Omar G gave this episode a grade of
B+
6 users have given this episode an average grade of
A
It's been so long since there was a new episode of Third Watch, that I was starting to lose the threads of reality.
I began to think that Bosco was a happy-go-lucky, great guy.
I hallucinated that Carlos had a brain.
I began to find reasons to respect Kim.
It was sick, and terrible, and made no sense. But reality has returned. Welcome back to Third Watch: The Reckoning.
Previously on The Reckoning: a random, very short selection of clips, maybe 12 seconds worth, showing Bosco telling Ty that police work is "all about the law of averages," Sully telling Faith she's a good cop, Sully bringing cookies to a cute neighbor's house, and Faith coming home to her husband Fred. That's it. According to NBC, if you don't remember what happened all those weeks ago, too bad, suckas! The episode (which should be called The Reckoning if for no other reason than that it's not "A Hero's Rest," which is just an ass title) begins with a slow-motion lottery ball bouncing and spinning through a lottery machine. Bosco, in voice-over, tells us that the week the jackpot was $70 million, lines stretched around the block for people to buy tickets. I really like this disembodied, faceless Bosco. I wish all of his performance was in voice-over. Balls are bouncing. One of them comes through a tube. Bosco says he doesn't believe in luck. The number 35 pops up and down the tube, galvanizing itself with loud, unnecessary sound effects. Right. Loud balls. Got it.
In the station locker room, Sully announces, "Seventy million dollars!" to which Faith replies, "Yeah! Right?" Ty chimes in, too. Bosco bursts in with his plain clothes and says that if he had the power over who lived and who died, the world would be a better place. And there would be no ugly women anymore, right Bosco? Sully contemplates Bosco as God. A goose walks over my grave. Bosco does a John Rocker, complaining that he won't ride the trains with "that garbage" after complaining about traffic. Yokas tells him defensively that she rides the trains. Ty suggests, pretty stupidly, that if Bosco wins the lottery, he can ride a helicopter to work. Because that makes absolute sense. Ty maintains that if you won the lottery, you'd still need something to do, so why not come to work? Faith says sarcastically that she'd love to strap on a bulletproof vest out of boredom. Bosco suddenly announces that the lottery is a scam. Someone comes in and announces roll call and Bosco is suddenly late. "Morons!" he calls after everyone, even though he is the tardy one. That scene was pure setup, but to what end? Oh, I know: to show that Bosco is a breed apart. A nonconformist. A man comfortable with his own prejudices. Damn, it's only the first five minutes and already I need a stiff drink.
At roll call, a glowering young man in uniform is staring everyone down. He looks like a young Jason Bateman crossed with Doogie Howser. I shall call him Sergeant Doogie Bateman. Bosco creeps in and the other man in charge, a short stocky man of the Sully variety, warns "Boscorelli" that it's the fourth time he's been late this month. You know you're in trouble when they call you by your entire last name. Sully says, loudly, that it's actually more like five times. Ty backs him up and says it's been twice this week. Wow, Bosco, you are quite hated. "You people got nothing better to pay attention to?" he asks, in a mannerism that sounds like it was picked up directly from Faith Yokas. Bless her sweet influence. The guy at the front of the room warns Bosco that time he's late a command discipline will go in Bosco's file. The patrol sergeant, Doogie Bateman (real name: Jason Christopher), is introduced and Bosco is taken aback. "Jason Christopher?" he asks. "In the flesh," Faith replies, while leaning back to whisper. Everybody gets up. Faith greets Doogie Bateman. Doogie asks Bosco how he did on his sergeant test. Bosco says he didn't take it. "Well that's probably for the best," Doogie says snidely, and now he has gone from being merely Doogie Bateman to being Doogie McSnidely Bateman. Doogie leaves. Bosco asks what happened and Faith says he needs to patch things up with Doogie. Faith says she wants to go buy a lottery ticket. You and the rest of New York.
