Watching Showtime

In one of the most tragic and serious episodes of the season, The Hill is brought together through tragedy as a bus crash leaves them missing a dozen of their family and friends. As they all struggle to cope with the sudden loss, many loose ends are woven together between several of the survivors.

The rain is pouring down, and several of our favorite characters are on a bus heading home from the Patriots game when a man stops his car in front of them to jump off the bridge, leaving behind him a massive car accident. In the fallout, you see all the families of all the people on the bus getting phone calls. This includes Tom and Michael, as Mary Kate and her husband were sleeping cuddled up around each other halfway back on the bus.

Pete’s taken Eileen under his wing and is taking her to an AA meeting. He’s the only person that can see she’s got a problem, but their bigger problem right now is trying to get down the highway where the big bus crash has just happened. Pete’s upset because she’s not willing to risk hurting Tommy by being noticed at the meeting (despite the anonymity of the meetings), and because this is the first person he’s ever helped. They pass by the bus, which was flipped over in the accident, and head back home.

Freddie Cork is in a meeting with someone, and Michael’s outside hanging out with the boss’s bodyguards. Freddie’s paused by his phone ringing to tell him someone he knows was on the bus.

Deco pulls up to the scene of the accident, looking for the captain so he can identify the 11 bodies of the 45 that were DOA. First person he sees is Marty, sitting by the side of the bus and shaking. He’s in total shock and has a tag around his neck so others know the EMT’s have seen him, but his wife was one of the ones that died in the crash. Just then Tommy shows up and immediately finds Mary Kate and Jimmy fine, but she’s got to be taken in for x-rays. Tom finds Deco and asks what happened, and that’s when they find out it was a jumper that started the whole thing, Rickie Cork. That’s Freddie Cork’s kid, and to say this would bring down a shit-storm.

Michael’s at Freddie’s house, being sent on errands such as finding the best gray suit and making sure he’s got a good casket. Michael brings Petey with him to find the gray suit, and the pair are talking about suicidal thoughts. Pete admits he’s tried it once, tried to hang himself when he was 11. That’s when they find out Robbie Cork was gay, so now they have to find the lover, figure out if Freddie knows, all that goodness.

Tommy’s out making the rounds to all the families of the people who died on the bus crash. The mayor wants the public memorial to be that Thursday. It looks as though he’s trying to take over the whole thing, turn it into a publicity stunt, which sucks. The next house they go to? Carl Hobbs, the man Eileen was having the affair with. While at Carl’s mom’s house Eileen runs into a woman in the kitchen, who was his fiance but he’d broken it off six months previous. Another thing Eileen didn’t know.

Back at home after having to identify the bodies, Deco and his wife are short with each other, mostly due to the horror of the whole thing. Cassie wants to go to a candle-lit memorial but Deco doesn’t want to have anything to do with that. He’s still struggling with identifying the dead.

Freddie and Michael show up to Tom’s house, and while Freddie and Tom are talking Michael and Eileen make sandwiches in the kitchen. Freddie’s there because he wants a priest at the funeral so they can say it was an accident rather than a suicide, and he thinks Tommy can talk to the diocese. When Tommy tells Freddie he can’t, Freddie reveals his family waited up until 3am for him to show up at his house. Eileen thinks he should help Freddie, saying Rickie didn’t mean to crash the bus and that he deserves forgiveness and a decent funeral. Is this just her demons talking? At work that day, Tom tells his aide to call the Bishop to see if he can spare 5 minutes for Rickie’s funeral, but his aide thinks they shouldn’t have to beg for the church to say he’s in heaven.

While meeting with the Bishop, Tom learns they won’t show up to the funeral no matter what based on the suicide factor, and is finally able to see the wrong in it. While this is going on the Italian mob head shows up at Freddie’s house to give his condolences. Michael’s out talking to one of the Mayor’s goons about how Freddie’s all distracted and it could cause problems on all fronts. Then he starts to set up a side deal with the goon.

Tommy heads over to Judd’s house, and first runs into his wife who reminds him how much he’d screwed up by turning down the personal favor Judd had asked of him. With that reminder Tom thinks against heading into the house with all the money Freddie’d given him to try to get Judd to help with the Bishop. Then he heads to visit Mary Kate, who’s in good spirits. Jimmy’s running around helping like a mad-thing, obviously grateful his wife survived the accident. Heading into the kitchen he asks his mom to help him by talking to Judd about getting a Bishop at Rickie’s funeral. Rose says if he ever brings up Judd again she’ll put bamboo under his finger nails!!!

Cassie’s giving Deco a haircut when Marty’s girlfriend Vickie storms in saying she can’t find him. Marty’s in his house, just sitting there watching tv and clearly still in shock. He’s mourning the loss of his wife, the soon-to-be loss of his own life, and in general isn’t doing so well. Vickie comes in while he’s talking to Deco and she holds him while he sobs. That takes a strong woman to hold her boyfriend while he’s mourning the loss of his wife.

Rose heads off to play cards with Judd and she asks him to help Tom out with the Bishop situation. As she’s about the only person who can talk him into it, it might just work.

Michael visits Freddie, and it would appear he tells him his son was gay. The pair drive to a factory (that’s been turned into apartments) to meet his dead son’s lover. Obviously upset, Freddie finds out the pair had been living together for five months but have been dating for two years, and that he’d been “getting better lately”. Turns out Rickie’s been depressed and suicidal for over two years. Freddie finds out that Rickie didn’t come out to him because he thought Freddie would never have forgiven him, but Freddie says “he could have sucked Elton John’s dick on national tv” and he wouldn’t have cared. When his boyfriend tells Freddie he loved him too, Freddie loses it and strangles him to death. Then he puts the ring Rickie had left on the side of the bridge on his chest and leaves.

The day of the memorial, everyone shows up to say goodbye to the dead. Freddie and his wife show up to the memorial, but Freddie doesn’t want to go in because of how people will stare and whisper. In the end, Rickie’s mother goes into the funeral but Freddie stays behind. And good for her for showing to everyone that she’s allowed to mourn her son. After she sits down, people all over the church are staring and whispering, and Tom gets up and offers to sit with her. Good man doing a good thing, showing to everyone that she has a right to mourn.

After the memorial, Marty sees everyone giving their condolences to Freddie, and he walks up to Deco and tells him that he’ll turn state’s witness and give up Freddie to the cops. While that’s going on, Pete offers to talk to Eileen in private so she doesn’t have to worry about embarrassing Tommy. Freddie thanks Tommy for sitting next to his wife, and then Tom sends him over to talk to another representative’s husband, getting some help in passing a budget. This will put Tom back on the good graces of the rest of the Senate, and will help Freddie on the way to getting a priest at his son’s funeral.

How will the neighborhood recover from such a tragic accident? We’ll get to see in the last two episodes!

Catch up on previous episodes:
Mark 8:36 (ep. 1)
Genesis 27:29 (ep. 2)
Matthew 15:37 (ep. 3)
Matthew 5:6 (ep. 4)
Matthew 12:25 (ep. 5)
Samyutta 11:10 (ep. 6)
Genesis 27:39 (ep. 7)
Job 31:5-6 (ep.

Showtime, Brotherhood, Michael Caffee, Jason Isaacs, Thomas Caffee, Jason Clarke, Eileen Caffee, Annabeth Gish, Declan Giggs, Ethan Embry, Freddie Cook, Kevin Chapman, Rose Caffee, Fionnula Flanagan