Rescue Me – " Hell " – Single Episode review
I just wrote about "Rescue Me," as a whole, and want to review a single episode as a contrast. This week’s episode, titled, "Hell," is nominated for convenience and that it was outstanding. As I mentioned, there were two lives hanging in the balance at the end of "Twilight,", the previous week’s episode.
Tommy’s brother, on a stakeout, was shot, and his station chief had a heart attack while having sex with a lady he’d met, who was an illegal alien and left instead of calling 911. The show starts with a montage of Tommy, set to music, as he gets the news about his brother, identifies the body, tells his wife (who was living with Johnny), and kids, and generally looks over-whelmed. It is life devastation on the level of Sipowicz on NYPD Blue, and throughout the show they dip into that well. To keep the whole hour from being a sob-fest, lighter moments are spread in between shattering revelations.
Tommy goes to the firehouse where everyone is wondering where and the chief both are, and tells them his news, as well as setting up logistics where the firehouse is taken care of and everyone is able to go take care of more business. Tommy takes his buddy Lou with him to tell his father, who is living with Lou’s Uncle in a sort of old man’s frat house.
He tells his Dad, who is given a glass of whiskey by his housemate, and his father asks to be excused to go into the bathroom for a moment of privacy. It is just one of the moments in this episode, not overly acted at all. In a show of extreme dysfunction, every performance is done under-stated.
Interspersed are two of the younger fire fighters, one who has recently been in a gay relationship and seems to be struggling with his sexual identity. They are in a bar where the straight firefighter explains how much better his partner has it because he can hit on anyone, anytime, simply because he’s gay. It is symbolic of the male-oriented dialogues that weave through the story lines, tongue-in-cheek not overdone.
Another side plot is Franco, who is involved with a complicated girl ( I leave it at this because like everything else in this show, nothing can be simplified into a quick line), that takes a picture out of his daughter’s bedroom and points out that she is the spitting image of his daughter.
Amid all of this, the Chief, Jerry, is found at home, taken to the hospital, and wakes up some time later with his son at his bedside, did I mention that they sometimes start something up and seem to change their minds?
Tommy sets up the funeral. When he returns home, there are two messages from his brother on his answering machine, as his brother tries to mend fences, work out their differences, to a machine. One of the solutions he offerd out was that maybe he shouldn’t be with Tommy’s wife. In the funeral home, with his brother before anyone else has arrived, Tommy says he wishes he knew if his brother got the message that Tommy left for him. Only his wife hears him, and asks him what the message said.
Then they are picking up his brother’s personal belongings, where Tommy takes out the cellphone and plays his message, "unheard" on the speakerphone. Tommy tells him he’s sorry for beating the shit out of him at his father’s birthday party when he found out that his wife and brother were together, and tells him he can’t help it. He loves her so much. His wife is right there as the message plays. It is riveting.
Then comes the funeral, with bagpipes and tons of people. Tommy is sitting in the front row as his cousin, who died in the World Trade Center, watches from the side, joining Tommy’s dead son, beside the preacher and taking him away before the vision ends. Just then, as if another one of Tommy’s ghosts, a young woman appears and gets the attention of Tommy’s sister. It turns out to be Tommy’s other sister, a deaf mute that was sent away as a youngster and comes back for the funeral. Fittingly, the long lost sister seems to be the best adjusted of the lot.
In any given episode this show takes chances and makes sloppy mistakes that would mean death to most shows, but I have read that it has already been renewed for at least one year. Maybe it is the heart beneath all the sordid and cluttered plots that keeps this show breathing, like a victim these men drag out of a building.
Monday, September 04, 2006
Sunday, August 20, 2006
Rescue Me – Another Crazy Season
Rescue Me – Another Crazy Season
Lately, I don’t get out much. My life does not exactly revolve around the television shows that I watch, but they at least occupy a portion of my daily thoughts. I like provocative, edgy writing and quirkiness, which explains my leaning towards cable drama offerings such as Monk, The Shield, and Rescue Me.
Rescue Me is possibly my favorite at this point, as it is capable of shocking me, provoking thought, and making me laugh out loud repeatedly throughout a single episode. Just the plot lines, which while ludicrous still come off as possible in this world of ours, make me shake my head as I think them over.
