The Rescue Me retrospective
My God, it’s been so long, I never dreamed that you would return, but now here you are and here I am.
Hearts and thoughts fade … away
Hearts and thoughts fade … away
-Pearl jam
In preparation for its final season, Rescue Me has been running a promo with this Pearl Jam song in the background as the camera scrolls through the fire station and the nondescript figures disappear from the screen. The beauty of this promotion is that it perfectly captures the excellence of the show as well as the maddening frustration of its loyal fans. With the final season starting tonight at 10pm on FX (you’re welcome FX), it seemed appropriate to take a look at the show.
The firsts years
The brilliance of the first season and a half of Rescue Me cannot be underestimated. Tommy Gavin and the rest of the Ladder 62 truck crew showed the best and worst of a “Boys Club” mentality: the endless jokes and jokes (all hilarious), the beautiful insensitivity (highly respected), and the lack of of understanding or appreciation for the women in their lives (well done). This was male testosterone at its finest. The rest of the team included The Womanizer (Franco), The Fat Guy (Lou), The Dumb Guy (Sean), The New Guy (Mike), and The Boss (Chief Reilly). Together, these six guys brought out the best parts of the male ego, while desperately trying to hide the fragile parts (to often spectacularly hilarious effect).
The highlight of the early years is the scene where all the boys attend sensitivity training because a female firefighter in the house filed a complaint against him (the overrated Diane Farr). The boys proceed to blurt out all the racial and ethnic insults you can think of to the horror of the guy in charge of the training. (At one point, Franco complains that Puerto Ricans receive only an ethnic insult: “Puerto Ricans, they deceive us even when it comes to racism.”) The look on the sensitivity coach’s face is priceless. He can’t believe that just happened and neither can we. The show attacked our insecurities and sensibilities and made us laugh at them. It was brilliant television.
The reduction
And then everything turned against us. Suddenly, and seemingly for no apparent reason, the show stopped being about the camaraderie of these 6 firefighters and became something much more depressing. I don’t mind a dark twist on a drama, but it became too much.
Consider the following stories from seasons 2-5:
Tommy and his brother Johnny discover that they have a half brother that their father had during their long affair outside of their marriage. The brothers try to determine if their priest brother is a pedophile.
Lou is scammed out of his life savings by a prostitute named Candy.
Tommy’s son Connor is killed by a drunk driver. The drunk driver is shot and killed by Tommy’s uncle, Teddy.
Tommy’s ex-wife starts sleeping with her brother Johnny.
The widow of Tommy’s cousin (whom he sleeps with) begins drugging Tommy with a combination of roofies and Viagra.
Franco dates a wealthy older woman (played by Susan Sarandon) who ends up stealing her daughter, which he is unable to do anything about because she stole her from foster care.
Janet becomes pregnant. We are not sure if the father is Tommy or Johnny.
Johnny is shot and killed.
Sheila accidentally sets a house on fire with her and Tommy inside after drugging Tommy again.
After being put on the desk due to his declining health, Chief Reilly commits suicide.
Tommy gives Janet’s new baby to Sheila for an agreed sum of $ 850,000. Tommy does this because Janet suffers from severe postpartum depression and Tommy believes this is the best course of action.
Tommy’s father passes away while sitting with his son at a baseball game.
Lou lets Candy move in with him after she reappears and asks for his forgiveness.
Lou marries Candy, discovers that she is inheriting a small fortune, discovers that her real name is Barbara and that she is wanted for fraud, clears their joint bank account, and calls the police.
Tommy’s entire family falls off the wagon and drinks again.
Uncle Teddy’s wife, Elle, drives drunk and is killed in the resulting car accident.
Uncle Teddy blames Tommy for his wife’s death and shoots him twice in the shoulder to watch him bleed out.
I didn’t invent any of those. The obvious question anyone who hasn’t seen the show would ask is “Why would you keep watching?” The answer is simple. The performance was superlative. Denis Leary truly embodies Tommy Gavin. Okay, it’s probably not a great stretch from Denis Leary to Tommy Gavin, but it does it wonderfully anyway. Steven Pasquale does such a great job playing Sean Garrity that if I ever meet him I’ll hope he’s just as dumb as Garrity. Lou has had some of the best lines on the entire show, and no one plays drunk like John Scurti. Daniel Sunjata has stood out as Franco. Plus, there have been some awesome guest spots from artists like Maura Tierney, Sarandon, and Michael J. Fox (he won an Emmy for it), to name a few.
Despite the ridiculous plots, we kept coming back due to the rare moments of brilliance that still occurred. In season 5, Tommy begins drinking in an empty bar owned by one of the firefighters and begins to converse with the ghosts of his cousin, father, and brother. At one point, Tommy has a truly profound moment when he tells the specter of his father, “You never told us what to do next.” Tommy is pointing out that his father has taught him everything he knows about being a hero, but nothing about being a husband or a father. The moment is emotional, sad and fascinating at the same time. It makes me realize that being a husband and a father are the two most important responsibilities I have in this world. Very few programs touch our emotions in that way. It’s still my favorite dramatic scene in the entire series.
The interesting thing is that the scene has parallels with the whole series. It’s like Denis Leary and Peter Tolan created Season 1 but no one told them what to do next. The series got lost somewhere in the middle of season two and never returned. The numbers show that viewers tend to agree:
Season 1- 2.7 million average
Season 2- 2.8 million average
Season 3 Finale- 3.3 million (see what happens here)
Season 4 premiere: 2.8 million
Season 5 Average: 2.3 million
Season 6 premiere: 1.9 million
The series was continually losing steam, but something strange happened in season 6: the show began to recover. The threat to close the fire station, plus the addition of Tommy’s nephew, brought the focus of the show back to the fire station and the main group (with the additions of Black Sean and Chief Needles). Although the season finale garnered only 1.6 million viewers, there was a clear effort on the part of the writers to add more humor to the proceedings. While the show didn’t reach the dizzying heights seen in seasons 1 and 2, the show put in solid efforts as a 35-year-old starting pitcher who is still effective but doesn’t have his good fastball. Many of the people I’ve talked to about Rescue Me tell them that they are hopeful that the momentum built in season 6 will lead to a solid ending in season 7. We hope they are right.
The most frustrating part of Rescue Me is that it leaves me wondering what it could have been. The show will most likely be fondly remembered for all of the reasons already mentioned. With that said, Rescue Me had the opportunity to be a Hall of Fame show. The show was regularly nominated for Emmy Awards and broke cable television viewership records. Along with The Shield, it put FX on the map as a high-quality, brave drama venue. Unfortunately for all of us, no one told them what to do next.
The television czar