Rescue Me – Heroes at Ground Zero

The first scene before Rescue Me‘s theme song began and the opening credits rolled was remarkable in one significant way: Tommy Gavin was uncharacteristically silent.

He, Lou, Needles, and the Chief stood there, looking out at the Ground Zero construction site where, a decade after the terrorist attacks, nothing has been built yet. And no one said anything. To them, it’s not a mere construction site. It’s a graveyard.

Later, at a restaurant, after the guys blamed politics and politicians for the fact that there’s no standing monument there, the Chief gave a stirring monologue. Drawing an analogy to his experiences fighting in the Vietnam War, where six guys he knew died, Chief Feinberg said that visiting the Vietnam War Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. years later didn’t move him like he thought it would. What did, and does, move him to this day are the memories of those men with whom he served.

He pulled out photos of the guys who died in the war that he carries around with him — including a few whom he led — as well as a letter that one of the soldiers had written for his wife in case he was killed in action. “You want to memorialize somebody, you do it here,” Feinberg said, pointing to his heart, urging the guys to tell the stories of their fallen comrades and remember them that way, not by relying on a stone wall to do it for them.

It was a powerful start to a somber episode, on a show that’s becoming more universally relatable as the nation emotionally girds itself to mark the 10th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Pulling back a bit from his trademark insane behavior, Tommy was distinctly rattled by Feinberg’s talk, by looking at the site, and by finding Jimmy’s heartfelt letter that he left for Sheila in the event that he died on the job — which of course he did, along with hundreds of other firefighters on that crisp September morning. Tommy’s unease over this whole anniversary has only been growing.

Even the sophomoric humor of the ridiculous “dilemma” of Sean’s hot “farter” girlfriend, and the jokes about gas masks, had all the air taken out of them when the guys walked into a condo to follow up on a reported gas leak only to find a father and his two young children dead on the sofa, as they’d snuggled up to watch TV together. Death was everywhere, lurking, coloring everything.

In fact, Lou — who fell for Tommy’s letter trick and went after those red velvet cupcakes like a mouse going for cheese in a trap — said that both he and Tommy, along with a lot of other firefighters, have been like the walking dead since 9/11, all trying to fill the metaphoric hole in their hearts left by the terrorist attacks with food or booze, so they’ll feel whole again … which they can’t. Sick of this “9/11″ BS that has been hanging over them, Lou told Tommy to “Go bury yourself in that hole … for God’s sake, just get it over with.”

Though Tommy did go to Ground Zero, to that gaping hole in the earth, he didn’t “bury” himself, nor did he take a drink. He didn’t do any of the destructive things he wanted to do after Lou declared them already dead, save for the fact that their hearts were still somehow beating. It reminded me of how, a few episodes ago, Tommy didn’t actually ram his truck through the bookstore window and set ablaze the display that was commercially exploiting this anniversary, even though he imagined doing so in his head.

Instead, Tommy’s retreating inward. He’s checking to see if each member of his family is still breathing. He’s writing goodbye letters. He’s being unusually quite and very un-Gavinesque. This means that I’m counting the minutes until he explodes and releases his rage somewhere, somehow. Hopefully he’ll be able to process all the ugliness that’s simmering mere millimeters beneath the surface of his skin without cracking open the vodka bottle or hurting anyone.

Clacked by Meredith O'Brien
on Aug 18, 2011 @ 14:24 EST5EDT