SPOILER ALERT:The story includes details about Episode 815 ofABC’s9-1-1,“Lab Rats.“
On a typical 9-1-1 episode, this would’ve been a centerpiece — a chase involving three helicopters around Downtown Los Angeles skyscrapers that ends with a landing on the field of the L.A. Coliseum.
But the April 17 episode of ABC’s firefighter drama, “Lab Rats,” was anything but typical, marking the exit of star and executive producer Peter Krause. So the impressive stunt was overshadowed by Station 118 Captain Bobby Nash (Krause) dying just minutes later at an underground lab where a fire had triggered the release of a deadly virus.
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The aerial pursuit involved 118’s Buck (Oliver Stark) and his ex Tommy (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) leading two military choppers on a decoy mission while Athena (Angela Bassett) rushed to deliver a vial of anti-viral to Bobby’s team, one of whom, Chimney (Kenneth Choi), had gotten infected.
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The plan worked and Chimney lived; it was ultimately Bobby who sacrificed his life for his team. (For Deadline’s coverage of Krause’s departure, read our story with Krause’s comments as well as a and executive producer/showrunner Tim Minear.)
Here, Minear discusses the helicopter chase, which was not a CGI trick.
“It was all real,” he said.
How did they pulled it off?
“We got helicopters and we got an aerial unit,” he said. “Basically, I knew that I wanted the LAFD chopper to land on the roof of the building, and for our people to escape that way.”
That is a reference to Tommy coming to Buck and Athena’s rescue as they were running away from the FBI with the antidote.
“And then Bob Williams, our line producer, who’s always giving me more than I asked for — when we did the tsunami, he called me from Mexico and said, ‘Would you like to see this ferris wheel collapse into the Pacific as they’re racing away on their Zodiacs?’, and I’m, like, ‘Knock it over’, because that wasn’t in the script,” Minear recalled. “So Bob said, ‘Anyone can have a helicopter take off from a building. How about if we get two military choppers and have a chase through downtown LA that ends up in the Coliseum?’, and I’m like, ‘Let’s do it’.”
Minear then revealed what the sequence initially looked like.
“Originally, there was a four-minute version of that, which I just loved. And I slapped Wagner over it, it was Ride of the Valkyries, and it was my favorite thing, I watched it a million times,” he said. “It’s four-minutes long, I’m like, I’m going to have to probably cut your desk scene short, because I’m so in love with this.”
In its original form, the sequence was clearly a nod to what likely is the most famous helicopter scene ever in Apocalypse Now, which also is four-minute-long and set to Wagner’s music. But it didn’t make it to air.
“Eventually the network in the studio talked sense to me,” Minear said. “They’re like, it really can’t be Ride of the Valkyries, and it can’t be four minutes.”
