Spoilers for the sixth episode of "Rescue Me" season five coming up just as soon as I abdicate my throne..."Sometimes, when I'm falling asleep at night, I have this weird thing: I think I'm him, and I'm inside the first tower, and it's coming down on top of me." -Tommy"Perspective" was the strongest episode of this season so far, and maybe one of my favorite "Rescue Me"s to date. Where the other episodes this season were a mix of scenes I really liked and scenes I grudgingly tolerated, virtually every moment here was a winner, including:
• Tommy and Lou tearing into each other about whether Lou has a shot with Genevieve, and how much Tommy's narcissism has raged out of control ("I'm a little overweight sad light, orbiting around the planet Tommy in the universe of Gavin!") was just a terrific dramatic showcase for Denis Leary and John Scurti, and then it was beautifully, hilariously followed with the two of them giving each other insulting titles (Turdmaster, King of All Douchebags) on the way to a fire call.
• While Black Shawn's relationship with Colleen has been one of the season's bigger misfires, I like Black Shawn as a member of the firehouse, and it was funny to watch him ruin the detente they'd achieved with the other fire company over Franco's 9/11 conspiracy theories.
• Needles' monologue about getting promoted due to 9/11, and trying and failing to instill discipline by being everyone's pal, featured some great work from Adam Ferrara, who to date has been mainly used as comic relief.
• Steven Pasquale continues to run with this storyline about Garrity trying to keep his cancer diagnosis a secret, and is even managing to balance the darker moments (Garrity chews out the other guys for bickering about Franco's conspiracy theories) with the lighter ones (Garrity pretends to masturbate so Franco won't suspect of him of stealing from the bar cash).
• Mike playing mentor to Damian was more evidence that the writers are trying to find a way to take every character seriously now.
• I like that this season has been more generous with giving big emotional scenes to other characters, like last week's Sheila monologue about wishing Tommy died instead of Jimmy, but Leary can still bring it when called, as he did in the scene at the diner overlooking Ground Zero. (I don't get to that part of Manhattan very often, so it's always unsettling to see that hole -- and to realize that there are so many businesses and residences in the area where it's become just another part of the scenery.)
Some people have been asking why Tommy is so unnerved to find out that Jimmy died in the second tower collapse rather than the first, and this scene sort of explains why: had Tommy known Jimmy was still out there, still trying to save people, maybe Tommy would have found a way to go into that second tower. But I think it's just as much a question of having finally made peace with the story of Jimmy's death, only to find out that the story was different. The new details almost don't even matter; whatever they are, they'd be enough to reopen all those wounds that seemed healed. And they've been reopened to the point where Tommy drank again (right after getting his one-year sobriety chip)...
...and we all know that he only sees the ghosts when he drinks. Is there a chance he's doing this because he wants to see Jimmy again, even if it's just an alcoholic delusion?
Episodes like this make me very glad I let myself be talked back into watching "Rescue Me" again. What did everybody else think?
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