Chris O’Donnell on What Surprised Him About 9-1-1: Nashville (Exclusive)

Unexpected dangers are the name of the game in the 9-1-1 TV franchise created by Ryan Murphy — and the proximity between absurdity and reality still delights Chris O’Donnell, the star of its latest installment, 9-1-1: Nashville, as it approaches its midseason finale.

In the series, O’Donnell’s character, Captain Don Hart of Firehouse 113, works with his team — including his two sons — to save the citizens of Nashville from every possible sort of disaster, from tornadoes to faulty Murphy beds to kites gone wild in the wind.

“Sometimes I’ll read these scripts and go, ‘Oh, come on,'” O’Donnell, 55, tells PEOPLE. “It seems like it’s just so unrealistic, but then you read that some of these things actually happened.”

A few recent disasters on the show really surprised him: “The whole tornado and lightning stuff we’ve been doing — I get that stuff because those are the highlights we see on The Weather Channel. But some of these little things, these little disasters — like the episode where the water slide breaks apart? Sure enough, on my social media, I’ve got these things popping up with these crazy situations where this really does happen.”

(Earlier this year, a Royal Caribbean cruise guest was injured following a malfunction on the ship’s water slide that looked frighteningly similar to the incident on the ABC show.)

“Every time I laugh and I call [the producers], they’ll send me a link to an article,” O’Donnell admits. “I was laughing about the girl who gets eaten up by a Murphy bed. I’m like, ‘You’ve got to be kidding me,'”

But the actor, who joined the franchise after 14 seasons as a lead on NCIS: Los Angeles, has embraced the 9-1-1 ethos.

“It’s insane, and it never ends,” he says, pointing out that the original series, 9-1-1, recently sent its characters to space. “Anything is possible, and that’s the show. A lot of my friends thought, ‘Oh, Chris is doing a fireman show,’ and they’d never seen 9-1-1, so they turn on the first episode, and they’re like, ‘What the hell is this? A girl got swept away with a kite!'”

“It is a very specific brand,” O’Donnell adds. “People want to tune in and see this chaos. … You have to have fun with it.”

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In addition to all the musical elements that are worked into the rescue plots thanks to the show’s location, 9-1-1: Nashville has another storytelling layer that stands out from the franchise’s previous iterations.

“Our show is a little different because there’s this soap opera, Dynasty-type thing piled on top of it,” O’Donnell says, referring to Don’s family drama with his wife Blythe (Jessica Capshaw), sons Ryan (Michael Provost) and Blue (Hunter McVey) and Blue’s mother Dixie (LeAnn Rimes).

Still, the drama stays on the screen, according to O’Donnell: “Our cast couldn’t be nicer,” he says. “We have really good energy.”

That energy will surely be palpable throughout the new show’s fall finale, airing Thursday, Nov. 13 at 9 p.m. ET/PT on ABC. The action will resume in the new year on January 8.