By Omar G
We get a batch of previouslys, including Carlos getting kissed by a grateful patient; Bosco telling Yokas how he's not a bigot by verbally demonstrating exactly how much of a bigot he is; Kim telling Bobby that she loves him as her best friend, despite the nookie she just gave him recently; and Yokas telling her alcoholic hubby Fred to hit the road (incidentally, he looks a lot like my favorite character actor/comedian Larry Miller). Got all that? Time to get your John Wells freak on with another Third Watch!
The lovely, talented, gracious (and did I already mention "talented"?) Nicole has sent me the "Officer Involved" tape, along with a huge goblet from which to drink vast amounts of red wine. ("To dull the pain," she tells me.) Not one to buck tradition, I settle down with a goblet full of some Cabernet-Sauvignon. Word up to my homie Sars and the down-low 3W crew in the forums. Don't get too crazy over there, kiddos. I'm new with this one.
We open with Yokas pulling her kids along the street on the way to school. According to Yokas' daughter, L'il Exposition, the kids usually walk themselves to school. Yokas, seeking moral high ground after throwing out Fred, says she just wants to spend some time with them. Sensing trouble at the homestead, the daughter asks if Dad went to work early. If by "going to work," she means "crawled into a bottle of Jack at 8:15 a.m. to dull the raging hangover that is the staple of his existence," then yes. Daddy go to work good. The boy says the babysitter has a Playstation and that he wants to play the Pokémon game over there. ("Family Feud" buzzer.) Oops, sorry, TW writers: Pokémon has and will always be available only on Nintendo's monopolized consoles. L'il Soon-to-be-from-a-Broken-Home Girl says she likes spending time with Dad, too. Yokas wipes an ill-gotten tear as the kids run off to class.
Oh, hey, look at Bobby! Kissin' the new girl! Hey, nice voice she's got. All raspy and smoky like Kim Carnes with pre-cancerous polyps. They're kissing nice and slow right in the middle of the street and -- oh, crap, here comes Kim. Dude, what are you doing!?! Wait a minute, I know this game. It's called "Make Her Jealous," and Bobby just bought the home version. So join me if you will for an episode of "They're Both Wrong Theater." Kim asks about Bobby's new friend. He says he met her right after Kim blew him off. She says, "If you're trying to make me jealous it's not necessary." Bobby tells her she has a pretty high opinion of herself and walks off. If that wasn't enough, Jimmy is standing nearby, smirking the whole time. He tells Kim, in his best assholish tone, that workplace romances are tough. As she walks off, he says, "What? I saw it on Rosie!" And we'll be seeing Rosie herself soon, so this little bit of wit comes off as gratuitous, yet stupid.
Ty and Sully are cruising around, Sully carrying a cup of coffee on his not-exactly-tidy gut. Ty is going on and on about the women he's dating while Sully enjoys the vicarious experience. Suddenly, Ty spots some movement in an alley and tells Sully to pull over.
The cruiser pulls up to three guys beating the crap out of a less fortunate fourth guy on the ground. (He shall henceforth be known as Fleshy McFacewound [tm Pamie]). Sully and Ty pop out of the car like they're spring-loaded. Sully takes off after the beaters and tells Ty to stay behind with Fleshy. Given Ty and Sully's physiques, this just seems like a bad idea, but who am I to challenge police procedure? We get a close-up on Fleshy, who lives up to his name, while Sully gives chase on foot, looking like a bit like Chief Wiggam as he scuttles on. Sully asks a man taking out his trash where they went. "They went that way!" Innocent McBystander shouts. Sully pushes his prodigious gut over a rail, slips on some ice, and falls. His gun goes off in mid-air, prompting my closed captioning to inform me, "(gunshot)." Ty looks up and radios for backup. He's scared. You can see it in his Ty-eyes. Ty leaves Fleshy behind to go after Sully. We cut to Sully crawling up and Innocent McBystander offering help. "My gun!" Sully yells. Innocent McBystander moves to retrieve it and suddenly, everyone watching knows exactly what's going to happen. Ty run, run, runs. Sully crawl, crawl, crawls. Innocent McBystander becomes Shot McWrongly as Ty turns a corner, sees the man pointing a gun at Sully, and fires four shots. Shot McWrongly goes down. Sully looks pained, yelling, "Nooooooo!" We don't hear the audio, however, so he may have been yelling, "I work on an NBC shoooooooooow!" Ty comes over. Sully shakes his head. Shot McWrongly moans. I drink more wine, because it tastes mighty fine.
