Hunt, who is chained up to a nearby radiator, disagrees with me. "You've got all that crap churning in your head," he sneers from his spot in the peanut gallery. "No wonder you're seeing things." Hunt asks Sam how long he's been feeling like it's him against the world -- he does not pose the question particularly sympathetically. Sam responds that he's felt that way since arriving at the 125, an answer that apparently cuts Hunt to the quick. "Being a loon is one thing," he says. "But that's the first I'm hearing of your dissatisfaction with being on the squad." If Sam's feeling so alone, Hunt continues, maybe he and Annie shouldn't have bothered coming in after him. It's the petulant, quick-to-take offense Gene Hunt, ladies and gentlemen -- I bet when this is all over, he goes home and eats an entire pint of Haagen Dazs while writing all about this in his Cry Journal. Before we can linger too much on that mental image, Michael H. reappears to announce that it's time for an ill-considered surgical procedure. To the abattoir!

In the operating theater -- really just another dingy room with one of those big surgical lamps -- Dr. Schwan preps for surgery, while Sam, Annie, and Hunt have been re-handcuffed to new parts of the room. Dr. Schwan's plan is to stimulate Johnny's brain so that the EEG machine indicates that there's activity. And after that? Well, Dr. Schwan hopes that by the time the gun-wielding maniac realizes that someone's pulled a fast one on him, the hostage crisis will be over. The characters in this episode must have gotten a bulk discount rate at the Bad Idea Store. Michael wheels in his newly-shorn brother and puts him on the slab. Johnny's hooked up to the EEG machine and grabs a tool -- I believe the proper terminology is That Whirly-Looking Saw That Cuts People's Skulls Open. What? You can't trick an EEG machine into recording brain activity without breaking a few eggs -- the "eggs" in this case being Johnny's skull.

As the blades of the rotary tool get perilously closer to Johnny's flesh, Sam speaks for all of us when he demands that Dr. Schwan stop what he's doing. "This is not going to work," Sam tells Michael. "This operation -- it's not going to bring Johnny back." Michael orders Dr. Schwan to resume with the sawing, but Sam is most insistent: "What you're about to do is not helping Johnny. It's hurting him, Michael." Michael thinks it's high time Sam got a second opinion on the procedure from Dr. Fist, who, unsurprisingly, prescribes a savage beatdown for Sam. Annie and Hunt scream at Michael to stop -- beating on Sam is the exclusive right of the 125th Precinct, you animal! But it's finally Dr. Schwan who puts an end to this charade. "He's right!" Dr. Schwan confesses. "I can't do it. I can't help your brother." Well, can you do anything for Sam, then? Surely, all these weekly blows to the head aren't helping with his brain injury.