Rescue Me, Please!!

I'm catching up on "Rescue Me," a show which was great and now has officially jumped the shark. Sorry for the cliche, but it fits.

The final insult was two episodes ago when Tommy takes his new baby--actually his dead brother's new baby--and appears poised to do something horrible like drop it in the river or leave it in a park. But we know the show's creators are not going to go there. They are not going to turn the protagonist into a murderer and since we know that, the tease is crap. They even seemed to know it, giving the plot to the television guides and showing in ads for the following episode that Tommy gave the baby to his former lover/dead cousin's wife. So much for building suspense.

But nonetheless I tuned in the following week (actually, I taped but anyway), and the episode opened with absurdly long dream/blackout sequence in which Tommy yet again trashes his apartment. This time all his ghost buddies, tired of dealing with his garbage, burn themselves up to escape his self-loathing narcism. If only the ghosts could make their way to my place on Wednesday nights at 10 p.m.

"Rescue Me" does little things very well. The locker room humor is on the money. The loyalty between the crew works. But for all the little things the show does right, it gets every big thing wrong. Tommy's relationships, Lou with the ex-nun, Mike's gay not gay thing, Sean and Maggie, the deaf sister who shows up out of nowhere, etc. etc. And what happened to Tommy's dad this season?

I will keep watching for now because I like Denis Leary. However, his acting is moving away from bold and daring to over-the-top and hammy.

I finished this post while still watching the episode only to see that they actually sneaked a Gina Gershon cameo into the show, again borrowing from "The Job." Since that show was also Leary and Peter Tolan I guess they can rip themselves off as much as they want but they're not doing a very good job of it and it's too bad.