Spoilers ahead for Episode 2 of 9-1-1 Season 5, called "Desperate Times."
The heroes of Station 118 on 9-1-1 have had to deal with their fair share of bonkers emergencies, many of which are taken from real life situations. It's safe to say that one of the wild twists in "Desperate Times" wasn't ripped from the headlines, with a zoo breakout after a ransomware attack crippled Los Angeles for the better part of a week, and the result was Bobby and Hen reliving an iconic scene from Jurassic Park...except with alpacas instead of velociraptors.
The 118 firefighters and EMTs had to pay a visit to the Los Angeles Zoo to rescue a couple of people who had been attacked at a souvenir store, which involved Bobby and Hen venturing into the dark shop to try and save a life. In the process, they encountered what they'd feared: an escaped zoo animal that had made the attacks. What they didn't expect was for that zoo animal to be an alpaca, but they discovered an alpaca with a bloody muzzle after attacking the unfortunate victim and chewing off his ear.
And in the process of performing the rescue and escaping, Bobby and Hen basically relived the kitchen scene from Jurassic Park when Lex and Tim were hiding and then fleeing from some raptors. In fact, Hen trying to use corn chips to lure away the alpaca – as one does – seemed pulled from Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park novel, when Tim uses frozen steaks to try and lure the raptors into the walk-in freezer.
The end of the scene, with a second alpaca turning up and Hen dropping the unforgettable "Clever girl" line, was technically an homage to a different (and deadly) scene from the Jurassic Park, and Chimney's line after they escaped the souvenir store confirmed that the similarities to Jurassic Park weren't actually lost on all the characters. Chim said:
After careful consideration, I have decided not to endorse this park.
Hen was not amuse by the Jurassic Park line that Alan Grant said to John Hammond at the end of the movie, but I for one loved it. I'm not sure the scene would have worked if 9-1-1 didn't acknowledge how wild the entire thing was, especially since the menacing alpacas didn't seem the most believable. Fans had a variety of reactions to 9-1-1 going full Jurassic Park with alpacas, and some were less on board with the scene than I was.
For some fans, however, the alpacas being used to substitute for vicious velociraptors was actually pretty frightening:
For others on social media, alpacas being equated with the deadliest dinosaurs of the Jurassic Park franchise means that 9-1-1 has changed their perspective on alpacas forever. And somewhat hilariously, one person used a positively adorable pic of an alpaca to make the point:
For another person on social media, 9-1-1 channeling Jurassic Park with the alpacas was enough to bust out the exclamation points, and give the alpacas a new nickname:
I'm ready to start calling them "Attack Alpacas," personally! Others didn't so quite so enthusiastic about the alpacas, or willing to suspend their disbelief about what they actually looked like on the show:
At the end of the day, there does seem to be one thing that pretty much everybody can agree on when it comes to 9-1-1 staging an attack by some terrifying alpacas, and it's that it was an absolutely bonkers storyline.
For me, the end of the episode leaves me pretty relieved that the whole hour wasn't doom and gloom. Athena learned that serial rapist and attacker Jeffrey Hudson had escaped from custody after the attack on Lou (although Lou fortunately survived) and targeted her family, kidnapping her son before either she or Bobby could make it home. That storyline should come to a head next week, and hopefully with a resolution that means the young boy comes home safe, but it's intense enough that I'm happy to look back on the alpaca take on Jurassic Park.
See what happens next on 9-1-1 with new episodes on Mondays at 8 p.m. ET on Fox, with or without a certain firefighter who hasn't appeared in Season 5 just yet. Spinoff 9-1-1: Lone Star won't be back until midseason, so any crossovers between the two that might happen won't be possible for months. Still, 9-1-1 clearly has plenty in store, so be sure to keep tuning in!
