First off, props to Heathen for doing a bang-up job filling in for me last week while I was at "Management Training." I learned how to successfully manage nine beers imbibed in rapid succession. It was very educational. And further props to Strega for chillin' with me in D.C. and helping me navigate the Metro.

Previously on Cops and Medics Get Shot a Lot: Sully got it on with a Ukrainian babe who we continue to suspect is hiding some deep dark secret. And Bobby spilled his morals to Doc when he complained that paramedics are just middlemen who rarely get a chance to make a difference. He was talking suspiciously like a martyr. Whoops, did I just let a cat escape from a bag?

A hazy flashback sequence begins the actual episode. Bobby, in voice-over, is explaining how his father got him and his brother Matty to learn boxing. It was to toughen them up. It certainly worked for Matty, who ended up becoming a petty criminal later in life. Bobby says that by the time Matty was fourteen, he was taking on beat cops two at a time. That's in the punching/kicking sense, not in the desperate/sexual sense. We see Matty struggling with some cops on a street corner to illustrate this. We segue into a scene featuring Adult Bobby fighting in a ring, and then a different ring with a Young Bobby, all padded up and getting his face bashed in by a "friend." Although Bobby never took to boxing, he says, his friend Paulie did, and had no problems punching the stuffing out of Bobby. It would prepare him for those long shifts sitting next to Kim. We watch as Bobby gets beat up, and he says that instead of hating the guy for beating him up in the ring, he loved the kid. Paulie, Bobby says, was the best friend he ever had.

We get shots of the two boys walking along, growing into the men they would later become. Bobby says that the two shared everything -- homework, TV shows (hey, we do that here, sometimes!), even Paulie's sister. Whoa! tI don't know if we're quite ready to go in that direction, Bobby. Care to explain? You did mention some strange sexual predilections to Alex a few episodes back, but we all thought it was a joke. Bobby explains that Paulie's sister, Gina, was the first girl he with whom ever made love. We see the young Bobby and a young Gina in a room with a Madonna "Like a Virgin" poster on the wall. The girl, who he says was in ninth grade, kisses him, and then stands up and starts taking off her Catholic-school uniform. Bobby says that plaid skirts and white socks still make him weak in the knees. Somewhere, Calvin Klein has got a woody right now. Bobby says that Paulie was okay with his getting it on with his sister, probably because Bobby really cared about her. They were together for five years, Bobby says. Then she went off and married some plumber from Queens. More quasi-kiddie porn as the two kiss, Gina with her shirt half unbuttoned. Teen-Bobby stops to take some gum out of his mouth, stick it on the dresser, and continue to get it on 'til the break 'a dawn. Where are the parents in all this? I swear, I'm never having kids.