Crystal Method techno credits. Even my cat is dancing.
Bosco and Yokas en route. He's giving her a hard time about throwing Fred out. She's being defensive. Just try not to love these guys.
Kim and Bobby are following Bosco and Yokas. Bobby sounds like he's having the time of his life and Kim asks if everything is okay with their situation. Bobby says he's never been this good. God looks down and considers striking Bobby down with lightning, but being that there's so many police and ambulances around, He figures it would just be a waste of time.
At the scene, Shot McWrongly is moaning in pain. "He shot me!" he says, and we are again reminded of Mustafa from Austin Powers. Ty tries to help Carlos and Doc, but he just keeps getting in the way. Doc asks Shot to move his feet, but nothing happens. Sully asks Ty for his gun. This is bad, Ty. Just thought you should know.
Back at Fleshy McFacewound's little piece of gravel, Kim is trying to intubate. Rosie O'Donnell, wearing a ski cap, runs up to offer a hand and Kim lets her do the epi. This cameo lasts for all of ten seconds, and I'm thinking there's no way this is real because nobody would ever be able to fit Rosie's gargantuan head into the back of an ambulance. Bosco finds Fleshy's wallet. Yokas tells him it's evidence, and Bosco fires back by thanking her for the insight. There will be words later. Oh, yes. Ty continues to get in the way until Sully finally has to pull him away.
Back at the station, Jimmy asks Kim if she's having a bad day. She says Bobby got involved in a rebound relationship. Jimmy asks why she thinks that. Kim says that she's not an easy person to get over, as Jimmy's lack of a serious relationship after a year of divorce demonstrates. Jimmy deflates her ego balloon by telling her that he has indeed been involved with someone. Her name is Brooke, and according to one of our frequent forum posters, she may be a bitch. Just a warning. "Love of your life, I'm sure," Kim mutters as she walks off. The bakery calls and says they have a big, creamy humble pie for Kim to pick up after work.
Bosco regales us with more Wisdom From Bosco. This time, he's talking about how Ty won't get in trouble for shooting Shot McWrongly, because he's black and McWrongly is also black. End of story. Bosco says that if it were a white cop like him who fired the shots, the city would hang him out to dry. How amazingly perceptive. You should write a Hissyfit about it, Bosco. At least so we could see it get rejected. Yokas goes through the motions of acting surprised that he could be a bigot. Hasn't she figured him out yet?
Ty is brooding in the locker room. Sully walks by and thanks Ty for saving his life. Oh, and shooting an innocent man. That deserves some hearty thanks too. Sully warns Ty to listen to his attorney and union delegate, or internal affairs will eat him like a snow cone. Ty doesn't listen and doesn't seem appreciative of the advice.
Doc and Carlos are pulling a man out of his house in a chair because he hasn't taken his meds correctly. The woman who kissed Carlos before shows up suddenly, and Carlos asks for a little break so he can work his Mack. The girl is wearing some weird knitted hat that looks like it was won at the hemp tent at a Dave Matthews concert. Carlos asks why she's riding her bike in the freezing cold. She takes it personally and waddles off, upset. What did he do? I spy a psycholady.
Tense moment: Ty is starting to face off against the internal affairs people. They ask what his state of mind was when he shot the innocent man. Ty says he doesn't remember. Sully says, "They're trying to help you." Ty is upset and tells Sully to go ahead and speak for him since he seems to know everything. Then he leaves. Ty is the kind of guy who would be mad that somebody was sticking their hand in his face when he's hanging off the edge of a cliff by a fingernail. Sully tells the internal affairs people that this needs to get done as soon as possible because Ty is a brooder.
