ET exclusively debuts a first look from Wednesday's powerful episode about mental health.
S.W.A.T. is on high alert when one of their own goes missing.
On Wednesday's episode, titled "Stigma," Hondo (Shemar Moore) and his colleagues become increasingly concerned over the well-being and mental health of ex-S.W.A.T. member Buck (Louis Ferreira). When he disappears, Hondo and the team fear for the worst.
In ET's exclusive sneak peek from the hour, Hondo, Deacon (Jay Harrington) and Street (Alex Russell) bust into Buck's home to find it abandoned and in complete disarray -- empty bottles of alcohol and takeout containers covering every surface. Hondo notices a broken framed photo of Buck with the rest of S.W.A.T. and starts to scour for any hints as to where he could have gone, his eyes landing on Buck's dead cell phone. Seconds later, Deacon comes out with a bottle of sleeping pills. Things aren't looking good.
With his phone charged up, Hondo redials one of the last numbers Buck called before splitting -- a 1-800 number that turns out to be the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. It dawns on all three of them that Buck may be suicidal, prompting Street to immediately go to Buck's gun safe and confirming that his gun is missing. This is officially bad news. Watch ET's exclusive sneak peek above to see what happens next.
S.W.A.T. co-creators Aaron Rahsaan Thomas and Shawn Ryan chose to take advantage of the series' national platform by bringing attention to the often unspoken mental and emotional pressure that police and law enforcement officials experience every day with Wednesday's episode.
The episode was developed with the support of the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline.
Last April, Thomas wrote a first-person essay for ET detailing why he and Ryan felt it was crucial to use S.W.A.T. as a vehicle to shed light on real-world injustices, difficult social issues and hot-button topics.
"Similar to the way we used a controversial police shooting to launch the series, we often take topics reserved for 'very special episodes' of TV series and feature them as story engines," he wrote. "We’ve explored storylines as diverse as devout Christian beliefs, immigration, privatized prison labor, militant liberalism, white nationalism, false information on social media and throuples (where three people exclusively date each other as a group). We strive to effect change by presenting different sides of topics for audiences to consider."
S.W.A.T. airs Wednesdays at 10 p.m. ET/PT on CBS.
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