Rescue Me Review: Cowboy

This week, Rescue Me is all about second chances. For Tommy and Janet, for Damian, and all the boys of 62 Truck. We open in the aftermath of last week’s finale, which found Tommy and Janet connecting again in spite of a disastrous date after seeing an old friend of Connor’s. Tommy tries and fails to make morning-after breakfast for Janet and in his impossibly inarticulate (and highly entertaining) way, tries to express that he wants to try to repair their relationship for the umpteenth time.

Janet reluctantly agrees, with the following two caveats: this is Tommy’s very last chance—and if he blows it it will be the cruelest thing he has ever done to her—and he has to say goodbye to Sheila for good. Janet tells him that when he turned to Sheila when he was wallowing in post-9/11 and post-Jimmy grief, that it was “emotional betrayal.” I’m not sure that’s fair, because she had already given up on their marriage before he ever got involved with Sheila. But then again, who am I to keep track?

Next up: Needles and Feinberg go to HQ to try to convince them to reopen the firehouse. This was without a doubt the highlight of the episode for me. Feinberg knows the old fart head honcho who shut them down, so he goes in there and in his pathetic, bloated way tries to butter him up and convince him to reopen the firehouse. He fails miserably, mostly because he didn’t really try in the first place because he’s an obsolete pushover who doesn’t care. This is where Needles steps up to the plate and hits it out of the freakin’ galaxy.

He takes it to this geezer, chops him down and blackmails him the livelong day. He points out the little incident last week where the crew responded without gear to the burning school for deaf kids and pulled all of them out of there just in time to see the other firefighters saunter up in their cars. “I don’t know if you heard Dickie, but my boys had a bunch of saves at a school for deaf kids the other day. They responded in their own vehicles with no tools, no bunker gear, and they got every kid out safely, just as your trucks were rolling up…better late than never huh? Maybe you should have that painted on all of your vehicles.” Jab! Geezer hits back: “None of those men were authorized to report to that call.” Needles: “And none of those kids were authorized to burn to death.” Uppercut!

For the knockout blow, Needles pulls out a little homemade DVD with all of the footage on it, promising to deliver copies to all the major newspapers and, “just in case what I hear is true about print media being dead, this whole footage is getting posted on YouTube. That’s the newfangled interweb you’ve heard so much about. When you go home, have one of your grandkids type in ‘FDNY Turns Deaf Ear To Disabled Children.’” Bam! I swear, if I could have leaped into the television screen right during that scene, I would have tackled Needles and given him a big platonic, strictly non-sexual kiss on the mouth and squeeze on the ass. He more than made up for any crap he did last season with that scene. I mean that stuff was Network quality. The writing and strength of performance on this show continues to astound me.

From there, the rest of the episode centers on Damian trying to score with his new ladylove, and Sean and Mike trying to make firefighter-turned-terminal-cancer-patient Pat feel appreciated by taking him to meet up with former victims he saved, with very mixed results. We also get Tommy trying to follow Janet’s ultimatum and say goodbye to Sheila with no drama. Guess how successful he is?

Season 6, Episode 8: Cowboy (originally aired August 17, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDb Pro.

The Expendables Review: Crushed Dreams and a Heavy Heart

The Expendables is not merely the blockbuster of the moment but also a conscious throwback to an outmoded genre, aesthetic and worldview, it must be contextualized before it can be analyzed. So, dear reader, I fear this article will be a sprawling one. I hope you’ll stay with me.

The Expendables is an attempt to round up a medley of the pioneering rock stars of the hardcore action genre and combine their many energies and talents into one zany, gritty orgy of justified violence and destruction. It is an attempt to revive the 1980s and early 1990s action aesthetics, thematics and life force and introduce them to the 21st century. In other words, the concept of The Expendables is my ultimate wet dream. And I know I’m not alone.

Most people talk with nostalgic fondness about ‘80s action movies, but they can’t really articulate what made them great. For me, I think it was this: those movies encouraged you to embrace and cheer for the heroes and yell for the villains to get their comeuppance. There were good guys and bad guys, right and wrong, black and white.

Now today, you look at something like the Bourne films (which have, inexplicably, become the pervasive benchmark for evaluating action movies now) and it is no longer PC to even have good guys and bad guys. It’s all about grays and murkiness and shifty political jabs and ambiguity.

Don’t get me wrong, I love all of that stuff a lot of the time, but it doesn’t make for joyful viewing. If you tried to cheer for something in Bourne it would be like “Come on Matty! Kick the snot out of that…corrupt CIA… assassin guy…wait is he good or bad, isn’t he just a patsy for…wait everyone in this movie is bad…wait, our whole government is bad, that sucks…but well they had good motives…but…well…never mind.” The Expendables is designed to be a wonderfully nostalgic anti-Bourne.

And what better auteur to mount this ambitious, potentially genre-saving film than the guy who defined it and shaped it like no other? I’m talking of course about Mr. Sylvester Stallone, one of the biggest movie stars of all time who is also no stranger to calling the shots behind the camera and on the written page.

Now that I’ve contextualized The Expendables and its fearless leader, let me contextualize myself and explain why I think I am supremely qualified to judge the movie.

I saw Rocky Balboa thirteen times in the theater—and I have the ticket stubs to prove it. It was one of the most significant movie-going experiences of my life. I saw John Rambo almost as many times and wrote my senior college thesis on the Rambo films. I’ve written academic papers on Cop Land and Demolition Man and have seen every Stallone movie in the theaters since 1996. My shelves are full of Rocky and Rambo figures. I have a vintage metal Rambo lunchbox with the original thermos that I polish weekly and I have Rambo bubble gum, seven Rocky t-shirts, a portion of one of the original 35mm reels for the original Rocky, and an autographed copy of Stallone’s fitness book.

