Jamedryl

Rescue Me SPOILERS BELOW

I'm starting to realize how naive and nerdy it is of me to consider Lost to be my favorite show. It's like when I was a kid and though Labyrinth was the best movie ever. Sure, a Bowie-scored Muppet flick is cool (despite his tight purple pants), but there needs to be a more worldly view taken when making such an assertion.

Not that Lost isn't among the best shows ever produced for television, it's just a narrowed, overly cynical view for me to take, I think. Especially considering that I purport to be somewhat of a professional, part-time TV journalist. I'll credit this week's Rescue Me with putting me in this frame of mind. This show has gotten progressively better on a weekly basis since starting in July 2004 and deserves just as high a classification.

Specifically, I want to point out the squad's incident in the burning building -- an everyday occurrence for them, I'm sure, complete with flames, rescues, a baby's delivery, losing track of a team member and getting lost in a NYC building. This is the only show that could make a comedy routine out of that.

Anyway... previously on Rescue Me THE CHIEF KILLED HIMSELF (yes, killed himself, those friends of mine who were heard spouting the query "you think he's dead?"). You would think that's all you'd really have to know coming into this week, but it turns out Jerry gets a more unceremonious sendoff. I read somewhere that the actor who plays the chief, Jack McGee, blames a falling out with Denis Leary for this. I don't necessarily buy into that, and Leary denies it. But, either way, the chief was beaten on every level and I tend to agree with Lou, who gave the guy respect for going out on his terms while the younger guys deemed him a coward.

(Which leads in to a brilliantly performed and written tirade from Tommy, who doesn't get to do the serious stuff with that sort of situation very often. "He used up all the goddamn brave he had" may be among the best lines I've ever heard spoken on television.)

Sadly, instead of focusing on Jerry, this episode is all about Tommy's emasculation. It's common fare for one of the three women in his family to walk all over him, with little in the way of argument (letting his eldest blackmail him into buying furniture, letting his younger daughter draw his attention when she know's he's annoyed about the other one, letting his ex(ish)-wife hold onto him at arms length until SHE'S ready to make time for him). Sheila, too, to just shove her way into the apartment is nothing out of the ordinary.

Then there's the firefighter who saved his life... by the time he gets to her he's a stuttering, scared mess of a man who's unable to unclench and put together a full, truthful sentence. By the time he goes chasing her (the Tommy/Janet do-over was obviously a bad idea) she'll want nothing to do with him... she'll probably be with the goofus Sheila's dating right now. The question now is why is Tommy such a wuss... and now he HAS to find out the answer, since it's starting to physically manifest.

This, again, is a theme in Leary's work. Who knows why... maybe he enjoys exploring it. It's certainly great comedic fodder. But hopefully we're getting to a place where he actually gets down to the bottom of it. (Either that or, early prediction, he'll get news that he has cancer or something and blame his lack of performance on that... and use it to make everyone else feel guilty.)

He's still a romantic, though. He can sit and pontificate about the joys of marriage to Franco and tell him to "pull the trigger" without any hesitation (that's going to be a great exchange next week when Tommy tells Franco he was out of his mind). He obviously wanted the Janet thing really bad and will either be crushed or extra crotchety when next week's edition comes around.

Side notes:
-- Lou will consistently remain my favorite character -- his delivery both comedically and dramatically are impeccable, though it's nice to have Adam Ferrara on full-time duty.
-- Jerry's death being fixed as a heart attack so his son can pick up the benefits was a nice touch, though I'm worried it may come back to haunt Tommy now that his most recent court battle is over.
-- Jamedryl = hilarious.
-- More proof of this show's brilliance: