Rescue Me, "Drink": Shame on me

I'm on vacation this week, but I got a chance to watch the last two "Rescue Me" episodes of the season before I left the office. And all I can say is that I'm astounded - but I shouldn't be - that they managed to throw away so much of the goodwill they generated at the beginning of the season. We started off with a return to 9/11, and we ended it with women literally fighting over Tommy, and then with another weak cliffhanger. Sigh...

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Zippo": Tommy's women

After tonight, there are only two episodes of "Rescue Me" left in the season. Unfortunately, I'm going to be on vacation for both of those Tuesdays. I'm working on getting review screeners of both, but I don't know if I'll be able to watch and/or write about them until after the finale has aired and I'm back in the office.

And, also unfortunately, I didn't much care for "Zippo," which was too heavy on Tommy's romantic life, even if one part of that life currently involves Maura Tierney. So I don't have much to say, but wanted to let everybody else weigh in. What did you all think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "David": Wedding night is fight night!

Quick spoilers for tonight's "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I get more Oreos...

On one of the final days of press tour, FX held a panel with several of its top drama showrunners, including Peter Tolan from "Rescue Me," and I asked him the same question I'd raised in my last episode review a few weeks ago, about how he felt doing 22 episodes this season instead of 13 had worked out. This is what he said:

Well, the advantages of doing a shorter season are you’re obviously much more able to focus on the quality of the individual episodes, as opposed to looking at a very daunting 22 or 24 order (in) which, typically you’re going to have some really wonderful shows in there and some good shows and then a couple of stiffs. Hopefully, when you’re doing 13 shows, they’re all wonderful or pretty good. And when we did the 22 this year on "Rescue Me," it was a big thing because we used to consider the 13 sort of the Bataan Death March, and by the time we’d get to the end, we were dragging.

But for some reason, whatever it was, we were very energized and able to get through those 22 episodes with a great amount of vigor. So I don’t know why that happened. I think it may have been some sort of a human drug, you know, the growth hormone thing that they were putting in the food at lunch.

So Tolan seemed pretty happy with how it's gone, as has FX, which has ordered at least 18 episodes for next season (FX president John Landgraf said it was possible they might order a few more).

As I was the last time, my feelings are mixed about doing such a long season. It still feels like the storytelling has been too much on the shaggy side, and also that we've spent too much time focusing on stories that aren't very interesting (Tommy's love triangle, which I guess is now a quadrangle) than on the ones that were more compelling (repressed feelings about 9/11 coming back to the surface).

But the other thing I wrote last time feels even truer after an episode like "David": that having so many hours to fill has given Tolan, Denis Leary and company license to do scenes that are incredibly long by modern TV drama standards. Sometimes, those elongated scenes don't work and then seem to drag on forever, like Tommy's fantasy about adult Connor coming to rob the bar. And sometimes they work but have no connection to anything that came before or after, like Garrity's penile panic from last week's episode, which was funny but felt like it could have been airlifted into any episode that season that was running short.

But when they work, and when they tie into the ongoing storylines -- as in Lou and Tommy argument gradually turning into a brawl whose duration rivaled the Rowdy Roddy Piper/Keith David fight scene from "They Live!", or as in Kelly(*) gradually deciding to give Tommy a shot at dinner -- then they're a tremendous pleasure to watch, and make me think that doing a longer season isn't such a bad idea. Maybe 18 is better than 22 -- long enough to give them freedom for scenes like this, but not so long that the story arcs are stretched out too thin -- but as we head into the home stretch of season five, I'm feeling good about the season again.

(*) How great has Maura Tierney been, by the way? Because she spent so long on "ER" playing a dark and often depressed character, it's easy to forget how funny she was on "NewsRadio," and how vibrant and sexy she can be when given the right material. One of the funnier parts of listening to the commentaries on the early "NewsRadio" DVDs is hearing, time after time, a male participant doing his first commentary track pause at his first glimpse of Tierney to say something like "Wow, Maura was really hot back then!" It happens constantly: actors, writers, and NBC executives all quickly become smitten with mid-'90s Maura. I'm glad she got to play this part before having to deal with her current medical situation, and I hope she has a good enough outcome that she can quickly get back to work on "Parenthood."

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Clean": Weak against the strong

Quick thoughts on tonight's "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I clean under the truck...

The deeper we get into this season of "Rescue Me," the more I'm coming around to the viewpoint, expressed off and on by some commenters here, that doing 22 episodes instead of the usual 13 was a mistake.

Even under the old format, "Rescue Me" was a shaggy dog kind of show, meandering at its own pace, presenting episodes where the scenes seemed to be ordered at random, sometimes following through on ideas, sometimes not. But if a season was never as tightly-plotted as "The Shield," doing 13 usually meant that we got to the end before things felt too shaggy.