I’ve gone on pilgrimages to Philadelphia and Bowie, Arizona—Rambo’s hometown. I own every single one of his films—including Stop or My Mom Will Shoot! and his direct-to-dvd releases D-Tox, Avenging Angelo, and Shade. I’ve even gotten into fistfights defending the man and his movies and almost named my dog after one of his characters. So when I tell you that I’m a Sylvester Stallone fanatic, I hope you’ll understand exactly what I mean.

For me, Sylvester Stallone, Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, Steve McQueen, Harrison Ford and Mel Gibson have always been the action movie cream of the crop. They’ve got the goods, they sell action, they’re believable, they’re real. They are exactly what an action hero is supposed to be, and there ain’t been a single star from later generations that can hold a candle to any of them. Not Shia LaBeouf, not Tobey Maguire, not Jake Gyllenhaal (for christ’s sake), not Matt Damon. They don’t got it, what can I say? Tom Cruise has had his moments (not lately), as has Nicolas Cage, but for guys like me that were weaned on the golden age action movies of the ‘80s and early ‘90s, it has been truly sad to watch the genre get watered down and broadened out into overblown, cartoonish, comic book spectacles with wimpy stars and soulless computer effects that spoil the magic.

But then, a few years ago a righteous ray of hope opened up in the cinematic sky and guys like me started to get giddy again. And my close friend Sly was leading the charge. He bounced back with supreme force and energy after everyone—inside and outside of Hollywood—had written him off as over-the-hill and yesterday’s news. He had something to say, he had his fire and his focus again. He had found his place, and he hit it out of the park with Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, redeeming himself and his legendary characters for the rest of cinematic history. It was nothing short of beautiful and exhilarating to watch.

Then Brucey joined in and made me happier than a pig in…you know what…by doing what he spent more than a decade promising he would never do: he brought back John McClane, one of the greatest, most awesome kick-ass heroes in the world, for Live Free or Die Hard. I never thought I’d get to see a Die Hard movie in theaters even though I would have happily given my vital organs to do so. But then Len Wiseman with his obnoxious blue filters and Tom Rothman and all the other gutless hacks at Twentieth Century Fox teamed up to water the experience down for the tweens and nearly neutered the franchise and the character. Bruce Willis saved it because he’s just so fricken’ badass cool, but the movie wasn’t the second coming it should have been.

Hold on though, because Harrison Ford came to the rescue by resurrecting Indiana Jones, the scrappy everyman adventurer with a jaw of steel and an irrepressible roguish twinkle. Except Steven Spielberg and George Lucas teamed up to create a lazy bastard child sequel featuring a jaw-droppingly lame script and incredibly idiotic action sequences that damned the franchise and left everyone disheartened.

It was truly the end of an era, and since Stallone had talked about John Rambo being his final trip in front of the camera, I began to steel myself for the death of the proper action film. I knew I could do it because I’m a survivor, having watched the Western fade into the recesses of an American consciousness utterly devoid of an appreciation for history, ritual or mythology.

But damn it if Stallone didn’t get my hopes up again, and to new peaks, when he announced that he would be writing, directing and starring in a film with the conscious mandate to resurrect the thematics, aesthetics and visceral, old-school awesome set pieces of the ‘80s action classics…not to mention that he would also be assembling the ultimate action movie junkie’s wet dream cast to boot, a cast to make even The Dirty Dozen and The Magnificent Seven and The Untouchables pale in comparison.

For two years I have been drooling over The Expendables, looking forward to it like no other, surfing the web every day for pictures and set reports and behind-the-scenes footage and interviews. I bought an Expendables shirt, an Expendables watch, poster, comic book and soundtrack. I watched the trailers and tv spots at least nine thousand times, I swear I’m not exaggerating. When the movie finally arrived, I was almost catatonic going into the theater, reminding myself to breathe, pinching myself that I was about to watch the greatest action movie of the 21^st century, the one that was going to save the genre. And I remained in that catatonic state throughout the film and long after the end credits. Because the movie didn’t deliver on what it promised. Not by a long shot.

I can’t believe I’m writing this. I can’t conceive of how this whole thing happened. I wish I could erase it all from my mind. I feel let down and maybe even betrayed, and guilty that I’m not writing a glowing review of my idol’s movie. But as much as it pains me to say it, I have to stay true to the action hero ethos I grew up with and lay out the truth: Sly dropped the ball big time on this one. I can’t believe it, but it’s true. The Expendables is a total mess, wildly off-balance and uneven, filled with structural deficiencies, baffling creative choices and a cast that gels as well as a goat can tap-dance in outer space. Holy crap, what the hell happened? The ingredients were perfect but the recipe is rancid.

Actually, I think I know what happened. Stallone has said in interviews that the script went through over a hundred drafts, and entire characters were combined or eliminated altogether. Stallone may have bit off more than even he could chew with trying to assemble the greatest action cast ever. Ben Kingsley, Forest Whitaker, Brittany Murphy and 50 Cent (what the hell?) were all at one time or another slated to be in the movie. Also on the list at various other times were Kurt Russell—Stallone’s Tango & Cash co-star—and Jean Claude Van Damme and Steven Seagal. I know there were rewrites on the set every day, and it shows.

The story is an utter disaster, in almost every scene, in almost every moment, in almost every way. It’s mind-boggling how half-baked and inept it is. There’s even a ridiculous twist at the end that nearly put me in a coma. Jet Li? Barely in the movie. Barely. Not even kidding. Blink and you’ll miss him entirely, that’s how little he registers. Terry Crews and Randy Couture? Same story.

Dolph Lundgren–who famously took Stallone on once before in Rocky IV–potentially had the most interesting character but is also totally underused. If you’re making an ensemble men-on-a-mission movie, you have to be all in. You can’t just bench characters with no explanation and trot them back out when it is convenient. And that’s not the worst thing. What is? The dialogue. All of it is incredibly choppy and forced. No matter how charismatic these guys may be separately (and I think Stallone is one of the most charismatic actors in movie history, I don’t care who disagrees with me), together they’re totally flat. The humorous banter isn’t humorous. It isn’t even banter.

