Rescue Me

anybody watch this show? i love Denis Leary, and the first episode had me laffing my stupid head off one minute and damn near crying my eyes out the next.

one question-anybody know who does the theme song? its been stuck in my head for the last 2 days.

I didn't even realise Leary had a new show. What's it about, when's it on, etc?

It started a couple of weeks ago. It follows one squad of firefighters through their day to day life with work and personal time. I think it's supposed to be set a little after 9/11 and show how they are copeing with life after the fact. Its on FX, new episodes air weekly every Wednesday at 10PM.

The theme song is "C'mon, C'mon" by Von Bondies (got that off TV Tome), as opposed to its surrogate theme song "Under Pressure" by Queen and David Bowie.

I mostly like it, but I think they're laying it on a bit thick with all of Leary's character's problems. They should have played some episodes straight before getting into his delusions. My dad was FDNY, so I'd say most of the firemen are, unfortunately, spot-on. But the real business of firefighting and the stories on the job are much more bizarre and interesting than the divorce/alcoholism/survivor's guilt stories seen so far on the show.

Much thanks B5O.

btw, luv your sig. probably my second favorite AoD line after "Lady, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave the store."

Much thanks B5O.

btw, luv your sig. probably my second favorite AoD line after "Lady, I'm gonna have to ask you to leave the store."

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With so many it's hard to choose:

"Alright you primitive screwheads, LISTEN UP!"
"This is my BOOMSTICK!"
"Well, HELLO MISTER FANCYPANTS!"
"The only things you're leading are Jack and shit... and Jack just left town."
"Come get some"
"Give me some sugar, baby."
"Baby, you got real ugly."
"Good. Bad. I'm the one with the gun."

But the real business of firefighting and the stories on the job are much more bizarre and interesting than the divorce/alcoholism/survivor's guilt stories seen so far on the show.

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And Leary, who knows the world of firefighters very well*, will undoubtedly get to them. The really bizarre stuff will be sprinkled throughout the show - but just because it is bizarre, it can't be the main thrust of the show. You can't do a steady diet of that stuff. Family problems, raising kids, work headaches are all universal problems that everybody can relate to, so they are properly the focus of the show.


I'm really enjoying the show. I'm hoping it is successful enough to get another Leary series, The Job about the NYPD, released on DVD. The show (which I've never seen) is reportedly a similar combination of black comedy and drama - informed by the other part of the Leary family, which is law enforcement. If you're Irish American and living in New York or Boston chances are you have relatives in the police department, the fire department or both - either in the cities themselves or in the nearby towns. Not for nothing was the NYPD once known as "Irish Welfare". Family tradition has led generations of families to continue in these professions. I know a cop from my old neighborhood in the Bronx who is the latest in a line of cops, unbroken from father to son through several lines of brothers, uncles and cousins going back to the founding great-grandfather over a hundred years ago.

(* For those who don't know, Leary really did have a cousin/best friend who was a firefighter and who died - along with one of their childhood friends - in a building collapse in the Boston area five or six years ago. In the aftermath of that tragedy Leary founded the Leary Firefighters Foundation which helps the families of firefighters killed in the line of duty and which also provides equipment and training resources to fire departments across the country. Through the foundation Leary has become friendly with a lot of firefighters in New York, especially the ones in the houses closest to where he lives in lower Manhattan, and therefore was personally acquainted with some of the over 300 NYFD personnel who died on September 11th. So he knows whereof he speaks.)

Regards,

Joe

The really bizarre stuff will be sprinkled throughout the show - but just because it is bizarre, it can't be the main thrust of the show. You can't do a steady diet of that stuff. Family problems, raising kids, work headaches are all universal problems that everybody can relate to, so they are properly the focus of the show.

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I'm sure they will, Joe. I'm just saying that we're three episodes in and there's just too much goofy situation stuff in the plot. Leary's seeing dead people everywhere, bribing his children for info, hiring a hacker to attack the business of his wife's new boyfriend. Then there's the gay angle and the lesbian angle. There wasn't a lot in the last episode or two that I would call genuine or specific to firefighters. Half the stuff could've been recycled from The Job. I think the show is losing that delicate balance where you can take it seriously. Again, a lot of the humor is situational. I just think they're trying too hard. Real firemen's humor is more in spite of situations. It can be dark, but funny too. I would rather see men dealing with the job than slogging through the same old contrived dramatic storylines.

True Story: It's a Sunday morning and EMS comes across two bikers who got themselves wrapped around a tree. The deceased bikers are real hardcore; leather, tattoos, swastikas - the works. One guy says to the other, "Maybe they were on their way to Church."

I was looking for information about the show and read that Conan O'Brien is Denis Leary's cousin!

Ack! Something's fishy in Beantown!

but just because it is bizarre, it can't be the main thrust of the show. You can't do a steady diet of that stuff.

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That's the reason I stopped watching "The Practice" a couple of years ago...

Let me clarify my statement. The reason ER was such a consistent hit over the years was that it combined drama with very dynamic and powerful sequences in the emergency room. For every story of divorce, substance abuse, yada-yada, you had the blood and guts, fence post through the chest, spurting artery action that you expect to see in an ER. This gives the audience a glimpse into the hellish world of emergency medicine. Similarly, COPS has been on forever, using a winning formula of showing the insane world of law enforcement as it happens. Contrastingly, I've only seen one fire call on "Rescue Me", and that was in the first episode. So rather than showing the viewer what firefighters do for a living, we're getting fed a lot of generic dysfunctional American drama. The more I've thought about it, though, there is a good reason why this might be so. It is a lot cheaper, logistically simpler, and safer to film riveting scenes in the ER (or for that matter, any crime show) than to stage a practical fire on set. The inherent difficulties (and FXs budget allowance) may be why they are choosing to make a series about FDNY, one of the busiest departments in the world, without much actual fire. Still, they might have considered that ahead of time.

From what I understood the idea behind this series was more involved in how the firefighters were dealing with the events of 9/11, which as far as I've seen so far is doing that. If it was a show about them fighting fires every episode, it would get boring real quick.

I've already tuned out.