And while this year has overall been much stronger than either of the previous two seasons, it's also felt looser and more random than usual, either doubling back over the same material too often, or simply dragging things out past the point of interest.

Take the reverse intervention Tommy pulled on his family(*), which might have seemed funny if it hadn't come so close on the heels of Tommy trying a similar stunt at his AA meeting. Or look at the ongoing Tommy/Sheila/Janet love triangle; admittedly, I wouldn't find it interesting under any timeline, but dragging it out as long as they have (because they can, and because they have episodes that need filling) is just making things worse.

(*) Speaking of Tommy's family, whatever happened to his other brother Timo, played for a few first season episodes by James Badge Dale? At the time, I got the sense that they hired Dale because Dean Winters had a scheduling conflict, but given all the tragedies Tommy has suffered in the years since, shouldn't Timo have turned up again? And was he ever memorable enough to be considered a 21st century Chuck Cunningham?

Now, an argument could be made that because they have so much time to fill, they can let scenes run longer than normal, and then we get terrific sequences like Tommy vs. Needles in Needles' office, or even the pre-credits stuff in Sheila's kitchen. The latter is an instance where I was starting to get irritated (oh, look, Sheila's being an unreasonable shrew again!), then I started to laugh (around the time Callie Thorne started saying the word "fluffy"), and then it really all clicked in when Sheila brought out her pill dispenser and we remembered that Sheila does (understandably) have severe emotional problems, and that the show occasionally takes them seriously.

For scenes like those two, I'll suffer through a lot of fluff. But I still think 13 is a better number for season six (assuming there's going to be a season six).

Given my press tour commitments over the next several weeks, and vacation time after that, I'm not sure how often I'll be able to weigh in on the rest of the season. If nothing else, if I've seen an episode, I'll make sure to put up a post so those of you who are watching can discuss it.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Wheels": Runaway truck

Because I had jury duty yesterday -- and because, frankly, I didn't really like this episode -- I'm eschewing a "Rescue Me" review this week, but feel free to talk about your own thoughts on it. Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Torch": A burning in his loins

Spoilers for tonight's outstanding episode of "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I polish my coin collection...

"The only thing he can feel is heat. Only thing that gets through that thick Irish skin of his is fire. And even goddamned flames ain't gonna make him cry." -Tommy's dad

Damn, that was good, wasn't it?

It's easy to dwell on the negative with "Rescue Me," but episodes like "Torch" are a reminder of how brilliant the show can be, and why it's worth suffering through the sloppy, self-aggrandizing moments.

Where even the better episodes of the series often appear to be a randomly-assembled series of vignettes, some stronger than others, nearly all of "Torch" (with the exception of the Garrity stuff, which was isolated comic relief, but fairly well-executed comic relief, so no biggie) felt very much of a piece, all of it tied to that amazing shot(*) of Tommy wrapping the little kid's corpse in a blanket. Every scene afterwards -- from Franco at the gym to Lou with Candy to Tommy burning himself after another round with the ghosts -- keyed off of the crew's response to seeing the burned child, and to Tommy's guilt over Connor.

(*) Major kudos to director John Fortenberry and anyone else in the crew involved with the decision to frame that as a static shot, with Denis Leary popping in and out of frame as he worked, occasionally looking directly at us in a way that didn't break the fourth wall, and the other firefighters looking on sheepishly, just out of focus. It lent an immediacy to what Tommy was doing at the same time it deliberately kept our eyes off the horror in the same way that Tommy was trying to hide it from the media and cameraphone gawkers.

"Rescue Me" is often guilty of deifying Tommy past all reason or dramatic interest, not just in the way that every attractive woman in the five boroughs throws herself at the guy, but in the way that he always seems to have the moral high ground on any subject that doesn't involve his personal life. With Leary a producer who has a hand in every script, it's easy to view the series as some kind of massive ego trip. And maybe some weeks it is. But here, Leary and Peter Tolan's script turned Tommy's super-competence and unassailable machismo on their heads.

Yes, he's the only guy from the truck who can bring himself to deal with the little corpse, and the one who can bring himself to enter the pediatric cancer ward and put on a happy face for the kids. But we see through the episode -- particularly when the ghosts come out again (in maybe the series' best use of that device since very early on, if not ever) -- that Tommy's armor comes with a cost, and in many ways is as un-admirable as his drinking, his inept parenting, his clumsy relationships and the rest of it.

Tommy may be as tough as his old man suggests, but so much of his pain in this episode comes from his realization that he's thought so little of Connor in the years since he died. Some of this seems self-corrective on Leary and Tolan's part -- the show killed off Connor at the end of season two, then ignored him as soon as it was convenient to do so -- but the end result of watching Tommy listen to his father, brother and best friend taunt him for being tougher than they are is still devastating, and wonderfully played by Leary.

