Third Watch Episode Review: Transformed
Transformed (First aired 1/14/02)
Episode Review by X_tremeroswellian
Let's just start out by saying, I was less than happy with this episode. I mean, it's not that it was a bad episode, per say...it's just...it was mostly about Jimmy and Doc, and neither one of them are my favorite characters, so...I was kind of bored most of the time. However, below is a fairly detailed description of the episode. Oh, and fair warning. I don't like Jimmy very well. I don't like Carlos except for comic relief. And my review is a bit less than...well, nice to either of them. And I was in a bit of a sarcastic mood when I wrote this, so this review is sprinkled with all kinds of smart-ass comments and opinions. Hopefully you'll all find it amusing and not get upset with me. :)
The episode starts out with Jimmy yacking on the phone to Kim's mom about when he's bringing Joey over so she can babysit. (And while we're at it, can someone explain to me why the woman is on such good terms with Jimmy when he's suiing her daughter for sole custody of her grandson? Um, let's just say my family went through a similar situation with my nephew's father, and my mom HATED the guy for it...so I'm just not sure that's so realistic). And in between talking to her, he yells at Joey, who's playing on some playground equipment up high, to sit down before he gets hurt. So he hangs up with Kim's mom and starts flirting with the single mom sitting next to him on the park bench (hello? Can we please get Jimmy a storyline that doesn't involve him flirting with some woman? Please? Or go back in time and kill off him instead of Bobby? Sorry...got carried away). Joey falls off the playground equipment and winds up breaking his arm.
Opening credits begin.
Faith walks into the locker room and Sully greets her with "Hey, look who's back." Apparently she took Boz's advice and took some time off work. She and Fred (and I'm assuming the kids) went to Jersey for a week and hung out and relaxed. Sully and Davis leave. She puts her things into her locker and glances at Bosco. "Hey."
Bosco, who was watching her off and on since the moment she walked in, says, "Feeling better?" And she says yeah. He looks relieved, but it's a bit of an awkward moment between them. Faith comments, "They don't seem like they know." Bosco replies, "Unless you told them, they don't." He tells her that he'll see her in role call and that she should hurry because "Christopher's been a real hard ass lately." (Like he's not usually? Uh, I've been watching this show awhile now and I pretty much loathe the guy everytime he walks on screen.)
In the e.r. Jimmy's all telling Joey to stop crying, be a "tough guy." Boys don't cry, blah blah blah. Such crap. Anyhoo, Kim and Doc bring in a young woman who's been beaten badly by her boyfriend and she finds out from one of the nurses that Joey's there. She finds Jimmy outside the door of where Joey is getting a cast put on his arm. He is talking to the mom from the park all smiling and laughing. Kim walks up and demands to know what's going on. He assures her Joey's fine, "he just broke his arm." (Yeah, and the dad of the year award goes to...). She questions why the hell he isn't in there with him, and he just kind of looks embarrassed. She turns to look at the single mom. "Who the hell are you?" she demands. Jimmy hesitantly starts to introduce her. Kim glares at him, says, "You've got to be kidding me" (nope, it's still the Jimmy from the past three seasons whose only real concern is getting laid) and goes to comfort her son, telling him it's okay to cry if it hurts...she and Jimmy argue. He's all like, "boys get hurt, I broke my arm twice playing football, we take chances, blah blah blah." And she's like, "He broke a bone. That doesn't upset you?" At which point Davis and Sully come in and helpfully participate in the conversation talking about the bones they broke as children, and Davis says something like, "Yeah, my mom was all upset every time I got hurt, too" and laughing. Kim simply narrows her eyes and says, "Yeah, all women get hysterical, huh?" At which point he stops laughing and shuts up. Sully and Davis inform her they need her to answer questions about the boyfriend of the patient that she and Doc brought in because the girl died and the case is now a homicide.
Doc visits the young guy from last week that wound up paralyzed because Doc took the neck brace off in order to intubate. The boy's in a fairly foul mood (understandably) and tells Doc he's a surfer. Then he wonders if Doc visits all the patients he brings in. Doc says no, looks uncomfortable and leaves a short time later.
