Rescue Me: Tommy's Got a Big Decision to Make

In the first few minutes of the season premiere of Rescue Me, Tommy Gavin died, went to hell, and came back to life again. And that's when things got really rough for him.

A funny thing happens when you die: Other people go on living. Tommy got to see the detritus left in the wake of his mess of a life—that is, if he'd actually died—and uplifting it wasn't. I don't mean to get all Christmas-y in June, but unlike George Bailey in It's A Wonderful Life, Tommy didn't end up learning the greater value of his existence—only the consequences of his reckless, self-destructive ways.

Considering that Tommy flatlined, it's not altogether surprising that the episode itself felt rather flat and lifeless. Haggard and gray, Tommy looked not even like death warmed over so much as death barely defrosted as he moved tentatively back into the world. The washed-out color tones and the improbable sequence of Mick driving the wrong way on the highway left me wondering, at times, whether Tommy was dreaming or in a coma. But Rescue Me has always employed all sorts of time- and reality-shifting devices, so it's highly unlikely that the show would bother to get that contrived.

Tommy is plainly at an existential crossroads. Blessed (or cursed, in his case) with a second chance, he faces a set of interrelated choices: booze or no booze, good or evil, life or death. As Uncle Teddy put it, "Go to hell. Go to heaven. However you want it to play out, it's up to you." Later on, his dead cousin Jimmy told him, "If I were you, I'd stock up on some prayer."

All good advice. But free will and Tommy Gavin haven't always worked so well together. He's at his best when, as in a fire, he acts purely out of instinct. And unlike most of us, Tommy's basic instinct isn't about self-preservation, but rather about doing what is necessary in the moment. That lets him save the lives of others, if not his own.

Doom and fatalism hang heavily over Rescue Me, and what last night's show set up is the question of whether, even after confronting the prospect of eternal damnation, Tommy can still redeem himself. Or is he just too far gone to change his ways and dig himself back out from the brink of hell?

That's some serious ground to cover, and so the premiere ended up feeling more like a transitional episode than an explosive and energizing launch into a new season. We didn't get much action at the firehouse, and a bit more of the banter would have helped balance out the gravity of Tommy's choices. Some scenes fell flat, such as the one at the bar where Tommy's near-death was turned into a tourist attraction of sorts. The chalk outline was a nice touch, but I'm not sure anyone would have cared enough about Tommy's quasi-resurrection to actually take pictures with him. This is New York after all.

But Tommy lighting up a cigarette with an altar candle and making the sign of the cross with a bottle of booze? And Lou's vision that heaven is "free hot donuts on floating trays" and hell is Barbra Streisand glaring at you for eternity? Yeah, there's plenty of life left in Rescue Me. The bigger question is, how much life does Tommy Gavin have left in him?