Rescue Me - Finale

Cafe Society
1

Well, as expected, that was a real pick me up. Saw Lou’s screw-job coming a mile away, but I can’t say I expected it to be a total con. Just that she’d lose interest or point out that it was just about the money. Maybe end up with a younger better looking guy. I like that it was a total con-job and that she was running several at once. If you’re going for miserable, they nailed it.

Anyone else hoping that Tommy would have grabbed the lesbian girlfriend by the neck and slammed her around some? Not that I am too upset seeing her pound the annoying ex, Sheila. I just wish that storyline would go away. Either that or show us so good ole fashion lesbian sex.

I’m going to be a little relieved next season to see that the Chief’s wife will be mostly out of the picture. That whole theme wasn’t very interesting and that actress really grated on my nerves. Even moreso being reduced to a forgetful child.

Really nice touch with the weeping Virgin Mary.

Do you think that Laura will be back at all next year? Didn’t quite see that coming, I figured they’d wring more misery out of Franco first.

2

I really liked Tommy’s little girl accurately describing the world to the two mentally challenged firemen. Wish I’d been that articulate at that age.

3

Checked IMDB – looks like she’ll be a regular on Numb3rs.

I liked the story line with the chief and his wife. It was nice to see a middle-aged couple on TV still in love and caring for each other. It reminded me of something Ruth Fisher (Six Feet Under) said last season, that no one else would ever love her like Nate Sr. did, when she was young and pretty.

Yep, I was ready for Tommy to smack Sheila’s girlfriend. That’s the story line I was tired of. It seemed so contrived. What was the point? If they wanted to keep a Sheila story going, why not just give her a boyfriend?

I’m hoping Janet stays gone next season. The only reason she and Tommy were getting along was because they were both medicated. Many marriages don’t survive the loss of a child, and this one was toast long before Connor died.

Totally agree with Baldwin about the scenes with the little girl explaining things to Probie and Garrity. :slight_smile:

4

This is definately among the best shows on TV. FX is doing a great job with original programming. Rescue Me and Over There are the two shows I’ll make a point to watch undisturbed with minimal distraction.

My guess for the 2006 Season Opener:

Teddy missed. Hit a cop instead. DD still gets off light.

5

I love the show, but did a single woman come out of the season looking decent? Yikes. Candy/Dani - not so much the hooker with a heart of gold as a con artist. Sheila - besides being a drunken mess, she’s now a punching bag, and the girlfriend that initially seemed ok is full of violent rage. I’ve pretty much hated Janet since day 1, but her complete blaming of Tommy for Connor’s death is so ridiculous.

Then again, I might be looking at it wrong. I don’t think any of the men came out looking great, either. The Idiot Twins, Probie and Garrity, mean well most of the time, they’re just both so dumb. Lou got taken for $25K, Uncle Teddy may’ve just killed a guy (deservedly or not), Franco got ditched - but he brought it on himself. Then Tommy’s been a mess since day 1.

It’s a great show but damn, that’s a lot of misery in one hour.

6

Lou’s about the only one who isn’t a total pricky or idiot, guy or girl. Granted he had an affair on his bitch of a wife, but that wasn’t particularly calous. For balance, Laura was probably the most innocent of the group. Though she was kinda petty a full of drama in her own way. The end for her was fairly cold-hearted but I wouldn’t call it malicious like just about everything else that happened with the others.

So, by my count, you’ve got 2 characters (one of each) that aren’t going to be reincarnated as a dung beetle or something. Thats out of about 14 or 15 regulars, excluding the children.

7

I pretty much agree with you - Lou’s a good guy for the most part, and by the time he’d been cheating on his wife she’d been carrying on an affair of her own for a long time. So that’s kind of a wash. And for all his trouble of BEING a good guy, he gets scammed by a hooker.

I mean, the first time the girlfriend smacked Sheila around, part of me was GLEEFUL because if any character was EVER begging for a beat-down, it’s been her. Also, the actress Callie Thorne was part of ruining “Homicide” and an awful addition to “the Wire,” so I probably liked that a little TOO much. Still, when I watched that beating I was shocked but amused, but when I saw Lou get his heart broken (and I’d seen it coming, too), I was upset for him. He didn’t deserve it, and I just wanted him to be happy for once.

I’m up in the air about Laura - she DID know ahead of time that getting involved with Franco was a bad idea, so she should have stuck to her guns. Then again, they had become friends after Franco’s accident, and I can see where it’d be next-to-impossible to resist him. I think the maybe the reason she vanished like that wasn’t to punish Franco as much as to keep herself away from the temptation. If she can keep herself from seeking him out and he can’t find her, she won’t be tempted to give him another chance.

So I’d say you’re right about those two not coming back as dung beetles, but I don’t think Probie and Garrity will either, necessarily. As I said earlier, they really seem to mean well. Probie is just - wow, dumb as a box of rocks, and Garrity might be a little smarter but he’s also led around by his hormones. So they’re not big thinkers, but they generally aren’t as malicious and hostile as, say, any random Gavin.

And as screwed up as the Gavin siblings are, I actually find Janet to be worse. With the exception of the time she was on the goofballs, she always blamed Tommy for EVERYTHING. She was willing to kidnap the kids and essentially steal money from him just to hurt him, because according to her everything is his fault. He’s no prize, and they sure didn’t need to stay married, but she went above and beyond once she ran away. That wasn’t for the good of the kids, or even herself - it was strictly to punish Tommy. And now that Connor is dead, it’s somehow more Tommy’s fault than the drunk driver’s. Yikes, I think I hate Janet even more than I realized.