Yokas and Bosco show up at a missing child call. Yokas comments that Bosco seems to be taking her separation personally, as if it were his own. They arrive at a raggedy woman's house as she goes on and on about how her ex-husband took her ten-year-old son. The woman yells and screams and over-emotes. She must be practicing for Springer. Yokas notices some liquor sitting out in a glass. Projecting personal problems, much?
Sully looks around for Ty at the station and finds out that he took off. Bad, bad Ty.
While searching for the missing boy, Bosco and Yokas have it out. Bosco calls her a quitter. He says she gave up as soon as things went bad. Bosco tells her she never went to counseling and never tried taking Fred to AA. She counters by citing his lack of commitment and he says he's not married. For once, I agree with the Bos. They suddenly hear the whimpering of a child and follow it. They find the child wedged in between two buildings, stuck along with his dog. The boy is in his pajamas and the dog is in his . . . fur. Poor kid can't move. Bosco and Yokas call for backup. Maybe Rosie will come and manage to get her pinkie into that crevice.
Ty foolhardily shows up at the hospital and finds Shot McWrongly's two kids in the man's hospital room. The older brother gets mad that the police sent a black man to placate them. Ty says that it has nothing to do with race, but doesn't come right out and tell them that he was the one with the smoking gun. After some more arguing, Ty finally reveals himself. The older brother says, "Get out of here!" and there is much tense yelling. Ty tries to explain, but really, what can you say to the sons of a man you just shot? "Oh, hey, jeez, sorry. Um, waffles, anyone?" Ty reiterates that it had nothing to do with race. The older son says that if his dad had been white, Ty may have hesitated a moment longer. Ty stumbles back and walks away, very, very sad and confused.
Kim and Bobby arrive to save Benjamin, the trapped boy. He's very cold because he's still in his pajamas and while mom was drinking, he was out getting himself wedged, looking for his dog. Jimmy tries to get the kid to grab onto a pole, but Benjamin is too weak from the cold to hold on. Mom cries, but even that just comes across as annoying. Jimmy decides they're going to bash through a wall to get the kid out. It could take a while.
Carlos and Doc are at a mall, and who should show up but Carlos' new psycho girlfriend. He asks how she found them. She reveals a scanner she just bought. Carlos tells her to get lost and that they'll talk later. "Oh, so you're coming over tonight," she says. I and my other male friends just wince. She tells him she'll make pizza rolls. Carlos says, "Yeah, whatever," which is exactly what I imagine Nicole saying if she were watching. Carlos tells her to go home, but she takes it to be this sexy anticipatory thing. Poor guy. Well, not really.
Jimmy starts taking things out of a garage to get to that wall. An angry German man comes up and yells for them to get out of his place. Bosco pushes the German man back and tells him to relax.
Kim is trying to keep Benjamin awake but they're quickly losing him. He's cold, he's tired, and he's appearing toward the end of the episode, long after Rosie's cameo. Things don't look good.
Yokas' moral center resurfaces as she asks the crying mother if she takes many afternoon naps. Way to be a sensitive sister.
Sully tracks down Ty and asks about the go-round at the hospital. Sully tells Ty that he better watch himself: internal affairs is going to be as tenacious as a pit bull on an infant. Ty is upset that he destroyed this man's life. He didn't hesitate, he says. Sully says that if it had been real and Ty had hesitated, Sully would be a dead donut man. "You saved my life," Sully says. Yes, we all know Ty didn't, but let's let the kid feel okay about shooting an innocent man. We won't tell, Sully. Ty says, finally, that he's not cut out for this work. Sully tells him to go to law school, join the circus, whatever. But he needs to deal with internal affairs before he's hauled off to jail. Ty breaks down crying. "I thought he was going to kill you," he says. Poignant Guy Moment.
Back between a wall and a soft face, Jimmy is still working to get the kid out. The German man gets irate. He says he's going to sue everybody. Bosco says, "Okay, get out, Adolf." Then he goes on to throw more Nazi epithets at the man. So what race does Bosco like? Just as the German man is led away, Benjamin stops breathing. Panic ensues, just in time for a commercial.
