really? all i remember is him coming in with the remote and someone saying the dead guy had the biggest. I dont' think they ever said if he was bigger than franco

It was definitely the dead fireman that had the biggest "hose." Made his hot widow that much more believable. And if Tommy *did* have the most below, that'd just further the nepotism claim.

Tommy's a pussy magnet because he's a bad boy not because he has a ginormous hose. The women that throw themselves at him are the type that like it dangerous.

I agree somewhat, but I think his telling her the story about "stealing" his daughter might come to something.

I meant of the living firemen. Good laugh from the revelation of the dead fireman's hose, though, at the time.

I hate to admit it but the ex-wife semi-rape situation felt totally real to me. I have a "friend" who had the exact same situation play out with the exact same type of discussion at it's conclusion.

Dust
Probie
Crazy woman phone call day

I saw Al Sharpton was listed in the credits as himself. So it seems he filmed it for the show.

That was definitely a rape. I don't quite know what to think of it. I'm waiting to see how the show handles it. I wouldn't put it past Tommy (after all, he's a right bastard) and I dig the power play angle of it versus Johnny, but it's an icky direction to take (and even ickier to take lightly). I'm taking a wait and see attitude but I'm a little wary.

Don't think there was any uncle ted this week.

johnny is a pi, right? how does he gets the siren thing on his car? I don't think pis can use those.

edit: as for the Al Sharpton thing, I think he just did it to poke fun at himself. I think unlike Jesse Jackson, Al has a sense of humor.

Johnny is an actual NYPD detective.

And Rev Al is a fame whore. Gotta love 'im.

Speaking of Brokeback, I don't ever think I've seen a thread in this forum with so many guys talking about the size of guys' hoses.

Gah, I didn't realize this already started..I was trying to watch S2 before this started so I could watch it this season

Well, blame it on that episode where Kenny had to help Franco out when the c*ck-ring got stuck on his hose.

I still want to know what happened to OTHER COP BROTHER Timo!

He is serving time for murdering his borther's girlfriend's husband.

"I don't want scrambled eggs."

"Dude, if I'm not gay at all, how could you possibly be more gay than I am?"

"...use your logic!"


Who wants to bet that Janet will be impregnated with the Gavin male heir, and the rest of the season will be devoted to figuring out whether it's Johhny's kid or Tommy's kid, and who knows.

Edited per Gil's post immediately below, and to fix some atrocious grammar

Gavin. Garrity is Sean.

D'oh!

Uh ohhh...

Just re-watched an episode from the first season, where Tommy and Janet hook up while she was drunk. Johnny finds out and calls Tommy up to find out if it was true. At one point Johnny says "Ah you lucky prick, I can't even get my wife to blow me."

Just a little script error. Forgivable, but still.

`Rescue Me' writer fans the inflamed
After FX's firefighter antihero crosses a line, one of its co-creators gets an earful online.
By Scott Collins, Times Staff Writer
June 26, 2006

Here are a couple of things Peter Tolan, the co-creator of FX's "Rescue Me," learned the hard way last week:

1. If you have your lead character beat and rape his estranged wife, don't expect viewers everywhere to welcome the scene as the culmination of a complicated dramatic arc.

2. Trying to explain yourself on an Internet message board can be like attempting to lecture on Shakespeare in the middle of a rugby scrum.

Taking risks comes naturally to the creators of "Rescue Me"; the series, after all, is a delicately balanced comedy-drama that explores the screwed-up lives of a group of fictional New York firefighters, the same fraternity who were dubbed "America's Heroes" after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11. But last week's episode, co-written by Tolan and star Denis Leary, went way too far for many fans and critics.

In the closing scene, after Tommy Gavin (Leary) and soon-to-be-ex-wife Janet (Andrea Roth) argued over custody of a chaise longue, he knocked her onto a sofa, ripped off her clothes and forced himself on her sexually. Then he apologized — not for the rape, but for tearing her shirt. ("It wasn't one of my favorites," Janet replied dazedly, a line that, in suggesting her lack of anger over the violation, did as much to incense some viewers as the act itself.)

Accept Tommy as a boozy, faithless, neurotic lout? Sure. He redeems himself by risking his hide to save people trapped in burning buildings.

But accept him as a rapist? No way, said many viewers. Not goin' there.

