Story of a Plot Device: Buck’s Bi Journey, Tommy, and the Buck-and-Eddie Thing
A post covering the behind the scenes journey of Buck’s bisexuality and exploring how I feel the show has been actively developing the Buck-and-Eddie thing from 7x04 on. I try to keep it as impartial as possible, but this does get into Buck’s relationship with Tommy as a plot device, so you know, if that’s not your thing, this post probably isn’t for you. Otherwise, more behind the cut 👇 (you can also read on Google Docs here)
A Look Behind The Scenes of Bi Buck
From the start, Buck’s character has been bi-coded in the eyes of fans, linked back to his interactions with the tapeworm victim in season one, and later most notably his interactions with Eddie throughout the series starting with the classic “Whattaman” introduction. Both of these are acknowledged by Oliver Stark as things that were perhaps unintentional at the time, but that he feels contributed to bisexuality being in the DNA of his character:
So you had been playing scenes in previous seasons with that in mind?I don’t think at the time, looking back, it was conscious, but there are certainly moments. The first one that sticks out to me.… if I go back to season 1, there’s this scene: It’s the tapeworm emergency, and the way Buck is kind of connecting with this guy.… I think there have been hints that weren’t intentional, but I think do create pieces of this journey for me. (Source)
From there, Oliver states that his character being bisexual was actually pitched to the network once before in season four, but was ultimately shut down from somewhere above.
Oliver Stark, who’s played Buck for six years, has been aware of fan theories about Buck’s sexuality for a long time. But while showrunner Tim Minear floated the idea to him as a possibility for Season Four, it was ultimately axed. “It was shut down from above,” Stark says. “I don’t know from where exactly but somebody had not wanted that story to progress then.” (Source)
After the show was cancelled on Fox and picked up by ABC, but prior to any confirmation of a bisexuality arc, Oliver decided he wanted to start leaning into this interpretation for his character’s identity if the opportunity presented itself.
What’s kind of crazy is that this season I did decide “If there’s an opportunity, I think I want to start leaning more heavily into that.” I hadn’t had that conversation with Tim though, so when Tim then brought this storyline to me, I was like, “Well, guess what: I totally think that’s the right direction and I’m all for it.” (Source)
Going into Season 7, we know that Lucy was intended to pilot the helicopter that rescued Bobby and Athena—she’s even still included on the paperwork Hen files to make the request—but due to the actress’s unavailability, this role was delegated to Tommy, who was then considered as a new love interest:
Choosing Tommy as Buck’s new love interest came down to timing and Ferrigno’s charisma. Originally, Lucy was supposed to pilot the helicopter used to rescue Bobby (Peter Krause) and Athena (Angela Bassett) from the cruise ship disaster from the three-part premiere. But because of her role in Fox’s “Rescue: HI-Surf,” Arielle Kebbel was unavailable for the scene. That left Tommy. (Source)
However, it wasn’t Buck who was initially meant to come out in season 7—according to LFJ, that storyline originally was considered for Eddie.
It was originally, possibly, going to be with Eddie and Tommy, but that fell through. But Oliver was willing, and I think that Oliver is just such a brave, generous actor. (Source)
Like Buck’s character, fans have felt for years that Eddie was also queercoded. Canonically, he was a teen dad who felt pressured by the church to marry Shannon, and his breakup with Ana was framed very similarly to a canon queer character in another series. (This isn’t evidence of intent, just an observation in similarities.) His dialogue in the Season 7 finale with Kim is also eerily similar to the words Michael said to Athena after coming out to her.
But regardless of the actual intention behind those scenes at the time, the interview with LFJ confirmed that Eddie’s sexuality at the beginning of Season 7 was something being discussed in the writer’s room, just as Buck’s had been during Season 4. Ryan also confirmed in a podcast that he wasn’t sure which character of the two, if any, would lead in that way.
What ultimately set this story in motion for Tommy and Buck instead of Tommy and Eddie was the availability of other actresses. Marisol’s actress was able to return, Natalia’s and Lucy’s were not.
