Adam’s Crawl Space: Rescue Me

Deciding to watch Rescue Me was born out of curiosity and boredom. You know how it is these days. Most of us have access to Netflix and it’s glorious instant streaming service, and when you combine that with having a little too much time on your hands and a constant drive to seek out entertainment, well shit happens. What began as a simple curiosity quickly ballooned into an experiment in just how much blatantly exploitative television I could personally handle without crying uncle. I finished the first season. That wasn’t hard at all. Despite the fact that I hate the show, and intensely dislike nearly every character and their stupid decisions, it was like junk food. I know it’s terrible for me, but I can’t stop shoving the Doritos in my fat hole. Because of this, I decided that I would also watch the other 4 seasons available on Netflix (the sixth premieres in June) and make it the subject of a future Crawl Space. I felt I owed it to myself and to you all to explain just why I can’t stop watching this garbage even though I hate almost everything about it.

Allow me to fill you in quickly on just what exactly the series is about. Denis Leary (more on this asshole in a bit) is Tommy Gavin, a New York City balls-of-steel firefighter who is still reeling from the fallout of 9/11. The idea that Leary is some heroic firefighter is offensive enough, but making him a hero on 9/11 is just preposterous. His cousin and best friend Jimmy Keefe (James McCaffrey) was one of the many firefighters who perished in one of the towers, and the dude hangs around as a hallucination/ghost routinely shooting the shit with Tommy. Tommy is also separated from his wife Janet (Andrea Roth) and lives across the street from her and their three kids, Connor, Katie and Colleen. Tommy’s firehouse, home of ‘62 Truck’, is a den of iniquity. The firehouse is full of colorful secondary characters. The only real likeable one out of these guys is probably Lieutenant Ken Shea (John Scurti) who is easily the smartest of this retarded bunch of cartoons. He’s the resident philosopher in a way, and his portly appearance make him appear harmless when he’s actually one of the biggest ball-busters in the firehouse. Then there’s Franco Rivera, the completely repulsive and abrasive ladies man of the crew. Daniel Sunjata who plays Rivera makes playing him seem a little too easy at times, almost as if he’s a pussyhound piece of shit jerk in real life as well. The rest of the crew is rounded out by Sean Garrity (Steven Pasquale) and Mike ‘the probie’ Silletti (Mike Lombardi). These two are the dumbest guys in the house. That easy kind of dumb too, it’s not even remotely funny when they constantly point out how idiotic these guys are. Then there’s Chief Jerry Reilly (Jack McGee) who plays the hardnosed boss who is also a complete douchebag homophobic mess of a man.

The show centers around Tommy for the most part, and his chronic issue with alcoholism, family issues and trouble letting go of 9/11, but it does tackle the other firefighter’s stories to keep things from getting completely stale. I’m going to focus mainly on Tommy/Denis Leary for the remainder of the review, because I just don’t have the time or space to hit on all the other retarded caricatures on the show. Just know that every single character, with the exception of Ken Shea, is a fucking jerk and deserves everything bad they have coming to them. The reasons I kept watching this show were the same reasons I flat-out hate the shit out of it. Being an FX show, I knew I was going to get an unhealthy dose of the word ‘shit’ since nearly every show on this station feels the need to use it just because they can. What I didn’t expect was that they’d use every other word other than ‘fuck’ to also drive home the fact that HEY THEY’RE ON CABLE, CHECK OUT WHAT THEY CAN DO. It’s exhausting and will likely turn you completely off unless you’re a filthy son of a bitch such as myself. There’s also a crazy amount of sex on this show. I mean, like every 5 seconds people are fucking. And everybody is fucking everybody! The sex is not just your typical under the covers style network TV shit- this is full on nasty sex, people. They pretty much get away with everything but showing nipples on breasts, which is sort of ludicrous when you see the amount of things they do show. Oral sex (on both men and women), as well as other extremely graphic depictions of every sexual position imaginable are here. This wouldn’t be so bad if 99% of it didn’t include that scrawny asswipe that is Denis Leary.

About Denis Leary…I really, really hate this man. If you’re a Bill Hicks fan such as myself, then you probably have a special hatred for the guy too, since it’s widely known that he ripped off rather large pieces of Bill’s act. He’s the consummate hack comedian. His bullshit cigarette sucking, angry ranting? All derived from Hicks. The only thing he couldn’t rip off of Bill Hicks was the endearing quality Bill had. Leary can rant all day but he can’t conjure up even the tiniest amount of heart and conviction that Bill displayed so effortlessly. He’s a one-trick pony by its very definition. It’s weird though, despite my fiery hatred for him, I just can’t stop watching him on this ugly, hateful and borderline racist show. The show is complete crack and I’ve put way too much of this shit into my body and now I feel a little sick. Leary can go die in a fire. See what I did there?

So where does the show go? Tommy Gavin has sex with everyone, his wife is a bitch on wheels, his kids are one dimensional little pricks and the entire firehouse is full of uninformed turds who are intent on also fucking everyone. In the middle of all of that, tons of characters die and in the most clichéd way possible. Every time a season started running out of steam, the writers clearly had a meeting and decided to axe a main character. That’s nothing new on television really, but when you see how predictable it is on Rescue Me, you will no doubt be laughing out loud rather than sobbing like a little girl. The show is also a revolving door of guest stars. Susan Sarandon and Michael J. Fox are among the lot, slumming it. Disgraceful

I will never understand how this show every won an Emmy for anything. It‚Äôs just a bunch of shitty Denis Leary rants strung together and skinned with a fireman theme. The show‚Äôs crude, filthy and as stated before, borderline racist subject matter operates under the guise of ‚Äòthis is how a firehouse is.’ Much like fellow shitty comedians such as Larry the Cable Guy and Alex Reymundo, it‚Äôs all about trying to tell us that this is how people really talk and act. Everyone fucks everybody else and they all have severe potty mouth. This bullshit premise only exists as a property that Leary can shoehorn his tired, and completely narrow social commentary into and a way for FX to gain the 18-35 retarded drunken male audience. There is nothing redeeming here, and no matter what Leary wants you to believe, there are no life lessons to be learned. Just a bunch of assholes clowning around and glorifying the uneducated.

So, again, why the hell did I watch this? I’ve already stated it several times: I’m a pig. It’s that simple. It’s a way to pass the time, and although I know that it’s bad, I justify it to myself by being vocal about how unremarkable and scummy it really is. I am ashamed of watching it. The only thing I’ve learned from this show is that Denis Leary should never be shown with his shirt or his pants off. I feel like less of a man for gobbling up 5 seasons worth of this shit in a little under 2 months. Where is my dignity? Up in smoke.

Ok that was terrible.

Recent posts by Adam

• Memo to Warner Bros: WE ALL GET IT - April 30th, 2012
• Adam's Crawl Space: Bucky Larson: Born To Be A Star - January 11th, 2012
• Review: Fruit Ninja Kinect Demo - August 18th, 2011
• Your Highness - April 11th, 2011
• Zack Snyder fired from Superman, Replaced with Tim Story - April 1st, 2011

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