Faith fills out paperwork while she sits in the driver's seat of the squad car, then sets it on the dash, gets out and we see Bosco sitting on the hood of the car. She tells him they're all caught up, and he informs her that for the past week working with Gusler, he'd had to stay at the station house until 1 a.m. working on paperwork. And she answers, "Yeah, paper's not his strong suit." And Bosco looks at her. "He has a strong suit?" She thinks for a moment, then replies, "He's eager." They're both quiet for a moment. He asks her if she's really better. She tells him that she's feeling fine. Bosco says, "You should have told me." He doesn't seem angry, just a bit hurt, but very calm about it. And not in a calm way that suggests he's angry with her and is suppressing the anger. She tells him she knows she should have told him. Bosco says, "And not just because I need to know if you're going to be there to back me up, because....we're partners." She tells him that not telling him sooner was a mistake. And then he asks if she's going to be okay. "It looks like," she tells him. And Bosco tells her in a rough voice, "Don't do that again." To which Faith replies, "I'll tell you everything." And he cuts her off with, "No, don't get sick again." And then they share this look. He doesn't hold the look for long and he says, "Gusler really sucks at paperwork." And then he suggests they go "harrass somebody." They go to get in the car. Now, let me just say that for me, this was the single best scene of the entire episode. Because we don't see too much of sensitive, concerned Bosco, but it came through loud and clear here. He wasn't upset with her for not backing him up, his concern was that she was going to be okay. And the *way* that Jason Wiles delivered the line, "Don't get sick again" was awesome.
Doc and Kim talk in the ambulance. She's talking about how she wishs the judge would hurry and decide who Joey's going to be granted custody to, and he keeps bringing up the paralyzed teen. She gets a bit pissy with him, telling him that if he doesn't stop talking about and visiting the kid, people are going to put two and two together. She tells him that they messed up, it happens, welcome to the world of mortals, Doc.
They introduce some new firefighter who's trying out for the squad. His name is Prescott. Alex is ticked off when she meets him because she thinks he's taking her place and she wants back on the fire department. And he calls her "honey" which annoys her for obvious reasons. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not all 'men shouldn't use terms of endearment towards women because it's degrading.' I'm all 'men shouldn't use terms of endearment towards women they've never met before because it's a bit offensive if some random guy walks up and starts calling you things like 'honey' 'darling' and 'baby'. I mean, geez. He didn't even know her name til the end of the episode).
There's a big old fire at some apartment building and Jimmy and the new guy go in to search for people inside. An old woman from next door rants about how a couple of the fireman broke some old antiques when they came in to try and get on the roof to fight the fire next door...the captain of the FD looks a bit surprised that she's ranting about that when there may be people stuck inside a burning building. One of the firefighters come out carrying a woman. The old woman stares in horror then tells them that the woman has two children. They find the baby fairly quick and when Prescott carries the baby out, Jimmy goes to find the other kid. He's a young boy about Joey's age and he's hiding in his closet. By the time Jimmy finds him, the fire's trapped them in the room. Jimmy uses his axe to start breaking through the walls.
Alex and Carlos have a little exchange, which thankfully is the only scene in which Carlos talks tonight (because I don't think I could handle a lot of Carlos and a lot of Jimmy in one night without wanting to scream). She tells him she wants back on the squad and he replies, "Anything I can do to help that happen, let me know." And she comes back at him with, "Just keep being yourself." Which was funny. I do enjoy their banter because she can usually take him down a notch or two and it's funny to see that happen.
Jimmy finally breaks through the walls and he and the kid get out safely. However, when he goes to the hospital to see the kid, the boy shys away from him, clinging to his mother almost fearfully at which point I was like, "Did I fall asleep and miss something pivotal here? Did Jimmy hurt the kid somehow? What's going on?" But they never explained it, so I have no clue where they were going with that other than to maybe say that kids are afraid of Jimmy? I don't know.
