Wednesday, July 19, 2006
Rescue Me: Are you kidding me?
Today's column is me once again getting mad at "Rescue Me" for the end of last night's episode. I'm frankly too annoyed to write about it twice, but feel free to comment below.
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11 comments:
Hope this doesn't post twice!
I don't think men fantasize about being taken advantage of by women and then not being able to remember what happened. That scene made me more uncomfortable than the infamous Janet/Tommy one.
Sheila's pain over losing Jimmy made me feel sorry for her briefly, but the rest of her pathetic antics were, well, pathetic! And I'm guessing she's going to wind up pregnant with the next male Gavin firefighter, which should piss Tommy off even more.
Other than that, I liked the rest of the ep, especially Probie's continued sexual follies. I know a few guys who are like that in real life, so Probie's predicament continues to crack me up.
I'm still holding out hope for karmic justice. For example, the huge dude Garrity almost had to fight on the street...maybe he's friends with Birdy (and a friend of Dorothy) and will meet Tommy in a future episode for a little unwanted man-on-man.
I think the Sheila "rape" of Tommy was supposed to be the karmic justice. Wasn't this ep 6? I've lost track. I think that's the ep where Tolan said Tommy would get some payback.
She used the roofies and Viagra that she confiscated from her son, who was banging the teacher who gave Tommy VD, so that... Tommy can give her VD. Which is punishing Tommy, see, because now he thinks he fell off the wagon. Huh. It really is hard to tell where Tommy's worldview stops and Leary's begins.
Making him think he fell off the wagon was particularly cruel of her. I do think she was trying to get pregnant with his kid, too, though. Yuck.
Sheila is flat-out crazy;that whole number she pulled on Tommy was horrifying to say the least. I agree with dez that this is NOT a male fantasy(or a female one,for that matter),it was the act of a truly emotionally disturbed person.
You can't compare it to the Janet/Tommy hate sex because,for one thing,it's pretty obvious that Janet likes it rough(which is why her relationship with Johnny is doomed;he's too nice of a guy for her tastes.)and as a woman,it annoys me that whenever a female character shows some interest in the darker side of sex,it's always seen as sexist. I prefer to take it in context and yes, some women are just as freaky as men in the bedroom and no,it's not always meant to be some ploy to get the male viewers excited.
Oh,and Maggie & Garrity hooking up again-hard to say that that wasn't coming! Liked the payback on that bar owner who stiffed the Chief:)
lady t
I think had it been clear that Janet was engaging in rough sex or even viscous hate sex, no one would have batted an eye. Freaky is NOT what's being called into question. But what many believed was conveyed dramatically was that Janet was genuinely fighting him off, at least in this instance. The fact that they share a strong mutual attraction, doesn't alter the fact that in this instance, she clearly did NOT want him for WHATEVER reason. Which is why her smile afterwards was angering to people.
Leary has now said he believes women enjoy being raped -- not acting out rape, not consensual hate sex; RAPE. Bizarre notion since rape (as opposed to violent sex), by definition, means someone is NOT a willing participant, so how could they enjoy it? Which gives credence to what Alan and viewers saw as Janet's puzzling response, And to the notion that the show's POV indeed mirrors Leary/Tolan's.
so no one thinks maybe Sheila is setting up Tommy to claim he raped her? The trashing of the apartment/ The sprinkling the booze on him? The fact that she was obviously quite on the verge of spazzing out when she asked about Angie?
cdtv,I get what you're saying(and since I didn't read about Leary's rape comment,I'm not going to address that at the moment)but it seems to me that Janet and Tommy have done this dance before and while I don't condone marital rape,some people,both men and women,do act out rape fantasies.
I still think it was hate sex,which does not for a healthy relationship make(which is probaly why the two of them are on again/off again along with Tommy's addictions). What Sheila did was out and out scary- no one wants to be drugged up and phyiscally taken advantage of. Kevbo may be right about Sheila claiming that Tommy forced himself on her-really bad karma going around for these people,I swear!
I think you may be right, kevbo. But will anyone believe her? She's thrown herself at Tommy so much that her story would be suspect even if he really did rape her instead of the other way around. I hope that's not the direction the show goes because that would be far uglier than anything they've done so far.
And I'm with ladyt that Tommy/Janet was hate sex, and Sheila/Tommy was scary.
In other parts of the ep, the thing with Perolli taking their money and giving it to charity was great. I'm glad the Chief didn't steal it. And the car scenario was very funny! They couldn't beat the guy up, which is their preferred method of dealing with problems, it seems, so they take it out on his car instead. Heh!
First of all, karmic justice for Tommy isn't having an attractive woman dope him up and have her way with him. Karmic justice is sending him to "Oz" to share a cell with Adebisi for an afternoon.
No, Sheila doing this to Tommy -- at the end of an episode where Marisa Tomei's previously tough character broke down in tears and repeatedly succumbed to Tommy's charms in the bedroom -- is yet another male fantasy, just like the "she secretly wants to be raped" aspect of the original scene with Tommy and his ex-wife, Janet. Tommy Gavin/Denis Leary apparently drives women so wild with desire that they'll resort to insane, aggressive measures to get him into bed.
Uh - no.
For one thing, while being raped" by a woman might be a male fantasy, I think it has been pretty well established that Tommy does not want to have sex with Sheila ever again (since he found out about the miscarriage, methinks). Notice that she tried to come on to him when he was crying in an earlier episode, and he rejected her. I think it is fairly obvious that had she tried to seduce him while he was lucid, he would have rejected her, violently if she persisted.
Second, while I do not believe that "rape is never about sex," I do think that in this cas,e as with the case between Tommy and Janet, sexual desire was less an issue than control. Sheila has sort of thought of Tommy as hers ever since they broke up, and sees his tryst with Angie the same way he sees Janet's relationship with Johnny.
Looking at how angry she got at the end of last week's episode, and how angry she got (for a moment) when confronting Tommy about Angie, it seems clear to me that her goal was to "reclaim her property" and to violently take control of their relationship. And probably to get pregnant; I think she feels that he owes her a kid.
Also, her plan to cover it up by making him think he hit the bottle again seems to me to have some premeditated cruelty in it. Definitely this is going to bother him.
So no, I think that this is karmic payack that will bite Tommy big time.
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