Following two weeks of excellent, best-of worthy material, the writing team behind “Rescue Me” is going to have a helluva time outdoing themselves any time soon. Tonight’s episode is proof of that. After opening with a killer scene involving the Ladder 62 crew responding to an apartment fire (caused by a heat lamp burning the tenant’s marijuana plants) and watching Garrity and Probie get high off the fumes, the rest of the hour was littered with nothing more than a few slow-progressing subplots to help pass the time.

For one, Probie’s haphazard homosexual experiment is officially out of the bag, and while most of the guys aren’t exactly sure how to take it, Tommy feigns empathy in order to keep his crew together. It’s not going to be as easy as he thinks, however, with Franco taking the lieutenant’s exam and Lou contemplating moving down to Florida to work for his brother’s boating company. Also, now that Garrity is marrying Maggie, Tommy can’t stand hanging out with the guy because he constantly refers to him as his brother; even going so far as to change his firefighter trench coat to read “Gavin.” To counter this, Sheila pleads Tommy to quit and move away with her to a house on the beach, using her widow money from 9/11 as a means of income. Apparently, she’s managed to save up over $1 million (thank you, interest) just by letting the cash sit in the bank for five years.

This probably isn’t going to happen – since no firefighters means no show – but I’m still rooting for Sheila to win him over in the end. This might be a little easier now that Tommy’s discovered Janet is pregnant (courtesy of older brother Johnny), unless, of course, it’s his baby, which we all know is going to be the case. Oh well, at least the show had a few good weeks to deliver before the wheels on this train wreck were set into motion.