Rescue Me Review: Sanctuary

Somewhere I read some negative comment by some ninny with too much time on his hands saying that Rescue Me was really only a series of scenes and moments in the characters’ lives. What am I missing here? Isn’t that fundamentally what all shows are? What all narratives period are? It’s called storytelling—the act of telling a story. In telling a story, you are shaping a character’s life, condensing it, managing it, showing only the parts that support the story you are trying to tell. No story in human history has ever captured every single millisecond, every single fragment of life of a character from birth to death.

And since when have we wanted that? Movies and television are supposed to exist as versions of life, versions with all of the boring and unnecessary parts taken out. And given that particular criteria, Rescue Me still gets the job done with an energy that no other show on TV does. Last night’s episode was indeed a wonderful collection of scenes and moments, scenes that were at once entertaining, revelatory and creatively cross-pollinating.

At the opening, the crew is called to a car accident involving a young drunk girl who survived unscathed and a passenger who wasn’t so lucky. Tommy tries to save her but her neck is broken. This hits Tommy hard, as losing victims always does. And to make matters worse, the victim and the whole situation reminds him big time of his daughter Colleen—the daughter he spent all of the last episode frantically trying to find after both of them blacked out after one epic night of boozing.

When Tommy gets back to the station, he finds himself paralyzed, unable to move even when another call sounds. Needles does his best to motivate Tommy, but Tommy is done. He starts talking about quitting the firefighting game and decides to go visit Peter Gallagher’s unorthodox priest. The conversation that results is a highlight of the episode, but by far the best conversation comes courtesy of Mike and Sean, who are on a roll this season, having previously provided the greatest conversation about George Clooney, Matt Damon and Ben Affleck ever. This one occurs when they are out at the ballet (yes, the ballet) with the cancer-stricken firefighter they took under their wing while they were smuggling Lou out of the hospital.  This is all about kids they would like to punch in the face, and the important list includes both Haley Joel Osment and Jonathan Lipnicki, who, courtesy of Sean, will now forever be referred to as “that little shit from Jerry Maguire.” Kudos boys, kudos.

Another big moment: Black Shawn surprisingly coming to Tommy’s defense (even though Tommy isn’t around to see it) when Franco calls him a coward. They start to fight and while others try to break it up, Lou encourages them to get it out of their systems. Black Shawn then proceeds to give Franco the beatdown he has been in sore need of this entire season. Seriously, I’m pretty close to hating Franco now.

The main crux of the episode though involves Tommy’s continuing battle to save Colleen from drinking all the booze in the continental U.S. This battle includes both the most memorable AA meeting ever and a raging baptism by booze.

Season 6, Episode 6: Sanctuary (originally aired August 3, 2010)

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Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDb Pro.