“I thought that [Oliver and Annelise] were great together,” says Minear. “But, I think after the long strike and after the pandemic… [Annelise] is based in New York, and it was partially her decision to not return for this premiere. I originally had a big story in there with that character. But, to be honest, I’m not sure I could have fit it all in. You can see how quickly that real estate goes. And I just kind of wanted to explore other avenues with Buck this year.” (Source)
I wanted to get into the background a little on the journey it’s been to have Buck come out as bisexual, and also to point out that Eddie’s sexuality has been given the same consideration, before getting into anything else.
Of course, interviews can be misleading, and things that are true one minute may change the next. Ultimately, what matters is what’s shown on screen, so let’s dive into that.
Buck’s Bi Realization
The story starts in 7x04 with Buck getting a tour of Harbour Station from Tommy, who thinks Buck is considering a change in career. Buck seems interested in getting to know him better, but when Eddie shows up to hang out with Tommy, jealousy and insecurity begin to set in.
What follows is a confusing mess of feelings—on one hand, Buck was interested in Tommy on some level. On the other hand, a lot of his spiraling has less to do with Tommy and more to do with the fear of losing Eddie. The second Eddie says, “You know, it’s like that thing when you meet somebody, and you just click,” Buck appears to switch targets. He’s ranting to Maddie about how often Eddie’s had Tommy over, how cool Christopher seems to think he is, he’s nitpicking little flaws in Tommy’s character, and more importantly, he conspires to try and win Eddie’s attention back:
He sees Eddie on the phone laughing with someone else. It’s never stated that it’s Tommy, but the assumption is palpable as Buck uses the bench press without a spotter while peeking at Eddie to see if he notices and comes over. He turns down Ravi’s offer to spot.
He has a basketball delivered to the fire station so he can ask Eddie to shoot hoops, and again is disappointed when Eddie doesn’t notice. This is particularly uncharacteristic for Buck, since it follows the scene with Maddie where Buck reveals that Eddie is going to the pickup game with Tommy instead since Buck keeps refusing to go.
He asks Chim to go to the pickup game under false pretenses, even though as Maddie pointed out, Buck doesn’t like basketball. He proceeds to compete against Tommy and Eddie, though the scene is more focused on Eddie, and things escalate when Buck knocks Eddie out of the way and injures his ankle.
It’s a sobering moment for Buck, whose actions have steadily escalated until this point out of jealousy. He talks to Maddie about it, telling her he was pissed seeing Eddie and Tommy be such good friends after only two weeks. He says, “I felt left out, and I guess I was trying to get his attention.”
Maddie’s response feels significant: “Well, that’s not how you get someone’s attention. You clear your throat. You tap them on the shoulder. You don’t hurt them.” Her words show that she thinks it was Eddie’s attention Buck was trying to get, and Buck doesn’t deny this. At this moment, at least, he agrees with her.
Tommy comes to Buck’s apartment later to clear the air. He assures Buck that he never wanted to cause bad blood between him and Eddie, and that Eddie can have more than one friend. Specifically, he adds, “I mean, it’s not like I could ever replace you. Christopher would definitely have something to say about that.” This is important because while Buck was also interested in getting to know Tommy, his feelings were amplified and muddied by the fear that Eddie and Chris liked Tommy more than him, which Tommy picks up on.
They find some common ground when Tommy admits that he was jealous too (of the 118), and that seems to endear Buck to him, as he reassures him that the reason he went to Harbour Station was because he wanted to get to know him better after he threw in with them no questions asked. This starts to reframe things a little, something Buck is able to do now that his fear of losing Eddie has been appeased somewhat by Tommy telling him Eddie isn’t pissed at him for what happened.
Their conversation takes a bit of a flirtatious turn, but it’s all very subconscious on Buck’s part. We’ve seen him this way before with men, but it’s always been left in the subtext. The show finally brings it to the surface when Buck tells Tommy that trying to get his attention has been kind of exhausting, and Tommy, a little caught off guard, says “My attention?”