Even the Sheila sex scene, ordinarily a cue to lunge for the remote or flee to the kitchen for a snack, fit. Though Sheila's concern about the burn being gross was superficial, overall Callie Thorne got to play her as an adult again, which she hasn't done since the 9/11 monologue near the start of the season. And the sex between the two of them was as raw and ugly as the wound on Tommy's leg.

Hell, the dead kid storyline even kept me from rolling my eyes at Lou and Candy for once, even though I suspect I'll be back to that pretty soon.

Strong, strong episode. Best of the season by a long stretch, I think, and that includes the more 9/11-intensive stuff.

A few other thoughts:

• Anyone with experience in makeup and/or special effects want to wager a guess on how they pulled off the thigh-burning effect? There's obviously a cut from a full-body shot of Tommy to a close-up of the thigh, but that still looks like someone's real leg.

• I don't begrudge Leary and Tolan wanting to showcase Steven Pasquale's song-and-dance skills, but these fantasy numbers are starting to feel a bit less special each time they do them. But at least this one ended with a funny payoff to the otherwise pointless storyline of Teddy playing Dr. Kevorkian at the VA hospital.

• That "New York, New York" cover at the end was by Cat Power.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Disease": Veggie heaven

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? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Mickey": The singing fireman

Spoilers for tonight's "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I taunt you with my sandwich...

"What are you singing for? You sound gay!" -Terrance Garrity

Whatever reservations the last few episodes may have created in me were temporarily eased by "Mickey." It still had elements that drove me nuts -- "Rescue Me" is probably genetically incapable of not driving me nuts on occasion -- but the fun stuff was so, so much fun that the irritating parts were easier to shrug off than usual.

Start with the climactic fantasy musical number as Garrity was prepped for surgery. That kind of scene feels all but obligatory on any show featuring any actors with musical theater background -- which Steven Pasquale has(*) -- particularly in the decades since the original "The Singing Detective." When it works, as it did here, it does so because the show commits to the idea while still staying true to itself. So the song (with lyrics by Peter Tolan) sounded good, the production (with the nurses as angels, then Valkyries) looked good, and then it took a very "Rescue Me" turn where Terrance wandered into the shot to heckle his brother's singing, and Sean in turn grabbed a shotgun to deal with the problem. Hilarious.

(*) Pasquale also just released an album of showtunes. I know some people have complained that the scenes with Mike's band are just a blatant commercial for Mike Lombardi's own musical career, but so far neither musical subplot has felt that intrusive to me.

Meanwhile, Tommy's futile attempt to "control" his drinking continues to be fascinating. I loved him calling Mickey's bluff and confessing to/telling off the entire AA meeting (including poor, disillusioned Derek), but what made that scene work was the later moment where Tommy's home alone watching Mickey Mantle's famous "Don't be like me" interview shortly before his death. For all of Tommy's bravado, the show is making it clear, repeatedly, that Tommy is fooling himself even more than usual -- that this is a stupid plan that's doomed to cause Tommy and the people around him more pain.

And while the actual concept of Janet and Sheila throwing themselves at Tommy is still grating, some of the material on the fringes of that has been funny, like Needles' delight (well-played by Adam Ferrara) at discovering Tommy and Janet in the car together.

Similarly, Black Shawn/Colleen remains lame, but Tommy hosing down Black Shawn and the ensuing Birmingham discussion ("Footage? I was there!") was funny.

I still wish they'd get back to 9/11, and I'm not feeling optimistic about either Franco with the female boxer (which looks like another of the show's awkward attempts to talk about gender roles) or Lou with Candy the hooker, but overall, I was relieved enough with this one to not feel the need to dive through the rest of my screeners.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Control": Bad old Tommy

Spoilers for tonight's "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I absorb a muffin...

"I'm not an alcoholic." -Tommy

I feel like I may have to spend the rest of this season -- and maybe the series (unless the stress of producing 22 episodes in a year leads them all to give up the ghost after this) -- prefacing each review with a list of the things I'm trying to ignore so I can enjoy the good stuff. For "Control," that list would have to include the Teddy stuff in the VA hospital(*) and most of the stuff with Sheila.

(*) Actually, I think I'm done with that storyline, which has nothing to do with the show, always ends with the cheapest and most obvious punchline, and is just an excuse to keep Lenny Clarke (and Tatum O'Neal) hanging around. Somebody let me know if/when it starts tying back into the main story again, if ever, so I know if I should stop fast-forwarding through it.

Sheila's attempt to control Tommy's drinking was moderately less annoying than her seduction of him last week, but it still feels like her great monologue about 9/11 was just a blip on the radar, and she and Janet are back to being characters the writers don't know what to do with except make as broadly comic and hateful as possible. And that's a shame, because Callie Thorne showed that she's capable of so much more.

