With My Teeth Locked Down I Can See the Blood

When a show has a bad season you have to wonder if it just an outlier or signs of what’s to come. The fourth season of Rescue Me just came completely off the rails with silly plots about baby stealing and Tommy being forced to date the chief’s daughter. But if there was one show that benefited from the writer’s strike more than any it would be Rescue Me which had a twenty month layoff between seasons. This apparently gave the writers enough time to get the train back on the track (for the most part) for the fifth season.

Part of the resurgence was song crafty casting that saw Alex P. Keaton turn into a hard drinking, wheel-chair bound tool that somehow landed Janet between the seasons. While an aloof Maura Tierney kept everyone, including the audience, guessing for the last couple episodes. And let us not forget the Garrity family who came to help Sean out during his cancer treatment, that caused the highlight of the season with Garrity musical numbers. By the end I was hoping that his big brother would stick in New York to keep tabs on Sean.

The big theme of the season was relapse. Shortly after getting his one year chip from Alcoholics Anonymous, Tommy found himself back at the sight of the former twin towers talking about his cousin who he hasn’t for that time, getting him back on the wagon. If only he knew this would be his downfall. And finding out his cousin had slept with his wife was the least of his worries from going back to the bottle.

Tommy’s reunion with the alcohol started a chain reaction that eventually contributed to the death of his Aunt. And despite Uncle Teddy only being married to her for a year or two, wanted to get away from her after he got out of prison, and let her get into a car drunk even though he was in prison for killing a drunk driving, he still blamed Tommy for getting almost the entire extended Gavin family back on the sauce. And so Teddy shot Tommy. Twice. In front of everyone at the bar. Leaving him to die a slow death as the season end leaving open what should be an interesting final season.

Rescue Me 5.x gets a on my Terror Alert Scale. Rescue Me came in at #11 on The 100 Greatest Television Shows of the ‘00s.