Reruns on Cable
Cancelled
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Rescue Me
Hell, 08/22/06
Top Ten - #6
Someone Else's Review
Gut (7/21) and Gay (7/28)
Review in the New Yorker
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Rescue Me: Hell, 08/22/06
Tuesday 08.22.2006
alice ttlg || 09:52 PM
This show is so over the top most of the time in the wacky, zany things that happen and that Tommy and the rest of the cast do. But the reason I watch is for those little moments in between, those bits of ordinariness grounded in reality, those make all the wildness and craziness meaningful. Tommy careens from one event to the next, making rash, impossible choices that often end badly but there's this streak of life happening while you're making other plans through it all that brings it home. Only Denis Leary could make it all work so incredibly well and he keeps doing it each week, each season.
It's really just amazing stuff...
Tommy and Lou walking back and forth in Tommy's burned out kitchen, getting food and drink and the answering machine in the background playing messages, most from before news of Johnny's death and then there's Johnny's voice on the phone...the answering machine has become this modern day voice of the dead, highlighted by all those 9/11 calls home from the towers and the plane, I'm sure it happened before that, times when someone called home or somewhere and left a message which wasn't played until the person died but it's almost ubiquitous now and still chilling, still heart-stopping to hear.
There are times when an actor or a director comes together with the show or movie that brings out more than the very best they are. Schindler's List is the top example of that, I think, other movies like the first three Star Wars (for George Lucas), Thelma & Louise (for Susan Sarandon & Geena Davis), on TV, it's shows like Rescue Me, The Shield (for Michael Chiklis), 24 (for Keifer Sutherland), Hill Street Blues (for Daniel Travanti and Veronica Hamel but many others too), Miami Vice (for Don Johnson), China Beach (for Dana Delany), shows and movies that make us think or take us out of thinking, give us more than just daily entertainment that sells commercials and that take the actors or directors beyond the best that they can do, to something magical.
Rescue Me: Top Ten - #6
Thursday 11.11.2004
MattM || 11:25 AM
Anyone watching this show might want to take a few prozacs before hand because believe me if you weren't depressed before watching it you will be after it. This show redefines the word black. Oddly enough as I type I have the Rolling Stones Paint it Black playing. A rather appro song for this show. Still despite the fact that it is very depressing and disturbing it is done so well and acted to so perfectly by Denis Leary that you can't help but watch. FX continues to churn out great show after great show, er well ok, Lucky wasn't great but we all have our mistakes. Still this a show that would be a runaway for best new show of the year if it weren't for number #3.
Rescue Me: Someone Else's Review
Friday 08.06.2004
alice ttlg || 01:11 PM
From TV Underground: Rescue Me continues FX's streak compares Rescue Me to Homicide: Life on the Streets. I happened to miss that show when it originally aired but I've seen enough in reruns to agree with him, it is like Homicide in its realistic depiction of the job. And he made the same point I did about Fox and FX, that Fox (and ABC, NBC, CBS, UPN and WB) don't give shows time anymore. Hill Street never would have lasted today, Homicide probably wouldn't have either. I love cable, FX, HBO, Showtime for giving that time, most of the time they've got all the eps in the can when they start airing and they show ALL OF THEM. Then they decide about renewing for the next year. So I don't have to hold my breath or be depressed about liking a really good show, I know I'll get to see at least one season, even if that's a short season of 12-13 eps. USA (Monk, Touching Evil) and even Lifetime (Division) are not only making shows I want to see, they're airing the shows.
Networks, are you listening???
Rescue Me: Gut (7/21) and Gay (7/28)
Thursday 08.05.2004
alice ttlg || 10:32 PM
The New Yorker said it best: unflinching, that's what it is. It's more real than The Shield and more real than most shows. The characters have warts like real people do and problems and divorces and kids and then there's all the other real stuff like fires and death and 9/11. It's a very serious show, there are funny moments but they're darkly funny and echo with realism.
Denis Leary has found his first best destiny in this role, he gets to wisecrack and be sarcastic and ironic but since he knows about real firemen and the very real losses, he doesn't go over the edge. His wife wants a divorce because he's "emotionally unavailable" and they fight about how he had to take three jobs so she could stay home with the kids like she wanted and he argues that she can't blame him for not being home as much. But then the argument takes a turn into the afterwards of 9/11, into the neighborhoods of firemen's families where now there's widows and fatherless kids and how she wants them to have a normal life. And it hits home - the rest of the country eventually moved on, sure we still think of it, but for most of us, it's something that happened over there, in that city. We don't get confronted every day with it, we don't have to grow up with it.
The show is heavy on 9/11, but never in your face, never melodramatic, never just tugging at heartstrings. It's about how when you were in the middle of it, you can't necessarily just get over it in a week, a month, a year. This is the Vietnam War for these guys but more so since they have to go on living in Vietnam after the war's over.
The New Yorker review made reference to The Shield but they're very different shows, I think. The Shield is over the top, purposely so. There are elements of truth in it, the politics of being cops, the day to day dealing with paying the bills on a salary that doesn't really quite make it, but the cop stuff, scamming dealers, stealing money trains, police captains getting sexually assaulted, these things over over the top and it makes for great TV.
But Rescue Me isn't about being great TV, it's something different, something rarer. It's closer to the first year or two of Hill Street Blues, when they worked to show the day-in, day-out grind and chaos. Rescue Me is quieter tho, the chaos is internalized. The men of the firehouse are ordinary people, they have middle class viewpoints, they think gay marriage is a joke (which they tell frequently) and they think women (and a few other minorities) can't be firemen because they're not tough enough. They're not Archie Bunkers, they're just ordinary people, warts and all, good, bad and indifferent.
Thank god this show is on FX and not FOX!!!!
Rescue Me: Review in the New Yorker
Monday 07.19.2004
alice ttlg || 01:28 PM
While scanning the New Yorker, I found this tidbit, a review of Rescue Me, debuting on Wednesday on FX - watch this show! I've been excited about it, Denis Leary can be a really good actor in the right parts and this looks tailor-made for him. The New Yorker points out the promising things about the show as well as some rather ironic touches (Miller sponsoring the show's commercial free premiere, which has Denis' character falling off the wagon by drinking a Miller Lite) and all in all, it looks very good.
FX has a good track record with doing hard-edged solidly good shows - The Shield remains involving and well-written after its second season, Nip-Tuck (which my brother loves but I can't watch, plastic surgery *shudder*) is another sharp notch in FX's belt and Rescue Me looks to the third winner.
Next January, FX will have Thief, starring Andre Braugher, focusing on 12 days leading up to a heist he's planning and the various people involved in it. Braugher's another good actor with the right role, he did excellent work in Homicide and this new show sounds good for him.
So when you're bored by the reality tripe, insipid comedies and endless ripped-from-the-headlines crime dramas on the big three-four-five networks, switch over to FX and watch the kind of quality shows that used to be on the big networks.
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