‘Rescue 911’ Is a Wholesome, Family-Friendly TV Series to Watch With Your Kids

Star Trek legend, William Shatner, hosted this show about real life heroes and the show taught life-saving skills to the audience. Which show? Stay tuned to find out more.

Welcome to Family TV Uncovered, where I talk all about clean family-friendly TV shows and movies that shaped my childhood. I'm your host, Jennifer, and in today's episode, I'll be talking about Rescue 911.

Rescue 911 is the show that I will be talking about today. It was a very popular show in the 90s that I grew up watching with my parents, and I
just enjoyed it so much.
This is definitely a show that is highly educational, and if you homeschool, you can use it as supplemental tool to your homeschool lessons. The reason I stated this show was definitely one of the first reality TV shows is because it really does deal with reality. The show did an amazing job storytelling because it's a mix of reenactments, and at times sometimes the actual people involved are used in the reenactments, along with mixing the actual 911 phone calls with the reenactments. It really makes it stand out, and it really makes you feel like you're in the story and experiencing what the people involved actually experienced.

It taught so many people the importance of knowing basic CPR and fire safety. I know many people who watch the shows like myself actually learned how to do CPR or encourage them to learn CPR. They really try to encourage families to take CPR, be prepared, fire safety, what to do
in certain situations you'd never think you'd find yourself in.
The show was so popular it had over 200 episodes. I'll leave a link in the show notes for all the seasons and episodes so you can read more
about each individual episode.

There are so many stories in this show, too many to talk about on this podcast, but you see everyday people like you and me becoming heroes, people that go above and beyond what a citizen is called to do.
And best of all, you see people actually get involved. People didn't just, most people didn't just stand by and watch something happen.
They got involved to help either because no one else was around or no one else jumped in and certain people had this call that just made them want to be involved and help other people. This was definitely before the days of today. This was definitely before modern days where the first reaction most people have nowadays in an emergency is to grab their cell phones and start recording it to post it on YouTube or social media. That wasn't the case back then. You don't see many people get involved nowadays.
People's way of getting involved is just being a witness and recording things and not helping people. And that's what I love about this show is because you see some episodes where somebody grabbed an old school video recorder to record some of the events, but that was very few and far
between. Like I said, most people jumped in and got involved.

There are so many stories like there's a story where a woman for some reason her cards stopped on train tracks and there's other people around watching calling the police and one man jumped out of his car leaving his wife and son behind to go help this woman because he couldn't just stand by and watch a woman get run over by a train. You see many episodes of children saving other children's lives, children playing with fire
and teaching the importance of not playing around with fire and fireworks.
There's times when policemen and fire personnel just go above and beyond the call of duty. There are instances where you see police officers or firefighters saving animal lives. I don't think that's in their job description, but many of them felt like it's a life worth saving and that's their job is to save lives. And of course, there are other stories that are very traumatic and that's another great observation of this show is that it was very dramatic and some stories were very horrific, but they reenacted them in a very tasteful way. The show is not overly graphic. If there are some stories that are kind of hard to hear or maybe too traumatic or too intense for young viewers, they'll warn you about it just so that if you have children watching, you could preview it maybe before you have your child watch it.

Boy, I remember some really horrific stories and about an older man who's a doctor and a farmer and he's rolling his field of hay and getting a hay bale together to transport it to a neighbor or a customer, but he got complacent with safety and ended up moving it with the wrong tools and this, I don't know how much a bale of hay weighs, but this thing was huge and the chain he was using to hold it in place broke and this thing of hay just rolls down and runs over the man, the doctor who's he's sitting in a tractor. So when the bale of hay rolls back, it completely runs him over and snaps him basically in half over the seat and it's just horrific and just makes you cringe thinking about, my gosh, what did this guy go through? And his wife, because they're witnessing it and ends up having to decide whether to stay with him or to go get help and she has to go get help because there's no one else around and then hoping when she makes it back, he's still alive and coming back and waiting for help and it's just an intense story.

So there's another intense story where a child, unfortunately, witnesses her father trying to kill her mother and the call is just horrific listening to this poor child on the 911 call and the 911 operators being helpless trying to help her and just trying to get help there as fast as possible. You see the emotions of the police and the ambulance personnel that are there trying to help this woman and getting her to the hospital.

There's quite a few other domestic violence stories that are very intense and emotional. It's just amazing watching how a little girl, I think she was nine, eight or nine and how she handled herself and composed herself and saved her mom's life. So this story definitely has its place and it's definitely relatable, especially for anyone who's actually gone through a traumatic experience.
I haven't had, I have never had to call 911 for an emergency, so I cannot relate, but the show still has its educational value.

Another thing is that it really shows how important community is. You see so many neighbors, friends, colleagues come to people's help, come to their friends help and help in any way that they can. The police and fire safety back in the days when they used to visit schools and give fire
safety tips and other tips. I'm a homeschool mom, so I'm not sure if that still goes on. If it does still go on to this day, that's fantastic, but I'm not sure. So if your kids, schools do those kinds of things, that's awesome. And again, this show would be a great supplement to those kinds of lessons.

It's really nice when you see community come together to support one another. And sometimes you see the beautiful reunions between the 911 operators and the people that they help and the common theme among them is thank you. The two little words, thank you just are not enough to show appreciation for what these 911 operators do. These 911 operators are a lifeline for these people. And we should appreciate our 911 operators nowadays. They're the first ones we talk to when we call 911. And this show does a very good job of showing appreciation for our first responders. And that's so important because they sacrifice a lot with their own families to serve their communities too.

So again, I highly encourage you to watch this show. You can watch it for free on YouTube by doing a search for rescue 911 episodes on YouTube.
A bunch of them will populate from your search, but you can also stream it on Pluto TV. You can go to plutotv.com or if you have an Amazon fire stick or a Roku, you can add the Pluto TV app to those devices and stream rescue 911 on the rescue 911 channel. There is a rescue 911 channel on Pluto TV where they do nothing but loop all the seasons and all the episodes around and around. And they loop the shows over and over.
The show also teaches things like individual responsibility, accountability, the dangers of drinking and driving, not paying attention, speeding, stalking, the dangers of playing with fire, gasoline, even just simple things like running around with objects in your hand. Many accidents, there are plenty of stories about accidents of kids running around with things in their hand and getting hurt.
So there's just so many lessons that can be learned from this show.
And I highly recommend that you give it a try and watch it.
Well, that brings us to the end of this family TV uncovered episode.
I hope you enjoyed learning about rescue 911.
Join me next week where I'll be talking about a film about a young girl who takes on a daring career that I know I would never do. So I'd love to hear from you if you've had an experience where you had a call 911 and
what that was like or if you watch this show, some of your favorite episodes or moments or memories from watching the show. And if you're watching it for the first time, I'd love to hear your opinion of it and what you think of it. You can visit my website at familytvuncovered.com and send me a message through the website.
If you liked this episode, please help me grow this podcast by leaving a review and sharing it with your friends and family. That brings us to the end of this episode of Family TV Uncovered. I hope you enjoyed learning about rescue 911. Join me next week where I'll be talking about a 90s movie about a young girl who dared to live her dreams even when a life-changing injury could have brought it to an end.