Rescue Me – Tommy Gavin’s got a big, fat mess of a family

Going by the season premiere of Rescue Me, Tommy Gavin’s last season as the anti-hero New York City firefighter is going to be emotionally tumultuous.

There wasn’t even a fire or an emergency in the season premiere. There was no need for one. All the action came in the form of the relationships and family melodrama swirling around Tommy from his wife’s surprise pregnancy and the Gavin family’s longstanding battle with alcoholism, to the challenge of Damian being confined to a wheelchair, severely brain damaged.

The most chilling scene from the premiere came when Tommy was gazing at his daughter who was lying passed out on the floor of the shadowy office of the Gavin family bar — if ever there was a family that shouldn’t own a bar, the Gavins would be it — after Tommy had been promised by his gun-happy Uncle Teddy (who previously SHOT Tommy) and his cousin Mickey, both alcoholics in recovery, that they’d look out for her. This is  how Gavins take care of one another? I guess the answer is, “Yes,” considering that the Gavins are the most dysfunctional family on television.

Assessing the empty shot glasses and the bottle of vodka that Colleen left behind, Tommy poured himself a shot and threw it back. At this point, I was shouting my disgust at the TV. After the on-again, off-again sobriety wagon business we’ve watched Tommy experience all these seasons, I really don’t want to see Tommy become Drunk Tommy again. Last season’s Rock Bottom Drunk Tommy — I’m thinking about that episode where he “lost” Colleen and woke up not remembering what happened and had a green ring around his mouth — was dark enough. I don’t want to venture down that road again.

And, as is haunted, guilt-ridden Tommy’s wont, he envisioned the ghosts of his family’s male alcoholics cheering him on, encouraging him to take a drink because he deserved it what with an irreparably damaged firefighter nephew (whom he was supposed to protect and take under his wing), an alcoholic daughter, a dead son killed by a drunk driver, a dead cousin killed on 9/11, a dead brother (who had an affair with Janet) and a new baby on the way when he and his wife are in their mid-40s.

I exhaled with relief when Tommy, after allowing the vodka to reside in his mouth for some time, spit it out.  I was also perversely happy to see him grab Teddy’s shotgun (remember, Teddy shot Tommy in that bar and left him to bleed out) and fire several shots into the walls, exacting revenge for the fact that Teddy had boldly supplanted him as Colleen’s sponsor and persuaded Tommy to let her work at the bar because it’d be the best way to keep her off the booze. Huh? Guess that only makes sense in the world of Gavin.

The ultra-seriousness of alcoholism and Damian’s condition — along with Sheila’s denial about her son’s situation — was leavened by Rescue Me’s weird, off-beat sense of humor demonstrated by the creepy alliance between Janet and Sheila (seeing them giggle together was like watching Harry Potter and Voldemort chat over a spot of tea), the argument over whether Jersey Shore is “racist” and Janet’s wild driving while Tommy was atop the hood of her car. I could’ve used some more firehouse scenes though.

Based on the previews, particularly the storyline involved the documentary that folks want to make about 9/11 in honor of its 10th anniversary, I have big hopes for this last season of one of TV’s grittiest dramas where Tommy has proudly declared that there is no longer any such thing as “normal.”

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Jul 14, 2011 @ 10:54 EST5EDT