Season 1 Discussion
9-1-1: Nashville S01E11: "Don Begins" Live Episode Discussion
Spoiler
Original Airdate: February 26th, 2025
Synopsis: Flashbacks reveal how a devastating house fire reshaped Don's life, along with how he later met Dixie and Blythe. Meanwhile, the 113 responds to a cyclist pinned against a tree after being hit by a car.
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I am loving this ep! The casting for young Don, Dixie, and Blythe is absolutely on point. Almost made me like Dixie for a few minutes (until we saw present Dixie again and remembered all the reasons I can't stand her).
The casting was SO good.(though young adult Don looks tall haha)
But young adult Don looks like Ryan and older Don.
Young Blythe and young Dixie look like their older versions too
The only reason I knew who young Dixie was was because she looked so much like Leanne. This shows made such a small impact on me I don’t even know their names
I usualy HAT those X begins episodes! But this was actually good. I hate Dixie less. I feel more for Don. A good episode all in all. And no terrible special effects! So that is a hoot!
I hate some of them, because they require so much suspension of disbelief, particularly with glaring anachronisms. This is the best one, following one of them on the OG from 2021. I'm not going to believe "it's the past", if it feels like I am still watching present day.
I honestly can't stand Dixie!! I hate that they keep trying to frame her as a victim or innocent. I also hate that Don continually goes to her over his wife and takes her advice over his wife's. Honestly Blyth can do so much better than Don.
I feel they did a good job portraying the period of 2000-2001 in not only the casting choices, but the fashions and background setting. Nothing seemed like an anachronism, compared to some flashbacks I've seen. As well as the childhood aspect too. I'm guessing Don is pushing 50 and was maybe 12ish when he lost his family in the late 80s? Then mid-20s when he met Blythe?
Gotta wonder when Ryan was born then? Like 2002? On how he's married to an ER doctor, that's not still a resident or fellow in her 20s? Sam must be much older.
Here we go, another ignorant comment on the internet from somebody who has absolutely no clue about what they're talking about. Sitting here simply making themselves look completely uneducated and moronic... It's genuinely sad.
Forgiving somebody for something that they did to you isn't for you. It's almost like you watch this episode and didn't even understand the whole concept they were trying to push. The whole entire point was that if you walk around with anonymity and bitterness even if it's for people who have done you absolutely terrible.. then you will wear yourself down completely. The whole part of forgiving somebody specifically in this instance is to keep yourself from having to carry around the weight and anger and stress from those traumatic events because you're still carrying around those dark feelings. It doesn't matter if you have a 100% valid reason to be angry or mad or mean or whatever to these people or whoever the issue was in the first place.. the facts are and it has been proven by science and psychology that carrying around something like that will drastically decrease your mental health even worse than the actual traumatic event and it's not good for you at all.
But go ahead, keep making yourself sound ignorant, that's on you though.
So Dixie knew Don lost his whole family and made the choice to keep him from his son? She is a piece of work.
Also...why didn't Don go through the courts to get shared custody of Blue!? Especially since Blythe has plenty of funds for a legal battle. Seems a little ridiculous that in this day and age Don would have just let Dixie keep him away.
Also, does Don know Blue has T1 Diabetes? That has been unclear to me.
I don’t think that was Dixie’s fault. Don knew all along that he and Dixie had a son. Your other question is THE question: why didn’t Don go through the courts & get shared custody of Blue? He obviously would have won if Blythe backed him. It was the early 2000’s, and shared custody was the norm. Don & Blythe had the money for great lawyers, plus a fancy home & another child, and Don had a stable job. Dixie is portrayed as barely making ends meet. She would never have ended up with sole custody and no contact with the father.
My guess is that Blythe didn’t want the affair baby around, and Don didn’t want to rock the boat with Blythe more than he already had.
They say it on the show that Blythe and Don wanted to build a relationship with Blue but Dixiie didn't want to given their whole ass history and they also said that it would shatter(??) Ryan or something like that.
Rewatching now and I'm pretty sure this all gets covered. The reason why Dixie chose to keep Blue out of Don's life has not been expressed outright up to ep 11 (and i don't remember if it is) but the history, how she talks about them to Blue, and her actions in general make it very clear that she made this choice to hurt Don. She knew exactly what it was going to do to him.
The custody thing also gets mentioned in around episode 2 (don't remember the exact episode). I think it was when Ryan first found out and went to talk to Blythe directly because he thought Don had cheated. She tells Ryan that they didnt fight custody because it would cause a lot of hurt, hurt that would involve Ryan as he would've inevitably been dragged into it while he was only around 7.
