• by Adam Buckman , Featured Columnist, January 3, 2018

If you watched any NFL games on Fox on any Sunday afternoon in the last couple of weeks, then you must know about the new firehouse drama premiering this week called “9-1-1.”

It has been promoted incessantly during the games, with at least some of the promo spots highlighting the unfortunate suicide of a young woman.

In the scene, the young woman is seen letting go of the tall industrial structure on which she had been perched and threatening to jump. She lets go just as a first responder -- a veteran L.A. firefighter played by Peter Krause -- arrives on the scene and begins trying to persuade her not to take the leap.

It's a dramatic scene that makes for an arresting promo. This suicide takes place about four-and-a-half minutes into the premiere episode of “9-1-1” airing Wednesday night on Fox.

However, dramatic as this scene is, it does not emerge as one of the episode's central storylines, although the firefighter who was closest to her when she jumped is understandably sad about it.

Instead, this centerpiece of the promotion campaign for this show essentially disappears for the remainder of the premiere episode.

Instead, the hour is taken up by a slew of other stories and character sketches -- the 911 operator who juggles her stressful job while also taking care of her mother who has Alzheimer's, the rookie firefighter who keeps “borrowing” the fire truck to go and have sex with women he meets on the job, the veteran cop whose home life is in turmoil because her husband has recently told her he is gay, and a series of emergencies.

These include a young woman who is nearly strangled to death by her pet snake (photo above), a nine-year-old girl who is home alone when two nasty burglars break into her house, and a very terrible story about a newborn baby stuck in a drainpipe (there is more to this, but I will spare you the bloody details here).

As you might have already determined from the title, this show is about emergencies large and small. This is established at the very outset as the show's narrator -- the 911 operator played by Connie Britton -- declares that we all are living in our own personal emergencies.

Thus, at the very outset of the new year, Fox means to foist this terrible, pessimistic TV show on us, just at the time when at least some of us are trying to feel optimistic and hopeful about the year ahead.

I got into this subject recently as 2017 came to a close -- that TV has evolved into a window on the worst aspects of the world we live in.

In that same spirit, this show evidently intends to continue this evolution by providing for our entertainment pleasure a young woman jumping to her death and a newborn infant discarded down a toilet.

Happy New Year.

“9-1-1” premieres Wednesday (January 3) at 9 p.m. Eastern on Fox.