There are also some technical problems with the movie. First of all, some CGI blood and flames look completely fake. What the hell is wrong with good old-fashioned squibs and practical flames? I don’t care if you’re setting a dude on fire, you’re telling me there is no way to do that stunt practically, without computer augmentation?

Furthermore, even though the film is supposed to evoke the aesthetics of yore, some of the action camerawork is disproportionately entrenched in shaky-cam, quick-cutting crap we have MTV, Michael Bay, and the Bourne films to thank for. It’s nowhere near as bad as it is in those films–the geography is still clear–but it’s still off-putting. Editing in action movies needs to slow the hell down. I’ll say it again: longer takes, less cuts, put the camera on sticks.  The intensity of the action should come from the energy of the performers and the choreography, not the rhythm of the editing.

And unless I was just in a bad theater, the sound mix is off at several points in the film, resulting in muddled dialogue. And maybe it was just me, but a lot of the guns didn’t sound loud enough. The sound of gunfire—especially the amount of gunfire in this movie—should knock you on your butt.

Okay, now I know what some people are going to say: action movies aren’t about story, they’re supposed to be bad, stories don’t matter, it’s all just about gunfights and explosions and car chases. Just watch the movie, don’t think about it too hard and enjoy. You know what I say to all that? B#$$S@#$. Total, utter BS.

Lethal Weapon isn’t about gunfights and explosions and car chases. It has them all, and they’re exciting and kick-ass, absolutely. But the movie is about two mismatched guys—one a tortured, hurting, nihilistic cop with a death wish who is more lost than the criminals he takes down, the other a family man confronting his age and mortality—who have to come together serve justice. It’s a movie about chemistry and evolving, fun, complex relationships. Die Hard is about characters and relationships too. So is Midnight Run, and 48 Hrs., and The Rock, and Face/Off and Hard Boiled and The Fugitive and The Last Boy Scout and First Blood and Bullitt and Dirty Harry and In The Line of Fire. All of those movies are fun and perfectly entertaining, but they’re emotionally involving too.

My litmus test for a good action movie is very simple: if you take out all the action scenes, is it still a good movie that engages with intelligent, revealing writing, crisp direction and captivating performances? Any one of those movies I mentioned, if you take out all of the action, you’re still left with a lot of emotion and absorbing scenes. I would still watch those movies without the action sequences.

But of course, the action genre is also fundamentally about constructing visceral, slam-bang stunts and acts of derring-do (yes, I really did just write “acts of derring-do”) that make you sit forward in your chair, widen your eyes, clench your hands and stop breathing. It’s about providing set-pieces at frequent intervals, and that The Expendables does. The first shots and opening credits are perfect. They set a mood and a build and a stage for expectations before overloading with action, which made me think that Stallone was nailing it. But then so much goes wrong after that. So so much. There are definitely some sweet kills and great stunts and moments, but I couldn’t fully get into them because I was so focused on how poorly the group interacted and how generic the characters all ended up being.

Which is so surprising because in all of the interviews and accounts I’ve followed where Stallone talks about the characters, he goes into so much detail about who each of the guys are, what their histories are—both separately and as a group—what their specialty is, what they believe in, and how they live. He delineates all of them so eloquently and so precisely, and it’s all so right and so fascinating. But none of that is actually in the movie.

For example, in the story synopsis featured on the official Expendables website, Sly’s character Barney Ross (awesome name for an action hero) is described as “a true cynic who describes what he does as ‘removing those hard to get at stains.” That’s a great line that speaks volumes about how the character views the world…but that line isn’t in the movie. Why the hell not? Or take Gunnar Jensen, Dolph Lundgren’s character…we’re led to believe that he’s off-balanced and juiced up on some kind of drug because he’s haunted by his combat demons…but we never have a scene showing him using nor are we given any sense of what those demons are. Sure it’s all implied if you look for it, but everything in this movie is underwritten, especially the female roles.

The back-story for all of the characters is absolutely anemic. Clearly they’re all ex-military in one way or another, but we don’t know how they ended up as mercenaries for hire, what their family situation is, etc. And the villains are total cartoons, and not even in a fun way. Eric Roberts plays Munroe, the main heavy, a task he also shared sixteen years ago in the Stallone/Sharon Stone vehicle The Specialist. Roberts can exude such a menacing, snakelike charm that’s delicious to watch…but he doesn’t have a role he can chomp into here. There’s an attempt at the very end to paint Monroe as a doppelganger for Barney but it fails because the foundation for that has not been properly laid. Same goes for his henchman Dan Paine, played by Steve Austin.

Like everything in the movie, the villains are betwixt and between. They’re not quite ridiculous enough to be fun and entertaining like the inimitable Dan Hedaya in Commando or Jack Palance in Tango & Cash or John Lithgow in Cliffhanger, and they’re not complex or evil enough to be fascinating like John Malkovich in In The Line of Fire or Gary Oldman in Air Force One, to take two examples from Wolfgang Petersen. Plus, especially coming on the heels of John Rambo, the villains don’t even seem all that evil. They’re really not even worth cheering against because what they are doing is so vague and half-baked, they barely even register.

This all applies to the tone of the movie too. It’s not ridiculous or funny enough to work as a parody of the genre like the masterful Hot Fuzz, nor is it dramatic and skillful enough to make us care. The result: it’s all just an uncomfortable mess. If you’re going to eschew dramatic weight and character development, you better have actors with genuine chemistry and a fun kill-the-baddies-while-cracking-delicious-one-liners energy a la Harley Davidson and the Marlboro Man and The Long Kiss Goodnight. The Expendables doesn’t. It’s not fun and it’s not absorbing. When I watch a movie, I want to learn as much as I can about who I’m watching, I want to have as complete a picture I can of how they came to be. I want flesh-and-blood portraits, not half-baked sketches. And that’s what is driving me nuts.

