Image via ABC
Published Apr 13, 2026, 2:22 PM EDT
Jennie Richardson is a TV Features and Lists Writer for Collider, and a graduate student pursuing an MFA in Fiction Writing. In other words, she really loves stories.
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It is a truth universally acknowledged that network procedurals have the best ships. While focusing on weekly cases and calls, these shows allow viewers to both get to know the characters as individuals, and to see how they interact with each other on a day-to-day basis. From The Rookie's Lucy Chen (Melissa O'Neil) and Tim Bradford (Eric Winter), to High Potential's Morgan Gillory (Kaitlin Olson) and Adam Karadec (Daniel Sunjata), to Wild Cards' Max Mitchell (Vanessa Morgan) and Cole Ellis (Giacomo Gianniotti), some of the very best slow-burn ships right now are from network procedurals.
That being said, the very best slow-burn ship on TV right now belongs to 9-1-1. The long-running procedural has had a mixed bag of romances over the years, from short-term pairings that were clearly never meant to last, to beautiful romantic relationships that have become part of the heart of the show. There is a lot to love about the ships of 9-1-1, from their touching stories to their deep care for each other, but one of the best things about 9-1-1's ships is the excellent chemistry that they have with each other. This is every major ship in 9-1-1, ranked by chemistry.
7 Buck and Tommy
Image via ABC9-1-1's best ships that got together during the show have paired up two existing main characters who already had chemistry as friends and fellow first-responders. Before being a love interest for Buck (Oliver Stark), Tommy Kinard (Lou Ferrigno Jr.) had only previously been introduced as a former coworker of Chimney (Kenneth Choi) and Hen (Aisha Hinds), who'd been bigoted towards both of them when they first started working at the 118.
Tommy and Buck's romance was very rushed, with the two of them kissing for the first time the very next episode after they met. Their first kiss will always be an exciting and groundbreaking scene for how it revealed Buck's bisexuality both to him and to viewers, but their relationship only got progressively worse from there. The two never had much chemistry, and Buck's relationship with Tommy only ever seemed to serve as a foil to his closeness with Eddie (Ryan Guzman), so it wasn't a surprise when Tommy eventually revealed that he'd broken up with Buck because he was jealous of Eddie.
6 David and Michael
Image via ABCMichael Grant (Rockmond Dunbar) meets his main love interest and eventual husband, David Hale (La Monde Byrd), in a classic rom-com scenario: being trapped in a hospital elevator together during a power outage. They had immediate chemistry, so it was easy to root for the two of them by the end of their first interaction. After getting to know each other while trapped, they were interrupted before they could exchange contact information, but they reconnected at the hospital a few days later.
Michael and David didn't have as much development and screentime as 9-1-1's other main couples, but they just naturally clicked with each other, and all of their romantic scenes together are still excellent. David fit very easily into Michael's life right away, and he got along well with the 118 extended family. One of the best 9-1-1 storylines ever saw Michael, Bobby (Peter Krause), and David investigating a suspicious neighbor together, and the natural banter and easiness between Michael and David was the perfect addition to this subplot. Michael and David left 9-1-1 back in Season 5, but it's nice to know that the two of them are still happily married.
5 May and Ravi
Image via ABCOne of the best new additions to 9-1-1 Season 9 has been the romantic storyline between May Grant (Corinne Massiah) and Ravi Panikkar (Anirudh Pisharody). The two have known each other for a while through the 118 extended family, but they first connected when May was helping the 118 prepare for the firefighter bachelor auction. Although they didn't get much screentime together before their first date, their shared eye contact made it clear that there was strong chemistry between the two of them.
May bid on Ravi at the auction, and then the two went out on a date that went very well. After that, Ravi ghosted May for a little over a month because he didn't want to complicate his working relationship with Harry (Elijah M. Cooper), but the two recently had a promising moment. As it stands, Ravi and May aren't officially a couple yet, but it looks like they will be soon, and they certainly have the spark necessary to make the most of their limited screentime.
4 Maddie and Chimney
Image via ABCThe top four pairings on this list are the very best of 9-1-1, not just for their excellent love stories, but for their electric chemistry. Chimney and Maddie (Jennifer Love Hewitt) had an instant connection from the moment they first met, when he and Eddie joined Buck to help her move into her new apartment. When it was revealed in "Buck, Actually" that Maddie and Chimney had since become inseparable, their strong chemistry and the way that they were so in-sync with each other made this easy to believe.
Maddie and Chimney's dynamic has evolved in a believable and lovely way throughout the course of the last eight seasons, from two people with a spark who were still getting to know each other, to a devoted married couple with two children who can handle any obstacle that comes their way. Even this far into their relationship, Maddie and Chimney's scenes together always have a special magic to them, and even their casual scenes around the house are magnetic.
