Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Rescue Me: Letting go

I'm about to leave on a road trip that will have me away from the computer for at least a couple of days, if not through the weekend, so very quick "Rescue Me" thoughts before I go, and then you savages are on your own until probably "Deadwood" time.

Another comeback-y episode, with one very large exception. At this point, I don't think I ever, ever, ever want to see Janet and Tommy alone in a scene again. Too much baggage there from The Incident and what happened afterwards, both on and off-screen. As soon as they made plans to meet, I cringed, and the actual meeting was even worse than I was expecting. No. Just no. Time to start fast-forwarding through that stuff, methinks.

Lots of goodness in the rest of the show, both light (Lou looking at Garrity during the discussion of "retard strength," Tommy's debate with the cabbie about the 72/77 virgins, the woman at the bar being turned on by Tommy's woe-is-me monologue) and dark (Tommy talking Stack into dying for the sake of his family, the entire sequence with Connor on the bus and Tommy showing off his scars).

On the other hand, there was one very unfortunate bit of timing: the shot of Tommy looking at the WTC-less skyline coming immediately after the commercial for "World Trade Center." Not only did the ad kind of wreck me emotionally for a good five minutes, but it completely threw me out of the Tommy/Jimmy scene because, even though in my head I knew the timing was coincidental (for Leary and Tolan, if not for the FX exec who sold the ad time), I couldn't stop viewing the scene as some kind of weird movie plug.

What did everybody else think? Talk amongst yourselves for a bit.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I actually thought the scene with Janet was kind of interesting. I don't want to see it every week, but getting a little insight into her state of mind post-Incident was good, I think.

The closing scene with Stack was really strong. The fadeout of the sound before the screen went to black hit me pretty hard.

Anonymous said...

whatever the final decision, emmy-wise, Dennis Leary deserves recognition for his acting this year. He navigates the light and the dark with such anger & pathos that I forget his origins in stand-up.

Anonymous said...

I couldnt stop laughing as Tommy had to ask Janet and Johnny for cab money.

Anonymous said...

Tommy asking for cab money was a welcome relief after the intensity of Tommy's interaction with Janet. No surprise that Janet is a true ballbuster, either!

I still don't want to see any more Uncle Teddy-having-sex scenes. Guhhh.

Anonymous said...

Question: why are Tolan and Leary like Ernest Hemingway?

Answer: they just can't get women in 3-D.

My suggestion is that they eliminate all female characters. Tommy and the rest of the guys at the house in the grip of pain and sorrow are great. Leary and Tolan should just leave heterosexual relationships out of their scripts.

Anonymous said...

I gotta agree, Leary is fucking amazing this season. this ep was as great as the last one, even better, actually.

You really need to get over "the Incident." the scene with the two of them this time had nothing to do with any kind of vilence except what we all do to ourselves. It's a mistake to think anyone else can inflict the kind of damage that we can do to ourselves so easily.