Speaking of 9/11, I'm starting to worry that we're dropping away from all that material. Sure, there was the joke here about Franco decking the guy he was told hated 9/11 conspiracy theorists, and Sean still has his kidney cancer, but we haven't seen Genevieve in while, have we? (IMDb has Karina Lombard listed as being in the last few episodes -- which, admittedly, I watched a few months ago -- but I don't remember her in them.) It'd be disappointing if this was all of that just a pretext for Tommy's latest fall off the wagon.

That said, the idea of Tommy trying to chart a path between "sober" and "alcoholic" is an interesting one (albeit one that I assume is doomed to failure), and worked well for both comic and dramatic purposes as he dealt with the rest of the firehouse. Those scenes, and the hilarious interludes with Sean and his family (and then the sweet moment where his mom told him about her own cancer scare), were the highlights of an uneven but interesting episode.

And yet, in going over my notes, I keep being pulled back to the negative things. Was anyone really looking for the return of Lou's con artist hooker girlfriend? And wouldn't the idea of Mike finally standing up to Tommy be a lot more interesting if the show didn't constantly arrange to give Tommy the moral high ground? Last week, he was punching out Tommy over a screw-up (Damien in the fire) that he caused himself, and tonight he starts yelling at Tommy right before he panics over the realization that he didn't refill the oxygen tanks. In the moral universe of "Rescue Me," all of Tommy's failings pale before being either a coward or a bumbler as a fireman, so the Mike/Tommy scenes don't have the heft they should.

I said I wasn't going to watch the rest of my screeners (the five episodes after this) in a rush, so it would be easier to blog as if I was watching along with the rest of you. But part of me wants to just dive through them to see if my fears are unfounded. Remember: I didn't like the first couple of episodes this season, but I powered through and got to the good stuff before I lost my patience with the bad.

I have too much else on my plate right now for a mini-marathon, but don't be stunned an episode or two from now to find out I did it, if only so I can know whether I want to keep watching/blogging. I still think the better parts of the show are outweighing the parts I dislike, but as we saw last season (and for large parts of season 4), it's not hard at all for the bad stuff to overwhelm everything else.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Thaw": The gift of grab

Spoilers for tonight's "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I use sex as a weapon...

"Thaw" was the last episode of the season I've seen in advance. I have the next six(*), but for schedule and blogging purposes, I suspect I'm going to be watching them one at a time, not long before (or maybe shortly after) they air. But this felt like a very strong episode, give or take some of the show's usual peccadillos.

(*) At one point, there was talk that FX was going to split up the airing of the season, since there are 22 episodes, but as of now, the plan is to run them more or less straight through.

At this point, I just roll my eyes whenever Janet or Sheila are throwing themselves at Tommy -- and here, we got them both doing it in one week(**) -- and I still find the idea of Grown-Up Ghost Connor a little too weird, even by the usual standards of Tommy's alcoholic fantasies. But I really liked the rest of "Thaw," from the serious stuff like Needles continuing his pledge to be tougher on the guys (and, in this case, Fienberg) and Mike out-fighting a drunk and out-of-control Tommy, to the sillier moments like Franco being taken out by a one-eyed geezer and Dwight returning to exact his seven minutes of revenge on Tommy.

(**) I will give credit, though, to whoever came up with the idea to dress Sheila all in red and make her boudoir look like Hell itself. That was funny, even if Sheila's really only useful as a serious character these days.

Again, I don't know what's coming next, but I feel confident that it's going to be interesting, and that the good stuff is more than likely to outweigh the bad.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Iceman": Guy walks into a bar...

Spoilers for the latest episode of "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I cancel my trip to Cleveland...

"You never told us what to do after." -Tommy

One of the more frustrating parts of the two seasons of "Rescue Me" before this resurgent one was the sense that the show was making choices less for dramatic reasons than to feed Denis Leary's ego: more women throwing themselves at Tommy, more scenes of Tommy single-handedly saving the day, Leary solo in most of the advertising, etc., etc.

So an episode like "Iceman" -- which included that long (I clocked it at 15 minutes, which is an eternity in modern TV drama time) sequence of Tommy at the bar, arguing ghosts and getting into a shoot-out with what turned out to be the adult ghost of his dead son; and which climaxed with Tommy literally running through a wall of fire to save Damien -- should have made me worried that the series is starting to backslide into its bad habits.

But it didn't worry me.

I didn't love the bar sequence, even with the returns of Dean Winters and Charles Durning, but that's because I've never really been a big fan of Tommy's alcoholic nightmares, and those have been a part of the show since the pilot. And the scene in the aftermath, with Lou suggesting that a drunk Tommy is a more interesting Tommy, was terrific, and continued to prove that making those two roommates was a great idea (as well as an excuse for Leary to share a lot of scenes with his strongest co-star).

