The Tys that Bind

The Third Watch writers spin the Wheel of Character Development and the spinner lands on Ty. So we get an entire episode devoted to him. So far, it's been Sully, Faith, Doc, Jimmy, Kim, and now Ty. Hang on to your hats, it's going to get paternal around here.

The Previouslys remind us simply that Ty's dad had been accused (before he died) of being on the take, but nothing had ever been proved. Ty asked Sully and his mother about it and never got a real answer.

The episode (which is called "The Tys that Bind," and I wish I were making that up) opens with Ty floating, face up, in a pool of water as a very bright light is hitting him. As quickly as we see it, the shot's gone, replaced by Ty sitting up in bed. Dramatic music lets us know that he's conflicted, as if we needed that. Ty takes a gratuitous shower where we get to see the sun-shaped tattoo on his right upper arm. (By the way, Ty: niiiiice torso.) Ty gets dressed, and we see that his mirror is decorated with pictures of him and his father when he was a pre-teen. Ty brings up his gun and dry fires it, and all of a sudden, it looks like he's in a bad made-for-Showtime Rutger Hauer movie where he's going to avenge the death of his partner.

At the breakfast table, Ty is reading the newspaper as his snappily dressed Mom is telling him that a refrigerator is going to be delivered. Ty makes some noise about working on the trim in the living room, and he is ribbed good-naturedly about his supposed laziness. Ty makes some mock excuses and gets two kisses from the woman he calls "MaMa."

In the patrol car with Sully, Ty is talking about how nice it would be to have a career as a detective. Sully complains that it involves a lot of paperwork and boring crap like that. Ty complains that it's better than being bored. "Oh, I'm boring now?" Sully asks. Ty says he thinks the job is boring, not Sully. Then he goes on about how maybe doing undercover work would be "dope." Sully laughs, joking around about how funny Ty would be in baggy jeans, and she does a Duddly Do Right voice to imitate him. "The day you work Buy and Busts..." Sully begins, and Ty cuts him off: "...is the day you do a sit-up. Oh!" Heh. It's pretty funny. Sully tries to start again and gets cut off a second time: "...is the day you eat a salad. Oh!" Very nice, Ty. You get some snaps.

Ty and Sully get called to the scene of an accident. When they arrive, a helicopter is flying erratically overhead. A man inside a truck is bleeding. Ty finds a brick and says it's the third time that week that someone got hit with a brick from overhead while driving. As Doc deals with the accident, Ty notices the helicopter flying in circles. "Mayday!" is called and as Ty, Doc, and Sully watch, the helicopter goes past the bridge and down into the water. My Closed Captioning says a woman is yelling for help, but I don't hear it. The police rush toward the edge of the water and then stop, as if it's a pool of acid. Ty starts taking off his gun and gear to jump in. Sully and Doc try to stop Ty, but it's too late. He jumps into the water. Cut to opening credits.

As we return, Ty is climbing on top of the sinking helicopter. Hey, won't that make it go down faster? A woman inside is reaching down into the water, trying to keep the pilot afloat. It's not working. Ty grunts and tells the woman to keep the man's head up. It's still not working. She's still got her seatbelt on. Ty tells the woman to let go. She's starting to go under too. We see a wide shot of Ty sprawled on top of the helicopter door, reaching in. Sirens arrive in the distance. Ty gets the woman to let go of the pilot and pulls her out of the door. Kim and Bobby arrive in the ambulance. Doc and Sully watch Ty swim back with the woman. A little help, anyone? As Ty reaches the shore, Doc finally moves to help. Kim ventilates the woman and she coughs. Nobody even mentions the pilot, long forgotten in the water. As Doc wraps a towel around him, Ty looks up at the bridge and sees his dead father standing among a group of people. Sad, thoughtful music plays. Ghost Dad walks off.

On TV, Ty is saving the woman again. At the station, Ty walks past the TV and is greeted by Sully, who calls him a "crazy son of a bitch" and gives him a rough hug. "Good job!" Sully says. True male bonding is at hand. Yokas and Bosco add their congrats as they walk by. It's truly a good day to be Ty. At least, early in the day it is. Everybody is giving high fives. Ty sees himself on TV where he's giving a humble interview saying he wished he could have saved the pilot. Or at least mentioned him at some point in the rescue attempt. A woman behind Ty says, "Excuse me," and asks if that's him on TV. Ty says yes, yes it is. The woman asks if she can buy him a cup of coffee. Forward, are we? No, not really, I'm just jealous that Ty gets asked out to coffee by strangers. I mean, just because he saved someone's life, big deal...Ty agrees to the coffee and to meet that night after his shift. The woman introduces herself as Gwen Gerard. She knows that Ty is a Jr. Davis and then plays it off that she saw the full name on the news. Sully does a double take and immediately takes a call on his radio. He answers the call and tells Ty to hurry up and get dressed. Way to bust up Ty's action, Sully.

