De Niro plays the bull...

Fine, you don't want to weigh in, then you'll just have to listen to me... or just comment later... Either way, I'm gonna blow some big plot points so if you haven't watched Wednesday's Rescue Me yet, STOP HERE.

Big week for the best show on TV through this lame-o summer. And it didn't seem that way at the beginning of what would have been a pretty standard episode if not for the chief's storyline. Even Tommy's psycho-dad bit was relatively normal for this show. (I was really prepared for a nose-ring tearing that would have sent me screaming into the early morning, rain-soaked streets.)

It was, however, interesting to see that the boyfriend is a nice guy and to have a solid example of Tommy being totally, shamelessly unreasonable and self destructive in front of his friends. But Leary does play an awesome crazy dad, doesn't he?

While trashing his relationship with his daughter, Tommy's also having trouble getting together with his rescuer (whose name i forgot to jot down and I can't find on imdb). The nice lady carried him out of the burning house, saving his life, and the show would have us believe that this has him emasculated enough to turn her down, which is a common trend in Leary's work. I tend to think Janet has more to do with it than Tommy's letting on -- and so does his general fear of finding another strong woman who won't put up with him or another crazy woman like Sheila (who he's ALSO still holding out hope for). And this new woman's honestly the best shot he probably has at being happy. But Tommy's destined to crash every single relationship he has.

As great a character as I think Franco is and as hilarious as Teddy can be, I really don't care about their respective storylines right now... anyone else? Teddy's off on a silly tangent trying to get away from his new wife and intruding on a corrections officer who talked him into the wedding... and Franco's busy blowing a good relationship for no apparent reason. Yawn.

And don't even get me started on how the probie's story went nowhere. I had high hopes for the show to honestly tackle assisted suicide instead of having it peter out. It's sad that Shawn had the most interesting developments this week -- finally standing up to Tommy, though weakly, in regards to the fight with the emo kid, and making headway toward a normal conversation with him.

Then there's the chief, and the sad conclusion. I hate saying "I saw this coming," because no one ever believes anyone who says that, but it seemed pretty obvious to me, especially after he risked his new position to quickly scuttle away Tommy's problem and made a heartfelt toast in support of his gay son who had dealt him a staggering disappointment.

I was cringing for the entire second half of the episode because I was afraid that it was coming. The chief has been the most human character on the show, and his stories over the past few years (his wife's Alzheimer's, his son, his health problems, and most recently his job loss) have been the show's real grounding in reality. The depression of all these things finally weighed down on him, and his decision to kill himself is not surprising after getting to a point where he'd lost absolutely EVERYTHING he held dear.

His wife is no longer the same person; his son's never going to change; his career as a firefighter is reduced to sitting at a desk, and he can't be with his crew, which is all he really wants. It's a sad and scared but artistically acceptable end for Jerry.

Sadly, that's not even the most disturbing thing in this week's episode. Nope. More disturbing is that I was actually AT the man-date restaurant with a group of guys on Saturday night... good salmon.