And the episode's second half made good use of the supporting cast, primarily, but not entirely, in comic relief. Mike's reaction to the Cleveland Steamer definition may be the funniest line of the season so far, but that scene also continued to show him not being a complete imbecile. (It also showcased Mike Lombardi's singing voice.) Franco's boxing subplot was amusing enough (albeit not as amusing as Franco explaining that, of the two times he had gonorrhea, once was as a carrier), and all in all the show feels like more of an ensemble this year, even in an episode where the first half was 90% Tommy.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Play": Road trip? Road trip.

I know I promised to get lengthier in my reviews of "Rescue Me" once we got past the first five episodes, but I'm going to make an exception for "Play" for two reasons: 1)It's Upfront Week, and I'm beyond slammed; and 2)Way too much of "Play" featured Tommy and Janet together, and while this season has managed to rehabilitate a number of characters and relationships, this duo isn't one of them for me, ad I had to start fast-forwarding through their scenes after a while.

Some good stuff with Garrity, and with Lou and Genevieve, but overall this one felt much more like a relic of last season.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Perspective": Cashing in his chip

Spoilers for the sixth episode of "Rescue Me" season five coming up just as soon as I abdicate my throne...

"Sometimes, when I'm falling asleep at night, I have this weird thing: I think I'm him, and I'm inside the first tower, and it's coming down on top of me." -Tommy

"Perspective" was the strongest episode of this season so far, and maybe one of my favorite "Rescue Me"s to date. Where the other episodes this season were a mix of scenes I really liked and scenes I grudgingly tolerated, virtually every moment here was a winner, including:

• Tommy and Lou tearing into each other about whether Lou has a shot with Genevieve, and how much Tommy's narcissism has raged out of control ("I'm a little overweight sad light, orbiting around the planet Tommy in the universe of Gavin!") was just a terrific dramatic showcase for Denis Leary and John Scurti, and then it was beautifully, hilariously followed with the two of them giving each other insulting titles (Turdmaster, King of All Douchebags) on the way to a fire call.

• While Black Shawn's relationship with Colleen has been one of the season's bigger misfires, I like Black Shawn as a member of the firehouse, and it was funny to watch him ruin the detente they'd achieved with the other fire company over Franco's 9/11 conspiracy theories.

• Needles' monologue about getting promoted due to 9/11, and trying and failing to instill discipline by being everyone's pal, featured some great work from Adam Ferrara, who to date has been mainly used as comic relief.

• Steven Pasquale continues to run with this storyline about Garrity trying to keep his cancer diagnosis a secret, and is even managing to balance the darker moments (Garrity chews out the other guys for bickering about Franco's conspiracy theories) with the lighter ones (Garrity pretends to masturbate so Franco won't suspect of him of stealing from the bar cash).

• Mike playing mentor to Damian was more evidence that the writers are trying to find a way to take every character seriously now.

• I like that this season has been more generous with giving big emotional scenes to other characters, like last week's Sheila monologue about wishing Tommy died instead of Jimmy, but Leary can still bring it when called, as he did in the scene at the diner overlooking Ground Zero. (I don't get to that part of Manhattan very often, so it's always unsettling to see that hole -- and to realize that there are so many businesses and residences in the area where it's become just another part of the scenery.)

Some people have been asking why Tommy is so unnerved to find out that Jimmy died in the second tower collapse rather than the first, and this scene sort of explains why: had Tommy known Jimmy was still out there, still trying to save people, maybe Tommy would have found a way to go into that second tower. But I think it's just as much a question of having finally made peace with the story of Jimmy's death, only to find out that the story was different. The new details almost don't even matter; whatever they are, they'd be enough to reopen all those wounds that seemed healed. And they've been reopened to the point where Tommy drank again (right after getting his one-year sobriety chip)...

...and we all know that he only sees the ghosts when he drinks. Is there a chance he's doing this because he wants to see Jimmy again, even if it's just an alcoholic delusion?

Episodes like this make me very glad I let myself be talked back into watching "Rescue Me" again. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Sheila": Nightmares and dreamscapes

Tonight's "Rescue Me" was the last of this season's episodes that I watched in a quick burst back in January, so I'll offer up some very brief thoughts after the jump, and, time permitting, we can go a little deeper starting next week...

