The latest two 9-1-1: Lone Star episodes have been very emotional for paramedic Captain Tommy Vega (Gina Torres). First, she tries dating, only for her date (Amaury Nolasco’s Morris) to start crying at the table. Then, in “Impulse Control,” she deals with her brother-in-law’s visit.

Julius (Nathan Owens) comes to town for his nieces’ birthdays, and it becomes emotional when he and Tommy discuss the fact that he didn’t attend his brother Charles’ (Derek Webster) funeral. He went, he confesses to Tommy, but he couldn’t go inside. The two kiss, then later agree it didn’t happen nor will it again. But he is now staying with her and her daughters while he’s in town.

Torres breaks down the episode.

I absolutely love how Tommy dealt with Julius with that smile on her face when he showed up at the girls’ party and she had him leave. It’s a “you messed up, but I can’t act exactly how I’d like, but know you’re on my bad side” smile. I loved the way you played it.

Gina Torres: Thank you. I couldn’t really make a real scene because it’s a kids’ party. We’re in the middle of a party, so we just had to keep it all together and she deals with it later.

After that, Tommy tells Judd (Jim Parrack) she has to protect her girls, but how much is she also protecting herself? Because Julius is Charles’ family and part of him, but she’s still grieving.

She’s absolutely grieving. There’s a pretty long history of behavior that she has not been on board with for quite some time. It’s her opportunity to finally put Julius in his place and she looks forward to that. She’s in mom mode. She’s in widow mode. She’s in “don’t cross this line.” Yeah, she doesn’t need it. She doesn’t need any of the B.S. that Julius might bring to the day.

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Tommy finds out that Julius did go to the funeral, but he just couldn’t make it inside. But there’s still the matter of him only showing up four times a year to see his nieces. So there is this question of how much she can rely on him, but how much is she reevaluating everything about him after learning that about the funeral?

I think it’s important to Tommy to know the truth and she does just begin to create a space for him to prove himself. She wants to see the Julius that Charles saw and Charles knew, and I think it’s that need and that desire that not only helps Julius step up, but gives her this sense of family that she and her girls need at this moment, that sense of connection.

She hears that when she comes in at the end and Julius is telling her daughters a story she didn’t know about Charles.

Exactly. That’s treasure. That’s important for the girls.

Let’s talk about that kiss. It could be blamed on the drinking and emotions running high, but what was it about on Tommy’s side? It stood out that she pointedly did not look at him as he was leaving.

Right. That kiss was really about grief. It was about two people coming together in grief and comfort. It was a hug. It was a moment of ultimate nurturing and comforting that turned into a kiss and they realized it immediately and they separated and neither one of them wanted that and that was not what the intent was. But that’s what grief does. And she’s shaken by it. She goes to Grace [Sierra McClain] to talk about it. She finds a place to sort of put it and live with it and move on.

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Tommy and Julius haven’t really talked about the kiss, other than to say it will never happen again. How is she feeling about him at the end of the episode? Not necessarily romantically, but it’s complicated, right?

We established at the end of the episode that he’s gonna be spending a lot of time there. Because we see that Tommy’s ready to date from last week’s episode, Tommy is getting to a place where she is starting to reimagine what her life is really like now as a woman, as a single woman in the world. I find that maybe that was an awakening of that and we’ll see where that journey goes. How much that has to do with Julius and more to do with Tommy, we still don’t know.

With Julius staying around, how much can Tommy rely on him? Will he show up for her daughters when he needs to?

We’ll see. I think he wants to. I believe that he’s there now. He’s in a position where he feels like he has to step up. He can’t be the guy that gets bailed out all the time. Now his older brother’s not there, so he gets to step up, and so let’s hope he does.

Jordin Althaus/FOX

This was a rough episode for the 126 with the culmination in the multiple calls involving Al. How’s Tommy doing after that?

Nobody wants to lose anybody on a call, and that was shocking, to say the least. Nancy has a line: Usually by the time they’re strapped in the ambulance, the danger’s over. It didn’t occur to anybody that that would happened. It’s not the part of the job that anybody expects to happen, and so they’re all reeling from it.

Going back to Tommy’s attempt at getting back into dating, do you think she maybe needed a date that didn’t go well more than she needed one that did to figure out if she’s ready?

I think she got the date that she needed. I think she got the right date. Why not? What would she have done if it had gone perfectly, right? Maybe that’ll be in another episode down the road.

Owen’s (Rob Lowe) going to therapy for his rage. Is there anything coming up there when it comes to how it affects the 126 or Tommy talking to him about it? I do love the Tommy-Owen dynamic.

Rob and I have a lot of fun with that. Not that I can think of right at the moment. But we’re heading into the end of the season, so there’s a lot going on.

Are there any memorable calls coming up for Tommy?

I’m shooting one [this] week that should be pretty brutal, but that’s all I can tell you.

In terms of physical or emotional stuff?

It’s pretty emotional. The most emotional, we just had a rescue that actually wasn’t a rescue at all, with the mom and the young boy. It was awful. It was awful to shoot. It was so hard. And anything with just being a mom, when you have that element put into our stories and the sacrifices that moms make in the moment, the loss of a parent on their children, those are all really hard days.

9-1-1: Lone Star, Mondays, 9/8c, Fox