Collider Exclusive · TV Medicine Quiz Which Fictional Hospital Would You Work Best In? The Pitt · ER · Grey's Anatomy · House · Scrubs
Five hospitals. Five completely different ways medicine goes sideways on television — brutal, chaotic, romantic, brilliant, and ridiculous. Only one of them is the ward your instincts were built for. Eight questions will figure out exactly where you belong.
🚨The Pitt
🏥ER
💉Grey's
🔬House
🩺Scrubs
FIND YOUR HOSPITAL →
01
A critical patient comes through the door. What's your first instinct? Medicine under pressure reveals who you actually are.
AStay completely present — block everything else out and work through it step by step, right now. BTriage fast and delegate — get the right people on the right problems immediately. CTrust my gut and move — I work best when I stop overthinking and just act. DAsk the question everyone else is ignoring — what's the thing that doesn't fit? ETake a breath, make a joke to cut the tension, and then get to work — panic helps no one.
NEXT QUESTION →
02
Why did you go into medicine in the first place? The honest answer says more about you than the one you'd give in an interview.
ABecause I wanted to be where it matters most — right at the edge, when someone's life is actually on the line. BBecause I wanted to help people — genuinely, one patient at a time, in a system that makes it hard. CBecause I was drawn to the intensity of it — the stakes, the drama, the feeling of being fully alive. DBecause medicine is the most interesting puzzle there is — and I needed a problem worth solving. EBecause I wanted to make a difference — and also, honestly, I didn't know what else to do with my life.
NEXT QUESTION →
03
What do you actually want from the people you work with? Who you want beside you under pressure is who you are.
ACompetence and calm — I need people who don't fall apart when things get bad. BTrust and reliability — I want to know that when I pass something off, it's handled. CConnection — I want colleagues who become family, even if that gets complicated. DIntelligence and the willingness to be challenged — I have no interest in people who just agree with me. EFriendship — people I actually like spending twelve hours a day with, because those hours are going to happen either way.
NEXT QUESTION →
04
You lose a patient you fought hard to save. How do you carry it? Every doctor who's worked a long shift has had to answer this question.
AI carry it. All of it. I don't look for ways to put it down — that weight is part of doing this work honestly. BI process it and move — you have to, or the next patient suffers for the one you just lost. CI feel it deeply and lean on the people around me — I don't think you're supposed to handle that alone. DI go back over every decision — not to punish myself, but because I need to understand what I missed. EI grieve it genuinely, find some way to laugh about something unrelated, and try to be kind to myself — imperfectly.
NEXT QUESTION →
05
How would your colleagues describe the way you work? Your reputation on the floor is usually more accurate than your self-image.
AIntense and completely present — no small talk during a shift, but exactly who you want there. BSteady and dependable — not the flashiest in the room but never the one who drops something. CPassionate and occasionally chaotic — brilliant on the hard cases, prone to drama everywhere else. DBrilliant and difficult — right more often than anyone else, and everyone knows it, including me. EWarm and self-deprecating — not the most intimidating presence, but genuinely good at this and easy to like.
NEXT QUESTION →
06
How do you feel about hospital protocol and procedure? Every institution has rules. What you do with them is a choice.
AProtocol is the floor, not the ceiling — I follow it until the patient needs something it can't provide. BI respect it — the system is broken in places, but the structure is there for a reason and I work within it. CI follow it until my instincts tell me not to — and my instincts are usually right, even when they cause problems. DRules are for people who haven't thought hard enough about when to break them. EI try to follow it and mostly do — with a few memorable exceptions that still come up in meetings.
NEXT QUESTION →
07
What does this job cost you personally? Nobody works in medicine without paying a price. What's yours?
AEverything outside these walls — I've given this job my full attention and the rest of my life has gone around it. BMy idealism, mostly — I came in believing the system could be fixed and I've made a complicated peace with that. CStability — my personal life has been as chaotic as the OR, and that's not entirely a coincidence. DMy relationships — I am not easy to know, and the people who've tried to would probably agree. EMy sense of gravity — I use humour as a coping mechanism, which not everyone appreciates in a hospital.
NEXT QUESTION →
08
At the end of a long shift, what keeps you coming back? The answer to this question is the most honest thing about you.
AThe fact that it's real — that nothing else I could be doing would matter this much, right now, today. BThe patients — individual human beings who needed something and got it because I was there. CThe people I work with — I have walked through impossible things with these people and I'd do it again. DThe next unsolved case — there's always another puzzle, and I'm not done yet. EBecause despite everything — the exhaustion, the loss, the absurdity — I actually love this job.
REVEAL MY HOSPITAL →
Your Assignment Has Been Made You Belong In…
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
The Pitt
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn't let you look away.
- You need your work to be real, not romanticised — meaning over drama, honesty over aesthetics.
- You find purpose inside the work itself, not in the chaos surrounding it.
- You've made peace with the fact that this job takes from you constantly, and gives back in ways that are harder to name.
- Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center demands exactly that kind of person — and you would not want to be anywhere else.
