By Nicole
Okay, first off, I should confess that I didn't get to see the first few minutes of the show. My VCR decided that it wanted to record without sound, and while my husband was working on getting sound, he felt the need to put the TV on a station other than NBC. So, with that taken care of, on with the recap.
The show starts off (well, for me, anyway) with Kim and Bobby going into someone's backyard and there are a bunch of Jewish kids praying out loud in Hebrew. Bobby jumps into the pool to take a kid out of the water, and the kid isn't breathing, and they try to do CPR on him but it isn't working, so they use a defibrillator on him. ZAP!
Ty and Sullivan in their car. For some reason Ty is in a really good mood -- maybe his mommy made him pancakes that morning -- and he is whistling and telling Sullivan that he thinks it will be a good day, and Sullivan tells him that Mondays always suck. Ty tells him that it is all mental attitude, and the day is what you make of it, yadda yadda yadda. I take it back -- maybe he got laid over the weekend, because pancakes alone don't put someone in that good a mood. So they get a call from dispatch, and right away they get backed up with calls, from numerous family disturbances to a woman stuck in a tub to someone calling about a strange odor in her building.
Cut to commercial, and my husband finally gets the VCR to work, so from now on I can record and re-watch the show and take decent notes.
Bosco and Yokas walk into the precinct to find flowers waiting for Bosco, with a card that says, "Dearest Maurice, Thanks for the special night. Lance." And all the cops have a hearty laugh, and Bosco says Doherty sent him the flowers because he took Doherty's parking space the day before. What is the deal with these guys pulling practical jokes on each other by accusing them of being gay? Do they have absolutely no originality or imagination? Calling a guy a "homo" is the only thing they can think of when they want to make fun of someone? Come on -- there are tons of movies the writers can steal from -- Porky's, and Animal House,just to name two. Elementary school kids could think of better pranks.
So Ty and Sullivan go to the apartment building to check out the smell. As Ty is telling Sullivan how sunlight and exercise affect your mood, Sullivan tells him to always look up when getting out of their car at an apartment building, because people throw things at them from the windows, and he also warns him not to go into the elevator, because things get dropped onto it. And as they walk up the stairs, Ty slips and falls on his face, and Sullivan explains to him that the drug dealers put bacon grease on the stairs so the cops would have a harder time chasing them. Maybe the guys at the fire department should get some tips from the drug dealers on pranks, because watching Ty fall was pretty funny. So a woman meets them in the hall and opens up the door to an apartment where the smell is coming from, and the stench pretty much slaps them in the face when the door opens, and the woman runs down the hall all disgusted, kind of like the time my dog Clint laid a silent-but-deadly fart in the bedroom, and when I walked into the bedroom I walked straight into the fart, and I was totally grossed out and ran away. So Ty and Sullivan start walking around the apartment looking for the source of the stench, and Ty opens up a door and walks in, and he sees a dead guy all decomposing and a gazillion flies buzzing all around and Ty start retching and runs out of the apartment. Ew! That would definitely ruin my Monday.
Bosco and Yokas are in their car, and Bosco is complaining that people will think he is gay now; he whines to a skeptical Yokas that she wouldn't like it if people thought she was a lesbian or something, and she informs him that she is a female cop, so everyone assumes she is a lesbian anyway. Then she confesses that Fred, her husband, thought Bosco was gay because of the way he walks. So of course Bosco has to have a hissyfit about it, because we all know from his performance on that surveillance tape last week that he is a raving hetero. He's a raving something, at any rate.
Doc and Carlos stop at a corner and there is a girl sitting on the sidewalk wheezing, and a woman tells them that she is the girl's foster mother, that the girl just came to live with her that day and she doesn't know what's wrong with her. Carlos asks the girl all sorts of technical questions while Doc puts her in the ambulance and tries to calm her down. Carlos takes out a syringe, which makes the girl start freaking, and Doc tells Carlos to put the syringe away, but Carlos keeps insisting that the girl needs a shot -- of what, I don't know, because they just called it an "epi" and I don't know what that is. ["I think they mean 'epinephrine,' and since asthma inhalers contain pseudoepinephrine, that's probably what they mean, but don't take my word for it." -- Sars] Contents of the syringe aside, Doc is getting really annoyed, and he tells Carlos to start driving and let him take care of the girl.
