Grid Effect

I know I promised a Rescue Me preview in my last post, but I got caught up in some extra-cirriculars last night and never got around to it. Thankfully, however, the season premiere was essentially a preview in and of itself, so there was no need, as most of the episode simply rehashed where all of the characters are at. Usually I wait until the following week to recap a dramatic episode of television, but last night was fairly uneventful and meandering, so I’ll just get it out of the way now. Instead of going in order of events, I’ll do a character by character synopsis.

Tommy Gavin: Now living with Janet (his separated but not divorced but not technically separated anymore because they are living together wife) in a platonic relationship with a kid that may or may not be his (it’s his or his departed brother’s). Tommy’s concerns range from studdering in protest over his rebellious eighteen year-old daughter and Janet’s remarkably poor parenting skills, to potentially going to jail as an arson suspect from the fire at Sheila’s beach house (he cannot remember the details since she drugged him, she’s alive and trying to pull an insurance scam, by the way. Given how last season ended, this doesn’t add up) and fending off the advances of Jennifer Esposito, the firewoman who saved him; to debating with the rest of the house as to what kind of gaming court they should have in the basement: basketball or street hockey.

Franco: Now living with the young photographer he met at a bar by himself last season and is still coping with her mentally-challenged brother, who wants Franco to marry his sister so he can bed a girl with down-syndrome, whose partially deaf and in a wheelchair. There conversation went something like this:

Franco’s Girlfriends Brother (Can’t remember his name, sorry): She’s got a great ass.
Franco: Well, how do you know she has a great ass if she’s in a wheelchair?
FGB: Sometimes they stand her up.

Some might find this offensive, I find it amusing. He is pushing for the basketball court.

Kenny Shea: Not much going on here. He’s trying to handle the advances of sexually pent-up former nun he is currently dating and is the lead advocate for the basketball court over the street hockey rink, mainly because there is a new black guy going through probie school that he thinks he has an inside track on and can recruit to their house.

Probie: Had a colonoscopy due to a history of colon cancer in his family, meaning he will eventually be diagnosed with it at some point this season or it was written in strictly for John Scurti to crack a joke about his taint later in this episode. But he was drug induced and virtually unheard from, from start to finish.

Garrity: Still married to Maggie (Tommy’s sister) and has been so for nine months. There marriage is something of a gender reversal in terms of bedroom antics. In other words, she has a porn collection that he wants to get rid of. Garrity also looks bizarre with this new hairstyle, Very Abrecrombie & Fitch-esque. He was hoping for a basketball court but Garrity is blackmailing him into voting for the street hockey court with the threat of buying Maggie more porn.

Chief Riley: Coping well since his near fatal heart attack at the end of last season. Having lost thirty-five pounds and is begrudgingly going to attend his gay sons wedding as his best man, somewhere in Massachusetts. Another great exchange here:

Chief Riley: Okay okay, I don’t have to kiss the bride, do I?
Chief Riley’s son (again, cannot remember his name): Just not on my lips.

I guess his near death experience has done wonders on his psyche. He also determines the outcome of the remodeling of the basement: There going halvsies; and turns down more than one slice of pizza.

Other notes:

-There was an explosion on site where all of them nearly died, but you knew they wouldn’t because it contained five of the six characters mentioned above. A floor gets upturned and they all fall out of the third story of a building onto some stuffed animals. Think Suzy Green falling on the pound cakes in Curb.

-Janets newborn son hates her, and his crying is only quelled when Tommy is holding him.

-Colleen vomited after getting stoned and drunk with her twenty-six year old boyfriend and having sex with him in his truck.

Like I said, fairly uneventful and mostly a “seeing what their up to now” episode. But I’m cautiously optimistic they can rebound from the pedestrian third season with the body of work the fourth produces.