"Sheila" was, I thought, the strongest of these first five. While I think the series overdoes Tommy dream sequences in general, his nightmare of suitcase bombs and 9/11-style dust falling all over the city was effectively disturbing, and felt nicely tied to the renewed focus on the falling towers. Beyond that, the writers continue to rehabilitate characters who had turned into nothing but broad (and often annoying) comic relief, as Garrity is diagnosed with kidney cancer from his time working at Ground Zero, while Sheila gets a look at the 9/11 footage of Jimmy and makes peace with Damian's decision to join the FDNY. (And enlists Mike to be his mentor, a very promising idea for the former probie.)

When I complained about the bar and some of the other comic scenes last week, some readers suggested that they needed the laughs as relief from the more intense scenes. I don't disagree on that broad point. What made "Rescue Me" so good in its early days was its mix of the utterly tragic and the completely silly. My problem came when certain characters became nothing but walking punchlines, so stupid (Garrity, Mike) or crazy (Sheila), that they ceased to resemble actual human beings, and suddenly the joke wasn't funny anymore. Sean getting cancer isn't going to make him stop being funny, but it's also going to make those funny scenes more effective, because I again get to believe that he's a person and not just an excuse for cheap laughs. Great work from Steven Pasquale, who's rarely (if ever) been asked to go to a dark place like he did tonight. And this is two weeks in a row where I didn't really hate Sheila.

And a good chunk of the episode's comedy came from a good source in the return of Michael J. Fox as crazy Dwight. One of the many shames of Fox's Parkinson's diagnosis is that he doesn't have the time, or focus, or both, to perform much anymore, and a character like this is a reminder of what a great comic actor he is. This is a weirder character than he usually plays, and he's absolutely nailing it, with Denis Leary graciously playing straight man to him most of the time.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "Jimmy": Pictures don't lie

As I've mentioned before, I watched this season's first five "Rescue Me" episodes several months ago without taking extensive notes, so I'm going to offer up some very brief thoughts until a few weeks from now, when we get to the episodes I've seen more recently. Spoilers coming up just as soon as I pay a bribe...

Now here's where things started to get interesting for me with this season.

The arrival of Genevieve and the re-examination of 9/11 has led to some good moments in the last few episodes. But it wasn't until Tommy saw Jimmy in the DVD footage -- after the first tower fell, which is where and when Tommy has always believed Jimmy died -- that I really felt like "Rescue Me" was back.

Tommy's inability to cope with Jimmy's death was always the core conflict of the show -- the deaths of his brother, his father and even his son simply don't matter as much, because the series is about the emotional costs of being a firefighter -- and Tommy discovering that the death didn't happen the way he thought it did brings the show back to that core.

Along the way, "Jimmy" provided the first good Sheila scene in forever when her therapist (previously a buffoon) explained how she projects her anger about Jimmy onto Tommy(*), as well as a great fight between Tommy and Lou where Lou pointed out -- as this season already has, repeatedly -- that 9/11 wasn't Tommy Gavin's own personal tragedy.

(*) As with the fight in last week's episode (which I never got around to reviewing) between Mike and Franco over Franco's conspiracy theories, it's remarkable how much more interesting the comic relief characters on this show become once the writers start to take them seriously.

I still want to be rid of both the bar subplot and Black Shawn's relationship with Colleen, but the rest of the show -- including Lou's hilariously disgusting apartment, and another memorably weird rescue, with the car sinking into the street -- is really clicking right now.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me, "French": Flashbacks

Quick thoughts on last night's "Rescue Me" coming up just as soon as I have a drink...

As I mentioned last week, I watched the season's first five episodes in one burst back in January, sans notes, so I'm not going to go really in-depth until we get to episode six.

That said, I found "French" to be a big improvement over the season premiere, albeit still with some problems.

The introduction of Genevieve, the French writer working on the 9/11 book, is the best thing to happen to the series in a while -- not necessarily because of guest star Karina Lombard, but because the show desperately needed to get back to talking about the day the towers fell rather than just be the silly, ego-maniacal story of the world's most sexually irresistible fireman.

The only problem I had with the first episode with Genevieve is that, initially, it was hard to tell whether Franco and Lou's stories were genuine, or if they were just saying whatever they thought would help get them into bed with her. As it turns out, Franco's belief in 9/11 conspiracy theories comes from Daniel Sunjata's own belief in them, and Lou's enough of a sensitive soul (and a wannabe poet) that I could mostly believe what he was saying. But because the show's characters have been such inveterate liars (particularly with attractive women) for so long, it's hard to truly invest in the moments where they're being sincere, you know?

Still, those two scenes were well-played by Sunjata and John Scurti, and Michael J. Fox continues to be hysterical as Janet's insane boyfriend Dwight. On the downside, he's the only bit of comic relief working at the moment. Sheila needs to go away, forever, the bar subplot isn't funny enough to be as stupid as it is, and I'm not a fan of Black Shawn with Tommy's daughter.

