Your drown buck mission must have gotten in my head because I was just rewatching Buck Begins and there were several little things that stood out to me in the context of... if the drown buck theory were to come to pass, could make for nice parallels ,or just things that work nicely with what you've already laid out for that spec.

One was Buck being in a terrible headspace, but going into the factory fire and then disobeying orders to evacuate which got him in a life-threatening position. And "giving up" (which I know you've mentioned in your spec around him maybe not trying as hard to save himself)

They must have mentioned the ocean, specifically, at least three times in the postcard/flashback montage- from Buck: "I love being close to the ocean," "I miss the ocean," from Connor: "[LA] it's only an hour from the ocean, man."

The exchange with Saleh after Buck gave him his mask about "how will you breathe?" "I'm gonna hold it." "for how long?" "as long as I can."

I'm not sure I've ever heard or at least noticed 911 do this at any other point, but they played a heartbeat sound effect, only for about three beats, right as Buck is noticing him passing out/not breathing(?), just before the sprinklers come on.

And then there's just the whole music/rescue of it all: "so far from being free, from the past that's haunting me / the future I just can't touch" *ENTER EDDIE* (and team).

Idk, all that^^^, combined with your spec, and just generally where Buck's character stands vs where he needs to go, seems to line up nicely for a subtle, non-labeled, Buck Begins Again.

First of all, I need to say that every time someone says they are thinking about Buck drowning because of me I laugh like a cartoon villain lol so thank you for enabling my insanity.

ALSO YES YES YES. I know my general explanations of how I got to the drowning only brush on Buck begins, but like, the spec itself started going around in my head when I made this post back in September, because I thought making the set would make me stop thinking about Buck and water and the general breathing of it all, clearly it didn't work lol. The main thing for me is the way Buck has been trying to keep himself together since Buck Begins, and that I'm gonna hold my breath thing really stayed with me, because that's against protocol, but Buck doesn't believe his life is worth it, and in that moment he's really feeling that, and even Buck admits it, he almost gave up there. And Buck has been holding his breath. And sure, you could've moved on from that after the lightning since the thing that stops working are his lungs, BUT he's still pretending to be fine, he hasn't dealt with his death or any major feelings he might have about everything that happened to him. And since his trauma is linked by water and most of his near death experiences involve breathing, drowning him makes so much sense narratively. Even more considering the way he had some sort of revelation when he was in his coma, experiencing something like that again could shock him into action. Seriously, it's right there. It writes itself. And you can parallel SO MUCH stuff. Almost losing Bobby in the plane crash, Maddie lost in the snow, losing Chris on the tsunami, almost losing Eddie on the well, almost losing himself at that warehouse or even the lightning. It's right there.

Also yes, Eddie being the first on his line at the warehouse always makes me feral. Even more paired with the way Eddie was running up that ladder to get to his line in the lightning. Like hello?????? They need to drown him and make Eddie bring him back again since Eddie was the one doing cpr and shocking him when they got his pulse back. It all makes sense.