ER
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
- You show up, do the work, absorb the losses, and come back the next day without needing the job to be anything other than what it is.
- You care about patients as individual human beings, not as cases to solve or dramas to live through.
- You believe in the system even when it fails you — and you understand that emergency medicine is about holding the line just long enough.
- ER is television about endurance. You have it.
Grey's Anatomy
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
- You feel things fully and form deep attachments to the people you work with.
- Your personal and professional lives are permanently, chaotically entangled — and that entanglement drives both your greatest disasters and your most remarkable saves.
- You understand that extraordinary medicine often happens at the intersection of clinical skill and profound human connection.
- It's messy at Grey Sloan. You would not have it any other way.
House
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn't fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
- You're not primarily motivated by the patient as a person — though you are capable of caring, even if you'd deny it.
- You work best when the stakes are highest and the standard answer is wrong.
- Princeton-Plainsboro exists to house one extraordinary, impossible mind — and everyone around that mind is there because they're smart enough to keep up.
- The only way forward here is to think harder than everyone else in the room. That is exactly what you do.
Scrubs
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
- You are warm, self-aware, and funnier than most people in your field.
- You use humour to get through terrible moments — and at Sacred Heart, that's not a flaw, it's a survival strategy.
- You lean on the people around you and let them lean back. The laughter and the grief are genuinely inseparable here.
- Scrubs is a show about learning to become someone worthy of the job. You are still very much in the middle of that process — which is exactly right.
↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ
3 Hen and Karen
Image via FOXWith Hen (Aisha Hinds) and Karen Wilson (Tracie Thoms), 9-1-1 had the difficult task of introducing an established marriage in its first season in a way that felt believable. Whereas 9-1-1's other pairings have developed on-screen, Hen and Karen have been together since long before the start of the show. The easy chemistry between Hen and Karen is what sells their decades of backstory, and as the flashbacks to their relationship's early days in Season 6's "Tomorrow" revealed, the two have always been drawn to each other.
Hen and Karen just really feel like a long-married couple who both adore each other, whether it be in one of their more romantic scenes, or in a small moment where they are focused on their kids or their jobs. There is a spark to their casual banter, and it's always a lot of fun to see how much they genuinely enjoy each other's company. Hen and Karen have had a lot thrown at them over the seasons, but they approach the majority of it as a team, and a solid one at that.
2 Athena and Bobby
Image via ABCAh, Bobby and Athena (Angela Bassett) – this one still stings. One of the best decisions 9-1-1 ever made was bringing Bobby and Athena together in the Season 1 finale. Even when they were just two people who sometimes worked together, there was this deep connection between Bobby and Athena from very early on. Because of this, that first deep conversation they had together felt very natural and genuine.
Since Bobby's sudden death in Season 8 of 9-1-1, there has been this air of tragedy to his and Athena's relationship. She brought light back to his life when he needed it the most, and though their time together was cut short, they loved each other deeply. There was certainly an electricity to all of their near-death experience scenes, like their emotional cruise ship confessions and the time that he stood in front of a plane to make sure that she landed safely. The real spark of Bobby and Athena's marriage was in the in-between moments, though, where they always had a great back-and-forth, and where they could be silly together.
1 Buck and Eddie
There is a reason that, seven seasons later, Buck and Eddie are such a fan-favorite ship. Even when the likelihood that they could ever get together was extremely slim, there was this crackling chemistry to every single one of their scenes together, starting with the moment Buck saw Eddie for the first time in slow motion to the tune of Salt-N-Pepa's "Whatta Man." It's impossible to look away from Buck and Eddie when they're interacting on-screen. They naturally seek each other out, find each other's eyes, and are unbelievably in-sync and in-tune to what the other is doing at any given moment.
Buck and Eddie have an objectively amazing story. Buck was wary of welcoming someone new into the 118, but Eddie won him over as soon as he complimented him for the first time. From there, the two became extremely close and co-dependent best friends, and Buck even became a co-parent to Christopher (Gavin McHugh). It is their chemistry, though, that has elevated Buddie to a once-in-a-lifetime ship. Buck and Eddie may not have been initially planned as a romance, but the chemistry between them oozes in every scene they have together. Their banter and teasing feels like flirting, their moments of expressing care for each other feel like love confessions, and whenever they meet eyes during a group scene, it feels like they're having an entire silent conversation.
9-1-1
Release Date January 3, 2018
Showrunner Tim Minear
Directors Bradley Buecker, David Grossman, Brenna Malloy, Gwyneth Horder-Payton, Jann Turner, Jennifer Lynch, Marita Grabiak, Sarah Boyd, John J. Gray, Barbara Brown, Robert M. Williams Jr., Kristen Reidel, Marcus Stokes, Tasha Smith, Millicent Shelton, Juan Carlos Coto, John Gray, Greg Sirota, Alonso Alvarez, James Wong, Kevin Hooks, Varda Bar-Kar, Shauna Duggins, Sharat Raju
English (US) ·