Lone Star’ couple TK and Carlos fight over adopting Jonah (exclusive preview)

Things are not all well in the house of Tarlos.

Carlos (Rafael Silva) on ‘9-1-1: Lone Star’ season 5, episode 8, “The Quiet Ones”.

FOX

Last week’s 9-1-1: Lone Star saw TK (Ronen Rubinstein) end his birthday party early after his stepfather, Enzo (Lost alum Henry Ian Cusick), was arrested for fraud and conspiracy. Now, TK is worried about what will happen to his young half-brother, Jonah, and — in a season 5, episode 8 preview clip exclusive to Entertainment Weekly — discussing the possibility of adoption with Carlos (Rafael Silva) does not go well.

Carlos feels like he’s been working on being more present and not letting the search for his dad’s murderer impact their relationship, but TK still feels there’s “three people in this marriage”: “You, me, and your father’s killer.”

“As Carlos and TK got married, we were always looking for what are the deeper conflicts that they could have that would still allow them to love each other — so no cheating or anything like that,” 9-1-1: Lone Star co-showrunner Rashad Raisani tells EW. “They love each other. But in real relationships, even healthy ones, there are these really strong friction points.”

For Carlos, “it was always going to be his obsession with his dad’s murder,” Raisani continues. “That is inevitably going to cause issues. And then with TK, going back to last season, he told Carlos that he really wanted to be a dad and Carlos said ‘I’m not ready’ and TK said that was okay. We didn’t want TK to be a dick and bring that up again without a new circumstance, so we thought it would be great if we gave TK a new urgent situation, which is ‘My baby brother is about to be cast to the wind if we don’t adopt him’ and have that go right against Carlos going, ‘But I’m right on the cusp of solving my father’s murder and I don’t have time for that.’ So that kind of led to this conflict between them.”

The desire to set up that conflict — and casting the “incredible and nuanced” Henry Ian Cusick — led the Lone Star team to tweaking their initial plan to introduce Enzo: “We always had this character in our minds, and we always knew he’d be wealthy and probably have some Bernie Madoff-style baggage, but we had first pictured him much more as a comedic foil for [Rob Lowe‘s] Owen who would be funny and zany,” says Raisani.

“Then we started to realize there is a lot of real-life pain and love there with TK and Enzo, because this guy really, to be honest, probably had more to do with shaping TK into who he became as a grown man than Owen did,” he adds. “We realized we couldn’t write him as a punchline because he meant a lot to TK. And so we thought this will be a great way to turn the corner from TK thinking of himself as a son to these two fathers and start to think of himself as a father. That’s what got us here.”

9-1-1: Lone Star season 5, episode 8, “The Quiet Ones,” airs Monday at 8 p.m. ET/PT on Fox.