Monday, July 5, 2010


Rescue Me is back and I think that more than Tommy Gavin has come back to life. Don’t get me wrong, I like this show. I think that it’s a winning blend of tender and funny with one of the best real life depictions of machismo on TV, but the storylines have become a little repetitive for my taste. Tommy can’t decide between Janet and Sheila? Wow, color me shocked.

But when we open on the story this season, something has changed. All of Tommy’s hard-wheeling ways have finally caught back up to him. Teddy, enraged at the death of his wife, has shot Tommy and left him to die on the bar floor. And die he does. In the back of an ambulance, Tommy loses his life and is suddenly transported to an ethereal hockey rink where his 9/11 compatriots are all gathered, heading toward the light. Jimmy’s there, which might shock a normal person, but Tommy’s been talking to this dead guy for years. They all head off to a bright, white light but instead of Utopian cloud fluff, Tommy gets thrown into a burning building with the charred faces of his would-be rescuees asking him why they weren’t saved. If this is hell, Tommy Gavin doesn’t want to be there, and with a jolt he’s back in the ambulance, come to life once again.

A shoulder surgery and time passed out in the hospital later, Tommy finds that the world around him has changed. Everyone he turned back into alcoholics are sober—except for his teenage daughter. She’s drinking gin straight from the glass even though it “tastes like gasoline” (sidenote: everyone knows that Everclear tastes like gasoline; gin tastes like pinetrees. Don’t be silly Rescue Me). The firehouse is in danger of being closed, Tommy’s sponsor is willing to kill him if he falls off the wagon, and Teddy has constructed Tommy some bullet infused cuff links to remind him that if the sponsor doesn’t get him first (for drinking, for hurting Janice, for screwing up at work) then he will. And he’ll aim to kill this time.

The end result is a sober Tommy for much of the episode. He’s obviously grappling with the impact that his life choices have had. Not only to himself — I mean, the man is probably going to hell should he actually die — but to the people around him. His firehouse is in shambles, his wife is unhappy, his mistress is seriously fucked in the head, his daughter is an alcoholic, his younger daughter is pouring him scotch neat, and his family thinks he’s a murderer. So, what can Tommy do but visit his God.

He sits in a pew staring at the crucifix contemplating (assumedly) all of the wrongs he has committed and the nature of forgiveness. Looking up he sees the good version of himself, a man who gets clean and makes his wife happy and doesn’t see his dead brother in every choice that he makes. In the end, Jesus isn’t even enough to help him and he begins again the worship of his true master — by taking a big swig of liquor. And although he seems to have chosen like the Tommy, it seems to me that there's something more grave in the choices that he makes now. That there's a possibility for a turn around. Because now, if Tommy doesn't choose to change, he'll actually lose it all.

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