Because, that’s the point, isn’t it? It hasn’t always been clear whose attention Buck was trying to get, or who Buck was more jealous of, because he kept going back and forth, even pointing out the similarities between the two men. Maddie thinks it was about Eddie, and Tommy—who we now know with the context of 8x11 saw Eddie as the “competition” for Buck’s affection—likely thought the same. But in this moment, Buck says, “Yeah, I guess so,” and chooses to believe that it was always just about Tommy.
Tommy kisses him, and a lot of things start to make sense for Buck, who Oliver states has always felt like something was missing in his understanding of himself. From there, they make arrangements for their first date, and the Eddie of it all should be put to rest now that Buck has 1) reassured himself of his place in Eddie’s life, and 2) reassured himself that Tommy is interested in him, too. Instead, he remains a prominent focus in this relationship, highlighting exactly why Tommy saw him as his competition.
The First Date
In 7x05, Buck has his first date with Tommy, and although it’s a little awkward, it seems to be going well until Eddie shows up and assumes they’re just hanging out. Buck further encourages this by saying he and Tommy are going to go find some hot chicks, which Tommy doesn’t appreciate and later bites back with a pointed comment about how you can never have enough closet space.
This interaction leads to Tommy deciding to end the date early, feeling that Buck isn’t ready. But Buck’s behaviour wasn’t really about whether or not he was ready to date a man—there’s a specific trigger that he spends the rest of the episode spiralling over. He vents to Maddie about it, telling her that who he was dating didn’t matter—the point was that he lied to his best friend, and much like when he hurt Eddie during the pickup game, he doesn’t know why.
Maddie tells him, “I just think maybe you’re not sure of your own feelings yet, and if there’s something you need to tell Eddie, you will. Just… in your own time.”
What’s interesting here is that while 7x04 bounced back and forth between Buck being jealous of Tommy and Eddie, Buck closed that door by coming to the conclusion it was about Tommy all along. Maddie’s words gently pry the door back open, suggesting to the audience that Buck may not be as sure of his feelings as he thinks. This is revisited in 8x11, when she says it “wouldn’t be so crazy,” if Buck was in love with Eddie, so I do think it’s safe to assume she’s referring to the possibility of Buck misplacing or misunderstanding his feelings in this scene.
Buck does eventually tell Eddie about the date, and Eddie appears most surprised by the fact that Tommy is gay. This is an interesting contrast to Tommy’s disbelief in 8x11 when Buck says Eddie is straight. Both reactions we can reasonably guess are due to the similarities their characters share, as established by Buck in 7x04. Then, Eddie reassures Buck that this doesn’t change anything between them, while Buck tells Eddie he kind of can’t stop thinking about Tommy. In the end, though both of them seem a little off at first, Eddie encourages Buck to call Tommy and try again, while Buck encourages Eddie to work things out with Marisol.
I’m sure some might wonder, if the show was going the buddie route, why not make this scene the turning point? And while I still think it was, I also think the show was sensitive to not portraying to the general audience any harmful stereotypes around a character coming out and it being assumed they’d suddenly be into their male friends, something Oliver mentioned wanting to tread carefully around. Instead, this scene focused on Eddie’s support and acceptance of Buck.
Buck takes Eddie’s advice, and meets up with Tommy again to apologize. Tommy tells him there’s nothing to apologize for, he just left because he didn’t feel Buck was ready and he didn’t want to pressure him. Buck admits he’s not sure what he’s ready for—which is in line with Maddie’s comment about him not being sure of his feelings—but that he’s ready for something, and he thinks it could be with Tommy. He invites him to join him at Maddie’s wedding, and so we enter the relationship phase of this storyline.
The Relationship
Buck on two separate occasions has voiced wanting to get to know Tommy better—first, when he explained why he wanted a tour of Harbour Station, and again, when he asks for a second chance at dating. Yet the show never actually gives us very much insight into Tommy’s character, or shows the two of them getting to know one another better. The little bit we do get only serves to highlight the disconnect in their relationship or further other plots.
For example: when Buck plans a bachelor party for Chim, the show chooses to have Tommy be on call and not participate in the costume theme. The show chooses to have Buck and Eddie wear matching costumes, specifically of another popular queercoded relationship. The show chooses to have Tommy leave early, though there’s no plotline that depends on it outside of ensuring Buck and Eddie spend the night partying together instead. For the purposes of Chim’s disappearance, the same could have been accomplished by Buck and Tommy spending the night together, while also developing that relationship. If it was a matter of required screentime for Eddie as a main, they could have even followed the s9 playbook of having him third wheel.
