In the bank

Here's where I have to offer the big SPOILER WARNING... and I'm too tired to even come up with a clever way to introduce it. So tired that I keep zoning out while staring at a movie on TV. And the commercials during that movie... which makes it not even a movie at all. Anyway, my despise for movies on television is a blog for another day. I think I've gone on long enough that I can now start to talk about Rescue Me without someone complaining I've ruined it for them.

Sheila has always irked me. Since the beginning of the show, she's been annoying and whiny and had that awful snotty air to her (proven again with the perfume spritzing because Tommy "smelled like baby"). It's because of that I think I need to finally acknowledge Callie Thorne's phenomenal performance throughout this show's life. Before I've always just shrugged her off for annoying me, but in this week's opening scene, I finally realized what a great job she's been doing.

It all comes down to the screwed up relationship between her and Tommy. She's in love with him. Completely. In love enough that she spent the bulk of last season drugging him so she could have sex with him, that she guilted him into (almost) having a baby and (almost) retiring, and that the drugging went on so long that it almost got both of them killed. He's still there, though, acting strong but in the passenger's seat whenever they're together. They both play their roles well in these instances.

A bigger testament (more to the writing here) is that she's still able to keep him coming back AND keep him in the dark about what really happened that night (that'll be a great exposition when it comes out). It makes her an amazing, though granted unlikely, villain at the same time she's that whiny chihuahua of a character. They cultivated her well.

She's not the only one who's that strong, either. It's uncanny how great the entire cast is -- Lou's character is really well written, but it's his unbeatable comic delivery that does the job; Shawn is the classic bully target and takes a mental and verbal beating better than most characters. Even the fringe characters are stellar -- this week alone Teddy's wife, Mike's mother; Tommy's date-to-be/savior; Adam Ferrara as Chief Nelson. All of them. You can't dispute how well this show's been cast and put together.

Another one of the show's big successes, aside from the ability I mentioned last week to hit a range of emotions in the span of 10 minutes, is it's ability to treat a throw away verbal jab at someone with the same weight and reverence as a paranoid delusion of a dead relative. Johnny showing up under the covers got even me, and I'm just watching this on TV. Cut to commercial. 13 minutes earlier, quip-quip-quip-tension-quip cut to commercial. Both deadpan. Both serious.

Then there's the pure awkwardness on display on this show is another big plus. Where The Office has bury-your-head-awkward moments, this show tackles moments that feel more real. No one digs themselves as big a hole as Michael does on The Office, but Tommy's deposition (in which he's forced to admit to some ... physical shortcomings) is a real life embarrassment. And don't get me started on Shawn's faux pas by mentioning Tommy's wife in the discussion they were having.