Bosco leads Kim and Doc up the stairs at the police station, telling them that some druggie he and Faith chased and busted went into convulsions in the holding cell and could they make sure he didn't die because that would be six hours of paperwork. It was kind of amusing. So they turn the guy over, and low and behold, it was the guy who beat his girlfriend to death. To which Kim and Doc tell Faith and Bosco, who both look fairly disgusted because undoubtedly that's also going to be a lot of paperwork. Apparently he swallowed all the drugs that he'd bought and it made him really, really ill. So they revive the druggie/murderer and Bosco says, "Thank you, God" and leaves the room.
Bosco's riding in the front of the ambulance with Doc while Kim's in back with the druggie who's barfing all over the place...again. And Bosco asks Doc if they all throw up that much. The druggie guy wakes up and apologizes to Kim, saying he didn't mean to hurt his girlfriend. She tells him he didn't hurt her, he killed her. He pukes again. Kim looks a little sick herself, and even though I turned my head away to avoid watching the graphic cookie-tossing that's going on, I'm feeling a bit sick from listening to it. Kim gets up and tells Bosco the guy's awake so they change places now. Bosco's like, "Oh, great." So he changes places with her and the guy pukes yet again. Then the guy hands Bosco the bucket he'd been retching into and asks if Boz will get him a new one. The look on his face was hysterical. And can I just say that this show is getting waaaay too graphic with their expulsion-of-bodily-fluid scenes? I mean, seriously. We get the point. The guy was sick. Drugs are bad. Don't do drugs. Or you'll vomit repeatedly.
Alex talks to the captiain of the FD and tells him she wants back on the squad. He tells her they'll start looking for a medic to replace her, though it'll be hard to replace her. She runs into Prescott downstairs, who's looking at the memorial wall of firefighters that were lost in the Sept. 11 attacks.
She doesn't like the fact that he's there and he wonders if he's done something to piss her off. She doesn't really reply and as she turns to go, he tells her he knew the famous Captain Taylor (at that point not knowing that she was his daughter) and had worked with him. She doubted the validity of his statement because he looked too young to have worked with her father. He starts telling her stories about how the guy was really hard on him and on all the newbies, and how he had a daughter in the same line of duty. She kind of freezes and says, "He talked about her?" And he was like, "well, usually he seemed upset that she was there. Like a woman firefighter was a bad idea. But then people would stop in and tell him how great she was and you could see him swell up with pride." She's kind of floored by his words, and then he notices her name badge that says Taylor. He continues talking for a few moments, then said, "you must have had it rough" or something to that effect. She replied, "He was really hard to please." She turns to leave, then pauses and thanks him.
Jimmy goes to see Joey at Kim's mother's house. He looks surprised when Kim answers the door. (Uh, hello? It is her mom's house...is it really that shocking?). He tells her he just wanted to see Joey, and she says, "Yeah, me too." She tells him Joey's arm is hurting. She invites him in and goes to finish making tea. Jimmy greets his son, who's lying on the couch, his arm propped on a pillow, a bright blue cast on, with a blanket covering him up. Poor kid. Joey apologizes for crying earlier, and promises to never ever do it again. Kim comes in and tells him it's okay to cry whenever he needs to. Jimmy looks like he's about to argue, and Kim cuts him off with a similiar look to the one she gave Davis earlier, and says, "Jimmy" in a warning tone. He shuts up, too. Wow. Kim needs to give people that look more often. So then Jimmy tells Joey he'll call him tomorrow to see how he's doing. He leaves and checks his cell phone's answering service. He has one new message. It's his lawyer, telling him good news, the judge is about to rule in his favor, he's about to get full custody of his son. He turns to look through the window at Kim, who is snuggled up on the couch with Joey watching a video, both are smiling. Yeah. Jimmy really needs to get full custody of his son. That's just what the poor kid needs. Why not just hand him over to Carlos to raise? Now I'm not saying that Kim is the best parental example either, but I definitely think she's a better one than Jimmy. Or Carlos.
So Doc is visiting the kid in the hospital again. He brought him a surfing movie to watch. He leaves shortly. The tv goes blank. The kid is lying there, calling for a nurse to come and turn the movie back on. He's getting really frustrated and suddenly his fingers on one hand start moving. He starts yelling louder.
