Low D wrote:philipchevron wrote:Rescue Me (FX, July 2004 - September 2011)
It's been like a family member. Its capacity for spinning on a dime has been, by turns, infuriating and exhilarating. It almost never went down the obvious emotional route. Scratch that. It never took the obvious route. In terms of television vocabulary, in its own way, it tore up the rule book as much as The Wire did. The writing is often breathtaking, ranging from the screamingly funny to the gut-wrenchingly heartbreaking. It is the best work television has ever done on the subject of alcoholism. It took as long to get to like Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) as it took Tommy Gavin to like Tommy Gavin, though we both got there in the end. Most important of all, perhaps, Rescue Me is the best possible memorial to the 343 firefighters who died at the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001 could ever have and Leary has done them proud by refusing ever to succumb to self-indulgent sentimentality or scoundrel-patriotism.
It made me laugh like a drain and, as "Dirty Old Town" played under the final credits of the very last show, the cameras fixed on the building site where the Towers used to be, it made me bawl my eyes out.
It had never occurred to me that a show - created by & starring Denis Leary - about the post-9/11 lives of NYC firefighters could be anything but terrible. But based on this review, we've just finished season 1, and are gobsmacked (as is my neighbour, who i'd mentioned this to - he was knocking on the door 48 hrs later looking for season 2).
Not sure if everyone knows the backstory of Denis' involvement with the firefighters. In 1999, in his hometown of Worcester, MA (pronounced Woostah if you have a Boston accent) there was a warehouse fire that claimed the lives of 6 firemen, including one of Leary's best friends and also his cousin. Leary began his Firefighter Foundation shortly thereafter. Since Leary was based in NY (doing the Job I believe) it was only natural that the Foundation expanded to include the 9/11 fireman,
in fact many of the NY firefighters were welcomed at the annual fundraising event (my wife has been a longtime volunteer) for the Worcester Six and Leary naturally expanded his efforts to include NYC (and later New Orleans after Katrina).
