A quick review of tonight's "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I say Grace..."Disease" wasn't as strong as last week's "Mickey," though it featured an even more elaborate Garrity fantasy musical number, this one complete with Busby Berkeley choreography that has to be viewed from overhead to be truly appreciated.
(And did I miss the explanation for why Sean was in a coma? I know surgery can have complications, but I don't recall hearing them mentioned at any point in the episode.)
It wasn't a bad episode, necessarily, but it felt like there was way too much of Tommy and Janet, and Tommy and Sheila, at the expense of everything else, other than the musical fantasy and more inexplicable time with Lou and Candy the hooker. (And should we take Tommy's comment about how Lou should have kids as foreshadowing that Candy is trying to tell Lou that he's her baby daddy?) Given that my brain starts to tune out any lengthy scene with Tommy and his women, as a defense mechanism, when I got to the end of the episode it felt like it was only 10 or 15 minutes long.
Hope there's a point to all of this, and/or that we get a significant change in direction soon.
What did everybody else think?
19 comments:
I tried to get into Rescue Me, especially having worked with Steven Pasquale, but Tommy's relationships kept me from investing.
I've been watching these episodes to see Steven sing, but it really takes me out the moment when they screw up simple medical things. A ventilator and oxygen tubes?
I feel like Scallion pancakes after this post. mmm... veggie heaven.
The storylines revolving around Tommy's drinking are beginning to become as tiresome as his endless Sheila and Janet drama.
And can someone please explain to me Tommy's relationship with Janet? They've both been in multiple relationships with other people (she was even with his brother) and it seems like she's still technically with Michael J. Fox's character, but the two of them always act as if they're single when they're together. I get that they're not officially divorced, but would it kill them to ocassionally mention that when they're sleeping together at least one of them is always cheating??
I was confused by Sean's coma as well. Having a kidney removed is not minor surgery, but for someone to fall into a coma and be hooked up to a ventilator is rare. It would have been easy enough for one of the guys to ask Sean's mother what happened and for her to explain why he was in such bad shape. I would have appreciated that more than the Tommy/Sheila scene.
I completely support including more of Steven Pasquale's singing, but I felt last weeks number was better integrated into the episode.
Did Garrity Die? It seemed like he took his last breath when just Tommy was in the room. The way Tommy was watching Garrity's Mom when she hovered over Garrity, made me think Tommy was waiting for her to figure out that he died.
I got the feeling that he died as well, with the Our Father at the end. But I do wish they explained why he was so sick. I only half pay attention during this show (my defense mechanism), but was there some complication the doctor mentioned a few weeks ago that would explain this? I hope that Steven Pasquale isn't gone from the show.
The rest of the show was not interesting. Sheila is back to being a full-on kook. The dinner scene was stupid - why they are giving into Katie's whims is beyond me. It just further highlighed what idiots/bad parents Tommy and Janet are.
I thought from the moment she arrived that Candy was going to have a Little Lieu in tow, so the baby/kid mentions are like anvils now.
Not sure why I keep watching this show, but I do...
From Jan:
I'm glad I wasn't the only one confused about Sean in a coma. I kept wondering if I'd missed an episode.
I have to say that I enjoyed the musical number even if it wasn't very well worked in. And I'm glad that for once Tommy didn't get the girl when Mike got the nurse instead. Janet and Sheila are both doing absolutely nothing for me right now. The season started out so well..........I hope they get back to the good stuff soon. Some of the exchanges between Tommy and Lou were good, though.
While not as strong as last week, this week may be more fraught with meaning. The opening song is about self delusion and staying in your own self made fantasy rather than facing life. I think Garrity was going to wake up, but he says he'd rather be a vegetable. So, I'm not completely sure that he's in a coma, so much as really really avoiding things. The "fantasy world" theme is at its most obvious at the Gavin family dinner. Rather than be honest with Katie, everyone is acting. And Tommy's delusion is all over the episode, from his trying to convince himself that life was better with booze to his continuing to try to convince himself he's not an alcoholic (Alan, the Sheila stuff is annoying, but you may actually want to watch the Sheila scene where she explains to Tommy that he isn't a "get drunk and die" alcoholic, but a "functioning" alcoholic, kinda like a Keith Richards - eek). Lou's delusions are pretty obvious. First, he convinces himself that he won't get sucked in with the hooker (when he knows darned well he will). Then, he convinces himself after a single dinner that taking her home won't ultimately be a catastrophe.