Instead, while Chim is gone, it’s Eddie who helps look for him, and who is quietly supportive at Buck’s side. And while yes, Eddie is closer to Chim, Tommy knows him too. In fact, he even reminds us of this at the bachelor party when Eddie makes a comment about not knowing they were allowed to bring a date.
The next time we see Tommy, it’s after Chim has been found. He shows up after his shift, Buck kisses him, and the evidence of this is left on his face for a quick coming out scene that requires no extra time spent on it. We see him again briefly for the medal ceremony, where the cruise arc is wrapped up officially and Gerrard is re-introduced to the audience. There is a deleted scene here, where Hen and Karen grill Tommy about his intentions with Buck, but ultimately it doesn’t make the cut.
From there, we don’t see or even hear of Tommy again until Buck is having dinner with him in his loft. Buck confides in him about how Bobby’s like the father he never had, and we get the first kernel of insight into Tommy’s backstory: he doesn’t talk to his dad, and when he was at the 118, he had Gerrard, which he says didn’t make him a better person.
This throwaway line is meant to serve two purposes: one, call back to Tommy’s history on the show and how he was introduced, and two, set the stage for Gerrard’s return as Captain of the 118. It’s to remind audiences of how bad it was before Bobby—and to build anticipation for how bad it’s about to become without him heading into season 8.
When we return in 8x01, Buck is venting to Tommy about Gerrard while Eddie gets things ready for a virtual birthday celebration for Chris. It’s enough of a scene to establish that Buck is comfortable in his relationship with Tommy post-timeskip, and that Eddie is still friends with him.
Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, it really sets the tone for how the rest of their relationship unfolds. We don’t see Tommy again until 8x05, and while he is featured more prominently during the Billy Boils drama, as Oliver says, it serves mostly to “reintroduce and re-establish them so that the weight of the breakup could make sense for the characters and for the audience.”
Even with this goal in mind, Eddie is the elephant in the room for most of their scenes. He’s already at the hospital when Tommy arrives with a visitor’s badge to check on Buck, and he doesn't leave. Tommy does spend the night with Buck to keep an eye on him after he’s discharged, but the following morning sees Eddie brought in for medical advice and to tend to Buck’s face even though Buck’s sister is a former nurse and his brother-in-law a current paramedic. When Denny gets hurt, Tommy is included in the waiting room scene, but he feels out of place, and the show highlights this by notifying everyone of Denny’s condition via text so we can see that Tommy is excluded from their family dynamic. Again, narrative choices matter: Hen could have simply texted Chim, or someone could have come out to update them. Instead, we establish that there’s a group chat—and Tommy still isn’t part of it months into their relationship.
None of these things are necessarily bad in isolation, but added together, it just feels like a really odd choice for a relationship you’re trying to establish—unless, of course, that isn’t the point.
The Breakup
In 8x06, Buck and Tommy celebrate their 6 month anniversary at the restaurant where they had their first date. Buck doesn’t have a gift, but Tommy does, and it’s tickets to a Lakers game. It seems like an odd choice considering Buck’s dislike of the sport, but it’s probably a reference to the basketball game that brought them together—especially when Tommy jokingly says Buck can take Eddie if he wants, a nod to the original conflict.
The scene also brings up the Kinsey scale, and one hell of a bomb drop: before Tommy was out as a gay man, he almost married Buck’s ex, Abby. On its own, the Kinsey scale discussion might make sense as a plot device to introduce the audience to Buck’s bisexuality (as some members of the general audience think he “turned gay.”) But when paired with Tommy’s revelation about Abby, it serves as a reminder that sexuality is complex, and just because you’ve been with women before, doesn’t mean you’re necessarily bisexual like Buck. It’s no coincidence that in this same episode Eddie claims to be straight—or that five episodes later, Tommy would be skeptical of this.
