Television is passive entertainment.  Traditionally it has been meant to inform, divert, and amuse.  In this last decade we’ve seen the meaning of television change.  Now it focuses, reflects, and exposes.  For all the raw bullshit that this has put us through (America’s Next Top Model, The Bachelor, Glen Beck), the shift has also managed to create grittier, more realistic shows.  The best television dramas have taken their clues from The Sopranos and now operate much more like independent films—showing the human condition at its rawest state of being (Mad Men and Damages are two great examples).  Even in their lighter moments they portray characters that are weird, twisted, and well… human.  Different than us, but unmistakably the same, the most modern characters are as complicated as the viewers that they represent. 

So imagine this:  You’re in a shrink’s office.  You and your wife are there together, holding hands, trying to save your marriage.  You detail to the psychiatrist why you are there:  your best friend and cousin died in the World Trade Center, dozens of your co-workers died along with him, your city has forgotten you, your wife kidnapped your children and hid them from you, then she hooked up with your brother (who may have impregnated her before he was murdered), your son was hit by a drunk driver and died in your arms, your uncle shot the killer and went to jail for it.  Everyone you know thinks that you are an asshole, an alcoholic, and a womanizer of the first degree.  You and your wife are there because you want to save what’s left of the heaping wreck that is your marriage.

When you finish explaining this, the counselor gets up and walks to his telephone.  He makes a call:  “Yeah Dick, Don Weiss.  You got me.  Almost.  I almost fell for it you rotten bastard but then it just went way over the top with the dead son and the killing of the drunk driver… What?  Oh, don’t mess with me Dick…” 

Trust me Don, no one is messing with you.  It’s just time for another season of Rescue Me.

There is no better introduction to the particular combination of pathos, humor, morality, and anti-morality that is Rescue Me.  The series, about New York City firefighter Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary), his dysfunctional family, and his firehouse buddies, has recently entered its fifth season in the United States on the FX Network. 

Leary, whose first claim to fame was 1993’s wonderful mess of a song I’m an Asshole (voted #1 in an Australian youth radio poll) continues to hold the show together without missing a beat.  After finally coming to grips with the fact that he is an alcoholic who can’t drink, this season finds him pushed back off the wagon by a French seductress and his mistress Sheila.  Of course, with the drinking comes the ghosts that haunt him, and in true Dickensonian style they are still played by a variety of characters that have died during the life of the series.

While the other firefighting characters mostly play foil to Leary’s Gavin, they also exist as well rounded anti-heroes in their own right.  There is Franco, the humanistic Hispanic and conspiracy theorist nut.  Lou, the overweight middle-aged hopelessly romantic comic foil.  “Black Sean”, who insists on sleeping with Tommy’s daughter.  “White” Sean, now a cancer-ridden numbskull.  Mike, the other numbskull, who, well, really is just stupid. 
 
Rescue Me consistently delivers the statement of the great, silent, majority—not just of Americans, but of tragic working class heroes everywhere.  Those who put their cities, their nation, and their communities before their own lives.  Those who come back from fires could just as easily be soldiers coming back from wars.  They are wrecked inside—torn up, and having lost themselves they do whatever they can to stay afloat.  They are not the smartest.  They drink, they cheat.  They lie.  They joke.  They are sarcastic comic heroes on the outside and wretched villains on the inside. 
   
Maybe we could all learn a lesson from these characters.  The human condition is not a light thing to deal with, and in times of uncertainty perhaps we would all be a little better off if we could all sit back, share a stoic laugh, drink a whiskey, and embrace the flaws of our own inner hero. 

Or maybe then we’d just be assholes too.

Rescue Me currently airs in the United States on Tuesdays at 10pm EST on the FX Network.
 

Tim Rich is a freelance writer and man about town based in Portland and Bar Harbor, Maine.  He is a professional political activist.  He spends his free time hiking, reading, and preparing for the National Toboggan Championships, which he fully intends to win.