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slenderboo · 11 days

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Okay idk if this is just me being negative, but I personally get enjoyment out of the shows I watch by ripping them to shreds in the name of improvement, because there's always something there that's great, it just has to be refined and shaped to reach it's full potential. So, bear with me here.

I'm a 911 fan, and one who really enjoys the opening disasters. I have a pretty good suspension of disbelief, so usually I can deal with scientific inaccuracies and contrivances for the sake of good storytelling. I'm not the kind of person to point at the earthquake opener and be like "uhm akshually all buildings in california have to be built on a floating foundation and obey strict safety regulations to withstand earthquakes, so the high rise crumbling the way it did is actually really unrealistic." I don't mind extreme situations, as long as they're not so impossible it breaks my suspension of disbelief.

That being said, I can firmly and completely say that the bee-nado season 8 opener looks like the absolute dumbest thing you could ever write, not just because it's contrived and overly dramatic, but because it's wildly, comically unrealistic and breaks suspension of disbelief in a way that 911 has never really done before. Sure, a blimp crashing into a packed stadium is kinda dumb and contrived, but at least it's a thing that could realistically happen with a (semi) realistic aftermath.

The bee-nado is so bad it's almost insulting. Killer bees are a trope that's been beaten to death, to the point where 911's had a bee related emergency before, and from the trailer, this seems to be a depiction that's much, much worse.

(Cut for people who don't want to deal with the dissertation I wrote, which. totally fair, it's over 1300 words and arguably kinda nitpicky. dw, there's a tldr at the end)

Without further ado, my unsolicited opinion. Enjoy.

First, let's get our facts straight:

One: the "killer bees" they're talking about are most likely africanized honey bees, an artificial breed of bee first cultivated and then accidentally released in brazil, which has spread north all the way up to Texas, Florida, San Diego and LA (plus more, really any southern border state) via migration.

Two: the 22 million number they mention in the trailer is, as far as I can tell, an accurate number when it comes to transporting bees commercially. Generally this is done by companies who are hired by farmers to bring beehives to their crops for pollination; they take trucks filled with bees, covered in a mesh net to try and keep them in, and drive them down to the farmland. More on this later

Three: when in trucks, honey bees can only be transported under certain conditions. If they get too hot, they tend to fly out of their hives to avoid boiling in their exoskeletons. The main ways truck drivers mitigate this is by driving at night, waiting for a cold day/week to go, or going fast enough that the wind keeps the bees cool and inside.

Four: africanized honey bees are considered an invasive nuisance in california and aren't cultivated in large masses anywhere in the US. Nests that are found are usually destroyed because of the threat they pose to public safety, and there's even

Knowing all this, let's consider the "bee-nado."

One: there's no way anyone would be transporting 22 million cultivated africanized honey bees. No company would ever want to work with them because they're an insane liability to public health, and would get them sued so quickly if anything went wrong. See: literally the season opener. And at the same time, what private beekeeper has the money to care for 400 hives of hyperaggressive bees?

Two: The transportation issues. Like I said earlier, bees are generally transported at night/during lower temperature days because bees are less active in the cold, are less prone to suffocation/leaving the hive, and are usually taken places on highways because it means less stops where the bees can escape. So why the hell are we transporting them straight through LA, a place that's notoriously hot and has traffic for days, meaning the truck would lose a bunch of its bees even if it somehow managed to avoid LA-typical traffic, because it'll have to stop at dozens of lights and slow down for tight turns that are hard to do on a trailer that size.

And that's not even mentioning that the bees aren't covered in a mesh sheet, which as far as I can tell is industry standard, or strapped down in any way to avoid death. Bees are really easy to kill on these trips, and companies are careful as hell while transporting them; there's no way the truck skidding like that (note: the trailer doesn't show it being knocked over, just skidding on the road and hitting the side of another car) would send the beehives all over the road. Dumb. As. Hell.

I do have to give the show some slack here, because as far as I can tell the temperature issues would apply less to africanized honey bees because they can withstand higher temperatures. Don't quote me on that, though, because I couldn't find any information on it because NO ONE TRANSPORTS AFRICANIZED HONEY BEES. They're a public nuisance, aren't cultivated in any large capacity, and discovered wild hives are commonly exterminated. DUMB. AS. HELL.

Past the inaccuracy, though, there's another reason this disaster bothers me, and it's because of optics.

