I was actually applauding more when he shoved his ex out of his way and onto the hood of the car. I was wishing Shiela would have beat the snot out of that c-word. Somebody needs to.

I agree with everybody here: that last scene was incredibly well done. I think every man watching it could relate to what Tommy was experiencing at that moment. Those sound effects let me FEEL his rage. I actually felt my adrenaline starting to rush.

I can't remember anything like that in this episode.

Tommy walking to the kitchen to get duct tape to tape the mouth of that chick who would not shut up.

One of the funniest moments in recent TV.

You know, I sit and watch this show and wonder how the hell doesn't this show win an emmy for best dramatic show.

Then i also sit there and think, how hte hell doesn't this show win an emmy for best comedy. I laugh more at this show than any other sitcom on TV.

This is the best show ever on TV. That last scene was absolutely perfect. From the music, the minute leading upto the fight, the clip of his dad sitting there by himself. I can't believe this isn't hte highest rated show on TV. I've told everyone I know to watch it and they all love it.

Here's to Dennis Leary winning an Emmy this year!!!!

Tommy's family has already pretty much fallen apart, and we are seeing some hints that his crew might be the next to go: Franco is preparing for the lieutenant's exam and the probie's friend was telling him that everyone they went to probie school with is transferring when their probationary period is over. Not to mention that Kenny is a mess and there are probably going to be some serious problems when Tommy finds out about Garrity and his sister.

i read somewhere where that is the basic theme of the season. last season was all about trying to keep his family together. this season it's about keeping the house together. with this show, i have no idea which would be harder...

That song is sung by Fontella Bass and not Aretha Franklin.

I don't think that song would fit in well at all for the theme song. Just because it has the same name doesn't mean it should be the theme song

Well, how about that. Though I am most familiar with the Franklin version.

Patman,

I don't think Aretha Franklin ever sang this tune. Fontella Bass does sound alot like Aretha Franklin tho.

Love the little foreshadowing right before Tommy figures it out. Tommy's father says "And if you're not a complete moron, you start to see things the way they really are."

Love the muffled sounds when Tommy finds out. Laughed when he took a bite of cake and we can here his teeth clench onto the spoon.

Tommy looks like he's on fire with the orange lighting out on the street when Johnny is on the ground.

His family has fallen so far apart they don't even remember that Chase Edmunds is their other brother.

The entire restaurant scene was fantastic. They did a great job of setting it up with comedy, Sheila using words that are also racial slurs towards Asians, and then ending with the fight.

It must be a male thing to like this show because I have tried for two seasons and two episodes to understand the appeal of this show. With the exception of Chief Reilly, there's not one character I care about on this show. Tommy's travails are endless and they keep piling up to the point of ridiculousness. The show has never given me one reason to care what happens to Tommy. Am I meant to be entertained by the constant and needless violence that Tommy commits? I guess I don't subscribe to the "Wow, he kicked his brother's ass and assaulted his ex-wife. Gee, that was fantastic. Give me some more violence!" reaction. I was disgusted by the show's need for gratuitous violence--reminded of the unnecessary scene where Sheila was beaten up by her girlfriend.

Beyond that, the female characters are badly written although the male characters don't fare any better. I keep waiting for Daniel Sunjata to get something of substance, but his most memorable episode is when Franco gets stuck in a cockring. The characters of Mike and Garrity get more and more stupid depending upon what the script calls for. The show's take on sexuality is worse than American Pie's. I expect some of this from so-called Macho men, but does nearly every male on the show have to speak and act in the same way? Can't the writers come up with characters of different sexual maturities? Does there have to be this sneering, joking dismissal of anything sexual? I would expect this from a teenager not someone who has been married for almost 25 years. Of course, every woman Tommy meets wants to go to bed with him which as a woman I find absurd. Daniel Sunjata, I could believe it. Mike Lombardi, maybe. Denis Leary? Come on!

I can see I'm probably alone in disliking this show. The acting for the most part is strong, and individual episodes are first rate (the funeral episode comes to mind), but on the whole, the show just doesn't interest me anymore. I started watching the show for Daniel Sunjata, and I'll watch through the Sarandon arc, but I doubt I'll stick around.

I think I'll just quote some reviews that explore the feelings I'm sure many of us have towards this show.

"Another realistic aspect of the job that Rescue Me attempts to capture is the unique brand of masculine camaraderie that exists within the firehouse. It takes a special kind of person to do this job, and in order to face the danger and the fear, the department is seething with overly macho behavior. These men routinely gloat about their sexual conquests and abhor anything that may make them look like anything less than the pinnacle of masculinity."

"Gavin is not at all a typical television hero. Capable of both heartbreaking insight and unthinkable cruelty, Gavin is a walking time-bomb, visibly coming apart at the seams throughout the show. But what makes Gavin special is his tremendous sense of magnetism. Leary calls on every ounce of his formidable comic talents to turn his complex character into one of television's richest portraits. Gavin's emotions twist and turn in the wind when the rest of the world leaves him hanging, but Leary doesn't go for easy sympathy. Gavin's tremendous self-loathing is clear on his face, but so is his monumental ego."