And Tommy needs to start looking for chicks somewhere other than family gatherings. His ex-wife, his cousin’s widow, his faux half-sister… all in one season. That’s just icky.

8

Well, look at it this way. Tommy’s faux-half sister seemed at least mostly stable and sane. Well, aside from having a pedophile preist brother. That’s 2 strikes, BTW. She seemed reasonably well-off and didn’t have any serious passive-aggressive issues. Bringing her back into the fold would create at least a week or two of positive feelings.

When left to his own devices he’s bound to continue picking up women at AA meetings, murder trials, and god-knows-where else.

Janet was at least kinda hot.

[sub]I’m jus’ sayin’[/sub]

9

Dude… come on. They share a half-brother. While they aren’t technically related, don’t forget that Tommy, Johnny, and Mickey were all there to confront her perv-brother and basically set the whole thing in motion where the kid killed himself and the Pedophile Priest went to jail. There’s no way that would make things complicated, right?

And yeah, picking chicks up at AA isn’t going to help him, either. Apparently Tommy can only find women attractive when there’s a trainwreck looming up ahead.

10

Yeah, Tommy’s the only one with that issue.

You know there haven’t been nearly enough episodes involving strippers. This is a FDNY firehouse for god’s sake. I’m sure Tommy could date one of them, and eventually find his daughter working there…

Sorry, that’s my pet plot twist for next year…

11

Meh. I fully support your need to see more naked ladies, I really do. And to be honest, I’m torn - the show does a good job of entertaining me as is, but I’m not sure if I want more of the same or some signs of growth.

Hell, I’d be happy if Tommy had a big ol’ revelation and decided to be celibate for awhile, and they could let the other guys from the firehouse be involved in all the gratuitous dirty stuff. Plus, Denis Leary’s fake sex faces make me feel like sex is icky and wrong. Maybe we can see more naked Franco.

If you ask me, “Naked Franco” would be a great spin-off.

12

I’m not encouraging anything that involves more Denis Leary sex. I’m with ya there.

However, it stretches my suspension of disbelief to the breaking point to imagine that there haven’t been more encounters with strippers. It also is nearing ridiculous that these guys aren’t simply having random women walking by off the sidewalk and picking them up. I know Chiago firemen, I live about a block and a half from a firehouse, I know he drill.

I just can’t imagine Tommy going celebate. The guy has an addictive personality in spades. He’s apparently giving up booze and pain pills, and sticking with it. A good thing IMHO for the show. He’s going to replace it with something else. He has to. Might be becoming hyper-sexual. Perhaps going borderline suicidal in the in of duty. Maybe binge eating. (though that’d be a stretch) Something’s got to manifest out of this, and I don’t see it being celibacy or becoming a born-again.

I betcha Franco could end up going all reboundy and tearing through a dozen trixies next season in a matter of episodes. That could work out nice for you.

13

Oh, see, I think there’ve been hints (and maybe this is just in my head, it’s a shameful place) that strip clubs and picking-women-up-off-the-street isn’t really anything unusual. They’ve made it fairly clear that those guys know from groupies. Because that kind of thing is so commonplace, why would they spend any REAL time on it for the show? For example, we know that Franco and Garrity both get laid plenty. But we don’t actually SEE every single time. And after following the characters for 2 seasons, you just KNOW that going to a strip club for those guys is probably treated like when I run out for a pack of cigarettes. I tend to think that the writers are just giving the audience credit for assuming that yeah, they frequent nudie bars and they get random tail - the drama goes with the actual relationships.

As far as Tommy going celibate, that was just a ‘what-if’ kind of thing. The show REALLY makes the viewer feel invested in that guy, and aware that he doesn’t HAVE to be the mess he is. He quit drinking, but he was against getting any REAL help beyond that - he just took the same anti-deppresants as his wife. He proved in both seasons that he doesn’t trust the idea of therapy. He wants to do the bare minimum to get his family back together, which is understandable from his perspective.

It’s obvious, though, the guy needs to do more than getting off the hooch. He’s got 8000 issues and something’s got to give. He needs to give up the ghost of that awful marriage to Janet (no matter how good-looking she might be) and then he’s got to find a shrink or a priest or a fondness for chocolate, something. Yeah, a lot more sex COULD be his temporary solution, but that’s replacing one addiction with another AND it’d subject us to his icky O-faces.

From the huge-fan perspective, they’ve been building the tension of Tommy’s-World-of-Crazy for 2 seasons now. Something has to get resolved, and then maybe they’ll find new problems or weirdness. In real life, the tension doesn’t just keep ratcheting up w/o people at least TRYING to resolve the problems - and they’re not always succesful. On a show like “Rescue Me,” it’d actually be far more believable to see Tommy recognizing that he’s got an addictive personality, attempting to get help and then failing 'cause of his pride or whatever than to keep it up exactly like he’s been.

That’s my whole thing with the show - it’s been great, but because of it’s nature it CAN’T rest on it’s laurels. It’s not a sitcom where they can have the same thing w/ different silly plots every week. The writers did such a good job that they have to keep it up or the show’ll become a weak copy of itself. Look at the first and most recent seasons of “the Sopranos” for example.

Also, I think Franco nailing lots of new girlies would give us BOTH something to appreciate.

14

I can see the Starved / Rescue Me crossover episodes now!