Stallone is a savvy, Oscar-nominated screenwriter who has written or co-written virtually every film in his oeuvre, and he has always succeeded at providing acute characterizations that establish a classical back-story and a character context. Besides Rocky and Rambo, go back and look at the characters he played in Cliffhanger, Demolition Man, The Specialist, Assassins, Daylight, Cop Land, and his overly-criticized remake of Get Carter. Stallone makes us care about his character in all of those films, but Barney Ross is not worthy of that pantheon. He doesn’t infuse the character with anything unique or even specific; Stallone doesn’t take ownership of him and that’s really sad to see.

He had the perfect opportunity too: the genesis for the whole movie came from a scene in Rambo: First Blood Part II where Rambo and his contact Co—a beautiful Vietnamese freedom fighter—are riding up the river and she asks Rambo why he was assigned this impossible mission. He smiles with a twinge of sadness and tells her that he is expendable. Co asks what the word “expendable” means and he tells her “It’s like…if you get invited to a party and you don’t show up…it doesn’t really matter.”

That exchange perfectly defined the tragic nature of Rambo and mercenaries in general, and has more dramatic weight than the entire film of The Expendables. Mercenaries are guys who constantly live with the knowledge that they can be replaced, and that, inevitably, they will die a violent death and will never be able to wash the blood from their hands.

The Expendables could have been an exploratory meditation on what it is like to live with that mentality, to struggle to find and hold onto a sense of purpose, a sense that you are fighting a fight worth fighting, that you killed and sacrificed in the pursuit of justice and honor. But the film does not do any of that, save for one scene with Mickey Rourke that is very well-acted and directed. In fact, it actually takes you out of the movie because it is that much better than everything else.

That scene showed the marks of the Stallone of Rocky Balboa and John Rambo, the Stallone who wants to be taken seriously as a filmmaker of thematic substance. But other scenes, especially ones featuring the villains being, well, villains, and a subplot featuring Jason Statham’s character Lee Christmas, are staged perfunctorily and contain totally wooden, flat performances. If it ain’t dramatic or fun, then you really got a problem. Sometimes it seemed like Stallone wasn’t even trying to make a good movie.

But I feel weird even saying that, because I know he busted his butt making this film. (Actually, he busted his neck filming his smackdown with Steve Austin, which ends very unsatisfactorily and doesn’t live up to the epic-ness postulated in the trailer and behind-the-scenes material). I know he wanted to make a love letter to fans like me whose cinematic bread and butter was the real, character-driven action films of the ‘80s and early ‘90s, and he totally could have if he had just not rushed the script and had locked it down before he started shooting.

To go to so much effort and personal and physical pain, to toil away and make a movie this big when the story and characters aren’t worth it is just heartbreaking. Because audiences don’t know about the insane amount of sweat and tears and lost sleep that go into making a movie like this. At the end of it, all that matters is what’s up there on that screen, and what’s up there on the screen in this case is very little at all. I know Sly is capable of much more than what he ended up giving us here.

Again, I know some people will say my expectations were too high, that the movie did exactly what it was supposed to do. But as a foaming-rabid devotee of the genre, I vehemently disagree. I guess that’s where I differ from a lot of the other action fans out there: if I don’t care about the characters I can’t get into the action. I don’t care how awesome the stunts and kills may be, if I’m not emotionally invested, I’m left cold and get completely bored and restless.

I love action movies more than anyone I’ve ever met, but for me it’s all about the emotional impact of action, not the visual. The emotional appeal can survive without the visual, but not vice versa. The thrills come not from pyrotechnics but in caring for the people in these explosive situations, and in fearing for their safety and rooting for them to survive against all odds and save the day.

In looking over those last two paragraphs again, I’m left with this thought: Stallone and I are totally on the same page. Look at his filmography. There are some great films, some good films, some mediocre films, even some terrible films. But all of them are colored by emotion. They’re about characters with heart, fighting for what they believe in, constantly seeking redemption and a chance to right past wrongs.

And throughout his entire career, Stallone has always been disrespected and pigeonholed. I think he is probably the most typecast star in film history. Whenever he tried to bust out of the constraints that audiences and critics put on him, it backfired. Even Cop Land, which is a terrific film full of terrific performances–at the top of which is Stallone’s–was a failure.

So I think what happened with The Expendables is that Stallone finally gave up. He stopped trying to create dramatic characters and just focused on the action. That’s the only explanation, because the action is sensational but the story and characters suck. I think his heart told him to make the kind of movie I wanted, the movie I’ve been talking about, a movie that combined the chemistry and sheer joy of Lethal Weapon with the explorative thematic integrity of Unforgiven and The Wild Bunch.

But in his head, he knew that critics and the majority of moviegoers and action fans don’t care about his acting and don’t even believe he’s any good at it. He knew they would scoff at any kind of earnestness or weight he tried to put into the film, and he wasn’t masochistic enough to open himself up to the same kind of vitriolic criticism he has been taking for thirty years. Most people see Stallone as an action star; I see him as an actor who makes action films.

He made The Expendables for the lowest common denominator, not for people like me who want a little pathos mixed in with their explosions. I’m sure that when I go see this movie again (and I will, out of loyalty), I’ll be able to enjoy it more, because I understand the terms and mindset of it now.

There were certainly some highpoints. There’s a scene with Stallone diving onto a moving sea plane as a whole army is on his a$$ and then he and Jason Statham blow the crap out of it (before engaging in more forced dialogue) that is one of the most kickass action moments I’ve seen in a long time. Stallone still has the goods, believe me, and he knows how to stage action, though sometimes he cuts away from stuff you want to see. He throws some cool MMA moves into the mix and does some awesome John Woo-esque twin 9mm shooting (oh my god greatest idea ever: John Woo directs an action thriller starring Sylvester Stallone and Harrison Ford).

Maybe if The Expendables hadn’t come on the heels of John Rambo it would have seemed a lot better. I don’t know. Some people will be content just at seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger and Bruce Willis and Stallone briefly together, and in reveling at the nostalgia the movie tries to evoke for these guys and their bygone era. But it is precisely because I know that Stallone is one of the very few guys left who understands everything about action movies and gets them on an intuitive level that I can’t view this movie as anything but a disheartening disappointment.