Buck struggles with the revelation that Tommy almost married Abby, which leads to him talking to Maddie (and Josh) about it. By the end of the conversation, he feels he’s been unfair in his reaction, and this leads him to feel he should suggest taking the next step in their relationship. He conflates how he felt about Abby (his first serious relationship) with how he feels about Tommy (his first relationship with a man) and asks him to move in with him. He kind of takes Josh’s speech about the “pre-Glee world” and puts Tommy up on this pedestal as a gay pioneer, and Tommy recognizes it for what it is. He tells Buck that his feelings right now are new, and exciting, but he’s not his last—he’s his first.
They break up, and Buck goes to Eddie’s to drown his sorrows. Eddie, who has just taken the first step in no longer depriving himself of joy as a form of punishment, answers the door. The lighting and framing feels more than a little suggestive—Eddie coming off the high of dancing in his underwear, fixing his hair before opening the door and greeting Buck. It feels a lot like foreshadowing, but we’ll only know that for sure once the show decides whether or not to commit. As it stands, Buck’s in no place to question or appreciate what he just walked in on, and the two enjoy each other’s company in companionable silence.
Buck does wallow a bit over the breakup, admitting to feeling lonely but getting by. Whenever he gets the urge to call Tommy, he bakes, and judging by the inside of his fridge it happens a lot in the beginning. Maddie expresses concern over this, which Buck misinterprets as her suggesting he call Tommy. Instead, she tells him that maybe he should think about what’s next. Buck tells Chim and Maddie he’s not sure which “pond,” to jump back into, a nod to his newly realized sexuality, and Maddie tells him to trust that the universe will bring him a special person.
This isn’t the first time Maddie’s been used as the voice of reason while Buck holds on to a relationship that’s over—we saw it in season 2 when he was living in Abby’s apartment long after she’d ghosted him. Using her again in this context tips the audience off that whatever Buck shared with Tommy wasn’t built to last, and like Tommy himself, Maddie knows this isn’t Buck’s endgame. Still, Buck is Buck, and he’ll only take her advice when he’s processed his feelings and feels ready to move on. It’s clear that time isn’t quite yet, since he’s still baking and checking his phone obsessively to see if Tommy’s sent anything. There’s a moment where it looks like he might—Buck sees him typing—but nothing comes of it.
Buck, of course, sees it as a sign that he should message Tommy after all, but the rest of the team joins Maddie in talking Buck off the ledge and trying to convince him it’s not a good idea. They go as far as stealing his phone and keeping it from him, and it’s obvious that no matter what Buck is feeling right now, none of the people closest to him thought this relationship was “the one.”
Again, this isn’t something that has come up with our endgame relationships, only doomed pairings like Buck and Abby, or Chim and Tatiana. When our endgame pairings have faced hurdles in their relationships, the other characters have always encouraged working things out or giving the other person time. In some cases, they’ve even directly meddled. The only exception is Hen when Chimney wanted to propose to Maddie, and she showed remorse for it in the same episode, making it clear that the narrative didn’t agree with her initial feelings but was making space for her being overprotective.
The show could do the same with Maddie—but when it comes up again, that isn’t what happens. Instead, we see the connection between Buck and Eddie go from being left in the subtext, to deliberately being brought up to the general audience as a question to consider.
The Buck-and-Eddie Thing
Though we’ve seen the show nudging the general audience in the direction of Buck and Eddie throughout this arc, it really starts to pick up after the end of 8x08, when Buck learns that Eddie is moving back to Texas to be with his son. This revelation brings us full circle as he finds himself feeling like he’s losing Eddie again, and we see how hard it hits him in 8x09 even as he tries to be supportive. From the sabotaged meetings with potential renters, to spilling the news to the team, Buck keeps fumbling the ball on being the supportive best friend he wants to be. The show even makes a point of highlighting the contrast of the 118’s reaction to Eddie moving, and Buck’s confusion when it’s so different from how he’s been feeling.
The rest of the episode is spent with a lot of pent up feelings between them; Eddie is frustrated when Buck lets his emotions get in the way of being supportive, and Buck is hurt when he hears Eddie say to his potential renters that everything that matters to him is in Texas. The two of them dance around talking things out until the end of the episode, when everything finally spills over.