Bobby and Kim are in the ambulance on the way over to a park, and Kim asks Bobby if he and Dana "knocked boots." Yeah, Kim, they took off their shoes and clunked them together for a few hours. Just ask if they had sex! After giving Kim a hard time, Bobby finally admits that he did sleep with Dana. If the show had a studio audience, everyone would hoot and holler and yell, "Wooooooooooooo!" right about now. They park the ambulance and walk over to Yokas, who is sitting on a bench with a young girl who recently got beaten up. Hey -- it's Sunny, the girl who OD'd at the park and then OD'd a second time and was dumped in an alley! For once, you can actually see her face, and she looks like a poor man's Katie Holmes. Whatever. So Bosco walks up to them, and Bobby asks him if he has a hip problem because he is walking funny. Oh, I see -- Bosco is trying to walk differently now because Yokas told him that someone thought he walked like a gay man. How funny! Not. So Kim asks Sunny who her pimp is and Sunny doesn't say anything, so Kim tells her that she is going to be dead by Christmas, and then gives her information on a shelter. Then Kim and Bobby leave. I wish they had fewer scenes with boring extras and more scenes with Mantooth the fire dog (Wackydiva pointed out that the dog's name is Mantooth, not Mad Tooth).
Bosco and Yokas in a nice apartment building. Bosco is thinking of ways to get revenge on Doherty. At least none of his ideas involves inferring that someone is gay. They arrive the apartment, and a man is standing on the ledge of the veranda and his mother is pleading with Bosco and Yokas to get him down. Bosco goes out and asks the guy what's wrong, and the guy tells Bosco that his boyfriend broke up with him. Of course, once he hears that, Bosco doesn't want to try to help the guy, but Yokas tells him not to act like an asshole (actually, all we heard was "ass," and then the "hole" part got cut off, but I could see her mouthing it, and it was totally obvious that she said the entire word). Bosco sucks it up and tells the guy that he can relate, that he probably feels like he won't find anyone else. Bosco then tells him he is a good looking guy and that he will find someone else in no time. So at this point I think that Bosco may have a heart somewhere inside him, because last week he treated Rick the retarded guy really nicely, and now he is being cool with the gay guy on the ledge. The guy on the ledge decides he doesn't want to die after all and takes Bosco's hand to come inside, but as he is turning around to climb off the ledge, he slips and falls, and Bosco has him by just his jacket sleeve. Yokas rushes over to help, but all they can grab onto is his jacket, and the guy slips out of the jacket and falls to his death. And what does Bosco have to say? "Oops!" That's it. What a freakin' asshole. Forget what I said about his having a heart.
Carlos and Doc in the ambulance (or, as Doc calls it, the "bus"), still arguing about giving the little girl an epi. Carlos says she needs it, but Doc says that she's scared and needs to be calmed down first. Then, Carlos comes back with "I don't appreciate you pimping me all the time." "Pimping"? Funny, but I didn't realize that dealing sexual favors for money helped save lives. Doc informs Carlos that he is Carlos's training officer, and Carlos responds with "I'm not some new jack" and talks about spending four years as a corpsman in the Marines. Is that where he learned all that bizarre language? It's a good thing there are only a few Marines; otherwise, we'd have a big language gap between the Corpsmen and the civilians in this country. Doc gets just as annoyed with all of Carlos's uppity gibberish, and he just goes off on Carlos about how to take care of child patients, and adds that, since it's "[his] bus," they do things his way. Doc shuts him up but good and Carlos has nothing freakish to say after that.
Ty and Sullivan look at sneakers for Ty at a sidewalk sale; he "stepped in dead guy," and he'll have to trash his shoes because he'll never get the smell out. Ty can't find a pair in his size, since he wears a size 17 shoe. Sullivan makes some remark about having water-skis for feet. Sully is really dangerous with the stinging comebacks, huh? Ty says he can't believe that three weeks went by without anyone noticing the dead guy was missing. Sullivan lets it be known that he "wants to go on the curb," because that way someone has to notice. Not that you would want to die with, oh, I don't know, friends and family around you or anything. Ty gives him a weird look, and then they get a call over their radios about a family dispute. I guess Ty will have to track the smell of dead guy into the family's apartment. How rude -- what would his mommy think?
Bosco in the car with Yokas, telling her that if someone has to kill himself, he should just use a shotgun in the tub where it's easier to clean up. Have you noticed that Bosco likes to talk about guns to the head? I wish he would practice what he preaches. As he explains how a person should kill him/herself, he refers to people who jump off buildings as "those guys," and Yokas thinks he means gays; Bosco tells her he didn't mean guys who are "light in their loafers." Oh, Bosco, you are so freakin' PC that it scares me. Yokas then accuses him of being homophobic, and in response Bosco tells her about a gay guy he played high school football, as if that proves his gay-friendliness. Yokas asks him if he took showers around his gay teammate, and Bosco replies, "What? So he could check me out?" Now that is one sensitive man -- I can totally see why people would take him for a gay man. ["So can I. No, seriously. 'Protesteth too much' much?" -- Sars] Fortunately, just before my eyes roll permanently behind my head, they get a call about a restaurant fire and I don't have to hear any more about Bosco's so-called acceptance of gays.