We see Doc walking down the street and then the show is over for the night.
Episode Review by X_tremeroswellian
Let's just start out by saying, I was less than happy with this episode. I mean, it's not that it was a bad episode, per say...it's just...it was mostly about Jimmy and Doc, and neither one of them are my favorite characters, so...I was kind of bored most of the time. However, below is a fairly detailed description of the episode. Oh, and fair warning. I don't like Jimmy very well. I don't like Carlos except for comic relief. And my review is a bit less than...well, nice to either of them. And I was in a bit of a sarcastic mood when I wrote this, so this review is sprinkled with all kinds of smart-ass comments and opinions. Hopefully you'll all find it amusing and not get upset with me. :)
The episode starts out with Jimmy yacking on the phone to Kim's mom about when he's bringing Joey over so she can babysit. (And while we're at it, can someone explain to me why the woman is on such good terms with Jimmy when he's suiing her daughter for sole custody of her grandson? Um, let's just say my family went through a similar situation with my nephew's father, and my mom HATED the guy for it...so I'm just not sure that's so realistic). And in between talking to her, he yells at Joey, who's playing on some playground equipment up high, to sit down before he gets hurt. So he hangs up with Kim's mom and starts flirting with the single mom sitting next to him on the park bench (hello? Can we please get Jimmy a storyline that doesn't involve him flirting with some woman? Please? Or go back in time and kill off him instead of Bobby? Sorry...got carried away). Joey falls off the playground equipment and winds up breaking his arm.
Opening credits begin.
Faith walks into the locker room and Sully greets her with "Hey, look who's back." Apparently she took Boz's advice and took some time off work. She and Fred (and I'm assuming the kids) went to Jersey for a week and hung out and relaxed. Sully and Davis leave. She puts her things into her locker and glances at Bosco. "Hey."
Bosco, who was watching her off and on since the moment she walked in, says, "Feeling better?" And she says yeah. He looks relieved, but it's a bit of an awkward moment between them. Faith comments, "They don't seem like they know." Bosco replies, "Unless you told them, they don't." He tells her that he'll see her in role call and that she should hurry because "Christopher's been a real hard ass lately." (Like he's not usually? Uh, I've been watching this show awhile now and I pretty much loathe the guy everytime he walks on screen.)
In the e.r. Jimmy's all telling Joey to stop crying, be a "tough guy." Boys don't cry, blah blah blah. Such crap. Anyhoo, Kim and Doc bring in a young woman who's been beaten badly by her boyfriend and she finds out from one of the nurses that Joey's there. She finds Jimmy outside the door of where Joey is getting a cast put on his arm. He is talking to the mom from the park all smiling and laughing. Kim walks up and demands to know what's going on. He assures her Joey's fine, "he just broke his arm." (Yeah, and the dad of the year award goes to...). She questions why the hell he isn't in there with him, and he just kind of looks embarrassed. She turns to look at the single mom. "Who the hell are you?" she demands. Jimmy hesitantly starts to introduce her. Kim glares at him, says, "You've got to be kidding me" (nope, it's still the Jimmy from the past three seasons whose only real concern is getting laid) and goes to comfort her son, telling him it's okay to cry if it hurts...she and Jimmy argue. He's all like, "boys get hurt, I broke my arm twice playing football, we take chances, blah blah blah." And she's like, "He broke a bone. That doesn't upset you?" At which point Davis and Sully come in and helpfully participate in the conversation talking about the bones they broke as children, and Davis says something like, "Yeah, my mom was all upset every time I got hurt, too" and laughing. Kim simply narrows her eyes and says, "Yeah, all women get hysterical, huh?" At which point he stops laughing and shuts up. Sully and Davis inform her they need her to answer questions about the boyfriend of the patient that she and Doc brought in because the girl died and the case is now a homicide.
Doc visits the young guy from last week that wound up paralyzed because Doc took the neck brace off in order to intubate. The boy's in a fairly foul mood (understandably) and tells Doc he's a surfer. Then he wonders if Doc visits all the patients he brings in. Doc says no, looks uncomfortable and leaves a short time later.
