By Matthew Wood

Oh Tommy, don’t do it. As we fade to black in the latest episode of RESCUE ME, Tommy Gavin is leaning on a guard rail over the river, contemplating dropping his newborn son over the edge to his imminent death.

The reasons for taking the kid’s life are plenty. First of all, it isn’t even his son. It’s his dead brother’s, who conceived it while having an affair with his ex-wife. And now she’s in a rampant state of depression, ex-fling -- and crazy psycho -- Sheila wants to take custody of it (yeah, that’s what the kid needs) and money’s scarce, what with Tommy’s other two kids in need.

There has to be a better way. But not according to the ghost of Connor, who is thinly veiled in Tommy’s phsyche as his desire for a drink (at least, in this guy’s esteemed medical opinion) and urges Tommy to off the kid.

But you can’t blame Tommy – or anyone else in the house – for being pretty stressed out. The episode starts out with a whammy of a house fire, and the damage done – seven babies and a mother die – is pretty traumatic. I’ll be honest, I’ve never dragged a baby out of a burning building, only to see them die on the sidewalk outside. But I’ll just go on out on a limb and say it has to mess a guy up.

In other news, you can pretty much sum up the entire house’s love lives by saying they’re messed up. Lou’s ex-nun girlfriend still wants some hot lovin’ – bad. Franco’s ex, Alicia (played by Susan Sarandon) is back in town and is ready to rekindle their family life. The whole Franco subplot really doesn’t interest me, but if I had the choice between Annie Savoy (albeit 20-some years older) and a cute kid or a chick who’s having second thoughts about the proposal and her retard brother … well, let’s just say it’s a no-brainer.

At least the probie is a straight baller on the court – and has a pretty cool head in the face of danger. So it looks like the house has a hoops title to look forward to, so that’s nice.

But back to the “baby fire.” I’ve been clamoring for something like this to happen all season. It’s been mostly a waiting game, as the boys deal with their various relationship problems. But, as all firemen know, the next big disaster is right around the corner.

It almost legitimizes an otherwise sluggish start to the season thus far. Almost as though it was the calm before the storm, and everybody knew something bad was coming.

Well, it certainly came. And now it’s up to everyone to deal with it. Let’s just hope that doesn’t mean tossing a kid into the river.