- With the hospital cookout quickly approaching, the guys hatch a plan to sneak Lou out of the hospital. Sean and Mike attempt to do good, Teddy bonds with Colleen, and Father Phil gives Tommy a piece of advice that sends him reeling.
- After finding Lou face down on the firehouse floor, the guys are at the hospital going into hour six waiting for news. He had no pulse when they found him. They're allowed to see him.
In his room, Lou assures the guys he's fine. The cookout's not for another 10 days and Hillary the nutrition lady is there to help.
She joins them and see them subject Lou to a round of fat jokes. Needles explains brutal honesty is their stock in trade. So Hillary takes a turn. She tells Needles he has a giant mole on his face, Black Shawn's eyes are too far apart, Franco has Mr. Potato head lips and Mike and Shawn look mentally challenged and to Tommy: "Owen Wilson called, he wants his nose back."
Back at the house, Needles says they have to bust Lou out of the hospital because the West Side Wild Men have moved up their cookout to the weekend after they found out about Lou's heart attack. Damien can't go, he has a date with Penny the hot probie chick from the west side.
Needles has fake uniforms for the guys. Franco will be playing the doctor because he speaks "white" well.
Father Phil, the priest (Peter Gallagher) from the fire stops by to apologize for how he reacted to the chip in the 700 year old Virgin Mary statue's "a--" and he also has a bill for $40,000 in case the fire department can cover it. They can't. He tells them he's available if they ever need anything.
In the hospital, Dr. Franco wanders around with orderlies Mike and Sean looking for Lou. Somehow, they lose Sean. He walks by his old friend Pat Mahoney, a cancer patient who's hairless and not doing well. He wants Sean to bust him out.
On his date, Damien and Penny confess each of their houses wanted cook-out intel. Her dad was a fire fighter, she knows about his dad. He admits he signed up because of his dad and also to piss off his mother and his uncle (Tommy).
Damien finds himself talking about his dad and getting flustered, and Penny saves him by suggesting they get wasted.
In Lou's room, all the guys are there. Sean brings Pat. At first they object to sneaking him out and altering the plan, but Sean gives an impassioned speech about it being a battlefield and them not leaving Pat behind because he got his cancer at ground zero. (It sounds better when he says it.)
They push Lou on his gurney into the elevator and run into Sheila. She's not too keen on their plan, but wishes them luck.
Out the opposite exit, Sean and Mike race across the street with Pat, who briefly enjoys his moments of freedom. They're trying to decide between beers and strip clubs when Pat starts hacking and coughs up blood. They decide they better go back.
In the hospital lobby, they get stopped by an actual lady doctor, but Franco steps aside with her and works his Franco magic and they're on their way.
Pat wakes up the next morning and finds Sean sitting by his bed. He realizes he's going to die in that room. He thinks no one will care. He wonders why he put himself on the line, and Sean says it's just what they do. Sean boldly says he'll take care of everything, then confesses he has no idea how to back that up.
In the firehouse kitchen, Lou has made mini Cuban sandwiches, pastrami puffs and pizza rolls. He tells Tommy that Hillary told him he was an emotional eater. He's thinking of calling ahead to the hospital and reserving a better room.
He tells Tommy he saw black when he died and smelled a bakery. Then he had a feeling. Tommy thinks it was waves of dread, but Lou describes waves of joy and contentment. Then he saw his mother, the way he remembered her as a kid. He was licking chocolate cupcake icing. Tommy prompts him for the foreboding, but it never happened.
Lou tells Tommy he's kind of looking forward to going back there. Tommy thinks Lou was dreaming. Tommy doesn't see how Lou gets to go to a good place. They compare sins.
The hooker Lou ripped off deserved it, but Tommy's kids didn't deserve him, Lou says. Firefighters are replaceable, but fathers aren't. "You should start thinking about that, because maybe then you'd be smelling bakeries for eternity, just like me," Lou says.
Tommy goes to see Father Phil, who greets him with a baseball bat when he thinks Tommy's messing with a statue. He offers Tommy a drink and tells him they're on edge after the arson.
Tommy works up to telling the priest about his recent death and going "to the other side." Father Phil accurately guesses that Tommy thinks he went to hell.
He thinks the priest might have answers, but he tells Tommy only he can find them. He says in times like these he needs to be grounded and asks who has been there for him. After a long pause, Tommy says Janet. Father Phil asks if there's anything there that can be salvaged. He asks for a picture.
"Wow," he says when he sees Janet. He tells Tommy that Janet looks like she's worth fighting for. Father Phil admires it and asks if he can keep it.
Back at Tommy's house, Franco is under Janet's sink fixing things. She goes to change out of stained clothes on the other side of a gauzy curtain. Franco sees her in her lacy underthings and they manage to carry on a conversation about Lou in the hospital. Janet takes her time getting dressed and Franco gets distracted and cuts himself.
She comes to help with it and they stand too close and stare at each other. He almost goes for it, but then pulls off and apologizes profusely. She tells him it's not like she and Tommy are officially together.
Tommy comes home and Franco and Janet are supremely awkward. Tommy notices. Finally he says "You two have got to be s---ing me."
He leaves. He gets in his car. He almost goes back in, but doesn't. He reaches for the super fancy whiskey from Teddy and Mickey. He takes a drink. Then another. He takes out Janet's picture. He crumples it up and reaches for the bottle.
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