Faith fills out paperwork while she sits in the driver's seat of the squad car, then sets it on the dash, gets out and we see Bosco sitting on the hood of the car. She tells him they're all caught up, and he informs her that for the past week working with Gusler, he'd had to stay at the station house until 1 a.m. working on paperwork. And she answers, "Yeah, paper's not his strong suit." And Bosco looks at her. "He has a strong suit?" She thinks for a moment, then replies, "He's eager." They're both quiet for a moment. He asks her if she's really better. She tells him that she's feeling fine. Bosco says, "You should have told me." He doesn't seem angry, just a bit hurt, but very calm about it. And not in a calm way that suggests he's angry with her and is suppressing the anger. She tells him she knows she should have told him. Bosco says, "And not just because I need to know if you're going to be there to back me up, because....we're partners." She tells him that not telling him sooner was a mistake. And then he asks if she's going to be okay. "It looks like," she tells him. And Bosco tells her in a rough voice, "Don't do that again." To which Faith replies, "I'll tell you everything." And he cuts her off with, "No, don't get sick again." And then they share this look. He doesn't hold the look for long and he says, "Gusler really sucks at paperwork." And then he suggests they go "harrass somebody." They go to get in the car. Now, let me just say that for me, this was the single best scene of the entire episode. Because we don't see too much of sensitive, concerned Bosco, but it came through loud and clear here. He wasn't upset with her for not backing him up, his concern was that she was going to be okay. And the *way* that Jason Wiles delivered the line, "Don't get sick again" was awesome.
Doc and Kim talk in the ambulance. She's talking about how she wishs the judge would hurry and decide who Joey's going to be granted custody to, and he keeps bringing up the paralyzed teen. She gets a bit pissy with him, telling him that if he doesn't stop talking about and visiting the kid, people are going to put two and two together. She tells him that they messed up, it happens, welcome to the world of mortals, Doc.
They introduce some new firefighter who's trying out for the squad. His name is Prescott. Alex is ticked off when she meets him because she thinks he's taking her place and she wants back on the fire department. And he calls her "honey" which annoys her for obvious reasons. (Don't get me wrong, I'm not all 'men shouldn't use terms of endearment towards women because it's degrading.' I'm all 'men shouldn't use terms of endearment towards women they've never met before because it's a bit offensive if some random guy walks up and starts calling you things like 'honey' 'darling' and 'baby'. I mean, geez. He didn't even know her name til the end of the episode).
There's a big old fire at some apartment building and Jimmy and the new guy go in to search for people inside. An old woman from next door rants about how a couple of the fireman broke some old antiques when they came in to try and get on the roof to fight the fire next door...the captain of the FD looks a bit surprised that she's ranting about that when there may be people stuck inside a burning building. One of the firefighters come out carrying a woman. The old woman stares in horror then tells them that the woman has two children. They find the baby fairly quick and when Prescott carries the baby out, Jimmy goes to find the other kid. He's a young boy about Joey's age and he's hiding in his closet. By the time Jimmy finds him, the fire's trapped them in the room. Jimmy uses his axe to start breaking through the walls.
Alex and Carlos have a little exchange, which thankfully is the only scene in which Carlos talks tonight (because I don't think I could handle a lot of Carlos and a lot of Jimmy in one night without wanting to scream). She tells him she wants back on the squad and he replies, "Anything I can do to help that happen, let me know." And she comes back at him with, "Just keep being yourself." Which was funny. I do enjoy their banter because she can usually take him down a notch or two and it's funny to see that happen.
Jimmy finally breaks through the walls and he and the kid get out safely. However, when he goes to the hospital to see the kid, the boy shys away from him, clinging to his mother almost fearfully at which point I was like, "Did I fall asleep and miss something pivotal here? Did Jimmy hurt the kid somehow? What's going on?" But they never explained it, so I have no clue where they were going with that other than to maybe say that kids are afraid of Jimmy? I don't know.