Anyway, what did those of you who have the episode much fresher in your minds think? Click here to read the full post

'Rescue Me' season five review - Sepinwall on TV

In today's column, I review the new season of "Rescue Me," which is much improved (mostly) from last season, when I gave up midway through:

"I don't have any regrets," firefighter Tommy Gavin explains midway through the fifth season of "Rescue Me." "I don't live my life that way."

Tommy may not have regrets for all his terrible behavior, but he does seem to recognize that it was wrong and that he has to try to live a better life -- a philosophy very much shared by his real-life alter ego, "Rescue Me" star/writer/producer Denis Leary.

You can read my "Rescue Me" review here. After the jump, some specifics on how I'm going to blog the show this year, since I watched it under unusual circumstances.

Basically, I was done with "Rescue Me," but when I was at press tour in January, a friend whose opinion I trust gave me the season's first 8 episodes and insisted that it was much improved. And then, when I complained about the first episode being more of the same junk that made me quit on the show in the first place, he assured me that things would get better, and soon.

Long story short, I listened to his pleas and eventually powered my way through the first five or so episodes and saw that my friend was right (though, as I note in the column, the season doesn't really get going until around week 4). But I was watching them at odd hours, and not taking notes, and while I liked some of them, I didn't like them enough to want to find the time to rewatch them now for proper long-form blogging. I've since watched episodes 6-9 while taking some notes.

So here's the deal: every Tuesday night (or Wednesday morning, depending on my schedule), I'm going to have up some kind of post to allow people to discuss the early episodes, and if I remember a specific detail or three I want to highlight, I'll do that. But the serious blogging won't kick in until episode 6.

Seems the fairest solution. Those of you still watching (or willing to watch it again) get to discuss it, and I don't pretend to be remembering specifics on things I watched three months ago while battling jetlag and press tour brain-lock.

In fact, because I disliked so much of the premiere, I'm not going to bother with a separate post. Feel free to discuss it here, and I'll be back next Tuesday with something (even if it's just an open thread) on episode two. Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me: Take me out to the ballgame

Spoilers for the "Rescue Me" season finale coming up just as soon as I give a dog a bone...

And so the most disjointed season of the already disjointed series ends on... a disjointed episode. I suppose if you're going to be wildly inconsistent, you may as well be consistent about that. Or something.

I really have no idea what story or stories Leary and Tolan were trying to tell this season. Chief Reilly's suicide went nowhere. The insurance scam went nowhere. The baby storyline sort of went somewhere, then got to that insane, out-of-character moment at the river's edge, and then all but disappeared. (What happened to Janet and Sheila each assuming that the other was going to give up Elvis/Wyatt for good?) Nona (remember Nona?) was here because why? And on and on. There were some threads that got followed all the way through the season, or close to it -- notably Tommy quitting booze -- but for the most part this year felt as made up on the spot as your average "24" season. The difference is that, when "24" is working, you don't care that the storylines keep shifting abruptly because there's a gun in somebody's face; it's much harder to pull that off with a character-based show that's never been big on plot on the first place.

The last few episodes felt particularly random, with the introduction of the drunken crew that works out of the same firehouse and Tommy's out of the blue decision to start playing extracurricular fireman in his cousin's old coat. I suppose an argument could be made that the fragmented, seemingly random pacing was supposed to reflect Tommy cracking up under the strain of sobriety, but if that's what the writers and directors were trying to convey, it didn't really work. There were too many scenes where Tommy was just the same ol' Tommy, beating off the hotties with a stick (and getting to act out a caveman fantasy with Gina Gershon in the finale), busting balls at the firehouse, harassing Colleen's boyfriends, etc.

This series started off with a very clear mission statement: depicting life in the FDNY in the wake of 9/11, through the eyes of an extreme personality case. They moved off of that a long time ago, and while they shouldn't be obligated to make WTC references forever (it was actually jarring to see a snippet of Tommy's WTC lobby dream from season one's "Inches"), I don't think the story of Tommy Gavin, irresistable chick magnet has been nearly a worthy enough replacement.

Outside of Tommy dangling the baby over the river for the sake of a misleading cliffhanger and the writers blowing off Tolan's promised emotional fallout to the Chief's death, there wasn't anything about this season that especially angered me. The flip side, though, is that very little excited me. I used to use the old "girl with the curl" cliche with this show, talking about how the good stuff was so good that I put up with the bad stuff (even though it was very bad). Now the show just seems lost, and I'm not sure I'm going to search hard for it if/when it comes back next summer.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me: So maybe that isn't it for me...

As I mentioned in my kiss-off review of the episode from three weeks ago, I was going to stick it out with "Rescue Me" through the rest of the season but didn't plan to blog about it. Then came last night's episode, "Seven," which featured several things I felt the need to either praise or damn (or both).

Spoilers coming up just as soon as I look up the nutritional content of edible panties...