Buck has spent the entire episode being passive aggressive and pretending like everything’s fine when it’s not; Eddie asks him to own his feelings instead of making excuses for why they’re something else. Buck finally admits that he was mad, and takes it a step further by revealing he’s been having more trouble dealing with the idea of Eddie not being around than he likes to admit. Eddie admits to not liking it either, but if Buck’s going to make it about having to choose between him, or his son, he’ll lose every time.
It’s kind of an odd thing to say to your strictly platonic best friend, but Buck and Eddie have never exactly followed the normal patterns of friendship. Buck assures Eddie that’s not even a question for him, but before they can dig deeper, the rest of the 118 show up and it’s revealed that Buck has given notice on his loft so he can take over Eddie’s lease. Eddie is visibly moved by Buck doing this for him, though Buck adds it’s not just for him—it’s for Chris, too. Just like when Buck introduced Eddie to Carla, he shows his support by enabling Eddie to do what he thinks is best for his son, something no one else in Eddie’s life has done.
Though the conversation seems to end here, Buck’s feelings come up again in 8x10 when Eddie is helping him look for a missing Maddie. Just as things were starting to feel normal again, everything started to fall apart—Tommy dumped him, Maddie’s missing, and now Eddie’s “just moving back to Texas, mm, like it’s nothing, it doesn’t affect anybody else. It does.”
Buck’s outburst is the first time the narrative really calls on Eddie to tell us how he feels about the move outside of reuniting with Chris, and Eddie quietly admits it’s “not nothing” like Buck seems to think. We see the fight leave Buck, who now feels bad for implying it’s easy for Eddie to uproot his life, but Eddie waves it off: they’ve been up all night, Buck doesn’t have to explain himself.
Still, it’s obvious there’s still more to say, because the show keeps revisiting this discussion between them even after they left things on a good note in the previous episode. All of the narrative weight is on their feelings about the other—how Buck feels being left behind, and how Eddie feels about leaving him. Again, this is unusual. When Chimney was the one leaving back in season 5, we didn’t spend multiple episodes on how Hen felt about that, because of course Chimney was going to chase after Maddie, just like Eddie is chasing after Chris now. But this storyline with Buck and Eddie’s feelings doesn’t just take up one or two episodes—it goes from the moment Buck learned Eddie was moving at the end of 8x08, all the way through to Buck’s crashing out in 8x11 because he misses Eddie so much. That’s four episodes spent on how they’re going to cope being so far apart, which seems like an awful lot of screen time if the show isn’t trying to do a slowburn romance between the two.
By the end of 8x10, Eddie finally addresses the question Buck’s been dancing around and tells him, “I know this thing between us has been messy and hard, and both of us could have handled it a little better. But I hope you know, you do matter to me.”
Because that’s what some part of Buck has been afraid of all along—that he is replaceable in Eddie’s life, that he is someone Eddie finds easy to walk away from. You can trace this fear all the way back to his jealousy in 7x04, when he thought Tommy was taking his place in Eddie and Christopher’s life. And the thing is, Buck and Eddie never actually got to talk about that. Tommy just came over to apologize, saying he could never replace Buck, and that was the end of it. It’s been an open ended question ever since, and while Buck obviously knows on some level that he is important to Eddie, he has his own deep rooted insecurities that needed reassuring. Eddie knows this about him, and while he may sometimes struggle with his own feelings, he has always validated Buck’s existence in his life.
The two of them are awkward in their goodbye, neither knowing what to say or do with their hands. Buck runs to get Eddie the chocolate chip protein cookies he made to give him energy, and the two of them share a hug. Eddie makes a strange expression partway through, though the reason is left ambiguous. From there, they say their goodbyes, and Buck watches Eddie drive away, his expression growing more and more forlorn.
Up to this point, one could maybe argue that this storyline has been about Buck’s abandonment issues in a more general sense rather than about any feelings he has for Eddie, though it still feels like a stretch. But in 8x11, we see a direct parallel between Buck showing up on Eddie’s doorstep after Tommy broke up with him, and Buck showing up on Maddie’s doorstep after Eddie left.