I will never give up on Sylvester Stallone. But I feel like he has given up on himself, at least in terms of his acting ability, and that makes me truly sad, because he has always had the chops and has never been fully appreciated. I wish he knew that there were people like me out there who believe in his dramatic abilities. I wish he would believe in himself.

I will continue to support the man and his movies, and am nothing but incredibly grateful for the immense and lasting impact he has had on my life. But The Expendables hurt me, and it’s a pain I will live with for many years to come.

Rescue Me Review: The Evel Knievel of AA

Since Tommy begins this episode in the slammer for the whole baptizing-his-daughter-in-booze-at-a-Catholic-church stunt of last week, you would think that things could only go up for him. Well yes and no. On the plus side: his radical tactic worked and now even the sight of booze makes Colleen want to hurl, and he has a date set up with Janet for later that night. In the negative column: all this happens in the first five minutes, which gives Tommy the next 7/8^ths of the episode to get himself in trouble. And inevitably, that he does.

He thanks Black Shawn for going to bat for him and tries to lay the groundwork for reconciliation between him and Franco. But then they arrive at work and find that they have no work to do. Because they have no job. Because the city boarded up their house and shut them down. Wow.

After playing a lively round of the Blame Game, the gang teams up with the locals to start a good old-fashioned protest. Franco is MIA, but said protest goes swimmingly until Chief Feinberg shows up and rains on the parade, which is all he has been doing ever since he showed up in season four. He talks about going through proper channels and blah blah blah… I wish that guy would just die already. Luckily, everyone is interrupted by reports of a school burning down. Since the city shut down all the firehouses, no one is left to answer the call.

So our heroes pile into their civilian cars and rush to the scene with no suits and no gear. Franco shows up in the nick of time to contribute, and Damian—even though he is back into angsty whine mode and doesn’t want to be a firefighter anymore—cowboys up. It’s riveting to see our guys getting the job done old-school: no gear, no protection, no support, just good old-fashioned heroics.

Beyond all that, which is more than enough, we get more of Peter Gallagher’s entertaining priest, a disastrous dinner date, and in spite of all that, a very small flickering chance for a smidgen of reconciliation between Tommy and Janet. Oh yeah, and some more ghosts. And of course, we get great performances all around. Nothing but smooth sailing for this show right now.

Season 6, Episode 7: Forgiven (originally aired August 10, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDb Pro.

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)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDb Pro.

Burn Notice Review: Entry Point

You ever watch something on tv and think “Hey, that looks like fun. I bet I could do that. I wonder how you get into doing that stuff?” Well that’s what was going through my mind watching all of the interrogation scenes on Burn Notice, which comprised a good chunk of the episode. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying I condone torturing people, but the basic concept of interrogation seems like a lot of fun.

You got a bad person chained up to a chair in a dark room, you have all the power, and your sole task is to play mind games and intimidate until you get what you want. I can’t imagine that not being a blast. Plus, Michael, Sam and Jesse (mostly Sam) have a little fridge full of beer right outside the interrogation room, so they can watch the festivities on the monitors while kicking back with a cold one. My kind of setup.

Now in case you forgot, the subject of all of this interrogation is cold-blooded killer (is that an oxymoron?) Kendra, who for convoluted reasons I’m comfortable saying I don’t understand in the least, is on Michael and Jesse’s Bad List. The problem is that this dame is bonkers up the kazoo, which she demonstrates by smashing her head repeatedly against the table to prove that she can take anything they might dish out to her. So the team has to change tactics. New plan: have Jesse play the sap that Kendra thinks she can manipulate, while Sam plays Jesse’s mean boss.

Fiona, meanwhile, brings Michael yet another case. There sure seems to have been an influx of really needy people in Miami since I lived there. This time, it’s a knock-off accessory designer named Buddy, who thinks his latest client is trying to kill him. I hate when that happens.

The job was to put a couple of pieces of onyx into a leather band for mysterious reasons. After Buddy did that, his client tried to kill him. He got his client’s phone calls triangulated via the (surprisingly) helpful phone company, so Michael and Fiona go to that location to scope things out. Except before they can enter the building, it explodes big time. Yikes.

Michael calls the fire department so that they can put out the raging inferno before all the evidence goes up in smoke. Of course, this then creates the problem of how Michael can get inside the burnt building and swipe whatever juicy evidence might be lying around. The solution? Michael poses as an arson investigator, relying on bureaucratic chain-of-command red tape issues to buy him just enough time to get in and get out.

To cut to the chase, Michael determines that the person who commissioned Buddy and then tried to permanently decommission him is trying to piece together a replica of some sword used by Alexander the Great. Michael also realizes that Alexander the Great is trying to be resurrected so that he can hunt down Oliver Stone and Colin Farrell for bastardizing his namesake in 2004. Yes, that’s a part of the episode. It’s in the subtext, trust me.

So now Michael and Fiona have to catch whatever thief it is that is trying to swap the real sword with the replica. They track down the real sword, and, posing as private security consultants, try to convince the owner that he is going to be robbed by someone in his own company. But the guy is prickly about the whole thing (aren’t they always?), so Michael and Fiona have to resort to nefarious means to flush out the thief.

A couple of remarkable explosions, some jumping and a really cool car disabling sequence ensue. Good episode, but once again, where is Maddie and where the hell is Vaughn?

Season 4, Episode 6: Entry Point (Originally aired July 15, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 9/8c on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA Network and Glenn Watson.

Rescue Me Review: Comeback

Episode 6.3 of Rescue Me contains the greatest conversation about Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and George Clooney in human history. Believe me. Nothing else comes close and nothing else ever will. And, believe it or not, said legendary conversation comes courtesy of idiot savants (minus the savants) Sean and Mike. I’m tempted to call it the highlight of the episode, but there is a lot more to choose from.