Fair is fair, credit where credit's due, etc.: Last time out, I complained that the show had degenerated into a series of barely-connected scenes, some great, some awful, but all so tonally independent of each other that you could essentially edit each episode at random without changing much. But with the exception of the basketball game (and even that fit to a certain extent, if you look at it as a moment of respite for the guys), "Seven" felt all of a piece. The tragic events of the Baby Fire informed every scene that followed, whether it was Lou's sudden desire for children, Franco's reaction to the permanent return of Susan Sarandon and his daughter, or every single scene involving Tommy and his doubts about baby no-name. You can even justify Mike letting Garrity off the hook about the house fire under the "puts everything into perspective" umbrella.

The rescue sequence itself was harrowing (though I think it's one of those bits where the alt-rock soundtrack got in the way; it would have had even more impact if there was no score at all, just the confused shouts and calls and grunts of the characters), and Needles' speech about the guys being heroes was maybe the best speech on the show since Tommy's monologue at the beginning of the pilot.

But Tommy dangling No-Name over the railing? No. There is simply no way that Leary and Tolan can convince me that child-revering (albeit lousy-parenting) Tommy Gavin even entertains the thought of drowning a baby, let alone drives out to the river and holds the kid out while he makes up his mind. Probably not drunk and absolutely not sober. I don't care how opressive the atmosphere at Casa Gavin has become, how many ghosts (whether Johnny, or Tommy's own shade) talk him into it, it's about the only line I believe this guy would never, ever cross, even mentally.

(I won't say more than that because I made the mistake of going to FX's website to scrounge around for a photo to accompany this post, and the blurb about next week's episode completely spoils where this is going. Seriously, don't ever go there.)

What did everybody else think? Is my opinion of Tommy in this instance actually too high? For those of you who've been as down on the show as I have, did "Seven" redeem it in any way, or did it just remind you that Leary and Tolan can still knock one out of the park on occasion? Click here to read the full post

Rescue Me: That's it for me!

Okay, I think I may be quits with "Rescue Me." Thoughts on why, including spoilers for episode four and some non-spoilery thoughts on next week's episode, coming right up...

In the mad rush to get ready for press tour, I saw that FX had sent me the next two episodes, and I watched them both in hopes of doing some advance blogging. Instead, they left me feeling so empty that I didn't feel compelled to write about them for days afterward. I'm not mad the way I was after Tommy raped Janet. I'm not offended. I just don't care anymore, and I think that's on the show as much as, if not more than, it's on me.

In the middle of the otherwise contentions TWoP feature on Jack McGee's departure, Peter Tolan explained that they killed off Jerry because they wanted something that would shake up the other characters. Leaving aside the theory that drama works better when it flows out of the characters instead of outside forces, Jerry's death feels especially cheap now because almost no shaking up takes place. There was some nice work on the opening montage, and on Lou's speech about Sean being too young to understand why Jerry might have done it, and then... nothing. Aside from some talk later in this episode and in next week's show (mostly jokes) about what to do with the cremains, it's like Jerry never existed. None of the characters' actions and reactions are informed by his death. I don't want to take sides in the McGee/Leary feud, but thus far it's playing out like they just wanted to be rid of the guy as quickly as possible.

If it was just the non-impact of the Chief's death, I might be willing to stick around, but that's just a symptom of a much larger problem. On this show, it seems like nothing impacts on anything anymore. "Rescue Me" is just a jumble of scenes -- some funny, some dramatic, some lame -- that all feature the same characters but have little connection to one another. The firefighting scene where the guys get lost was one of the more unnerving ones they've ever done, but it takes place in complete isolation, not affecting the characters in any way after it's over. You could chop it out, or reshuffle every scene into random order, and very little of the episode would feel different.

When I suggested at the start of the season,that the show might be better off dropping the dramatic angle and turning into a straight up comedy, it was more because the dramatic parts weren't working than because the comic parts were so great (aside from the occasional kitchen scene or good line by John Scurti). And now I'm not even really laughing at the comedy. Tommy and Janet's couples therapy session was painful (not to mention fourth wall-breaking, since Tommy putting quote marks around "the rape" was Leary referring to all the real world discussion of that scene, as opposed to how it played out in the reality of the show), the Nona storyline continues to make no sense except as an ego trip, and certain characters like the retarded brother and Uncle Teddy (who's back next week) just need to go away.

If it seems like I'm being overly harsh after an episode that has a few very good sequences (again, the opener and the fire), it's because I've seen next week, which is even dumber and more disjointed. There's still just enough solid material that I expect to stick it out through the end of the season, but with press tour about to consume my every waking moment for a few weeks, I don't think I'm going to feel compelled to carve out spare time to blog on this show for a while.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post