Owen adopts a dog, while Michelle finally learns what happened to her sister.
Tropes featured in the episode:
- Big Friendly Dog: Buttercup.
- Call-Forward: Michelle using a defibrillator as a weapon to subdue a mentally disturbed man is another such event to the mother series, when a certain paramedic duo in L.A. would also use a defibrillator as a weapon against a team member who turns out to be a serial killer.
- Cat Scare: When dealing with a call about a rattlesnake infestation, Judd gets spooked by the family’s cat.
- Chekhov's Gun: A literal handgun is noted on-scene when the dispatch center realizes that Bruce’s home invasion and a call from an elderly couple about their own home invasion turn out to be connected. It belongs to the grandfather, who soon suffers a heart attack and drops the gun; amidst the chaos when his wife tries to revive him, his terrified grandson takes it and shoots the nearest person just as the firefighters break down the door (who unfortunately happens to be TK).
- Converse with the Unconscious: Owen talks to TK while he is in a coma after being shot in the chest.
- Deteriorates Into Gibberish: Iris has a brief moment of this while needling Michelle about how long she’s been panicking about going onstage, along with fidgeting with her bracelet.
- Flashback: Michelle gets a few of these remembering what happened between her and Iris before she vanished.
- A flashback of 3 years before the show started is shown. Michelle and Iris are at a bar with an open mic night, Iris tries to convince Michelle to get up and sing but the latter has Performance Anxiety and keeps saying she’s waiting for the right moment to go up. Dustin then sends continuous texts to Iris about when she’s coming home, much to Michelle’s disapproval.
- During the second flashback, the sisters and their mother Theresa are celebrating their late father’s birthday. Iris then starts laughing seemingly out of nowhere, finding their conversation with their father’s photo absurd. When Michelle tries to ask about Iris’ health since dating Dustin, the latter angrily shoots back that she at least has someone who’s smart and confident while Michelle apparently didn’t get accepted into Texas State University and was too nervous at the bar’s open mic. Theresa tries to play along, then stop the two from fighting, but they’re both too mad at each other to listen; Michelle then storms out.
- Freak Out: When Michelle and her crew try to let a man named Trevor know that his mother has passed away, he doesn’t believe them and grabs a saber from the top of a dresser, threatens them with it and demands that they help his mother.
- From Stray to Pet: Owen adopts the abandoned Buttercup to be this for the 126.
- The Ghost: As Owen holds vigil for TK, he mentions TK’s mother, who went into “full lawyer mode” against the lead doctor treating him.
- Heroes Love Dogs: Everyone in the 126 loves Buttercup. Then Owen tells them he and Buttercup have the same lung cancer, which turns T.K. off from the dog for a little while.
- Improbable Weapon User: Michelle uses a portable defibrillator to subdue Trevor when he refuses to accept his mother’s passing, but not before she and her team decide to humor him by checking her body’s vitals.
- Internal Reveal: Michelle tells Theresa about what she learned from the blue truck lead, and how Iris’ erratic behaviors in the time before she vanished were signs of severe mental distress (even bringing up schizophrenia).
- It's All My Fault: Michelle believes that if she had just answered the phone calls from Iris on the night she disappeared, she could have saved her sister. Sarina disagrees with this.
- Laughing Mad / Mood-Swinger: The second flashback sees Iris start randomly laughing when she, Michelle and Theresa are observing their father’s birthday, then lashing out at Michelle when she irritatedly but worriedly asks about her well-being.
- Mood Whiplash: TK is happy that Owen has adopted Buttercup, until he is told Owen and Buttercup have the same lung cancer. TK then temporarily wants nothing to do with the dog.
- Never Be Hurt Again: TK learning that Buttercup also has lung cancer drives him to push the dog away and refuse to get close to him, because it was hard enough for him to learn that Owen was dying from it. Owen acknowledges this fear, but then encourages him to see Buttercup as more than another dying loved one— he is, in his words, “an affirmation of [Owen’s] life.”
- Oh, Crap!: A worried mother checks in on her baby using a nanny cam on her phone while she and her husband are out at a restaurant, and sees a rattlesnake in the baby's bedroom.
- A Mass "Oh, Crap!" ensues right after TK busts down the elderly couple’s door and a gunshot goes off— their grandson mistakenly thought they would be attacked, grabbed the man’s handgun, and shot TK without realizing who he was.
- The Paranoiac: The multiple 9-1-1 calls Iris places from the burner phone have her freaking out about being seemingly followed, and being monitored and tracked electronically.
- Performance Anxiety: Michelle suffers from this when deciding whether or not she’s going to sing in front of a crowd at a bar’s open mic night.
- Properly Paranoid: The first emergency feature on a pair of new parents going on their first date since having their baby. The mother is very anxious about her child, though, and her husband allows her to look at the nanny cam. Her instincts turn out to be right when she sees a snake in the nursery.
- Psychological Projection: TK projects his fear of someone he loves (his dad dying) onto Buttercup, hence why he doesn’t want to get close to the dog. Owen calls him out on this.
- Shock and Awe: Michelle knocks out Trevor with a portable defibrillator.
- Shoo the Dog: TK does this with Buttercup initially after learning that the dog was also a cancer patient. After talking it out with Owen, it turns to Pet the Dog as he accepts Buttercup into his life.
- Shout-Out: To several movies featuring “monsters”, both inside and out.
- At the beginning, Paul, Judd, Marjan and Mateo banter about which horror movie is scarier to them: Alien, Rosemary's Baby, The Omen or The Exorcist.
- Mateo then brings up Cujo again when he notices Owen walking in with Buttercup.
- Tim quips “A mother is a man’s best friend” just as the 126 paramedics find Trevor’s mother’s dead body.
- Team Pet: Buttercup becomes this for the 126.
- Thieving Pet: Buttercup likes to steal TK’s things, much to the latter’s irritation.
- Unbroken Vigil: Owen is unable to get the rest of the 126 to go home and rest after TK has been shot. They all stay at the hospital, waiting.
- When Carlos stops by the hospital himself to visit TK, it’s implied he has one of his own. The group does not object, and joins him in solidarity.
- Unkempt Beauty: Michelle comments on Iris’ hair being unbrushed, and her seeming more sleep-deprived in the second flashback.
- Wham Shot: The episode ends with the reveal that Iris is alive and at Sanctuary Hearts, the very place Michelle volunteers at.
- Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: While he might have grown up with them, Judd is not the biggest fan of snakes at all.