Carlos and Doc at a woman's apartment; she seems to have stomach flu symptoms. Carlos tells the woman's friend that she should take the woman to a doctor and the friend gets upset that Carlos and Doc won't take her. To Carlos's dismay, Doc overrules him and tells the friend that they will take the woman to the hospital to get checked out. Carlos probably doesn't want to get puked on. Wimp.
Bosco and Yokas get to the restaurant. Smoke is coming out of the front door, and people are walking out with old furniture and antiques. The owner of the restaurant tells them that his grandfather brought over all the furniture from Damascus and he doesn't want to lose it. Bosco and Yokas go into the restaurant to get the rest of the furniture.
Ty and Sullivan get to the domestic-dispute apartment and hear yelling from the hallway. They ring the doorbell and a maid lets them in. The husband and wife are screaming and grabbing at each other while their two kids sit on a couch watching the whole thing. The woman tells Sullivan that her husband was day-trading and lost their kids' college money and all of her money as well, and the husband goes after the wife. Sullivan tries to stop him while Ty goes over to check on the kids, and the wife starts yelling at Ty to leave her kids alone. Meanwhile, Sullivan is struggling with the husband and yells for Ty to help him. After they get the husband under control and take him to their car, Sullivan yells at Ty for not immediately having his back and says that's the most important part of being someone's partner. So, Ty, has your Monday gotten any better?
Bobby and Kim come out of a coffee shop and find Sunny waiting outside for them. She asks them about St. Mary's, the shelter Kim told her about. Kim offers to give her a ride there in the ambulance. And for once, not in the back of the ambulance. Sunny needs to go back to Dawson's Creek.
At the burning restaurant, the firemen arrive, and the owner tells Doherty that the fire started in the back in the kitchen, and a moment later Bosco and Yokas come out of the restaurant all smoky and holding an antique chair, and Doherty yells out, "Move that to the other side of the street, ladies, real men have work to do!" With that big head of Doherty's, he's going to need the fire-truck ladder to help him get over himself. Bosco gets all offended about being referred to as a lady, as if he's some kind of gentleman or something. Then Doherty starts smashing out all the front windows of the restaurant. Yeah, Doherty, good thing you broke all those windows, even you could have just walked through the front door to get to the back of the restaurant. Ego much?
Bobby and Kim at the ER. Bobby tells Kim that he is going to talk to Dana and it will only take two seconds. Kim is all, "That's what I heard about you!" Not that she would know from relationships since she spends all her spare time spreading her legs for an ex-husband that she claims she hates. So Bobby sees Dana and asks her if he is going to see her on Saturday and she confirms the date. It really did only take two seconds. Then he walks to the lounge to get some coffee with Kim, because apparently the coffee they just got at the coffee shop just won't do it. Kim is all happy because Doherty came up with half the child support he owes her. Wow, what a stand-up guy; no wonder she can't stop sleeping with him. Maybe if she keeps sleeping with him, she'll finally get the rest of the money that he owes her, because it's not like she doesn't see him every day at work and can't hound him or his commanding officer to get him to give her the money. She goes to get her wallet to pay for the coffee, and she discovers that her wallet has been stolen. She figures out that it must have been Sunny. What a shock! A drugged-up teen-aged prostitute stole her wallet! Kim laments that she lost her credit cards and $200 in cash. Maybe Doc can start pimping her and Carlos so she can make some extra money.
The fire is taken care of at the restaurant, and the owner gives Doherty two big boxes of meat for saving his business. Bosco and Yokas think that they should get some meat too because they were the first on the scene and got the furniture out. Doherty tells them that all they did was direct traffic, and announces that they are going to have a big barbecue. I've never seen a man get so upset over not getting any meat. That's all I have to say about that.
Carlos and Doc answer a call that someone got shot. Cut to a guy lying in the street bleeding, with some other guys standing around him holding baseball bats. Doc won't get out of the car until the police come. Some guy comes over and starts yelling at them to get out of the ambulance and help the guy, and then he smashes the windshield with his bat. Yeah, that'll motivate people to run right out and help. Doc puts the bus in reverse and hangs out at the end of the street to wait for the cops. Carlos is all peeved because they didn't get out and help the bleeding guy. Sure Carlos, go on and get your head beaten with a baseball bat -- maybe it will knock some normal vocabulary into you.