The story all centers around Tommy’s first day back on the job, and he doesn’t get a chance to ease back into it. The crew goes from call to call—35 in one tour—and Tommy has to contend with stupid civilians, Mick and Teddy making ominous threats, Janet constantly calling to talk with Franco instead of him, and his aching shoulder. But, contrary to what you might expect, Tommy doesn’t complain. In fact, he’s the only guy not complaining. “You guys are bitchin’ and whinin’ and moanin’ about being busy…why don’t you put in for a transfer to some house in Staten Island where you can sit around and…twitter and twatter and download deaf mute porn online…why don’t you run for Congress? Me? I’m happy being a firefighter again.” Enough said.

And I’ll tell you what, Tommy may have seemed out of line busting Franco’s chops in the season premiere for spending so much time at his house, but he was right. There’s something going on with Franco and Janet. They have their own little world, and Franco has his own obnoxious nickname for her. Even if nothing is going on, he’s crossing the line, the same line he beat the crap out of Tommy for crossing with Sheila in season one. Hypocrite much?

Speaking of Sheila, I think I may be sicker of her than ever. She has done nothing so far this season except come get in Tommy’s face and bitch and moan at him like a drugged out banshee to get Damian out of the firehouse. I wish she would just shut up and maybe jump out the window. Sheila, your son is 22-years-old and spent the last several of those years dealing with your crazy, mentally unbalanced Looney Tunes antics. Leave him alone, let him do his job and live his life. He shouldn’t have to keep paying for your warped psyche and abandonment issues. And neither should Tommy. As far as I’m concerned, he has done nothing to you that you didn’t deserve, and that you didn’t do tenfold to him first.

Am I the only person left who is on Tommy’s side, who has more sympathy and affection for him than anyone else on the show? I don’t know when he suddenly became an antihero in need of redemption. Let’s review: he’s not a mobster, he’s not an assassin, he’s not a serial rapist…he has spent his entire adult life in the pursuit of saving people. He lost his cousin and best friend on 9/11, his young son was run over by a drunk driver, and his eldest daughter hates him.

His wife once kidnapped his children and disappeared with them. She also had an affair with his dead cousin and his cop brother, who was subsequently gunned down. He learned that his father had a whole other secret family, and his secret brother turned out to be a pedophile who was also killed. Sheila once drugged him and tried to burn the new house down…with him in it. Then his uncle shot him twice and forced all of Tommy’s friends to watch him as he bled out. Honestly, hasn’t the guy suffered enough? The worst I could ever say about him is that he has a bit of a self-destructive streak and a drinking problem and made a bad judgment call ever getting involved with Sheila. Give. The. Guy. A. Break.

Big holy crap ender involving Lou. They better not kill him off, because honestly, they are running out of characters on this show. If they are going to kill anybody, it should be Mike, because the guy is a moron who hasn’t been remotely interesting since season two or maybe briefly in season four.

Season 6, Episode 3: Comeback (originally aired July 13, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX

Rescue Me Review: Change

Though perhaps one of the most unlikely candidates in history, Tommy Gavin is trying to change. His friends and family sure as hell aren’t making it easy though. Black Shawn and Franco are hanging out shirtless at his house for Katie and Janet’s gazing pleasure (they both blame their lack of attire on vomit incidents, one from baby Wyatt, one from Colleen). Colleen is still drinking like a salivating fish. Janet more or less wants nothing to do with Tommy, blaming him for “coating” her life in “cynicism and ash.” Teddy, Mickey and that other cousin whose name I can never remember are all still holding grudges. Sheila is still rabid about forcing Tommy to drum Damian out of the department. And the firehouse is on the brink of closure. God even I want to drink a vat of Bushmills after writing that paragraph.

This season has started out remarkably Tommy-centric, and I for one have absolutely no problem with that. I hear snippets of other people complaining that the show isn’t what it once was, that the other characters don’t have anything to do. I say poppycock (mostly because I love that word). Being that the show is winding down, it isn’t just legitimate that Tommy is the focus; it’s imperative. He still remains, by far, the most lost character on the show. He’s the guy with the most wrong with him, the guy missing the most answers, the guy missing the most peace. He needs to find all of these things, or at least get to a place where he can find all of these things, or else he’ll end the show in misery and so will I.

And of course, it doesn’t hurt that during all of this searching and through all of these attempts to repair his life and family, Tommy Gavin is still constantly hilarious to watch. Denis Leary injects such a potent sharpness to the guy. He’s trying to be nice to everyone now, even sitting down his ex-wife and daughters and telling them how much he loves them…to their constant scorn. He’s acting now like he was in season two when he was mainlining Janet’s happy pills. Damian even makes a little comment to himself after Tommy hugs him that it’s “Pills. Definitely pills.” In other words, Tommy is acting as fake as he was when he was on drugs, which begs the obvious question, is this quest he is on inherently bankrupt?

Highlights include: Damian stepping up to the plate on a call for the first time, Tommy talking to Lou about what he saw in the afterlife, Tommy taking his daughter to a bar to try to cure her of booze, and Tommy giving a parental speech to Katie that backfires horribly.

Season 6, Episode 2: Change (originally aired July 6, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX

Burn Notice Review: Neighborhood Watch

Burn Notice is back in top-fun form with this episode that finds Michael & Co. trying to get the drop on mystery killer woman Kendra while simultaneously battling drug dealers causing trouble outside a nice little Homestead clinic. They certainly are a busy bunch.

Michael Westen is an expert at high-tech, but the opening finds him with a low-tech problem: trying to find a way to access the information on the antique tape drive he and Jesse took out of Kassar’s wall last episode after Kassar was killed by Kendra. You don’t understand, you say? Don’t worry, I don’t fully either.

