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After nearly dying, Rescue Me’s Tommy vows he’s going to change … again

When Tommy told everyone he was going to give up drinking and smoking, and start being a better man, a better father and a better husband, no one believed him. Why should they?

- Season 6, Episode 2 - "Change"

It’s not that I thought Rescue Me’s Tommy Gavin was going to suddenly get right with the world and stop drinking so soon after he nearly died, but I didn’t think that the writers would have him run around and publicly proclaim that he was going to get sober and then have him cave in to temptation, fail in yet another attempt to get sober, all within the same episode.

So depressing, yet, unfortunately, so realistic.

When Tommy told the guys at the firehouse that he wasn’t going to drink anymore, they burst into laughter. “I almost got assassinated,” Tommy said, by way of explaining how he was going to make amends with everyone, even, weirdly, to Sean Garrity who wasn’t quite sure what to do with Tommy’s verbal contrition. I kept waiting for Tommy to utter a punchline, only it never came.

Later, when Tommy tried to make amends with Janet, she wasn’t buying what he was selling any more than his colleagues were. She mocked his all too frequent mantras, “‘I’ve changed!’ ‘I’ve got feelings!’ ‘I’ve stopped drinking … for real this time.'”

“So everything’s going to be different, starting right now?” she asked him, almost daring him to prove her wrong. Then Janet recalled how she used to have fun, be lighter in her outlook on the world, in stark contrast her mindset today. And she largely blamed Tommy for the change. “Everything I do now is coated in anger and cynicism and ash,” she said mournfully. “I hate what you’ve made me.”

Then, there’s their daughter Colleen, who, as Lou observed was “knockin’ ‘em back like a Kennedy” after she’d sucked down four double-vodkas at the now Gavin family-run bar. Tommy thought he’d give her a dose of “tough love” by buying her a ton of drinks, or some baloney like that which he, for some bizarre reason, thought would get her to give up drinking. (Shawn called him out on the idiocy of this plan, but to no avail.)

But Colleen’s a Gavin, therefore not only did she keep ordering more drinks, but she started brawling with another woman. The two were nearly falling down onto the bar room floor, not far from the spot where Colleen’s father, shot by her uncle, nearly bled to death. Assessing the situation, Tommy decided that, “The world is not cooperating,” with his attempts to get clean. Life is too hard, apparently, and he needed to take this sobriety business more slowly. Thus he raised a glass and took a big gulp of whiskey.

What was really heartbreaking was seeing this cycle repeat itself, from Tommy to Colleen, with no real end in sight. If Tommy can’t commit himself to get sober and stay sober, what makes him think that he can persuade his daughter to get help? She, after all, learned at the feet of the master. It’s not as though watching her father self-destruct multiple times over, the death of her brother and her police officer uncle, her parents’ on-again/off-again sometimes violent estrangement, the Gavin family’s epic alcoholism and the shooting of her father by another family member has put her in the best, healthiest emotional state.

My favorite moment from this “Change” episode: The shirtless “Uncle” Franco and Shawn making Tommy feel physically inadequate, while Franco told Tommy that he would’ve donned a shirt — his had been soiled by baby spit-up — but that none of Tommy’s fit.

A runner-up: Mickey saying it’d take a bazooka to get Tommy to stop drinking.

Photo Credit: FX

Categories: | Episode Reviews | General | Rescue Me | TV Shows |

One Response to “After nearly dying, Rescue Me’s Tommy vows he’s going to change … again”

July 7, 2010 at 11:15 AM

Problem with the show is that I know there are about what? 52 episodes left? So there’s no way he was going to go back on the waggon.

Funny thing for me is that I don’t get theappeal of alcohol. It just doesn’t taste good to me. And every time I am even a bit drunk I want to cuddle. Meh. Where’s my small shirt…

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