Rescue Me - The Complete First Season (2005)

"THIS FIRE DEPARTMENT IS ON FIRE"!!!!!!!

Once again "Denis Leary" is doing the damn thing.
The writing of the script is excellent along with the
acting, and the characters. KEEP IT COMING BABY!!!!!!
I can't wait to order the second season. August 10, 2008

Rescue me -Prepare to be haunted

I just started the 4th season, and I cant get enough of this show. Denis Leary as tommy Gavin is one of the funniest, and darkest characters I have ever seen. He is truely a human being with a blackened soul, but still surprises you constantly. the humor is outrageous and very funny. The show, and esp its music is truely haunting. The end of the finale when tommy comes back to a empty home, is one of the most heartbreaking scenes i have ever seen. The scene moved me to tears watching it, the music drowning out his actions. Very profound, I felt so bad for him, and had no idea how or where the show could go from there. Thats why its my favorite finale from any tv show besides LOST and smallvilles finales. The characters a re very vivd as well.

It always makes me think that if he were to die, would tommy go to Heaven or Hell?

Its a great show to drown yourself in. But be warned, once you let it into your head, theres no shaking it loose. August 2, 2008

Rescue Me is Red Hot.

Rescue Me is one of two good reasons to own a television these days. (Mad Men is the other.) Set in post-9/11 New York City, Season One of Rescue Me involves a crew of NYC firefighters working, smoking, drinking, and socializing together. The show centers on Denis Leary, who plays the role of a self-destructive firefighter named Tommy Gavin. He is a mercurial, chain-smoking anti-hero, who struggles with alcoholism and dysfunctional relationships. Although Tommy and his wife Janet (Andrea Roth) are separated, he lives across the street clinging to the hope that he can salvage his marriage, despite the fact that his estranged wife is already dating a new, white-collar guy. Despite his many flaws, Tommy is a good father who loves his three children. He lost his cousin, Jimmy Keefe, in the September 11th attacks, and is now secretly seeing Jimmy's widow, Sheila. Tommy is frequently haunted by the many victims of 9/11 he failed to save.

Rescue Me's supporting characters are equally well-drawn. For instance, Chief Jerry Reilly (Jack McGee) is the homophobic father of a gay firefighter. Firefighter Sean Garrity decides to secretly date one of his coworker's former lovers. That coworker, Franco Rivera (Daniel Sunjata), discovers he has a 5-year-old daughter with a psycho ex-girlfriend. Lt. Kenneth Shea (John Scurti) copes with his post-9/11 trauma by writing poetry. Mike Siletti (Mike Lombardi) falls for a "fat chick" named Theresa (Ashlie Atkinson). Firefighter Laura Miles is always at odds with her male coworkers, and with Tommy in particular.

It's easy to understand why this show was nominated for an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series, and an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series during its first season. The show confronts dysfunctional relationships, depression, alcoholism, homophobia, and the aftermath of the September 11, 2001 attacks with honesty. Rescue Me is a must-see show.

G. Merritt June 19, 2008

Uneven

Although this is for the first season, I've seen everything available on DVD, and my over-all impression is that the first season is the best.

I'll admit I had high hopes for this series. Let's face it, firefighters are modern-day heroes (most of them, at least), risking their lives running into buildings that everyone else is running from. I wanted action, thrills, drama and some backstory.

What you get with 'Resue Me' is almost all backstory. The one thing a bit different about Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) is that he is haunted by some of the dead he encounters as part of this dangerous job. (This can lead to some problems with his fellow firefighters who rightly think he might be cracking up, and putting them in danger.)

But it's the backstory that takes up most episodes. He has an ex-wife he (sorta) wants back (at least, he doesn't want anyone else to have her), he is an alcoholic (not that you'd really see him drunk much), he is sort of in love with the widow of a firefighter killed on September 11, and he has problems with his kids.

To be honest, I got tired of the personal lives of the firefighters. If they are not measuring things, they are falling into bed with all sorts of abnormal people, posing for calendars, playing jokes on one another, or watching Tommy get violently angry.

I would like the series better if there were more action (what action there is, is truncated, like the loss of Billy in season two (I think)). He loses his life while everyone stands around. You would think they'd spring into action to try to save him, but, no, they don't.

Overall, it's slightly better than most of the drivel on television these days, but most of the characters are wooden and one-dimensional, Tommy is always dysfunctional and not really sympathetic, his ex-wife dumps a guy who makes two million dollars a year (and really, what would a very rich guy want with a woman with three misbehaving kids anyway???), and the lives of firefighters seem to revolve around sex, more sex, a burning building, more sex, then more sex. June 14, 2008

He loved it...

I'm not a huge fan of the show but I bought this as a birthday present for my boyfriend and he loved it. May 1, 2008

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