But Michael goes all over town to every kind of tech/media outlet to find a way to access the tape and he strikes out. But at his last stop, he and Fiona discover that Kendra is tailing them. They enlist Sam to help turn the tables on her, but Kendra turns the tables on them. Michael and Kendra have a nice little cat-and-mouse phone conversation that makes Fiona jealous. No idea what’s on the tape, but Michael decides to let Kendra believe that he is willing to sell it to her for $50,000. However this McGuffin comes into play, Kendra is certainly the most delightful, dastardly female villain since Carla in season two.

But as usual, Michael gets distracted. Jesse calls Michael over to Maddy’s house (where Jesse has been staying for several episodes) for what Michael assumes to be a meeting about the Kendra situation. But no. Instead, Maddy has another cause for Michael that Jesse has already gotten invested in.  She wants Michael to help her friend’s boyfriend deal with the drug dealers who attacked him and keep selling heroin in front of his clinic. Michael reluctantly complies.

But the boyfriend, David, is a pain-in-the-ass client. He doesn’t want Michael & Co. to operate outside of the law, which is kind of like asking a goldfish to swim outside of the tank. The team proceeds to do what they have to do to help David or not…whether he wants them to or not. Chiefly, this involves getting to know the hierarchy of the drug dealers—led by a maladjusted fellow named Cutler—and using Michael’s drug dealer former buffoon neighbor Sugar to provide references for Michael’s supplier cover.

Highlights include a rare solo Sam brawl in a strip club, doing surveillance via an infrared camera attached to a remote control plane piloted by a twelve-year-old, lots of explosions, a knife fight between Michael and Kendra, and Michael and Fiona going nuts together with sniper rifles—probably the coolest couples’ activity in human history. Nice to see that both Fiona and Maddy have more screen time and more to do in this episode; that’s exactly how I like it.

My only concern: once again, what the hell happened to Vaughn?

Season 4, Episode 5: Neighborhood Watch (Originally aired July 1, 2010)

For more on Burn Notice, click here.

Thursdays at 9/8c on USA

Photographs courtesy of USA Network and Glenn Watson.

Covert Affairs: Conference Call with Executive Producer Doug Liman

Doug Liman is often credited with reinventing the spy/espionage/assassin genre in 2002 with his unexpected, contemporized adaptation of Robert Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity, turning Matt Damon into an unexpected action star and causing Barbara Broccoli and Michael G. Wilson and the MGM brass to completely reboot and remold the Bond franchise in the Bourne image (most say for the better, I say for the worse—I miss you Pierce!).

He did it again in 2005 with the mighty successful and overblown star vehicle Mr. & Mrs. Smith…which united Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie in more ways than one…and Fair Game, his film about outed CIA agent Valerie Plame starring Naomi Watts and Sean Penn, premiered in competition at Cannes this year. Though he has directed films in other genres like Swingers and Jumper and authored shows like The O.C. (yikes), one thing is clear: this guy really digs the story possibilities of the spy world. And now he’s at it again with his new spy show that he’s producing for USA through his banner Hypnotic. It’s called Covert Affairs and it stars Piper Perabo, Christopher Gorham and Peter Gallagher.

Poptimal.com was invited to take part in a conference call with Mr. Liman set up by USA to promote the show. Though he didn’t always seem thrilled to be taking part in the proceedings (and I can’t blame him, given how inevitably there are always a few people who ramble on incoherently and ask the same obvious questions), he talked candidly about the show, his forays into the spy world, and the exciting challenges of writing and directing character-driven material. Below is a summary of the most interesting comments Mr. Liman made.

• He referred to television as “the last bastion to develop real characters” because networks don’t have the bucks to compete with the spectacle of Hollywood blockbuster comic book franchises, so they have to put their energy into creating characters that will make people tune in every week.
• He also referred to television as a “much bigger canvas than film.” Can’t say I agree with that one.
• Liman has always preferred to work from the standpoint of creating characters with actors, developing projects from the get go with specific actors in mind and then letting their thoughts and attitudes shape and change the character—a modus operandi that has often caused problems for him in Hollywood.
• Angelina Jolie was not Liman’s first choice for Mr. & Mrs. Smith, and Brad Pitt was supposed to be Bourne before Matt Damon.
• Fight scenes are never really safe unless at least one of the persons involved is a stunt person. After casting his lead, in terms of action, Liman says it is easier to find stuntpeople who can act rather than actors who can do stunts.
• He learned on The Bourne Identity how important it is to have a very specific point of view on action sequences and to use budget limitations to create style. In other words, when done well, action sequences don’t have to be generic; they can excite while telling the story and revealing character.
• Though he acknowledges that since The Bourne Identity became a cultural touchstone, USA will obviously promote Covert Affairs as “from the creator of The Bourne Identity,” but Liman insists that he is not repeating himself and that Piper Perabo’s Annie Walker is a completely different character than Jason Bourne. He also talked about how many properties are imitative of Bourne and Mr. & Mrs. Smith.
• He referred to Green Zone as a rip-off of The Bourne Identity—basically just producing a carbon copy of Bourne and putting him into a different scenario. This makes me wonder if there is some bad blood between Liman and Universal and Paul Greengrass and Matt Damon. Greengrass directed the two Bourne sequels, which were considered superior to the original by a lot of people (myself included). It could be argued that Greengrass ultimately put a bigger stamp on Bourne than Liman did, and certainly Matt Damon always speaks about the franchise in terms of Greengrass, never Liman. Though Liman executive produced the two sequels, I’ve always wondered why he didn’t direct them. Was he just uninterested or were there creative/personnel problems that prevented him from doing so? I’ve always wondered.
• For some fight sequences on Covert Affairs, the crew use a bunch of Canon 5D Mark IIs, which allows them to get closer to the action in a way that not even the Red camera can. Honestly, does everyone have one of those 5Ds except me?

Personally, I’m a little fatigued by spy stories and I wonder how much new territory is left to mine with the genre. The market is so saturated by espionage fare…it seems there’s a new spy movie every week (e.g. Knight and Day), and I swear 95% of all scripted shows are about cops, doctors, lawyers and spies. Can Covert Affairs reinvent the wheel and feel fresh, or will it just prove to be another endless entry in the genre?