He’s also back to baking as a coping mechanism, which is another interesting parallel to make here as it insinuates the loneliness he feels from Eddie being gone is comparable to the loneliness he feels from his ex dumping him. More than that, he hasn’t even been able to bring himself to move into Eddie’s house because as he says later in the episode, it feels like accepting that he and Chris really aren’t coming back. Honestly, it feels like we get more melancholy and longing from Buck about his best friend moving than we did about his boyfriend dumping him.
Maddie encourages Buck to go out and make new friends, and that’s what we see Buck try to do with Ravi. There’s another interesting parallel here, as we see Ravi working alone on what Buck and Eddie turned into a two man job:
It’s a subtle way of showing just how much Buck and Eddie do together, and to highlight the gaping hole Eddie’s absence has caused. Ravi is a little suspicious of Buck’s offer to hang out; Buck tries to tell him that it took him a while to warm up to Eddie too, but the defense falls short when he reveals it didn’t even take a whole shift. It only gets worse from there: when trying to find an activity Ravi might enjoy, he can only think of things that Eddie likes doing, and when they actually go out, all he can do is talk about Eddie. It’s not even reminiscing so much as it’s gushing about how cool and awesome he is. Eddie made sure we weren’t late to the game and changed the tire with the boot still on, Eddie wouldn’t do something illegal because he has a silver star. Ravi is visibly bored, and then we learn that they’re even playing the drinking game Eddie taught him.
So it’s not really surprising that when Ravi sees an out, he takes it. He brings Tommy over and ditches Buck, and Buck says it kind of feels like being dumped again. They catch up a little, and Buck’s given an opportunity pretty early on to naturally bring up Eddie leaving. What’s interesting here is that Tommy doesn’t really engage much when Buck tells him about his sister being abducted, even though he knows Chimney and worked with him before. He also doesn’t offer up a lot about himself, which is par for the norm at this point.
What Tommy does show interest in, however, is the fact that Eddie left. We learn that Eddie stopped talking to Tommy after the breakup, something Buck looks pleased about, and then suddenly Tommy tells Buck he’s actually been thinking about calling him. One thing leads to another, and Buck brings him back to the house for a hookup.
We catch up with them immediately the next morning, and Buck tells Tommy he knows their hookup doesn’t mean they’re getting back together. Tommy asks why, and Buck asks if he’s saying he wants to try again. This is a huge turning point for them, potentially, because they’ve had some time apart to think about what it is they want. If the show were setting them up for endgame, we probably would have seen them reconcile here.
Instead, Tommy drops yet another bomb: he’s not worried about Buck breaking his heart anymore, now that the competition is out of the way. The fact that the viewer immediately knows who he’s referring to says a lot about how the show has been laying the groundwork for Buck and Eddie, but Buck is still very much in the dark at this point.
If Maddie’s words in 7x05 were gently prying the door open for Buck to examine his feelings for Eddie, Tommy’s words here are essentially ripping the door off its hinges. He tries to brush it off so Buck won’t dwell on it, but the damage has already been done. Buck eventually works out that Tommy’s referring to Eddie, and instead of denying that Eddie’s the competition, Buck tries to make light of him living in his house (Eddie was just a renter) and asserts that Eddie’s straight.
Tommy’s reaction to this is to scoff and go, “okay,” showing he doesn’t really believe that. Again, Tommy has often been used as a mirror for Eddie, with their shared interests and backgrounds. By having Tommy—a former closeted gay man—express doubt over Eddie’s perceived heterosexuality, the narrative is once again opening a door to question what we think we know. This is something it keeps doing—about Buck, about Eddie, about their relationship. None of this is necessary for a ship you don’t intend to make happen, or for a character they don’t intend to have come out.
Buck snaps that he “doesn’t have to sleep with everyone he has feelings for, and he doesn’t have to have feelings for everyone he sleeps with,” and that’s basically the final nail in the coffin of what could have been for his relationship with Tommy. It’s obvious that Tommy’s words have hit a sore spot. It bothers Buck so much, in fact, that we see him venting to Maddie about it later on in the episode. “I live in Eddie’s house, therefore I must be in love with him?” Maddie doesn’t think it’s that out of the question. She asks if he is in love with Eddie, and says it wouldn’t be so crazy.