Did anybody else find it strange they did the longer version of the Our Father? I may be generalizing, but I've never heard a Catholic say anything past "deliver us from evil". I've heard it in Protestant services though. I always assumed that Sean was another Irish Catholic like Tommy, but maybe not.
So far this season... in my bias opinion... is just random scene's sliced together. Not one episode has told a complete story yet.
Every week Tommy has his pants off nailing every female in sight.
Which again I must ask... are all the women on the east coast, blind???
Geez... it has just gotten pathetic the whole Tommy is a stud weekly story. Ugh. Now if maybe Franco was showing it off weekly that would perk me up.
Hey Leary! Put your dang pants on... I am tried of seeing your bony white Irish ass.
So what is wrong this season is no one actually wrote a complete episode. Which is a total waste. I used to love this show... but they have killed off so many of the original cast members... that we are left with nothing but Leary nailing anything with a pulse.
I thought this episode was a lot of fluff, but I still liked most of it. The dinner table scene when Katie and Janet were making hot fudge sundaes was a highlight.
WTF is up with Sheila? She was so manic this episode. Why oh why can they not find a consistent personality for her? Is she supposed to be bipolar? Can it still be the grief talking? It makes me tired to try to figure out her character.
Sometimes I think this show would've been better suited for a half-hour format, like The Job, but it's so hard to pair a "dramedy" with something else, especially on FX. But I think you could "Nurse Jackie" it up to make it more efficient and cut out the crap.
I liked the levity of Katie asking Tommy seriously to stop drinking, and how much it scares her. It adds some interesting notes to the show.
LOVED the Sean musical number, and the guy falling out of his wheelchair at the end. So clever!
Can anyone explain why Sheila wants Tommy to keep drinking? Does she not remember anything from the first season? Or does she think he'll stop boinking her if he's sober?
I don't think Garrity's dead. The loud breath came from his snoring brother.
The loud breaths came from Garrity, not his brother. The camera was on Sean as he made the sounds.
Women (in Denis Leary's mind), would rather be with Tommy than Franco? Please, get real Leary.
Denis, you are not alone! My wife was also very bothered by the addition of "Thy Kingdom come..." to the Lord's prayer. Catholics would never do this especially a supposed old-school, Irish Catholic like Tommy (and Dennis Leary)
I hope it's just a red herring, but there were a number of things which could be interpreted as foreshadowing Garrity's death. Needles freaked out & started mentioning cancer deaths when Sean told him about the surgery. His mother said something about what if he never wakes up when admonishing the boys to make up. The dr. made a joke about it too. Also the coming attractions they showed for next week could be interpreted to allude to that, but I'm going to err on the side of caution & not go into that because the episode hasn't aired.
As for the differing versions of the Lord's Prayer, despite the tensions between Catholics & Protestants in Ireland, there is intermarriage between the 2 groups. One of my grandmothers (a Protestant) married one of my grandfather (Catholic) in a Catholic ceremony and they raised the children as Catholics. Might have been a situation like that.
I on the other hand found the mix up on the Lord’s prayer to be one of the most believable scenes of the episode. Garrity’s Mom stumbled, and Tommy picked up the prayer. Since A.A. meetings close with the Protestant version of the Lord’s prayer, that is the version that Tommy is most used to saying, so he just continued on. I thought it showed that Tommy was getting the program without his “knowledge or consent.”
The other thing is that church-going Catholics tend to mutter along with the priest on prayers, even the parts the priest is supposed to say and not the congregation. Or least, the ones I went to church with did that (including me).
This show so often has great dialogue and hilarious moments, but it seems to wander off the road so often, particularly involving Tommy.
The episode was about facades and things being other than they appear (fake happy family dinner, the probie faking tears to get the hot nurse's attention, Sean's mom mistaking Tommy's use of the hospital room to watch his DVD as some sort of brotherly loyalty, the musical dream sequence, Tommy's cousin (blanking on his name) describing in detail the teary-eyed moment of healing Tommy craves but will never really gain from watching the DVD containing home movies, the return of con woman Candy...)
But so much of it doesn't ring true. As funny as Leary is, the more tightly the show centers on Tommy and the women who can't seem to help throwing themselves at him, the less interesting it becomes. I do agree, Alan, that the peripheral characters seem to carry more heft this season, which I really like.
One huge problem I have is with how Tommy and his wife appease Katie instead of parenting her. Why the fight to win her affections and the desperation to cater to her every whim?
Another huge problem: Tommy mentioning why he drank to Katie included the loss of his cousin but not his own son; this has happened more than once. Doesn't ring true to me that you wouldn't also mention the loss of your child in that grouping, too.
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