Certainly, the show fits the USA brand very well. Piper Perabo makes for a bright and likable (almost too likable, almost too plucky) star, and the pilot is fast-paced, poppy and slickly-edited. It’s not great tv by any means but it’s very enjoyable and polished.

The show opens with Perabo taking her CIA entrance lie detector test, complete with all the pulse-reading gizmos you’d expect. The administrator asks Annie a series of personal questions to “establish a control.” Since Annie has to answer these questions, within the first thirty seconds of meeting this character we get to learn all kinds of painful tidbits about her. Through flashback—as Annie narrates—we learn that she has a real ear for languages and spent a long time traveling all over the world, especially in South America, where she met some stud and fell in love. Then one morning she awoke to find he had skedaddled and left her a cryptic note.

We then see her going through various training exercises on The Farm, culminating in parachuting. Then she is mysteriously whisked away to Langley, before completing the last month of her training, apparently because her language skills are needed on some important mission. We get the sense though that there is more going on here than meets the eye, probably somehow related to the stud who left her.

From there we get the usual—aliases, a hotel shootout, a car chase, all done very well. But there are promising character touches as well. Annie is befriended by a blind CIA colleague named Auggie, and we get to see her relationship with her older sister, a married mother of two who has no idea of her CIA life.

I’m sure Alias comparisons will be made, but I’m not qualified to comment because I never really watched that show. All I will say about female spies is that no one will ever top Geena Davis in The Long Kiss Goodnight. But Covert Affairs seems poised to be yet another hit, breezy summer entertainment for USA. That’s a good thing.

For more information about the show and cast, visit:  www.usanetwork.com/series/covertaffairs/

For television reviews, click here.

Photographs courtesy of Robert Ashcroft, Steve Wilkie, and USA Network.

Rescue Me Review: Rescue Me Is On Fire

I know…that’s a really lame, obvious title. It’s just the kind of thing that Denis Leary’s embittered, resilient, devil-may-care firefighter protagonist Tommy Gavin would dump all over. But I honestly couldn’t think of an insightful way to express Jesus-Christ-I-Love-This-Show-More-Than-I-Love-Oxygen-How-Can-A-Group-Of-People-Create-Something-This-Consistently-Unique-and-Brilliant.

I’ve been watching Rescue Me almost since its beginning in 2004, after my cousin Sara told me that this show would become my new best friend. All I can say is that six years is not nearly enough time to spend with the boys of 62 Truck and the people who surround them. Rescue Me has a rhythm and a vitality that is unlike anything I have ever seen on television. There is no formula, no common structure…it has a lifeforce that is all its own. It is by far the best show that FX has ever aired—which is quite a compliment because FX is an amazing network—and it trumps anything that has ever been on HBO, in my not-so-humble opinion. I just can’t praise the show—and specifically Denis Leary and Peter Tolan—enough. I would happily take a bullet for either one of those guys, because they’re clearly geniuses.

Season six picks up right where the unforgettable season five finale left us: with Tommy shot twice by a vengeful Teddy and left bleeding to death in his own bar. We pick him up here in the ambulance ride, with Lou and Mickey in tow. Tommy is betwixt and between: not quite dead, and not quite alive. We watch him in these precious moments as he flatlines, fragilely walking the tightrope between life and death, and—thanks to the Catholic guilt Tommy Gavin has been fighting all his existence—between heaven and hell.

First we see him with his perished cousin Jimmy and a sea of other departed firefighters. Jimmy tried to guide Tommy toward the light, but suddenly he explodes into a flaming building. Fighting the smoke and the flames, Tommy is confronted by horrible things: Sheila being attacked, 9/11 victims he failed to save swarming him, the Twin Towers, and the family he left behind. Then he bursts back to life. And all of this happens before the opening credits.

But that’s true for Rescue Me in general: the show generates a stronger, more turbulent emotional roller coaster ride in a couple of minutes than most shows do in a whole season. I’m not kidding folks, if you haven’t checked this show out, stop whatever you’re doing and watch the pilot episode right now.

Tommy may have cheated death once again, but it’s not a bed of roses for him when he gets out of the hospital (actually, he flees from the hospital after filling his bag with morphine). The firehouse is in danger of being closed down due to the recession and all of the colorful hijinks associated with the crew, not the least of which is this whole star-firefighter-nearly-murdered-by-his-former-firefighter-uncle-in-an-illegal-firefighter-bar-thing. Furthermore, his twenty-year-old daughter Colleen is trying to drink herself to death and give him a run for his money. His ex-wife Janet didn’t come to see him once in the hospital, and Sheila is pressuring him…as only Sheila can…to get her son Damian to quit being a fireman.

It gets worse: Teddy is still unhinged and threatening to kill Tommy if he ever takes a drink again, Mickey takes his turn at trying to kill Tommy by barreling down the highway in the wrong direction, and Jimmy is resentful that Tommy came back to life instead of staying dead with him. He’s also imploring Tommy to make some changes because he clearly went to hell instead of heaven when he was dancing on the other side.

Or is all of the religion stuff/talking-with-dead-cousin thing merely symptomatic of Tommy’s unhinged psyche? These are questions the show has been flirting with since the beginning, and with only 19 more episodes to go before Rescue Me leaves the TV landscape forever (I’m trying really hard not to cry now), who knows what kind of crazy, unpredictable answers we are going to get.

I could sing Rescue Me’s praises every day for the next fifteen years. My only criticism of the premiere is not really a criticism so much as a veiled compliment: I want more. I could happily watch a show devoted wholly to every single character—we’re talking twelve spin-offs or something. I wanted to see more of Lou, of Franco, of Colleen, of Janet, of Sheila…of everybody. There just isn’t enough time in forty minutes…or six years, for that matter.

Season 6, Episode 1: Legacy (originally aired June 29, 2010)

For more on Rescue Me, click here.

Tuesdays at 10pm on FX

Photograph courtesy of FX and IMDbPro

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