Outside on a street corner, Bosco is pacing and complaining. "Come on!" he yells into his radio. Faith is standing in line at a convenience store. She's trying to ignore Bosco's yelling. "I'm not standing out here all day!" Bosco yells. Yokas explains to the people around her, "Jumper. It's very tragic." Ha! Bosco paces around some more. He sees a shady-looking guy named Rudy suddenly steal a bag of oranges from a stand. Bosco clotheslines the guy, making him fall on his head. Bosco grabs him, then adds insult to injury by insulting the guy who just got injured. Bosco cuffs Rudy, pulls him up, and takes him to the squad car. He gathers the oranges (way to protect the public, Bosco!) and calls in the incident. Inside the store, Yokas is second in line. Bosco tells her what happened then insists they leave immediately. Yokas laughs and then gets mad because any other day, Bosco would have just let the guy go. She follows him, and asks what his problem is with her buying lottery tickets. They argue. Inside the car, Rudy is lying down. Bosco tells him to get up. The guy doesn't want to be seen. Faith throws an orange in the air and, oddly, it goes up and comes down in slow motion. The Hell is that supposed to mean? Leave the surreal stuff to Twin Peaks, okay? Rudy finally gets up and then POW! Shot through the head. Blood splatters against the window. Bosco and Yokas spin out of their seats and pull out their guns. Yokas yells into her radio. "Shots fired! Shots fired!" I hear Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta arguing about whether the gun went off or whether they ran over a bump. It's crazy! We go to the opening theme, which I have truly missed.
A Hero's Rest
NBC is incessantly playing the most annoying Golden Globes commercial that could ever be. The only semi-compelling moment is when Courtney Love's boob almost falls out of her ripped black dress. And it's only compelling in that Courtney Love exposing her boob to the world is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.
Back to the slow-motion, sound-effect producing lotto machine. This time, the 37 ball appears, as if the entire state of the world depended on it. Boom! Crash! BOOM! Crap!
Scene of the shooting: Kim and Bobby are examining the car. Bobby says it must have been a large-caliber weapon, because after all, he's a ballistics expert. He asks whether Yokas and Bosco are okay. "I will be after my ass unpuckers," Yokas says, in what may be the most brilliant line ever uttered on this show. They speculate on who could have killed Rudy Granger. Doogie Bateman arrives and tells Sully, who is examining the shot-at squad car, to get lost. Sully approaches Bosco and Yokas and says, "Wow." As in, "Wow, so glad it wasn't me." Ty says, "Sorry," on his way out, as in, "Sorry it was you and not Doogie." Doogie Bateman bitches out Yokas and Bosco over the "phantom shooter" and asks Bosco how he knew that Boscorelli was going to be his first problem. "Like I asked for this?" Bosco says. Yokas, who addressed Doogie as "Jason," also gets ranked out for not saluting and for calling him "Jason" out on the street. Yokas salutes and says, "Yes, sir." Doogie McSnidely Bateman has morphed into Doogie Tightass Bateman. Yokas explains to a black woman standing nearby that they all used to work together. "It was a misunderstanding," Bosco says. Yokas looks shaken. She wipes blood off of Bosco's face with a napkin, kid-style. I'm surprised she didn't lick the napkin first. "You should have just let me buy the ticket," she says.
In a squad car, Ty is speculating on how much happiness a mere lottery ticket could buy. Got Faust? Sully, meanwhile, is stewing over the young Sergeant Doogie Bateman. Sully feels he (Sully) is being treated like a first-year rookie. Aw, poor Sully. (I should have that phrase on a computer macro.) "I've got shirts older than that stiff-necked little son of a bitch!" Sully bellows. Sully and Ty do that not-at-all-cute thing where each of them is talking about different things and not listening to each other. Ty goes on about how he'd like to buy an island in the Caribbean if he won the lottery. Sully bellows some more, actually working in the not-at-all-overused phrase, "I'm too old for this crap!" Ty asks Sully if he's ever been to Jamaica. Rum punch. Half-naked women. Sully asks again about Doogie Bateman. Ty tells Sully he's not invited to the island when Ty wins the lottery. I think Sully would have been voted off Survivor pretty quickly. But he would probably do well on Temptation Island given his already repressive nature.
At the station, Yokas and Bosco are reclaiming possessions that were taken after the shooting. Yokas bitches that her memo book is ruined. Bosco says he's not throwing away his Kel-Light. He's had it since they started. Ewww. It's all covered in blood and probably brain matter. Somebody call Harvey Keitel and get some under-the-sink cleaning products. The black woman who was at the scene after the shooting, and who seems to be able to miraculously appear to interject wisdom and exposition into every scene, asks if Bosco and Yokas noticed a guy on a bicycle during the shooting. She says a witness saw a guy on a bicycle. Yokas lets slip that they didn't see anything because they hit the deck so fast. Bosco corrects her by making it sound like they were trying to secure the scene from behind the squad car's gas pedal. Wise Black Woman asks why anyone would have wanted to kill Rudy. Well, maybe because he was a crotchety, withered guy who probably killed a bunch of people as a Navy Seal. Oh, wait, she's talking about Rudy from Third Watch not Survivor Rudy. Got it. Yokas says Rudy was pretty insignificant as criminals go. Now that's just sad. You work your whole life to be a reputable criminal, and some cop calls you "insignificant" after you die. Sad, people. Yokas gets called away to an incident with shots fired at police. They take off.
