Thursday night’s episode of 9-1-1: Nashville, Season 1 Episode 13, titled “Small Potatoes,” brought one of the most anticipated moments of the season.
Blue and Taylor finally went public with their relationship. The person who catches them kissing in the station parking lot before their shift is not just their captain. He is Blue’s father.
Chris O’Donnell, who plays Captain Donald “Don” Hart at Station 113, has now spoken about the scene and what it means for the back end of the season, and the situation is as complicated as the show has been building toward since the premiere.
A Review Of “Small Potatoes“
In the March 12 episode, Taylor (Hailey Kilgore) drives Blue (Hunter McVey) to work and the two, arriving 20 minutes early, end up kissing in the parking lot.
Blue hesitates, knowing someone might see them. Someone does. Don walks out and catches them. Taylor’s response is to smile and say, “Hey Cap, how you doing?”
The episode, written by Jim Garvey, also follows Taylor getting an invitation to record with a Nashville music idol after she and the team save a father and daughter from a cliffside crash.
That opportunity forces her to weigh how far she will go for her music career against the firefighting career she has built.
Meanwhile, Roxie (Juani Feliz) faces a lawsuit from a family she helped and later discovers that a young woman she treated is pregnant, a diagnosis that ends up saving the woman’s life.
But it is the Blue and Taylor moment that fans have been waiting for, and it arrives with maximum awkwardness.
The Father-Captain Problem
Hunter McVey, who plays Blue, explained the dynamic clearly before the episode aired. Blue going public with Taylor is not simply a matter of telling their captain. It is a matter of telling his father, a man Blue barely knew existed at the beginning of the season.
“I think Blue is incredibly excited on where things are going with Taylor and where I think they can both feel that maybe it’s time to get it out in the open, get it out in the air and address it publicly,” McVey told TV Insider.
“I don’t think they both can hide it for much longer. So, I think if they want to continue the relationship, they’re going to have to come to terms with, ‘Hey, this is a tricky work relationship balance.'”
McVey acknowledged what makes the situation particularly knotty, “It’s not just going to their captain. It’s also Blue going to his father about this. Interesting dynamic, for sure.”
O’Donnell has spoken about Don’s instinct as a captain, and as a father, throughout the season.
Don, as O’Donnell has described him, is fundamentally about building family and leading by example.
Finding out that his son, who is also a cadet at his station, is in a relationship with a fellow firefighter puts both of those values in direct tension.
As a captain, fraternization in the firehouse is a personnel issue. As a father who has spent this entire first season trying to earn Blue’s trust after years of his existence being a secret, it is something else entirely.
Chris O’Donnell On Don’s Approach
O’Donnell, in interviews surrounding the episode, addressed how Don handles the collision of his professional and personal lives at Station 113.
Asked how Don and his crew compartmentalize the family drama when they are on a life-or-death call, O’Donnell said:
“I think that once people get over anger and shock and give people a chance to explain themselves — if there’s valid reasons or explanations for things — I think people can be more understanding, as opposed to something that was maybe just reckless and is hard to explain. So hopefully they can work things out.”
That measured, give-people-a-chance approach appears to be how Don navigates the chaos of his personal life spilling into the firehouse, which at Station 113, it has done constantly.
His son Ryan (Michael Provost) chose firefighting over the family horse-racing empire.
His ex-girlfriend Dixie (LeAnn Rimes) is Blue’s mother and has been the source of ongoing tension with Don’s wife Blythe (Jessica Capshaw), whose family wealth has defined much of the Hart family’s social identity in Nashville.
Blue arriving at the 113 at all was the original disruption. Blue and Taylor becoming a couple inside the firehouse is the next layer.
Who Are The Characters?
For viewers coming to the show for the first time, the setup of Station 113 is worth understanding. 9-1-1: Nashville is the second spin-off of the 9-1-1 franchise, following 9-1-1: Lone Star, which ended in February 2025, and it premiered on ABC on October 9, 2025.
It is created by Ryan Murphy, Tim Minear, and Rashad Raisani, with Brad Falchuk and Angela Bassett executive producing.
Chris O’Donnell, coming off 14 seasons as the lead of NCIS: Los Angeles, plays Don Hart, a veteran firefighter and rodeo rider who leads Station 113 and whose marriage to Blythe, a member of a five-generation horse-racing dynasty, straddles two very different worlds.
As O’Donnell put it: Don “straddles being a firefighter and then also being in this very high-end, well-known family here in Nashville.”
Hailey Kilgore plays Taylor Thompson, a firefighter at the 113 who is also a singer and guitarist, a character the show uses to lean into Nashville’s musical identity.
Kilgore was a 2018 Tony Award nominee for her Broadway debut in Once on This Island.
Hunter McVey plays Blue Bennings, described in pre-show materials as a “haunted bad-boy” who was working as a stripper before an incident involving a crashed party bike brought him to the firehouse and into Don’s life as the son Don never publicly acknowledged.
Kimberly Williams-Paisley plays Cammie Raleigh, a Nashville 911 dispatcher and Blythe’s sister-in-law.
LeAnn Rimes plays Dixie Bennings, Blue’s mother and Don’s ex-girlfriend, who is a singer. The Dixie-Blythe rivalry has been one of the season’s recurring threads, two women whose lives intersect entirely because of Don, and who have not been particularly gracious about the arrangement.
The Renewal And The Viewership Numbers
On March 5, 2026, the same night the 9-1-1 crossover aired, ABC officially renewed 9-1-1: Nashville for a second season.
The renewal came after a first season that had fluctuating linear ratings early before stabilizing and gaining significant traction on streaming. The show occasionally outperformed the flagship 9-1-1 on Disney+.
The premiere of 9-1-1: Nashville drew 12.4 million total viewers across ABC, Hulu, Hulu on Disney+, and digital platforms after seven days of viewing, a 231% increase from its same-day audience of 3.75 million.
After 35 days, total viewership reached 19.29 million, with the show ranking as the number one new broadcast series among adults aged 18 to 49 that season.
O’Donnell acknowledged the show took time to find its footing, and is looking forward to what Season 2 can build.
“Characters find their voices, and the writers kind of understand each character and the dynamics and how everyone works together, who works well, who doesn’t,” he told Collider.
“Finding the voice of the show and how it’s just different from its predecessor, the original — I’m excited to continue building on what we already started.”
He has also pushed for new viewers to catch up on Hulu before the season ends:
“If they go back to the episode that we just had with young Dixie, Blythe, and Don, that is very informative to understanding these characters’ history and how they all came together. And I think that foundation really helps to understand the show and get hooked in.”
What Comes Next on 9-1-1: Nashville?
With two episodes left in Season 1, the Blue-Taylor relationship is now out in the open, and Don knows.
McVey has teased that the rest of the season will see Blue pushing further in both directions: building his bond with the Harts while navigating what going public with Taylor actually costs him professionally.
The question of whether Taylor’s music opportunity will pull her away from the 113 is the other unresolved thread heading into the finale.
9-1-1: Nashville airs Thursdays at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC, immediately following 9-1-1. New episodes are available to stream the next day on Hulu.