On the call, Sully tells Ty that he shouldn't go on the date. She could be a stalker or a groupie, or "a badge bunny," as he phrases it. He warns Ty to stay away from the nice, attractive woman. Yeah, Sully, try taking a vegetarian to Ruth's Steak House. Ty and Sully arrive at a big trash bin under a trash chute at the bottom of some building. An old gent leads them there over some woman's complaint and when they look inside, a hand is sticking out. Yuck. A woman is lying in there, covered in trash. Sully and Ty, who are wearing rubber gloves, speculate on a possible cause of death. No blood or marks. Probably suffocation before being tossed down the chute. A noise accompanies a slew of trash coming down on the body. Ty complains that the coroner won't come for an hour, and they should move the body. Sully resists because it's a crime scene. More trash comes down as they decide to move the bin.

In the locker room, Bosco comments on Ty's overly fragrant cologne. "It smells good, doesn't it?" Ty asks. Bosco invites Ty to a poker night, and Sully butts in to tell Ty he should definitely go and reconnect with his manhood. Which sounds vaguely dirty.

Sully goes outside and sees Gwen waiting for Ty. He makes up some baloney about Ty having already left for the night and how he's a heartbreaker. Gwen, who looks disappointed, starts to leave. Just as you'd expect, Ty walks out and sees her going. Sully tries to cover his tracks by pretending he thought Ty was already gone even though he saw him just a few seconds before. Sully, is there some deep dark secret, possibly involving Ty Sr., and possibly cribbed from the movie Lone Star that you're not sharing? As Ty and Gwen walk off, Sully looks on, all concerned.

Over drinks, Ty tells Gwen that Sully acts paternally toward him. Gwen awkwardly tries to talk about something, but Ty cuts her off and asks her to go to the zoo with him. He makes a lame "Lions, Tigers, and Bears" joke to which Gwen responds. Ty offers to pick up Gwen for a date the day and then gets open and crass by proposing that they get together romantically. Gwen cuts him off. She pulls a picture from her purse and hands it to Ty. It's a young girl and Ty's dad. "This is my dad," Ty says. "Is this you?" It is. "You knew my dad?" "I'm your sister, Ty," Gwen says. Dum, dum, DUUUUUMMMM! "What are you talking about?" Ty asks. Gwen says it again because he didn't hear her the first time. We go to commercial. Oh, brother. No, really!

The hotjobs.com commercial with the chick hatching from the egg and escaping is terminally cute. I feel my glands shriveling and my brain shrinking from its sheer adorableness.

Oh, and on ER this week, a helicopter carrying Dr. Greene is going down. What, did John Wells just Xerox the episode, scratch out the title with a pencil and write Third Watch on the script? Sheesh.

We come back to Ty submerged in a pool of blue water. I keep thinking Leonardo DiCaprio is going to swim by and start kissing someone. Ty breaks out of the dream sequence to where he's standing -- in front of a school visiting his sister, the teacher. Ty cuts right to the chase and tells her about Gwen. "I know," Sis says. "She called me." Ty finds out that Sis knows Gwen and has known her for a while. "Who else knows?" he asks. Sis says that right before Ty's dad died, he and Ty's mother were trying to work out the situation. Ty gets upset: "I had a right to know," someone should have told him, blah, blah, blah, paternitycakes. Sis says to leave it alone, or it'll just make things harder for their mom. Ty walks off.

At home, Ty is packing up his things when Mom gets home. She knows what's going on. She found out from Ty's sister. She says that if he wants to know something, to just ask. Ty says simply that he's moving out. Mom asks if Ty thinks it's a conspiracy. Ty says he would have moved out when his Dad died, even though he was only eleven. Ty gets all accusatory and tells his Mom that she should have left the cheater. Mom says Ty is being holier than thou and that things were more complicated. They start to argue about the custody of Ty's bed, which she paid for. He leaves.

In the patrol car, Sully is spouting off about working the subway. Ty drives in silence. Ty stops the car in front of Gwen's house. "You know where we are?" he asks Sully. "Is this where you sat?" Sully says that it never occurred to him to tell Ty the situation, and it wasn't his place to do so. And yeah, he sat there, maybe eating a donut, or a cruller, or better yet, a Krispy Kreme cruller. ["Dude, you're killing me!" -- niki] Ty's just mad.

Under the bridge, Ty and Sully arrive on the scene where a little girl got clocked by the phantom brick thrower. The girl is on the ground, bloody and crying. Ty goes to question some kids who might have seen the assault. The three kids try to describe the brick thrower. They keep changing their story. He had a hat. He didn't. He was tall. He wasn't. He was a black guy, definitely, one kid says. "The suspect is taller than four feet," Ty finally concludes to Yokas, who is standing nearby.