Kim and Bobby walking out of some random building to go back to their ambulance. Kim bitches about her wallet getting lifted and having no money for her kid. She then tells Bobby that they have to go pick up her son from school because her mother is out and she has no one to take care of him. Um, okay.
Doherty is in the firetruck (hey -- where's Mantooth? Doesn't the dog go with the truck?) at a stoplight. A limo pulls up to the truck and a girl pops up out of the moon roof, and she and Doherty start flirting. Apparently, there's a group of girls in the limo going to a bachelorette party. Doherty pops a boner and invites them to his barbecue. Yeah, Doherty, they can drive around in a limo and party all night -- why wouldn't they want to stop at a fire station and eat your seared meat?
Doc and Carlos somewhere. Doc tells Carlos that after they switch buses they should get something to eat. Carlos isn't talking, so Doc says, "If you've got something to say, say it." Doc, if he isn't talking, why would you think he has something to say? And if he did have something to say, would you understand a word out of his mouth? Anyway, Carlos tells Doc that it annoys him that they take people with the flu to the hospital, but watch shooting victims bleed. Doc tells Carlos that the sick woman was dirt-poor and had no way of getting to a doctor. Carlos tells him that they aren't a taxi service, that they have different styles, and that they need to figure out how to work together as partners. Doc informs Carlos that Carlos is only keeping the seat warm until Jerry comes back. Ouch! That hurts. I think at this point Carlos wishes he could go back into the Marines and talk funny with everyone.
Bosco and Yokas drive up to the fire station. For some bizarre reason, it looks like it had been raining around the station and precinct, but every other location in New York had sunny weather. I guess if the producers of this show can't make their writing original, they'll make the weather original. Bosco walks over to Doherty and tells him that he got the parking spot, Doherty got him with the flowers, that makes them even. Bosco points out that he got to the fire first and got the furniture out, and he asks Doherty to "do the right thing and hand over some beef." Let me get this straight -- Bosco is afraid that what Doherty did would make him seem gay, but he doesn't mind pitching a fit over, um, meat? Dude, it's only beef. You can find it all over town in places called "grocery stores." So Doherty says no, and Bosco starts walking away and the firemen start singing, "Boom-sha-sha-boom!" as though Bosco is walking all swishy or something. Hey, don't make fun of Bosco because of the way he walks. Make fun of him because he is obsessed with your meat. So Yokas asks, "So now what?" and Bosco comes up with, "I have no idea." Maybe Bosco should pound on something -- that would make him look very hetero.
Ty and Sullivan at what looks like a bar and restaurant, at the buffet. Sullivan is piling the food onto his plate, but Ty has totally lost his appetite, and he only takes a roll. Maybe I should buy a pair of shoes with dead guy on them so I can lose my appetite too and drop some weight -- I could even market them! I'd make millions! As the two of them look for a table, they spot Doc and Carlos eating at the bar. Sullivan tells Doc to grab a seat, and they go sit at a table with two other uniformed guys, leaving Ty and Carlos to go find another table for themselves, an arrangement which Carlos calls the "kiddie table." Well, when you don't listen to your elders and whine like a baby, what do you expect? So Carlos asks what that foul smell is, and Ty tells him he stepped in dead guy, and then the two of them commiserate about their day and how the older guys just don't care. Ironically, I don't really care either.
Kim at the station, on the phone with her credit card company reporting her stolen card, and her mother walks in. She just had drinks with a new boyfriend. Kim's mom looks about five years older than Kim. Maybe her mom was easy like Sunday morning too. So her mom is telling Kim about what a great catch Bobby is, and Kim tells her that Bobby is too passive and she wants someone she can have a good fight with. Hell, Kim -- you got into a great fight with him last week when you dissed his mother, so just keep ragging on her and you'll have a perfect relationship!
Ty and Sullivan at the precinct. Ty sees the wife who had the fight with her husband; she's come down to bail him out. Ty tries to convince her that if she lets him out he'll just hurt her again, but she tells him that she's fine, and that it was just a misunderstanding. Sullivan takes Ty aside and tells him that if he gets too involved he'll make mistakes. Ty announces that he doesn't care if he makes mistakes -- someone needs to get involved! Good, Ty -- announce that you'll do whatever you want, whether or not it's right. That'll get you promoted in no time!
