Tacoma FD
“Bad Blood”, Season 4 Episode 13
What do I know about this series going into it?
Never heard of it. I assume it’s about a fire department. In Tacoma.
This is the type of cutting-edge analysis you signed up for.
Recap
Two guys, with nametags identifying them as Penisi and McConky, are sitting in a boat in a driveway, arguing over who’s the captain. McConky is the fire chief, and therefore of higher rank, but Penisi is a literal captain.
Mickleberry brings McConky a glass of milk, and heroic music plays as he drinks it. He delivers a wholesome message on how important and healthy milk is.
McConky and Penisi continue posturing and finally decide to settle it with a nautical-knot-tying contest. Penisi wins by tying McConky to the boat when he’s distracted.
Opening credits, with the song “Hot Blooded”.
The firefighters have gathered in a lecture room. Penisi is at the podium, announcing the annual blood drive. He’s a universal donor (O negative). The token woman on the force, whose hair is covering her name tag so I can’t read it, is the universal recipient (AB positive). Mickleberry is “be positive”, a joke he repeats multiple times. I’m guessing these blood types will turn out to be important later.
But there’s a problem: McConky announces that this year the blood drive will be held jointly with the police department, who for some reason the firefighters really hate. He shuts down their objections and quotes the pun in the episode title.
Filming begins on a commercial advertising the blood drive, in which Penisi plays Dracula and pretends to suck McConky’s blood. It’s the same theme they’ve done every year – but this year, Jerry the police chief is part of the scene. McConky’s name happens to be Terry, and they do a “I’m Jerry” “I’m Terry” “And I’m scary” gag. Terry calls cut.
Terry and Jerry leave to rewrite the scene, because they want to change the theme to one of interdepartmental cooperation. Penisi is mad that Jerry is becoming better friends with…
Okay, I’ve already forgotten which is which. I’ll call firefighter-erry “Ferry” and policeman-erry “Perry”.
Penisi is mad at how Ferry’s friendship with Perry is growing closer than his friendship with Penisi, and decides he has to break them up.
The cops arrive at the fire department to set up for the blood drive. There is bickering. Token Woman, whose hair is still covering her nametag, used to go out with one of the cops until he overdosed on edibles, and he’s still bitter about the breakup. The two sides agree on a bet: whichever team collects less blood has to get a tattoo of the other team’s insignia. But they have to keep the bet secret from Perry and Ferry, who have been insistent there be no competition.
The firefighters have decked out their half of the room with cookies and steak and other fun stuff – but when they open the door, the public lines up on the cop side. Turns out the cops set up a speed trap and let off everybody they caught speeding as long as they agreed to donate to the cops.
Penisi’s plan to break up Perry and Ferry gains an unexpected ally: one of the female cops, who doesn’t like it any more than he does. They have sex and agree to share dirt on their chiefs. The most valuable dirt: Perry hates milk and doesn’t like boats, two things that were established in the opening as being crucial to gaining Ferry’s respect. So Penisi brings glasses of milk to everyone, and Perry turns it down: he’s lactose-intolerant. This does not, however, have the desired effect on Ferry:
But then there’s a twist: When the female cop and Penisi were sharing dirt on their bosses, she secretly recorded Penisi badmouthing Ferry’s boating. She then plays it for Ferry to create friction within the fire department. Turns out all of it – including having sex with Penisi, twice – was in service of winning the bet.
In other bet shenanigans, the cops give out license plate holders that say you’re a friend of the Tacoma PD, and the firefighters drain Mickleberry of blood almost to the point of death. But things come to a head when the firefighters catch the cops filling donor bags with pigs’ blood. There is a fight, which Perry and Ferry are forced to break up. They’re angry - especially when they find out about the bet.
But thanks to Mickleberry, the contest ended in a tie. The underlings convince Perry and Ferry, who haven’t donated yet, to see who can donate more and break the tie. They agree, and while donating they trash-talk each other until it turns nasty and their friendship breaks up. Ferry, who is physically larger, easily donates more and wins, while Perry goes cold and faints.
In the coda, the fire department are all sitting around in their boat and enjoying their victory, during which I finally learn Token Female’s name is Lucy (but still can’t read her badge to find out her last name).
But then Smith arrives with bad news: they actually lost, because one of their blood donations was disqualified by the lab. It’s Lucy’s. She’s pregnant.
Unresolved questions
Who’s the father?
Ratings
Story: 3/10. A fairly standard sitcom plot with not much meat on it. There were a couple of subplots that were established solely for the sake of delivering a joke halfway through, which seemed to be too much effort with too little payoff.
Writing: 4/10. Almost all of the jokes fell flat, and (since the script was fond of repetition) some of them fell flat over and over again. In fact, the only joke I actually laughed at was the one the script itself mocked: “And I’m scary!” But I’m not going to mark the show down too harshly; it’s not its fault it didn’t match my own peculiar sense of humor.
Besides, the twist where the police officer was secretly working for her side all along was genuinely unexpected, given she had sex with Penisi twice to accomplish it. And the writers put in the effort to give the episode a spoof Aesop: never make new friends after the age of 40.
It did bother me a bit that the blood bank rejected Lucy’s donation. Blood banks don’t test for that; the reason they warn pregnant woman not to give blood is because it’s dangerous to the donor, not dangerous to the recipient. (Though of course that’s just a nitpick and didn’t affect the score - you should never expect too much logic from a comedy show.)
Production: 6/10. Generally competent, with a few bad pieces of direction – especially during the bet-establishing scene.
Characterization: 4/10. More caricatures than characters, but I got to know them surprisingly well over the course of 24 minutes.
Clarity: 9/10. Other than the Jerry/Terry mixup and never learning the name of the two female characters – the police officer was never named, and the firefighter’s hair was over her nametag – I was never confused.
Closure: 2/10. Only one momentous event happened in this episode, the announcement of Lucy’s pregnancy. That’s not usually considered closure, given it’s more the start of something than the end. It does occasionally appear in series finales, but only when there are multiple other types of closure as well.
Do I want to watch the series now?
As I said, it’s not my brand of humor. But it was competently done, so if you enjoy this sort of thing – go for it.