The last of the writers-strike MIAs have returned. After more than a year, the boys are back at FX's "Rescue Me -- perhaps you've noticed them tromping around a Lilliputian New York in the ads for the new "Larger Than Life Season" -- and the vacation seems to have lightened their spirits considerably.
In recent months, star Denis Leary and his co-creator/producer Peter Tolan have repeatedly promised a different show, one less bleak and heavy-footed than Season 4, and on this they most certainly deliver.
Where once "Rescue Me" wallowed in the endless dark nights of its characters' shattered souls, it is now so lighthearted it occasionally borders on glib.
There are reasons, besides audience unhappiness with how depressing the show had become. Part of the levity may be due to Tommy's (Denis Leary) still fairly solid sobriety, or to the fact that he is in a happily furious state of denial over his father's death last season.
Maybe it's because his crazy sister Maggie (Tatum O'Neal) is no longer involved with his fellow firefighter Sean (Stephen Pasquale) or because all the ghosts that have been haunting him were sick of him and all his selfish behavior. They were sick of him.
What little tension opens Season 5 -- whether or not Tommy will be declared Section 8 crazy and kicked out of the station, his ongoing divorce wars with Janet (Andrea Roth), the secret relationship between Colleen and "Black Shawn" (Larenz Tate) -- is played much more for comedy than booze-addled Irish Catholic pathos.
Watching Tommy go at it with Janet's new and physically challenged boyfriend (a remarkably tough and obnoxious Michael J. Fox) or attempting to persuade his daughter to break her new save-it-for-marriage vow, you have to wonder if Judd Apatow is lurking on the premises. Certainly the cheerfully obscene and occasionally violent firehouse round-robins, which previously served as contrast to the life-and-death tension of a firefighter's life, now seem more like centerpiece skits.
In fact, the shift is so marked that fans may wonder what the heck is going on.
Well, for one thing, a sexy French journalist is conducting interviews for a book commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11. During the scenes that do not involve the firefighters attempting to sleep with her, we are reminded of why Leary and Peter Tolan created "Rescue Me" in the first place: as a tribute to and exploration of the irrevocable damage done to New York firefighters on that terrible day.
