Rescue Me – Tommy gets taken to the woodshed

by Scott Tunstall

Season five is winding down. Only two episodes remain in what has been a major comeback for Rescue Me. After a deplorable fourth season, the series looked to have run out of steam. A 19 month hiatus is just what the TV doctor ordered. As the end nears, I can’t help but feel the other shoe is about to drop. Tommy Gavin may appear calm on the outside, but he is spiraling out of control. Jimmy’s visits are becoming more and more frequent, which isn’t benefiting Tommy’s mental health. My sense is Jimmy is a harbinger of bad news.

I would classify last night’s chapter as setup. Groundwork has been laid that will eventually lead to a big reveal. What that will be isn’t clear, but hints are being strategically dropped. Tommy was in the cross-hairs of multiple characters. Lou was first to take aim. The verbal undressing and subsequent firehouse wrestling match was a thing of beauty. Every word Lou uttered was the truth. How much of a fuck-up do you have to be when your best pal doesn’t trust you at his own wedding? A Tommy-sized fuck-up, evidently.

Next to bash Tommy was Kelly, the mystery chick played by the fantastic Maura Tierney. Her dinner table deconstruction of his character was something to behold. It wasn’t all negative; her Opie/Ron Howard jabs graduated to flattering comparisons to David Bowie. Still, she managed to trash his sexual prowess and astutely reduce him to a bitter asshole.

Sheila and Tommy’s volatile relationship took a turn. I quite enjoyed her Hamlet/Freudian analysis of Tommy. Sounds like he did marry his mother, doesn’t it? And who knew Sheila and Tommy almost got together 25 years earlier? Her admission that she desired someone opposite of herself was very telling. She ran from Tommy not because she didn’t want him, but because she saw herself in his image. That speaks to a humongous amount of insecurity on her part. She cannot trust herself, so trusting Tommy would be impossible. By the way, Callie Thorne’s performance the last two weeks makes her Emmy-worthy, in my opinion.

Jimmy took his shots at Tommy too. The elephant in the room seems to be that Jimmy and Janet had an affair before he died on 9/11. If this is the case, it might end up being a good thing for Tommy. The guilt he still feels for abandoning Jimmy when the second tower collapsed and his long-running sexcapades with Sheila, could dissolve if he learns Jimmy wasn’t the saint he believed him to be. Then again, Tommy might go on a kill-crazy rampage. He’s hardly the model of stability.

This wasn’t a memorable episode, but it did provide a bevy of critical exposition. I can’t envision a happy ending for Tommy; it’s only fitting he descend another rung down the ladder to hell.

Off topic, before I go. Candy has to have an angle, right? She has cash, so I wonder if she needs to get married in order to collect said cash. Just a thought. Finally, is there anything better than the drunk Gavin clan? Watching their sloshed buffoonery brings a smile to my face. Goodbye.