Spoilers ahead for Episode 3 of Rescue: HI-Surf on Fox, called “The Deep End.”
The plot is already thickening on Rescue: HI-Surf in the 2024 TV schedule, whether you’ve been watching live on Fox or streaming afterward with a Hulu subscription. Despite the skill of the various lifeguards – albeit some more skilled than others – there has been plenty of interpersonal drama between them, and some of it came to a head in “The Deep End” when Sonny had to take a day off to deal with grief that was beginning to affect him physically. A shift didn’t go too well with Em in charge, and tension built throughout the hour until Sonny asked a question that might be difficult to answer.
In the final moments of the episode, the team of lifeguards learned that the lawsuit from back in the series premiere didn’t come to a quiet end with the family taking a settlement from the city, and they learned it in just about the worst way: via a news broadcast. When Sonny didn’t seem as upset as Em expected, she went after him to confront him. He finally snapped, threw a pen, and asked:
What do you want me to do about it?!
It wasn’t violent, but it also was probably the worst that we’ve seen between Em and Sonny. It was particularly striking due to how caring she’d been toward him earlier in the episode when he passed out on the beach. Her stint as leader when she was left in charge just didn’t go well, and he didn’t hide that he would have done just about everything differently than what she did.
For her part, Em didn’t seem to really regret how she’d approached managing the other guards even though she had a rough time, and Sonny asking “What do you want me to do about it?!” at the end of an episode when they were at a stalemate doesn’t seem like it can lead anywhere good. She left after he asked the question since she didn’t have a clear answer, so nothing was really resolved.
I can imagine that one approach the city might take – or the mayor, depending on his feelings about how his son is doing as a lifeguard – is to fire Sonny and/or for Sonny to fall on the proverbial sword and take the fall, but that also seems like a very bad option when Em is the next in line to lead and she’s clearly not ready for it. There just doesn’t seem to be a good answer to the question of what she wants him to do about the lawsuit, and I’m afraid it might not be too much fun to watch.
Then again, Rescue: HI-Surf might just be worth watching for all of the action even if the drama between the characters gets tiresome down the line. The lifeguards had some very cool saves from the very beginning of the episode onward, and I won’t pretend that I wasn’t impressed by the cast doing burpees over and over again as part of Em’s competition. Honestly, by the time that scene finished, I just wanted to know how many takes they’d had to film!
Based on the action alone, Rescue: HI-Surf might be a solid spiritual successor to 9-1-1: Lone Star, which is set to end after a tough-to-swallow cast departure. According to the Lone Star showrunner, the writing was on the wall about a cancellation, but Rescue: Hi-Surf could have a bright future ahead of it. At the very least, it could fill Fox’s first responder vacancy after Rob Lowe and Co. have appeared in their last episode of Lone Star.
Keep tuning in to Fox on Mondays at 9 p.m. ET for new episodes of Rescue: HI-Surf, following new episodes of 9-1-1: Lone Star. The earlier episodes are already available streaming on Hulu if you want to catch up.