Bosco leads Kim and Doc up the stairs at the police station, telling them that some druggie he and Faith chased and busted went into convulsions in the holding cell and could they make sure he didn't die because that would be six hours of paperwork. It was kind of amusing. So they turn the guy over, and low and behold, it was the guy who beat his girlfriend to death. To which Kim and Doc tell Faith and Bosco, who both look fairly disgusted because undoubtedly that's also going to be a lot of paperwork. Apparently he swallowed all the drugs that he'd bought and it made him really, really ill. So they revive the druggie/murderer and Bosco says, "Thank you, God" and leaves the room.
Bosco's riding in the front of the ambulance with Doc while Kim's in back with the druggie who's barfing all over the place...again. And Bosco asks Doc if they all throw up that much. The druggie guy wakes up and apologizes to Kim, saying he didn't mean to hurt his girlfriend. She tells him he didn't hurt her, he killed her. He pukes again. Kim looks a little sick herself, and even though I turned my head away to avoid watching the graphic cookie-tossing that's going on, I'm feeling a bit sick from listening to it. Kim gets up and tells Bosco the guy's awake so they change places now. Bosco's like, "Oh, great." So he changes places with her and the guy pukes yet again. Then the guy hands Bosco the bucket he'd been retching into and asks if Boz will get him a new one. The look on his face was hysterical. And can I just say that this show is getting waaaay too graphic with their expulsion-of-bodily-fluid scenes? I mean, seriously. We get the point. The guy was sick. Drugs are bad. Don't do drugs. Or you'll vomit repeatedly.
Alex talks to the captiain of the FD and tells him she wants back on the squad. He tells her they'll start looking for a medic to replace her, though it'll be hard to replace her. She runs into Prescott downstairs, who's looking at the memorial wall of firefighters that were lost in the Sept. 11 attacks.
She doesn't like the fact that he's there and he wonders if he's done something to piss her off. She doesn't really reply and as she turns to go, he tells her he knew the famous Captain Taylor (at that point not knowing that she was his daughter) and had worked with him. She doubted the validity of his statement because he looked too young to have worked with her father. He starts telling her stories about how the guy was really hard on him and on all the newbies, and how he had a daughter in the same line of duty. She kind of freezes and says, "He talked about her?" And he was like, "well, usually he seemed upset that she was there. Like a woman firefighter was a bad idea. But then people would stop in and tell him how great she was and you could see him swell up with pride." She's kind of floored by his words, and then he notices her name badge that says Taylor. He continues talking for a few moments, then said, "you must have had it rough" or something to that effect. She replied, "He was really hard to please." She turns to leave, then pauses and thanks him.
Jimmy goes to see Joey at Kim's mother's house. He looks surprised when Kim answers the door. (Uh, hello? It is her mom's house...is it really that shocking?). He tells her he just wanted to see Joey, and she says, "Yeah, me too." She tells him Joey's arm is hurting. She invites him in and goes to finish making tea. Jimmy greets his son, who's lying on the couch, his arm propped on a pillow, a bright blue cast on, with a blanket covering him up. Poor kid. Joey apologizes for crying earlier, and promises to never ever do it again. Kim comes in and tells him it's okay to cry whenever he needs to. Jimmy looks like he's about to argue, and Kim cuts him off with a similiar look to the one she gave Davis earlier, and says, "Jimmy" in a warning tone. He shuts up, too. Wow. Kim needs to give people that look more often. So then Jimmy tells Joey he'll call him tomorrow to see how he's doing. He leaves and checks his cell phone's answering service. He has one new message. It's his lawyer, telling him good news, the judge is about to rule in his favor, he's about to get full custody of his son. He turns to look through the window at Kim, who is snuggled up on the couch with Joey watching a video, both are smiling. Yeah. Jimmy really needs to get full custody of his son. That's just what the poor kid needs. Why not just hand him over to Carlos to raise? Now I'm not saying that Kim is the best parental example either, but I definitely think she's a better one than Jimmy. Or Carlos.
So Doc is visiting the kid in the hospital again. He brought him a surfing movie to watch. He leaves shortly. The tv goes blank. The kid is lying there, calling for a nurse to come and turn the movie back on. He's getting really frustrated and suddenly his fingers on one hand start moving. He starts yelling louder.
We see Doc walking down the street and then the show is over for the night.