When we come back, the firemen have just finished pounding (very. slowly.) through the wall to get to Benjamin. Jimmy reaches in and grabs the child. They pull him out, rush him to a stretcher and do some CPR. After an endless moment, the kid starts breathing. I start wondering about the dog. After some more attention given to the kid, I think again, "Hey, where's the dog?" Finally, my cat, who doesn't even like dogs, jumps up on the futon and says, "Hey, are they gonna go get that dog out or what, yo?" Benjamin himself has to remind them, so Jimmy retrieves the canine, who looks none the worse for wear. Everybody's great. Way to pull together, team!
The German guy starts making a fuss, and suddenly Bosco smells something. He looks in a garbage bag and finds tons and tons of marijuana. Whoa, busted German guy! He gets hauled off.
Doc and Carlos are talking about why doctors don't date patients. "I'm not a doctor. She's not my patient," Carlos says. Doc warns him that this is bad, and he invokes Clint Eastwood in describing the situation as similar to Play Misty for Me. Oh, so that's where that subplot was cribbed from. I was wondering.
Back at the internal affairs snakepit, Ty is getting grilled. They tell him they're on the same side as they turn on their tape recorder. Bosco and Sully wait outside, and Bosco imitates a human by commiserating. Inside, Ty says that he thought Sully was going to be shot and that if he didn't take immediate action, Sully would have been killed. Now why couldn't he have said this at the scene of the shooting and saved everybody involved a lot of grief?
Bobby and Kim arrive back, and Bobby is immediately met with some tongue from his new lady friend. Kim walks off in disgust and bumps into Jimmy. Just as they're talking, Jimmy's new flame Brooke arrives. Jimmy rushes off to grab her for the introductions. Kim looks supremely uncomfortable as Brooke is brought over. (She's a babe, by the way. Not that is should matter, but -- damn. She's a babe.) Jimmy tells Kim that he wants to introduce Joey to Brooke that weekend. Kim hesitates like she's not sure, and Brooke leaps over the uncomfortable silence to excuse herself. She and Jimmy walk away. Bobby walks back over and says, "Wow, who's the babe?" Exactly.
Bosco and Yokas in the locker room. He tells Yokas that when he was in fifth grade, his mother told him she and his father were going to separate. But because it had been kept from him, all the fights and arguing, it had been a bombshell and he had been unprepared. Nothing has been the same since, he says sadly. Great, so that explains why you've been riding Yokas all day. Care to explain why you're a racist, a sexist, and a general jerkwad? Because I'd love to hear all of those sad, pathetic stories, too.
Ty is back at the hospital for another round of self-flagellation. He finds the man's wife, because apparently his mother, priest, and third cousin aren't yet available to take their turns feeding Ty's guilty conscience. The woman immediately gets up, slaps Ty, and begins beating him up as she yells, "He's paralyzed! He has a bag around his waist for elimination!" It would have been cleverer if she'd said, "around his waist for his waste," but she's emotional, so we'll forgive her. She tells Ty to get away from her family and not come back. If Ty is smart, he'll finally listen to someone instead of trying to wipe everyone up with the sticky sponge that is his soft, brooding heart.
Kim is putting Joey to bed, and Joey reveals that he has a girlfriend at school. Oh, I get it. Every man in her life has a new woman now. Let's all take a moment and feel sorry for Kim, because it's not easy being a single mom who in the last month has slept with her ex-husband and work partner. That shit's hard, y'all. Give her the respect she deserves.
Yokas comes home and finds Fred sitting on the steps. He doesn't look so much like Larry Miller now, which is truly a shame. Yokas tells him that she won't live with a drunk, but she will go to counseling and AA with him. They should do it together, she says. It pains me physically, in a very private part of my bowels, just south of the colon, to know that Bosco was right. Ow. "Ooohh, more wine," my bowels say. "Send more wine!"
Ty is back at the station, because the day just hasn't dragged on long enough. At the front desk, he picks up an envelope that contains a gun-shaped item. He takes it back to the locker room, drawing out the suspense. He opens the package and, oh, hey! A gun! Ty looks at it pensively, dry-fires it at the floor, and puts it on the top shelf. He slams the locker closed, and it slams three times, because the Third Watch editor needed to fill up space. Or maybe it was supposed to sound like gunshots, but then it should have been four gunshots, right? You know what? The episode is over, the wine is almost gone, and who the hell cares?