Let’s recap: Buck gets jealous over Eddie having a new friend, and as those feelings escalate Buck ends up injuring his ankle. Maddie tells him there are better ways to get someone’s attention than hurting them. Buck lies to Eddie about his date with Tommy, and spirals over why he’d lie to his best friend instead of the fact that he fumbled the date. Maddie tells him she thinks he isn’t sure of his feelings yet, and if there’s something he needs to tell Eddie, he will, in his own time. She doesn’t offer Buck any advice when it comes to his actual relationship with Tommy—Josh does that, and it ultimately ends in a breakup. Eddie moves, and Buck spends multiple nights at Maddie’s because he can’t bring himself to accept that Eddie and Chris really aren’t coming back.
With all roads leading to Eddie, it really isn’t surprising that Maddie might wonder about Buck’s feelings, and by this point she’s throwing subtlety out the door because Tommy has already named the elephant in the room. Buck insists he’s not hopelessly pining for his straight best friend—again, making a point of emphasizing Eddie’s unavailability due to his sexuality—but that yes, Eddie leaving has left a huge hole in his life. He even goes as far as to say he understands Tommy feeling threatened by what he and Eddie have.
Ignoring the fact that he could have said all of this to reassure Tommy and didn’t, a romantic partner should not feel threatened by your best friend. We’ve never seen it with any of Buck’s other partners, so why now? Because Buck’s other partners didn’t know that Buck was interested in men, and therefore didn’t have any reason to examine his friendship with Eddie. Tommy likely wouldn’t either, if he believed that Eddie was straight. By bringing this up as an issue, it’s forcing the show—and the characters—to confront it in a way that’s never been necessary until now. If Buck was reaching the correct conclusions each time this has come up, we wouldn’t have multiple episodes dedicated to exploring it.
Buck also explains that part of his reaction with Tommy was that it felt as though he were being accused of something. He doesn’t elaborate, but you can infer that it felt like he was being accused of having feelings for Eddie and lying about it, or of being disingenuous about his feelings for Tommy, which were real to him at the time. A lot of his response right now is defensiveness because of that, and as long as he thinks Eddie isn’t an option anyway, he’s not going to examine it any closer, no matter how much the people in his life are asking him to.
By the end of the conversation, Buck has talked himself into thinking he should call Tommy and apologize for using him as a distraction so he wouldn’t have to feel alone. He’s basically admitting that hooking up with Tommy had less to do with any feelings they once shared, and more to do with the fact that Buck is just lonely without his best friend around. That’s the reason he was hanging out with Ravi in the first place, but that wasn’t enough to fill the void he feels with Eddie being gone. It wasn’t enough to distract him from the fact that Eddie and Chris wouldn’t be coming back, so he could finally sleep in his new place. He puts an entirely new spin on “getting over someone by getting under someone else.”
Not only does this arc spend a lot of time reminding the audience of the depth of Buck and Eddie’s friendship, it also re-frames it in a possible romantic context through the eyes of people observing it from the outside. Viewers are now called on to reconsider their interactions through that same lens, while waiting to see if Tommy’s assumptions about Eddie prove to be true.
In the meantime, a new obstacle has been introduced in Buck’s journey to finding happiness: how does he reassure any of his future partners that Eddie isn’t a threat, when he couldn’t even convince the man he dated for six months? It seems like Oliver may be getting his wish for a slowburn, will-they-won’t-they.
We do see Tommy one final time after all this, and it serves as a bookend to their relationship: he helps Buck save the 118, ending things on a more positive note so that Buck can look back on their time together positively. This is something Tim mentioned wanting for the pairing, as a sort of entry level relationship for Buck. The show makes no efforts to lay the groundwork for a reconciliation, despite Tommy being present for Buck losing a father figure, and despite Tommy attending Bobby’s funeral, because his purpose in this story has been served.
