We may never be able to outrun the ghosts of our pasts.

And no matter how hard we may want to, those ghosts can stay with us long after we've presumed them to be long gone and buried.

And that's what the crux of 9-1-1 Season 5 Episode 7 is all about, though it's an odd hour that decides to put secondary characters at the forefront, which doesn't work out the way it should have.

Listen, I have nothing against secondary characters. They are essential pieces to every show, and they help keep things fresh and move storylines forward. But there's an issue when they take the focus away from the main stars of the show.

And that's what happened here, with the main plot going to Ransone and Taylor, which is weird to write out and even weirder to watch.

Ransone is a great recurring character. He and Athena work well together, and there's no issue with him getting screen time. He and Athena do their detective thing and investigate the case because they're, you know, actual cops doing their jobs.

But Taylor comes out of nowhere, suddenly wanting to be like a private investigator, turning Buck's dining room into a mock precinct, and nothing about it works.

For starters, since when is this what Taylor does? All we know about Taylor, for the most part, is that she's after a story. Being a reporter and all, that makes sense. But now she wants to get to the bottom of this mystery, for what?

It's bizarre. And the longer the episode goes on, it just gets stranger. And the fact that she somehow was at the location of an active crime scene before Ransone was so dangerous, and again, didn't make a ton of sense.

Ransone: Alright, here's what I can tell you. Off the record. I'm putting an officer at Mr. Hill's door. No one is going in or out, except hospital staff.
Taylor: Wow, you think the alleged carjacker could come back?
Ransone: No. But I'm pretty sure you'll try.

• Permalink: No. But I'm pretty sure you'll try.

Taylor is an okay character for what she is, but the show's insistence on making her a more significant part of an already bloated show doesn't sit right with me. We've got plenty of characters, literally, just begging for the kind of spotlight Taylor was afforded throughout this installment.

She somehow played a more substantial role than Buck and Bobby combined.

Where is this kind of spotlight for David? Or Karen?

Taylor has always been more than just a love interest, but in an episode that was already missing Maddie and Eddie, it felt weird to be getting this Taylor Kelly showcase. But this has been such a disappointing season thus far that it shouldn't have been all that surprising.

The big case she and Ransone were trying to solve started promisingly, but then it just got campy and confusing. And campy is fine, but it was hard to keep up with the back and forth montage of Ransone and Taylor trying to present the facts.

And from there, it just got worse and worse, culminating in this nonsensical reasoning for a man to get buried alive, which is a shame because the premise was great, and the lead-up to finding Edgar was brilliant.

The first few minutes were classic 9-1-1, with the first responders deploying all their resources to rescue someone in tandem with the call center. And tense seconds of Buck listening for a man's scream from underneath the dirt was harrowing and everything you like about the show.

But that was the highlight, as far as the rescues were concerned.

Everything else was personal, from Hen to Chimney and Harry.

For Harry, he's been battling the demons of Hudson and his kidnapping for a while now, but there was finally a breakthrough here.

Harry's struggles are expected, and I thought it was vital to reiterate that you can't just pretend things didn't happen to get back to a sense of normalcy. It's not healthy, and it's not productive.

But that doesn't mean you need to jump into confronting your feelings before you're ready to do so.

If you need time and space, then you need time and space. And Harry needed time and space to figure out his own emotions about his experience, as well as his feelings toward his parents.

May made a terrific point when talking to Michael about the fact that they haven't been discussing things as a family. They may be talking one-on-one to each other, but they need to communicate collectively.

Because none of them have been on the same page, and it was only furthering the wedge between Harry and his parents, in particular.

Harry is a bright, brave kid. Going back to the crime scene was a play by Harry to confront his demons, and hell, maybe it was foolish and not well-thought-out, but it was Harry attempting to get back a piece of himself that he lost.

Those ghosts that haunt you often continue to cause you pain because you spend so much time trying to pretend like they don't exist instead of making peace with them as much as you can so you can heal and move forward.

Harry: Were you working?
Athena: That doesn't matter. You always come first.

• Permalink: That doesn't matter. You always come first.

Going to that house wasn't going to do that for Harry. But it did allow him to talk to Ransone, who's one of the only other people on the planet who can relate to Harry and his fears.

Their scene was brief but poignant, and I liked how the forward progress started with that conversation, instead of having it be with May or even Athena.

Harry felt understood and respected at that moment by someone who got it, and it gave him the courage to start to mend his relationships with his family and his relationship with his trauma.

Elsewhere, we got some more Karen finally, but I'm sorry, how many times are we going to go down this Eva road?

Who even remembers Eva's exists until she's back and making things uncomfortable for Hen and Karen.

At least, the couple seemed to be on the same page by the end, and this isn't something that will linger because it's a story that 9-1-1 should have put to bed a long time ago, especially since Hen never wavers on her decision to be with Karen and her family at this stage.

So, Eva coming back now didn't carry much emotional weight because it's a moot point now.

But one nice little scene for Hen was her conversation with Chimney, who was back! And even though his screentime was limited, damn, it was good to see him.

And even better to hear him say a lot of things we've been thinking about him all season.

Acknowledging his failures where Maddie was concerned probably came in the hours, upon hours he had in the car with nothing but his thoughts.

Nothing he ever did with Maddie was malicious. Still, he chose not to understand the gravity of the situation because it simply wasn't convenient for him to do so. It was much easier to trust what he was hearing and not what he was seeing, and in the end, that was wrong.

Finding Maddie at this point is crucial for so many reasons, least of all for Chimney to tell her his own mistakes over the past few months. But Eli was right that showing up looking worse for wear wouldn't help the situation.

He needs to be in a much better headspace when he finds Maddie and gets that opportunity to talk with her, hopefully coming soon!

This season has been an up and down mess, but the key to everything could be getting their focus back. And that means having all the core characters back working together.

There is so much off about this season, but that would be a fabulous place to start.

Odds and Ends

• It's always weird when people call Chimney Howie.

• I've said this before, but sometimes they treat Eddie like background noise. And even having said that, it was highly noticeable he was MIA.

• Are they allergic to giving Bobby a storyline outside of being Athena's sounding board?

• All of these people are traumatized, but they seem to pick and choose who gets the space to deal with that trauma, and it's very baffling.

"Ghost Stories" was just not a great episode. There's no getting around it. But perhaps you saw something that escaped me.

There are no questions this week, just a plea for you to fill the comment section with all the good or bad things you liked.

So, let me know your thoughts below, and remember that you can watch 9-1-1 online anytime via TV Fanatic!

Whitney Evans is a senior staff writer for TV Fanatic. She is a lover of all things TV. Follow her on X.