show eddie once, and the deadline article points out that this was a this was "the biggest risk Tim has ever taken in his 30 year career." people apparently understood this was an incredibly risky and stupid move.

and as much as i would like to hold onto all of that, i think there's a very real, simple, and terrifying possibility that they're not going to reverse this and that the show is going to be run into the ground, despite all of the obvious reasons not to.

i think the best thing to do is keeping up the pressure because there are so many cracks in this already that it's very possible we could fix if we don't let it die.

i'm sorry for the dramatics, but i really don't wanna lose this show to a bad writing decision, especially not when i feel like there is something we can do and this could maybe be reversed.



Eddie Diaz, Queerness, and Faith

So I've had this idea floating around in my head all day following the most recent episode and with Buddie canon seemingly closer than ever, I thought I'd share it with y'all.

An interesting storyline I would absolutely LOVE for them to explore with Eddie is his relationship with Catholacism/Christianity as a whole and his sexuality, both in childhood and as an adult. I think it's inevitable that his relationship with religion would be brought up if they decide to go the route of Eddie being a repressed gay man. It's kind of unavoidable given his family history and his resurfaced Catholic guilt. I mean, growing up in Texas in the Catholic church as a gay kid??? As a queer atheist, it sounds like my own personal hell.

That being said, I think it would be really cool to see Eddie's journey to self-acceptance coincide with a restored faith in God and the church. It's not a storyline I've personally seen very often with gay characters (the only example I can think of atm is Eric from Sex Education), and I think it could be a really valuable form of representation for both progressive forms of Christianity and queer BIPOC Christians.

I don't think it's realistic given Eddie's decades-long repression for him to have this realization of feelings for Buck and just be okay with it without taking the time to interrogate all of his past relationships (romantic, familial, and religious) and how they have contributed to his repression. I would love to see him come back to LA post-feelings realization and for him to have more conversations with Father Brian about all of this. I want there to be a conversation between them about how Father Brian can reconcile being a gay man (because let's face it, he likely is, despite being celibate) and his faith in God, as well as being an active participant in the church who is guiding other people in their faith. I want to see the juxtaposition of Eddie growing up with a faith that is, at it's core, based in guilt and shame, to stepping into a faith based in love, acceptance, and affirmation (as, imo, Christianity SHOULD BE but all too often is not). I want more bonding and one-on-one conversations between Eddie and Bobby about faith, too. It would be really nice to see them bond more over something they have in common outside of their profession, especially with Bobby being a father figure to Buck.

I think his relationship with Buck could also be a way to explore inter-faith relationships. Now, I could be completely off-base with this, but Buck strikes me as a character that, while superstitious, is not religious. There hasn't been anything I've seen up to this point, that I can remember anyway, that suggests Buck believes in God. If it is the case that he is an atheist or agnostic, I would love to see how they navigate their relationship surrounding the topic, especially given the long and difficult history surrounding homophobia in the church. I don't even necessarily mind the topic becoming quite contentious (between them or brought on by external circumstances), but at the end of it all I want to see them get to a point where they approach this potential difference with love and mutual respect.

Idk I think it would just be really cool if they made this decision with Eddie's character. I know I've seen a few clips of Ryan in interviews talking about his own faith journey: growing up in the church, becoming distant from it as he got older, and then later coming back to God and religion. It would be awesome to see him being able to pour some of his own personal experiences with religion into this character, especially with how their journeys with faith would be kind of paralleled (though not entirely the same).

Anyways, if anyone wants to send me pre-existing fics or even write some based on this premise, I would love to read them 😊

something about eddie’s voice when he says "you really did that for me?". the emphasis on for me. he’s not surprised that buck would do something so selfless and kind. he sees that everyday. but it’s the fact that buck did it for him. and for christopher. he spent the whole episode acting like he didn’t want eddie to leave and then he turned around and did the one thing that eddie needed. he had his back

calm down guys, it's only the 8th

there is simply no world in which they’d have buckoliver doing All That if buddie canon wasn’t happening - like, they would not even touch this if it was just going to be one-sided?? not only would that upset people who want buck and eddie together, but also the people who want them to remain friends because unrequited feelings would permanently hurt their dynamic, and ripple through the rest of the team. not to mention, it puts one of their main characters in a position of being the ‘bad guy’ for not returning buck’s feelings. it wouldn’t make sense for them to blow up such a significant part of their show when there’d be no winning for anyone. and when you take a step back and put down the interviews and just look at what’s actually playing out in the show, it’s clear what’s happening.

they didn’t have to so heavily lean into focusing on buckandeddie since the switch to abc. they didn’t have to tie eddie to buck’s relationship with tommy. they didn’t have to make buck’s 8b arc all about grappling with losing eddie! say what you will about some of the writing on this show, but they’re not totally incompetent. these things didn’t just accidentally happen. it was always going to be either all in on canon, or nothing at all. and they’re all in.

let the story play out. it’s coming.

The interesting thing about the "if you’re asking me to choose between you and my son" line is that Buck isn't doing that at all. Not once has he said, or even implied that he wanted Eddie to choose. This is Eddie projecting, because he is choosing and he hates it! Of course he's going to choose Chris every time, but it's killing him that he has to choose at all!

Buck choosing to say “Eddie’s straight” “my straight best friend” ok what if he wasn’t.. what then