TV Review: Rescue Me - Season 5 Premiere

From the first moments of the opening to season 5 of Rescue Me it’s clear that this show is back to where it once was. That is, pretty damn great. This season of Rescue Me moves from hilarity to heart break in swift fashion, something the last season missed out on when it dwelled in Tommy Gavin’s (Denis Leary) misery.

What Rescue Me is doing again is examining the life and troubles of the firefighters of NYC post 9/11. But they do it without making the show a weepy 9/11 love fest. In episode 2 Lou (John Scurti) tells an interviewer about what happened for him during 9/11, he then breaks down. It’s real, it’s heartfelt and it’s juxtaposed by a strip club scene right afterward. All in all this is a solid show, but it’s this melding of different emotional points that distinguishes Rescue Me as a top tier cable series.

Leary is really bringing Tommy back to the guy you love to hate. While getting ready to deal with the Section Eight (declaring him crazy) that Chief Feinberg (Jerry Adler) put him up against Tommy tells his fellow firefighters what he really thinks. After coming back to the house Tommy attempts to blow it off as no big deal. Then he meets his ex-wife’s new boyfriend, played to perfection by Michael J. Fox, and really thinks the guy’s an asshole. So he wants to challenge him to fight, as you’d expect from a man who is constantly battling to keep himself in check with great trouble. But the boyfriend is an asshole, but he also happens to be paraplegic.

Rescue Me is all about Tommy, a man looking to right the wrongs of his life. But the brilliance comes in the fact that the show never centers around his character. The story of Garrity (Steven Pasquale), Silletti (Michael Lombardi) and Franco (Daniel Sunjata) looking to open a bar in order to get laid is as clearly a part of the series as Tommy’s diatribe about his deceased father to his family. It all matters. And that’s where the show becomes interesting, in the interactions of these men. You have to credit the writers for getting the friendships of men right more than any other show on television.

By the time you hit the seventh episode of Rescue Me in season 5 things are established and you’re back in familiar territory. After a difficult season last time around Leary and company have pulled their show back to what it should always be. An examination of a broken down man who puts forth every effort to better himself in a world where temptation and just plain bad luck await every decision he makes.