Rescue Me: Control

I suppose the title of this week’s episode is meant to be more than a little ironic. Tommy has started drinking again, and he’s in control about as much as a rabid monkey driving a tanker trunk backwards down a one-way street. Janet, Sheila, Lou and Mike already know about it. Tommy has to keep it under wraps before it becomes a problem. Toward that end, he takes a curious tactic: he openly tells all of the guys that he has started drinking again. He insists he is in control, and while the move was ballsy, it’s not necessarily stupid. Everyone probably would have found out anyway, so if he’s the one to tell them and make it seem like it’s not a big deal, maybe it won’t be. But then again, knowing Tommy, the whole thing will probably explode like the fire that begins the episode.

The boys are working a scene, and Mike and Tommy are forced to work together. Neither one of them is very excited about this because, as you’ll recall, last week they tried to beat the crap out of each other. Life has a perverse way of bringing people together unexpectedly at bad times. Or at least life on Rescue Me does. Either way, Mike and Tommy get trapped in the basement of the blazing apartment building they’re working when an 8000 lb. safe a resident has falls through the floor four stories down and blocks the door. And there is smoke. And fire. And Mike forgot to change their oxygen tanks on the last job so they have no air. I guess if you’re going to die, you might as well die with someone you love. Or not. Luckily, Lou and the guys come to the rescue just in time.

Of course, since Mike almost got the two of them killed thanks to  sheer stupidity, now Tommy has leverage on Mike to cancel out the leverage Mike got last week when he found out Tommy was drinking. Of course, like I said, Tommy chooses to demolish that leverage by telling all the guys about his drinking anyway. He tells them though that they can’t tell Colleen or Needles or Feinberg or his cousin/AA sponsor Mickey. How long do you think it will be before Mike and Black Shawn mess that up? You’re right, not long.

And it’s a giant week for Lou this week, because Candy comes back! That’s right, Candy, the prostitute who Lou fell in love with in season two. He loved her so much that he even gave her all of his life savings so she could pay off her pimp and get out of the sex racket. Except then he realized that she was scamming him out of his money, along with a whole line of other poor saps. My jaw dropped when I saw her return.

For years I had dreamed of Lou somehow tracking her down and knocking the bejesus out of her. Hey look, I know it’s a big taboo to hit women, but when you’re dealing with an evil, impossibly cruel succubus from hell, I think you ought to be able to make an exception. The same thing goes for Ellen DeGeneres. But regardless, Lou just manages to hold onto his control (there’s that title again!) when she shows up at the firehouse out of the clear blue looking for some kind of forgiveness. He doesn’t kill her, but he does refuse to see her. I don’t know if she’s going to play a continuing role throughout the season, but it sure was a shock to see her again.

Sean continues to secretly battle his kidney cancer, and his obnoxious family. We only see him at home in this episode, not at work, which I thought was a little weird. It’s not like he would have asked for time off, because he doesn’t want anyone to know about it in the first place. There’s no Janet this week (woo hoo!), or Feinberg. We get to see a little more of Sheila using sex as a weapon to protect Damian, Franco has his first match in the ring, and Teddy and Maggie continue to work their rounds at the VA hospitals. And no ghosts. That’s about it for now. The latter half of the episode doesn’t quite have the wallop of the first half, but then again, Rescue Me has more quality material in half an episode than many shows do in a whole season.

Season 5, Episode 10: Control (originally aired June 9, 2009)

For another take on this episode, check out Dirty Little Secrets by Jaimie Campos.

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photographs courtesy of FX and IMDbPro