Bees are an endangered species. They're vital to our survival, in fact. So, portraying them as 'killer bees' feels irresponsible. Say it with me:

Bees don't attack unless their hive is threatened.

Before anyone says different about africanized honey bees, they do the same thing. Stinging someone kills a bee; they won't do it just for fun (unlike wasps. I would have endorsed a wasp disaster actually, those guys can go to hell).

Obviously, the bee's hives being squashed across the highway is sure to send them into a frenzy, and it's definitely going to suck for anyone that's currently on that highway, but they're not going to travel around in packs mugging people. That sort of reputation is why people are apathetic towards, or even completely against preserving bee populations. They see bees the same way the media sees sharks; as inherently evil creatures who's only goal is human suffering, rather than living creatures with natural behaviours that are mistaken for antagonistic.

If this was just an episode long, I could definitely cut it some slack. A shorter time means less need to dramatize and mischaracterize bees as inherently predatory for the sake of drama. The way it was done in the renfaire episode a while ago was good; the bees only attacked one person because their queen was stuck in her armour. Normal bee behaviour, that's explained to the viewer and wouldn't lead to fear-mongering since there's a clear, non-antagonistic motive that's scientifically sound.

But, it's not. It's three episodes, and you just can't stretch regular bee behaviour into three episodes. Seriously, the simplest thing they can do is get everyone away from the hive to let the bees calm down, and letting exterminators take care of it. Even if the bees deem their hive destroyed and need to relocate, they generally stay in one place until the scout bees find something suitable to stay in (which can take a bit; and even then , the trailer didn't indicate the nests were crushed or anything, just thrown off the truck.)

My conclusion from all this? The season 8 opener is most likely going to be a contrived, comically unrealistic, damaging depiction of bees meant for drama and shock value, and most of all, I just think it's going to be lame. I'm sorry, you sank a cruise ship last season and the best you could come up with this time was bees? You made complicated and detailed water sets for a gorgeously written split perspective plotline in the season 2 tsunami disaster, and all you could think of was bees?? The volcano in lone star is almost impressively unrealistic, but at least it was more exciting than bees.

Please god let the rest of the season be better than this.

Important end note/disclaimer: the season isn't out yet as I'm writing this, so I literally have no idea how the portrayal is actually going to pan out. Knowing the show, they'll probably address the fact that they're africanized honey bees and not normal bees, which is a good step in the right direction. I personally don't think that's enough, since the optics are pretty fear mongering and especially dangerous with the current climate crisis and state of the bee population in the US, particularly California. If people go out thinking that it's normal for beekeepers to cultivate africanized honey bees, it'll result in a push against conservation efforts, et cetera, you get the gist.

But, I don't know how it's going to pan out. And as someone who genuinely loves this show's writing, I'm just hoping I'm wrong and I'm just taking things worse than they actually are. I know for a fact they can write so much better than this, and have written so much better than this.

The thing I love most about this show has always been how it sets itself apart from other procedurals, like greys anatomy, by creating realistic and complex drama, characters, and keeping most of its situations within the realm of possibility. This season opener feels like the first time they've sacrificed bare minimum realism for drama, and I hope to god that trend doesn't continue.

Uhhhh TLDR: killer bees are an actual type of bee that aren't cultivated, like, ever because they're considered a nuisance to be exterminated in california, and most other states. so, a random truckload of them being out in the middle of LA is wildly unrealistic. On top of that, the hives themselves are missing the usual safety precautions bee transporters have, like mesh nets and any sort of strap to stop the beehives from being flung off the truck. But it doesn't stop there, the portrayal of bees as these killer insects mugging anyone they come across is, you guessed it, also wildly unrealistic and adds to fearmongering around bees, which is not good for our critically declining populations. Their only goal is to defend their hive, and won't stray anywhere near as far as they do in the trailer.

#disclaimer that this is my own opinion and my own probably faulty research please don't yell at me #actual people who know stuff about bees please correct me if I'm getting things horrifically wrong #I'll make sure to update the post with corrections #I don't actually know anything about bees #I just saw the trailer and immediately thought it was incredibly dumb #and then went on a multi hour research binge to see if it was just me being too picky or if there actually was something off about it #this took me three hours to write #911 abc #911 season 8 #911 s8 speculation #911 critical #911 #911 spoilers #question mark #is the trailer a spoiler

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