Sully bolts out of his car and pushes gathered people around to get through. Two cops are lying on the ground. One of them, Marty, is shot in the chest, but alive. Sully tends to him. Ty tries to help another guy who looks like he's been shot in the neck. "Stay with me," Ty tells him. The cop with the neck wound asks for Marty, even though he can barely breathe. Sully says they have to take the bodies now. He lifts Marty up roughly. "We're not waiting for EMS?" Ty asks. Nope. The quick ER inspired music is playing. Two more squad cars arrive. Where's Doc and Carlos? Oh, I see. This is a cops episode, not a paramedics episode. Bosco arrives and, having no way of knowing what's going on, tells Sully that the ambulance is coming and not to move the bodies. Bosco is told by some witnesses that a guy on a mountain bike started shooting up the place. It was a yellow bicycle, they say. "Where's the damn bus!?" somebody yells. Ty tries to calm Neck Wound down. He tells the guy it's not that bad. Yeah, he only got shot by a high-caliber weapon in the neck. The guy, amazingly, is still alive and can almost talk. He's like Wonder Neck Wound Guy. "Look at me, Greg, look at me," Ty says. Greg, the Neck Wound Guy, starts to tell Ty to tell Mary something, but Ty stops him and says, "Tell her yourself." How rude. I know it's all inspirational and trying to keep the guy alive, but you don't tell somebody dying, "Tell her yourself." Because, boom, Greg just died. And he didn't get to tell anybody anything except maybe St. Peter at the Pearly Gates what an asshole Ty is. Nice, Ty. Real nice.
“ Kim and Bobby arrive. Oh, is Charles in Charge over? Glad you could make it. (Those lines, by the way, were shamelessly cribbed from MST3K.) ”
Kim and Bobby arrive. Oh, is Charles in Charge over? Glad you could make it. (Those lines, by the way, were shamelessly cribbed from MST3K.) Bobby and Kim step in, but it's far too late. The bodies have got rigor mortis by now. The camera spins around Ty as he broods. Implausibly, as Greg's being looked over, the inside of his hat is revealed to have a photo taped inside it. A woman and boy are in the photo. Ty, mouth open, looks stunned.
We go to a stupid Sprint PCS commercial. Because sometimes life is just like that. And I plan to take The Pledge not to see Nicholson's new movie. I don't care who directed it.
Another lottery ball moment. I wish they would combine this with the stupid Ti-Cheeze moments from the last episode and have Doc come out and kick the lotto ball machine. The word "Needless" would appear in some exotic language. No such luck. Lottery ball #24 rolls down the pike, in case you're keeping track.
Ty is washing his hands. Sully is preaching. He says if he ever buys it, please don't let them say he was a hero just because he gave his life to the city of New York. Very noble, Sully. Ty washes some more. He's soaping it up, Lava-style. "Did you call your mother?" Sully asks. He tells Ty not to let her find out from the news because they won't say names on the news right off. Ty keeps watching. "I'm sorry about your friend," Sully says. Ty downplays it. The dead guy, Greg, was in the academy with him. Ty's still washing. I obsessive-compulsively rewind three times to make sure I'm seeing it right. Sully notices the hand washing. "They look pretty clean. Your hands," he says. Ty stops washing. I rewind three more times to make sure it turns out okay. "Ready to roll?" Ty asks. Yeah. Sully is a roll.
Up at the front of the station, phones are ringing off the hook as people are checking in. Faith Yokas calls home and assures her kids that she's all right. She'll just be a little late getting home. Bosco walks up behind her. Yokas makes sure Bosco called his mom. Forum folks: I really think the Yokas / Bosco connection is maternal, not romantic. Honestly. Bosco says the detectives think the guy who shot the cops was the same bicyclist who shot Rudy. He asks how many white guys are riding ten-speeds in New York. "Twenty thousand?" Yokas asks. She says the guy has no reason for shooting up folks. Bosco says the guy has a reason. He grabs Yokas' badge and shows it to her.
At the hospital, Doc and Carlos are walking by. Carlos asks, "Is that the family?" "Probably," Doc tells him. Sad people. "Damn," Carlos says. What a poet.