And the writers know that they seem crazy, making light of themselves in a scene from the show two weeks ago. I am not sure what the title of the show was, and am not going to spend a lot of time being exact about it, but the gist of it was; Tommy (Dennis Leary), is having a crisis (as always). He walks into a New York pub, orders the most expensive Whiskey behind the bar, a couple hundred dollars worth for a couple of tall glasses of the stuff.
When he doesn’t have any money to pay for it he tells the bartender that he’s FDNY, which apparently gets these guys free reign throughout New York. This is a theme throughout the show. I do not know if it is like this in New York still, but that is how it is portrayed.
The bartender at first doesn’t believe him, and Tommy breaks into a monologue where he first shows the crowd around him his scars from fire-fighting. Then he tells them what’s going on in his life, how his estranged wife is pregnant with a child that could be either his brother’s or his own child and how he just saw his dead son riding the downtown bus.
Dennis Leary pulls this off quite well, and with a straight face, bringing sympathy to a character that on paper is a selfish, abusive, self-serving bully. The mood and the buttons this show pushes are all over the place.
It's not always perfect, there a lot of red herring plots that seem to fizzle out, such as one character’s daughter being abducted by a girlfriend/benefactor. Watching this show, you get the idea that the writer’s are allowed free reign but also told to drop plots that producers feel are not going well, after they are aired.
As far as I can tell, there are two episodes left this season, and this is a show for season-ending plot turns. Recently, Tommy’s son was killed by a drunk driver, and his uncle killed the drunk driver in another episode. Now, two main characters might die.
Central to it all is the FDNY, and the reverence each and every one of these characters hold for the fire department, even those that aren't fire-fighters. These characters make the New York buddy set from "Seinfeld," seem like a group of missionaries, but still respect the job and look to the other’s in their "House,"(Firehouse) closer than anyone, especially their families.
The firemen come off as a group of Prima Donna’s at times, but sprinkled throughout the show are telling signs of why they look on it all the way they do. When a friend of Tommy’s from his days in probationary school gets hurt critically in a fire, Tommy spends a lot of time in the hospital room, helping his friends wife cope as his friend is continually whittled down, his legs and arms amputated, and then, when the wife is out of the room, Tommy tells his buddy to just let go.
It is touching at times, and done well enough that you forget that one scene before you were laughing at gay jokes or that a nun just got done sleeping with Tommy’s room mate. I recommend "Rescue Me," highly, and hope it keeps coming back as fresh as it has this season.
Lately, I don’t get out much. My life does not exactly revolve around the television shows that I watch, but they at least occupy a portion of my daily thoughts. I like provocative, edgy writing and quirkiness, which explains my leaning towards cable drama offerings such as Monk, The Shield, and Rescue Me.
Rescue Me is possibly my favorite at this point, as it is capable of shocking me, provoking thought, and making me laugh out loud repeatedly throughout a single episode. Just the plot lines, which while ludicrous still come off as possible in this world of ours, make me shake my head as I think them over.
And the writers know that they seem crazy, making light of themselves in a scene from the show two weeks ago. I am not sure what the title of the show was, and am not going to spend a lot of time being exact about it, but the gist of it was; Tommy (Dennis Leary), is having a crisis (as always). He walks into a New York pub, orders the most expensive Whiskey behind the bar, a couple hundred dollars worth for a couple of tall glasses of the stuff.
When he doesn’t have any money to pay for it he tells the bartender that he’s FDNY, which apparently gets these guys free reign throughout New York. This is a theme throughout the show. I do not know if it is like this in New York still, but that is how it is portrayed.
The bartender at first doesn’t believe him, and Tommy breaks into a monologue where he first shows the crowd around him his scars from fire-fighting. Then he tells them what’s going on in his life, how his estranged wife is pregnant with a child that could be either his brother’s or his own child and how he just saw his dead son riding the downtown bus.
Dennis Leary pulls this off quite well, and with a straight face, bringing sympathy to a character that on paper is a selfish, abusive, self-serving bully. The mood and the buttons this show pushes are all over the place.
It's not always perfect, there a lot of red herring plots that seem to fizzle out, such as one character’s daughter being abducted by a girlfriend/benefactor. Watching this show, you get the idea that the writer’s are allowed free reign but also told to drop plots that producers feel are not going well, after they are aired.
As far as I can tell, there are two episodes left this season, and this is a show for season-ending plot turns. Recently, Tommy’s son was killed by a drunk driver, and his uncle killed the drunk driver in another episode. Now, two main characters might die.