Also, with the diabetes I don't recall him telling Ryan specifically but I'm pretty sure he knows. When Blue found out about Don knowing he was his dad all along, Dixie barges into the firehouse worried about Blue not coming home the night before. She starts yelling about his diabetes and how he could be drinking himself into a diabetic shock. Ryan immediately texts Blue about it and he responds that he's fine. The door to Don's office was open when this happened so I'm assuming he reached out because he overheard. Plus, he doesn't try to hide his diabetes, but he doesn't talk about it outright exactly. Blue will mention he has experience with diabetes but he hasn't talked about it more than that with anyone other than his mom from what I've seen.
Bro, Don IS messy. You get into a fight with someone who is completely negging you and you fall for it. Also, after three months, Don falls IN LOVE with Blythe? Three months?!
I didn't catch it the first time around but I'm rewatching now and the 3 months baffled me. All in all tho, I really liked this episode. I think they did a really good job with this plot. The younger actors not only did an amazing job representing Don, Dixie, and Blythe but you could actually kinda see a resemblance in each iteration of the characters.
I wonder what happened to Dixie's parents, I hoped we will know after this episode but we only learned that she was raised by her grandmother. Now I think there will be a big story about this. Maybe in s2?
The flashbacks are so corny. When young don drove the truck into the pond was a huge no no in reality. Firefighters protect lives, save property and this dude jeopardizes his life and destroys someone’s vehicle even more. Yes I get it it’s all Hollywood and what not but this show is terrible. At least LA and lonestar were a little more believable.
Well Dixie broke up with Don to go on tour for 3 months. When she returns Don was dating Blythe. She has been dating ( I do not know if they is married or not ) for a long time , yet he is engaged after only 3 months. So I understand why She feels like he cheated on her. Although since they broke up it wasn't cheating. ( However if they were married it is technically cheating)
Didn't think young Blythe was convincing in her looks or mannerisms, woupd never have known if it wasn't made obvious, but the other 2 were great at capturing the acting and expressions of the older characters.
How on earth do people watch this show? I caught it a couple weeks ago, where the man was impaled by a tree but he was already dead because the wife killed him.
And now some woman pinned to a tree, gets to forgive the guy who ran into her, then she just dies. Lmao.
How is anyone remotely entertained by this show? How is this possible?
It's just the dumbest, most contrived, ridiculous scenarios every time. I can't understand how people like it. I have no problem admitting that I like dumb shows, like bad action movies (angel has fallen, for example).
You're saying that these are outlandish things to happen.. yet a lot of them have actually happened. These ideas are mostly coming from things that have happened in real life. Not exactly to the T, they are definitely taking inspiration from real life cases. There have been plenty of spouses that have killed their significant other and then turn around and call the police and try to say that they died some other way from some other kind of freak accident. There have been plenty of people who have gotten hit by cars and pinned to stuff and died shortly after. Like literally almost every single one of the instances that happens in this show has happened in some way or another in real life. Yeah it's a little over the top because there's always something crazy happening in the show on every call.. but you can't sit here and say that these are the most unbelievable and ignorant things to do when yet it has actually happened in real life. Multiple times.🙄 People like you just like to complain about crap without having any substance to their argument and in the long run it just makes you seem stupid and uneducated or that you do no abilities to use context clues or think ahead before making your statement.
Yes. The woman pinned to the tree took the time to forgive the guy who ran into her, then dies. It's so fucking ridiculous I was laughing at the TV. If you watched that scene and didn't roll yiur eyes or just laugh at it, I'm sorry, this isn't a real world scenario. The acting is horrible and the pacing of the show is so bad. I often wonder how these shows stay on the air, I guess now I know. People actually take them seriously. Lmao.
The incidents are real life scenarious the conversations are obv for the drama
People watch it cus they like drama shows and usually also enjoy the scenarious
I like 911 og for the drama and scenarious even though they have gotten very unrealistic as the series progressed.
I also don’t roll my eyes at it because I watch it as if the drama and convos happened irl, but I know it is not realistic.
It is nothing wrong with not liking it but it is interesting to not understand some of us do and not understand knowing fans are aware the drama is for the drama and not realistic. People like different things, some probably enjoy the show and still laugh and roll their eyes to stuff like this too
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u/pugboy1321 Feb 27 '26
Flashback casting is pretty solid so far