When Amir, the nurse played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner, saw Bobby (Peter Krause) at the end of 9-1-1 Season 7 Episode 7, he took note of his name and said he didn’t know him but he’d “like to.” Before his first episode, we knew that Amir was a nurse in a hospital burn unit with a connection to Bobby’s past. It stood to reason that it would go back to the fire that took Bobby’s family to him in some way, and after his debut episode revealed the burns on Amir’s face, that seemed all but confirmed. It is in the promo for Episode 8, “Step Nine” (amends in AA), airing May 16.
“Ten years ago, an apartment fire almost took my life,” Amir says, with accompanying flashbacks to the incident that killed Bobby’s family (he’d been drinking, and the space heater caught fire). “I’m constantly reminded of what I lost.” A photo shows him and a woman.
Bobby tells his wife, Athena (Angela Bassett), “he wanted me to see what I’d done. I need to make amends.”
But what does Amir want? As we see Bobby going somewhere and being attached from behind, a knife put to his throat, presumably by Amir, the nurse’s voiceover plays: “Just when you think you have everything under control, the anger rages up until it consumes you like a fire.” Watch the promo above.
In “Step Nine,” after this victim of the apartment fire that changed Bobby’s life resurfaces, he searches to make amends. Driven by his need to right past wrongs, Bobby delves deep into memories of his childhood, unearthing moments from his fractured past.
“Malcolm-Jamal Warner is such an incredible addition to our cast, and I got to meet him in passing, and his storyline is integral in Bobby’s storyline. And the way they’re feeding off of each other is just amazing. It’s everything you’d wish for in television,” Ryan Guzman told TV Insider.
There will be “a lot of them one-on-one,” Kenneth Choi teased. “And so you’re going to see two great actors going at each other, and I’m super excited for that.”
How do you think this next arc for Bobby is going to play out? Scroll down to check out photos from this episode, then let us know in the comments section, below.
9-1-1, Thursdays, 8/7c, ABC