Central to it all is the FDNY, and the reverence each and every one of these characters hold for the fire department, even those that aren't fire-fighters. These characters make the New York buddy set from "Seinfeld," seem like a group of missionaries, but still respect the job and look to the other’s in their "House,"(Firehouse) closer than anyone, especially their families.
The firemen come off as a group of Prima Donna’s at times, but sprinkled throughout the show are telling signs of why they look on it all the way they do. When a friend of Tommy’s from his days in probationary school gets hurt critically in a fire, Tommy spends a lot of time in the hospital room, helping his friends wife cope as his friend is continually whittled down, his legs and arms amputated, and then, when the wife is out of the room, Tommy tells his buddy to just let go.
It is touching at times, and done well enough that you forget that one scene before you were laughing at gay jokes or that a nun just got done sleeping with Tommy’s room mate. I recommend "Rescue Me," highly, and hope it keeps coming back as fresh as it has this season.
Saturday, July 29, 2006
Blogging for the sake of Blogging
It’s been a short, unbelievable, summer. I can’t begin to explain…and am not going to, but in between 60 hour work weeks, 100 degree weather, a sober Jimmy Buffet concert, and constant exhaustion, I have been smiling. Now I’ve decided to Blog a little more, very often I’ve had something to say and did not not post it because I wanted to use this space for stories, well, no more. So I’ll keep prattle to a minimum, but beware…some blogging is on the Horizon.
Tour de Floyd Landis has another bad stage.
I am a bicycling fan, not hard-core, but I follow enough of it to know who wins the Tour De France, and how they did it. Not just Lance Armstrong, before him it was that french(?) guy, and before that with Greg Lemond, the Tour De France has(had) a purity to it that many other sports can only hope to approach. What is better than a bunch of guys dueling up and down the hills of France on bicycles?
Nothing.
Behold, Europe has it’s own bureacracies and International biking as well, and none of it has escaped the stench of steroids. Sooooo, a whole bunch of cyclists were kicked out of the race before it even began, including most of the ones I knew of, Hamilton, Ullrich…, but they had a good field and after those first awkward days, I began following it as I always have, online and on OLN. It was fun, and Floyd Landis pulled some heroics that had me looking forward and not back to the Armstrong years. Seriously, it didn’t hurt my interest level that he was American, but I believe I could have latched on to anyone that pulled the kind of comeback he did.
Now, he’s tested positive for high testosterone levels. I’m not a chemist, or informed about any of it, but my gut instinct is this guy didn’t cheat. Look at him! Okay, they have enhancing drugs that won’t bulk him up, but nothing of what I’ve seen about this guy tells me he’s done anything but have more guts than the rest of the field to win bicycling’s premier event.
Of course it has already been tarnished, irreparably, but no matter if I spend the next year hearing updates on ESPN about Floyd’s blood levels, I will let myself enjoy what he did. It was pure guts, and that’s what it should be about.
Tour de Floyd Landis has another bad stage.
I am a bicycling fan, not hard-core, but I follow enough of it to know who wins the Tour De France, and how they did it. Not just Lance Armstrong, before him it was that french(?) guy, and before that with Greg Lemond, the Tour De France has(had) a purity to it that many other sports can only hope to approach. What is better than a bunch of guys dueling up and down the hills of France on bicycles?
Nothing.
Behold, Europe has it’s own bureacracies and International biking as well, and none of it has escaped the stench of steroids. Sooooo, a whole bunch of cyclists were kicked out of the race before it even began, including most of the ones I knew of, Hamilton, Ullrich…, but they had a good field and after those first awkward days, I began following it as I always have, online and on OLN. It was fun, and Floyd Landis pulled some heroics that had me looking forward and not back to the Armstrong years. Seriously, it didn’t hurt my interest level that he was American, but I believe I could have latched on to anyone that pulled the kind of comeback he did.
Now, he’s tested positive for high testosterone levels. I’m not a chemist, or informed about any of it, but my gut instinct is this guy didn’t cheat. Look at him! Okay, they have enhancing drugs that won’t bulk him up, but nothing of what I’ve seen about this guy tells me he’s done anything but have more guts than the rest of the field to win bicycling’s premier event.
Of course it has already been tarnished, irreparably, but no matter if I spend the next year hearing updates on ESPN about Floyd’s blood levels, I will let myself enjoy what he did. It was pure guts, and that’s what it should be about.
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