Grid Effect

Just a few quick words on a pretty ordinary Rescue Me. When I describe an episode of Rescue Me as “ordinary”, it’s generally intended to be a comedic episode that falls flat, making it ordinary in the sense that it’s too much like most television and not unique or interesting enough for us to really care about any of it.

For starters, I’m growing tired of Tommy always, no matter how small or large the dilemma/task, always outshining everyone around him. He gets in a fight with his old friend/chief, naturally he clobbers him. Him and his fire crew decide to wager on who can see up Needles’ wife’s dress first, we see both Franco and Kenny fail but he succeeds in spades. And the worst of all he gives his family a lecture at an intervention about the joys of drinking/alcoholism, and manages to convince his entire family short of Maggie, most of whom were practicing sobriety, to do a toast with him at Mikey’s bar.

The first of which we don’t have much of a problem with. Its been established that Tommy is something of a fighter and Needles always has looked a little frumpy (probably why we’ve never really bought the actor in the role). The challenge actually provided some good comedic moments, most notably in the deliberating the terms of the bet and the exchange afterwards, and as much as we hate seeing Tommy outsmart everyone else, at least they were able to work in a good laugh while he’s being given shit detail (we also got a reference to the season two development of him and Janet taking prozac, glad they haven’t forgotten about it).

But the lecture was a tad self-aggrandizing for Gavin, even for this series. I suppose they’re trying to say something about the penchant Gavin’s have for the bottle and the grip alcoholism has on those vulnerable to it, or man’s inability to change himself (there’s only about five other series’ we watch that do this and do it better), but it just came off so clumsily thrown together. I’d like to think that, especially for Mic –since he’s basically been the foundation for Gavin ever since he told the firehouse about him and Sheila back in the first season– it would take more than some bullshit soliloquy from Tommy to put him over the edge (though he’s had his moments).

We’ll see where they take the storyline tonight. Actually, all the Gavin’s sitting in a bar rotting from the inside out at 11am isn’t the worst case scenario for this show. To the contrary I think it involves any relationship Tommy might have with someone of the opposite sex. See below for the gist of every scene Tommy Gavin has with an actress on this show. Judging from the previews next week, it looks like that all the Sheila-Janet build-up comes to a head tonight. I hope my preset notions turn out wrong, but I, for one, am not looking forward to it.

Long overdue links post tomorrow.