Bobby is walking to his car; Carlos asks if he can talk to him. They both get in Bobby's car, and Carlos asks Bobby if he will be his new training officer. Out of nowhere, Bobby tells Carlos that Doc's wife died last year in a water-skiing accident. Then he says that Doc is the best paramedic in the city. Bobby parks his car by a park (get that?) and gets out and makes Carlos stay in the car. I guess he's showing Carlos that he'll pull the same dick moves on the "new guy" that Doc did when he made Carlos sit in the bus to go into a diner and have coffee. So Bobby finds Sunny in the park and gets Kim's wallet back, but he's somehow surprised that the cash is missing. Duh. I wonder where all the money could have gone?
Sullivan and Ty at the ER, responding to a call about a rape case. They go into the exam room that the victim is in, and it's a little girl about six or seven years old. I have nothing snarky to say about this. How scary and sad, and unfortunately not completely original.
At the station, a woman walks in to see Doc. She wanted to thank him for delivering her baby at the zoo a year earlier. The baby was premature, but the paramedics saved her life. The woman baked cookies and brought them over. At least she took the time to come over in person, a year later.
Back at the hospital, Ty and Sullivan talk to the girl and her mother, and the mother tells them that her husband, the girl's stepfather, raped the little girl. For a little girl who was just raped by her stepfather, the daughter was very calm -- too calm if you ask me. It was just weird how quietly she just sat on the edge of the bed holding her mother's hand.
At the station, Mambo Number Five is playing, and Doherty is grillin' and chillin' with the rest of the people who live in the neighborhood. Bosco is across the street at the precinct, standing in the rain (that pesky little cloud that only hovers over their street is at it again!) and whining, "They're giving away my meat!" Um, okay. Yokas tells him they can't do anything about it, and at that point a little steak-shaped light bulb lights up over Bosco's head.
Ty and Sullivan in the waiting room of the ER; a man comes in and thinks his daughter fell off her bike. The daughter-fell-off-the-bike story was really a trap that Ty and Sullivan came up with to get the guy who raped his stepdaughter to come down to the ER, but when they try to question him about her, the guy tells them that the girl makes up stuff, and says that she's a lying bitch. At this point, Ty decides he is going to make a difference and "get involved," so he starts beating the crap out of the guy. Right there in the waiting room of the ER. In front of everyone. Can you say "lawsuit"?! We'll see you in court, Ty!
Bobby goes up to Kim at the station and tells her that Sunny was waiting for him outside and returned Kim's wallet with all the money. Aw, what a sweet guy! But only making $30,000 a year, how could he possibly afford to be putting money in other people's wallets?
Outside the station at the barbecue, the firemen see their cars getting towed. Bosco and Yokas and a bunch of cops stand outside watching. Bosco tells Doherty that they are illegally parked; even though that's where they always park, it's still illegal. Doherty asks for a truce; Bosco says no. Then he sniffs the air and says pointedly that something smells good, and Yokas chimes in by saying that it smells like meat and someone must be barbecueing. Ha ha. Oh, those crazy cops, threatening to tow cars if they don't get to be part of the because! Whatever. If eating free meat is that important to you, go nuts, but I have to say that I am really bothered by the number of times the word "meat" was spoken in the past hour.
Ty is outside by their car with an ice pack on his hand. He asks Sullivan if he is going to get fired. Sullivan tells him he won't, since he beat up a pedophile, and that he himself isn't mad at Ty for beating the guy up. Why would Sullivan get mad? He didn't mind when Ty let that psycho shooter get away, so why should he care that he beat the snot out of some guy in public while on duty? Sullivan then tells Ty that he still cares about all the people, but he has to put his energy into things he knows he can change. It takes a lot of energy to keep from walking in dead guy, I guess.
Doc is visiting Jerry in the hospital, and Jerry's wife is there. Doc tells her about the woman who came to visit him and the preemie baby. Jerry's wife asks Doc how he's doing, and he tells her he couldn't get out of the ambulance to help a shooting victim. She says, "Good for you!" and tells him that he goes out there unarmed and with kids out there shooting each other, and it isn't worth it for $40,000 a year and crappy benefits. Yokas and Bobby have a $10,000 pay hike to look forward to once they put in about ten or fifteen more years, I guess, since they already told us that they only make $30,000. And why do the writers insist on telling us how much these people supposedly make in a year? Then Jerry's wife asks him if he misses Deborah (his wife), and he says he does, and she tells him she misses Deborah too. And I miss the hour I just lost watching this.