"In the first season the show took a big risk by visualizing Tommy's deteriorating mental state by having him constantly surrounded by the ghosts of the people he feels he failed, most notably his cousin Jimmy. Played by James McCaffrey, the alternately bitter and jovial ghost of Jimmy was a great partner for Tommy, egging him into all sorts of harmful situations. In season two, with his mental state a rollercoaster of improvements and downward spirals, Jimmy is less present. He mostly appears when Tommy is most vulnerable, sometimes to devastating affect. Tommy's inner dialog has a sort of Fight Club-like quality as he tries to rationalize his problems and attitude a million different ways. Jimmy offered a familiar voice in the first season, but by halfway through this one he's at odds with Tommy. The relationship between a man and his ghosts is explored in powerful and heartbreaking ways here."

Hey you quoted me.

http://www.google.com/search?q=Areth...22rescue+me%22

either she also sang it or lots of people are confused

I appreciate that. I truly am trying to figure out why this show is so highly regarded. Don't understand it.

"Another realistic aspect of the job that Rescue Me attempts to capture is the unique brand of masculine camaraderie that exists within the firehouse. It takes a special kind of person to do this job, and in order to face the danger and the fear, the department is seething with overly macho behavior. These men routinely gloat about their sexual conquests and abhor anything that may make them look like anything less than the pinnacle of masculinity."[/QUOTE]

I understand about the masculine camraderie and the hyper-macho stuff. I expected it, and I thought it would be interesting to see how these co-called macho men are really scared shitless--the false bravardo, the swagger, the overcompensation, etc. That intrigues me and I was hopeful the show would explore it. The way it's written feels false to me. The smug, jokey depictions of the men in and out of the house grew tiresome for me. It was too much and I felt a lot of it was a result of being on F/X rather than a natural extension of the characters or the environment of the firehouse. Nearly all the men talk the same whether they are in the firehouse or not. You could have the characters swipe dialogue and it wouldn't make a difference. That's why I latched on to the chief's story because it was achingly real and it was a respite from all the other stuff.I was going to say the writing reminds me of Leary's awful film TWO IF BY SEA, but the show brings to me DREAM ON which became a one-trick pony after a while.



Perhaps, that's where my problem is. I don't see his tremendous sense of magnetism. A character's self-loathing could be quite interesting to explore, but the plotting for Tommy leaves me unmoved. It's akin to the old serials--you solve one big cliffhanger and you're off to the next. There comes a point when enough is enough, and the writers have to ease up on a character because it just becomes too ridiculous. The writers also overestimate Tommy's magnetism. I stilll don't buy it that every women he meets wants to sleep with him. I was thrilled to see Sarandon's character going after Franco. I'm all for suspension of disbelief, but I have my limits, and I especially don't buy these women finding Leary's character attractive, charismatic, appealing, etc when Franco has been bemoaning the lack of easy sex since the pilot episode.

To me this is one of my favorite aspects of the show, especially the scenes where the guys are around the kitchen table in the firehouse. I'm not going to try to speak for any of the other males around here, but in my experiences, if you get a group of guys together with no women around, the conversations are pretty realistic.

As I said, not speaking for other guys here, I may just have a wierd circle of friends.

But you probably are right about alot of the show being a guy thing.

Well, the show actually is pretty close to what you were hoping for, but instead of it being about how the firemen are really scared of doing their jobs, it's more about the "heroic" firemen being unable to keep their non-firefighting lives under control. We've had Lou's failed marriage, and the incident with Candy, which seems to have caused him to really start to lose it, plus he also did the whole thing with the poetry back in the beginning, showing a peek under the whole macho thing. The chief has the stuff with his wife, Tommy's home life is a wreck, and Franco was so used to shallow relationships that he completely tanked the one stable one he attempted.

Now sure, Garrity and Mike haven't had a whole lot of plot as of yet, but with Garrity's involvement with Tommy's sister and Mike potentially thinking about leaving the firehouse they look to have some more stuff to do this season.

Thing is, while we see everything that goes on, the people Tommy meets in bars and such aren't aware of all that. They know that he's a firefighter, pick up on his projected confidence, real or not, and end up getting interested.

And since when has Franco ever had a shortage of easy sex? It seems that not an episode goes by without him mentioning at least one person he's been with. Even this week's episode has him mentioning that he was "banging it out like a sledgehammer" and the comment about the "firecracker" girl at the party.

Of course, whether or not he's making this up just to save face is another matter entirely.

I think a lot of people are confused. I would have guessed it was Aretha too but a quick look at allmusic.com shows that the Fontella Bass version is available on over 100 CD's while I was not able to find any Aretha Franklin version.

http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p...3:8x67mysd9f2o

Great episode BTW...an episode that ends that strong is usually saved for a season finale.

For anyone who didn't know, the song at the end of this week's episode was by a band called the twilight singers. it features at least one member of the afghan whigs. the song is called bonnie brae, and i was going crazy when they busted it out.

You can spot Dulli's voice a mile away.

It put a big smile on my face, too.

The tape scene had me laughing so hard I had to pause the show so I wouldn't miss anything. Another scene like that was when they bring out the birthday cake and Sheila starts singing "Happy Birthday" and Charles Durning shouts her down "SHUT YOUR HOLE!".

me as well. btw, twilight singers most cd is quite good and reminds me very much of the whigs "gentlemen"

Maybe...I'm a guy and love it, but my sisters and mother love Rescue Me just as much as I do, and they are not guys. To each their own.

Great episode overall and I think this easily could be the best start to any season I've seen in a while...they're just nailing everything.

MATT