Rescue Me: Clean

All throughout the opening scene of this week’s episode, I kept thinking over and over and over again, “I’m so grateful I’m not Tommy Gavin.” He’s boatloads of fun to watch, but if I were actually him I think I’d probably go skydiving without a parachute.

Now what is the horror in this opening scene I’m alluding to? At first glance it might not seem horrible. It might actually seem nice. Sheila is cooking Tommy breakfast and making pleasant conversation. But wait: she starts raving about how much she likes bacon, how she would eat bacon 24/7 but “I wouldn’t want my ass going all Kim Kardashian on me.” I don’t know who that is, though I hear the name way too often. But then the worm turns: Sheila asks Tommy the dreaded question: do you think I’m fat?

The color drains out of Tommy’s face, as it does out of every guy who gets asked that question, because there is no right answer, there is no safe way out. That question isn’t really a question, it’s a harbinger of doom. Tommy gives it his best shot and tells Sheila that no, of course she isn’t fat. She could eat all the bacon and all the Canadian bacon she wants and never get fat. And he’s sincere. But Sheila doesn’t buy it, and then she interrogates him over why he mentioned Canadian bacon. Apparently Tommy checked out a…shall we say…voluptuous woman at a party a long time ago, and she happened to be from Canada.

It gets worse: Sheila asks Tommy whether he wants both red and green peppers in his omelet or just one or the other. He says he doesn’t care, it’s all good. And Sheila starts sobbing. Does this sound like especially ridiculous behavior? That’s because it is, but, disturbingly, that doesn’t mean it’s not realistic. Because I’ve been in situations just like this, where something completely harmless can explode into a completely irrelevant, unrelated tangent with dire consequences.

Sheila gets up suddenly to leave while Tommy sits shell-shocked. Then, to make matters worse, Jimmy appears and chastises Tommy for still not telling Sheila that he can no longer watch Damian constantly because Needles has ordered Tommy to stay away and for Lou to take charge. But Sheila comes back with a big pill organizer and sheepishly explains that she forgot to take her many many meds this morning. She takes them all and becomes much more stable, but Tommy is frightened to tell her about Damian, and I sure as hell don’t blame him. And that’s just the start of a bad morning.

Right then, Tommy gets a call from Needles. It’s not a social call. He’s telling Tommy to turn on the tv and look at the paper, then get his ass into work. Tommy turns on the tv and sees…himself. Remember last week when a television crew captured Tommy shaking up a sleazeball politician? Yeah, this is the fallout.

Tommy meets Needles in his office and tries to explain. He says that he wasn’t drunk, and that the drink in his hand was his first of the night and he hadn’t even had a sip when he went after the politician. He says he didn’t go down there looking for trouble and Needles says that Tommy never does…it just seems to always erupt in his vicinity. Needles starts pulling the “I-have-to-be-responsible-and-deal-with-all-of-this” martyrdom bit, and Tommy replies that he fights fires and Needles pushes papers (i.e. shut the hell up).

“What happened, Tommy? We used to be friends” Needles says. Tommy nods, “Yep. Used to be.” Needles takes a cheap shot and asks Tommy if Tommy is going to drive him to shoot himself. This is a reference to the previous chief, the much beloved Jerry Reilly, shooting himself. But that had nothing to do with Tommy, it had to do with the fact that Jerry’s wife had Alzheimer’s and didn’t know who he was, and that the suits of the FDNY were forcing him to retire because he had had a heart attack.

Tommy’s response to this: he takes the direct approach. He leaps over the desk and starts clawing at Needles. Needles shouts that he’d love to go fight fires with Tommy, but he has a responsibility to deal with all the men and their families. Tommy stops, they help each other up, they dust themselves off. They certainly didn’t kiss and make up, but I think both secretly acknowledge that they understand each other and deep down there still is a smidgen of respect and camaraderie left between them.

But of course, Needles is obligated to sanction Tommy for the altercation with the politician. Needles asks Tommy if he could quit drinking for a few days. Tommy says yes. The deal is Tommy quits drinking for a few days or he inherits all of Damian’s crappy probie duties. Then Needles elaborates that by a few days, he means Tommy has to quit drinking for a month. Cut to: Tommy washing the rig. Some things you just can’t give up.

We’re not done with Needles though. Damian walks into the house and announces that he just saw a knockout young blonde outside. Then said knockout young blonde walks in. But this isn’t just anyone…this is Needles wife. His new wife, that is. It seems Needles went through a nasty divorce and ordered himself up his very own Russian mail order bride. Maybe this is what Feinberg meant when he said he had something on Needles.

Damian also mentions that he witnessed quite definitively that Mrs. Needles is not wearing any underwear. But something as juicy as that needs verification, of course. So a bet is announced: whoever verifies this information first is the winner. The stakes are…nothing more than to see that Mrs. Needles isn’t wearing any underwear, and for the guys, that is more than enough. What follows is the Rescue Me staple of a series of hilariously juvenile hijinks, as the guys all vie to win the bet.

The other big event this week is that Mickey enlists Teddy, Maggie, Derek, and Co. to stage an intervention for Tommy. They all try to convince Tommy that they love him and want him to get off the booze. But let’s just say their intervention completely backfires and Tommy succeeds in corrupting them all. It’s a great scene. My only real complaint this episode is that we don’t see Candy or see Lou mulling over her proposal. She proposed two episodes ago, and there has been no mention of it since. Come on people, this is huge! That’s the only downside of having a super-sized season, the drawn-out factor.

For another take on this episode, check out Enough Already by Jaimie Campos.

Season 5, Episode 16: Clean (originally aired July 21, 2009)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photographs courtesy of FX and IMDbPro