The Rise and Fall of Rescue Me

July 13 marks the beginning of the end of one of FX's flagship shows, Rescue Me. If I got to say that five years ago the tone of this post would have been much more positive, but it's not. Rescue Me went from must-see to must-flee and it's all one person's fault.


Flashback to 2002. The FX Network began its rise to prominence with The Shield in 2002. Winner. Then 2003 brought the world Nip/Tuck and some show I'd never heard of until I started writing this post. While not nearly as good as The Shield, Nip/Tuck was good and in this day and age two out of three ain't bad.


Move forward to the summer of 2004, when Leary and Peter Tolan provided FX with another winner in Rescue Me. The drama centered around a group of firefighters dealing with the after-effects of the 9/11 tragedy. Leary's character Tommy Gavin was the lead, dealing with the loss of his cousin and best friend while his family, friends and co-workers dealt with the reality that Tommy was the biggest asshole to walk the face of the earth. Wikipedia said it best when it described Tommy as an "ill-tempered, self-destructive, hypocritical, manipulative, and a relapsed alcoholic."


But the thing is he was a funny ill-tempered, self-destructive, hypocritical, manipulative, relapsed alcoholic. Talking to dead people (including his cousin), encouraging his daughter's lesbian behavior, asking his godson to mess up the bank accounts of the man his estranged wife Janet is seeing, one night stands with a woman he can't remember the name of, sleeping with the aforementioned dead cousin's wife Sheila, brawling with his priest cousin at his mother's funeral, trying to get free psychological advice from a doctor he was building a porch for, the list goes on and on. And that was only the first season.


The second season showed everyone the only thing funnier than a drunk Tommy Gavin is a sober Tommy Gavin. Tommy retained most of his lesser qualities but got it together long enough to give his wife a second chance and rebuild their family and, more importantly, kept his sobriety throughout. The hilarity of seeing Tommy talk to Jesus and Mary Magdalene, telling off a racial sensitivity teacher and arguing with his brother Johnny over who gets to date their alleged half-sister was all washed away with the death of Tommy's only son, by ironically, a drunk driver. This was the best season of the series and quite frankly Leary was robbed of an Emmy.


Season three saw Tommy caught between his wife Janet and brother Johnny, who had begun a relationship and conceived a child, which led to a "rape" incident and ultimately broke Tommy's sobriety. I doubt fans will forget the brutal beating Tommy gave his brother (at their father's birthday party, typical Gavin behavior) when he found out about the affair with Janet. Nor will they forget Johnny's apologetic voicemail, which came hours before he was murdered by a street thug. The season ended with Sheila unable to convince Tommy to leave the fire department behind, which led to her drugging him and accidentally burning down her new beach house with Tommy still inside.

And since hindsight's always 20/20, that's where he should have stayed. Let me sum up the last three seasons:

• Janet gives birth to a boy but has no clue if Tommy or Johnny is the father
• Chief Reilly blows his brains out, is replaced by a Jew with an extremely large penis
• The drunks in the Gavin family decide to hold their own AA meetings, fail miserably
• Tommy and Sheila try to have a sexual relationship, fail miserably
• Tommy and Janet try to patch things up, fail miserably
• Tommy starts running around on the night shift wearing his cousin's old fire jacket
• The drunks in the Gavin family decide to hold their own AA meetings again, fail miserably
• Tommy and Sheila try to have a sexual relationship again, fail miserably
• Tommy and Janet try to patch things up again, fail miserably
• Janet and Sheila sabotage Tommy's relationship with a woman similar to him
• Uncle Teddy shoots Tommy
• Tommy's oldest daughter becomes a destructive drunk like him
• The drunks in the Gavin family say to hell with each other
• Tommy and Sheila try to have a sexual relationship yet again, fail miserably
• Tommy and Janet try to patch things up yet again, fail miserably. See a pattern?

The only two highlights come from Season Five, where Tommy and Janet make fools of themselves during a trip to their younger daughter's private school and the episodes where Michael J. Fox returned to television as a drug-addicted, alcoholic cripple. A hilarious, drug-addicted, alcoholic cripple. Quite frankly with writing this bad I'm surprised the show's still on the air.

So what happened? The answer's pretty simple:


Denis Leary. Peter Tolan is probably to blame as well, but I'm sticking with Leary.


There's two ways to cast your show. The first way is to create an ensemble cast that's so good when one or two have an off day other's can pick up the slack. It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Grey's Anatomy, Arrested Development and The Wire are good examples of this.


The other way is to have a lead actor so good the rest of the cast can suck and no one will notice, much like 24, The Office and House (all due respect to Dennis Haysbert, Rainn Wilson and Lisa Edelstein).


Leary and Rescue Me fall into the latter category. As Leary went, so did Rescue Me. With the exception of Jack McGee (Chief Reilly), Dean Winters (Johnny Gavin), and John Scurti (Lou), the rest of the main cast was incredibly inconsistent and when Reilly and Johnny were killed off this was more apparent. The phenomenal guest stars over the years (including but not limited to the aforementioned Fox, Susan Sarandon, Marisa Tomei, Robert John Burke, Lee Tergesen, and Peter Gallagher) covered for some of this, but bad acting is still bad acting. I doubt any of them have improved their skills for this final season.


While Leary isn't the best actor in the world, he fits the d-bag role pretty well, which, in case you haven't been reading, is exactly what Tommy Gavin is. Either he jumped the shark and won't admit it or he just doesn't give a s*** anymore. And if you don't believe me read his piece of trash book Why We Suck (I'm sure the followup was equally terrible), watch his piece of trash appearance on the O'Reilly Factor or watch his piece of trash stand-up Douchebags and Donuts on Netflix. The only one of these I finished was the BillO appearance, only because it was a five minute interview. In any event Leary carried the show for a long time. He is Rescue Me, and his decline has coincided with the show's decline.


Why am I still watching Rescue Me? Why is anyone still watching Rescue Me? No clue. Loyalty to Leary, boredom, routine, who knows. Thankfully, the end is near and the end starts Wednesday.


But the end should have come much sooner. Or better yet, Leary shouldn't have gotten so damn lazy with his television show that he had to constantly regurgitate the same three storylines again and again and again. I'm sure the fact that this season finishes four days before the tenth anniversary of 9/11 means we'll see some fresh stories over these final nine episodes.


Yeah, right. Out.