The Chicago Tribune's Maureen Ryan blogged that the rape scene "hit a sickening new low." Newark Star-Ledger critic Alan Sepinwall attacked "Rescue Me" for "a pattern of misogyny and pathetic characterizations of women" and said the scene "made me uncomfortable and unhappy in a way even the most extreme TV and film almost never does." Fans began heatedly deconstructing the scene on Web forums.

Enter Tolan, a veteran screenwriter ("Analyze This") who says he innocently believed he could expand the discussion by posting his thoughts on a popular website, Television Without Pity.

Perhaps it was the site's name that gave him pause. Before posting his first comment, "I sat there and thought, 'Should I do this? My gut is saying no,' " he said in a phone interview Friday. "I thought maybe I could explain some things.

"But all you do," he has since concluded, "is paint a target on your back."

Two media trends are fueling the fire over "Rescue Me." One has to do with the evolution of the series drama, the other with the growing role of the Internet in shaping and amplifying debate over TV programming.

Since HBO's "The Sopranos" premiered in 1999, over-the-top antiheroes have become a staple of "edgy" TV fare. Vic Mackey, the leader of the anti-gang unit on FX's "The Shield," killed one of his team members and routinely tortures suspects. On Fox's "24," heroin addiction was a bugbear for counter-terrorism agent Jack Bauer.

Leary's Tommy Gavin fits into this antihero trend. Women and vodka bring him misery, but he can't leave either alone. Some fans, though, clearly don't want to contemplate Tommy as something darker than an essentially good-natured screw-up. Tolan agreed that that squeamishness may have much to do with Tommy's chosen profession.

"You're certainly not used to seeing an antihero who has been traditionally portrayed in media as a hero," Tolan said. "Especially in the days after 9/11, 'America's Heroes' and all that. We've always been turning that image on its head."

The Internet, meanwhile, continues to grow as an outlet for impassioned TV fans — and series creators like Tolan are, one way or another, learning to adjust. As the message boards burned with debate over "Rescue Me" last week, Gemstar-TV Guide announced that it would buy the popular TV site Jump the Shark, which the company hopes will give it improved access to die-hard viewers. In the forums at Television Without Pity — TWOP, to initiates — users analyze plot points and story arcs with a zealotry that would not be out of place in a debate over Mideast politics or abortion law.

TWOP started in 2001, but Tolan learned of it only last month, from an article in Entertainment Weekly. Surprised by the strong reaction viewers had to the rape scene, he thought he would use the TWOP arena to remind them of its context within the series.

He wrote: "I'll admit this is extremely dicey stuff. The idea of any woman 'enjoying' being raped is repellent, and caused all of us (and the network) a great deal of concern. But again, these are seriously damaged people who are unable to express their emotions — and so expression through brutality has become expected."

Many TWOP denizens were pleased that the executive producer of a series had bothered to join a discussion. But others were hardly star-struck, including one who suggested that Tolan was merely making fancy excuses for a poorly written script.

Tolan followed up with a protest that some of the discussion was "combative."

"The scene was not written to be provocative," he told me Friday. Asked if he believed what Tommy did to Janet constituted rape, he paused and replied: "Yeah, I guess I'd have to say that. That's the technical [term]. But we never called it that, because we were trying to hook more into the relationship."

Will the rumpus from fans affect the rest of this season's stories? Probably not. Tuesday's episode was the fourth of 13 episodes. Nos. 9 and 10 are being shot now; Tolan is currently rewriting the 11th. But Tolan made a point of noting that Tommy will get his "karmic payback" for the rape in a future episode: "There is a consequence, and it's an unexpected one."

Meanwhile, Tolan has gotten a bit of karmic payback himself. He clearly feels a little burned by his online adventure. But his experience may prove useful for future producers who find themselves squaring off against an empowered fan base. He also can't say he wasn't warned.

"I've actually talked to some friends, some of whom are actors who are very well known and other writers, and I've said, 'How do you find it to be dealing with your fans of your shows?' To a person, they said, 'You know, it's probably not a good idea to get involved.' "

So does that mean farewell to the message boards?

"I think I'll go back to say I won't be back," he said.

According to Peter Tolan...

Link

I don't mind so much that they had the rape since the character is pretty far gone (I mean, he pretty much beat the shit out of Shiela already). My concern is more with how they will treat it on a show that sometimes shows a pretty short attention span. I guess stay tuned.