I agree with the mention of the Worcester fire, I live in that area, and thought of it instantly when he was talking about it. Thanks for posting a link so other can understand.

I have to say that the show has NOT jumped the shark. Yes, it had been inconsitent, but it still is a solid show and has been (for the most part) true to itself. Story lines come and go, some work while other do not, but the underlying themes remain. Now if Tommy get a brain tumor or something, then we can start cooking some shark fin soup.

Does anyone know where I can watch this episode online?
I have the season set as my #1 priority on my DVR and for some reason it didn't record. I was out of the country for a family emergency, and was unable to even catch the re-runs. Please help me, Thank you.

Does anyone know where I can watch this episode online? I have DVR and for some reason, it didn't record. Please help, it's the only one I haven't seen, and since I love this show, I am going crazy, lol.

I'm having difficulty deciding if this season is inferior or if it's just that the commercial breaks are now so long that that the show seems choppy and unengrossing. I'm at the point where i may just stop watching and wait til this season comes out on dvd.

sorry....i lied...i have one more thing to say here...

re: troy

i agree that the whole getting the "autograph" was odd. how about troy is, as people have mentioned, an undercover insurance investigator. the insurance company lets sheila know that all is about to be resolved so tommy and sheila will speak more freely about the whole thing in troy's presence. troy get's tommy's john hancock and ends up as a witness against them based on what he's picked up from pillow-talk with the ever-so-stable sheila.

that i kind of like. and my point? maybe leary has gotten all literary on us (in his own way). the guy's name is troy...as in he's a trojan horse, slipped into the enemy camp to bring about their doom (an idea stolen, i might add, from the thomas crown affair).

that would be vaguely interesting. but if troy is simply a comic relief character who is oddly obsessive about tommy's jeans, then we're officially in the realm of shark-dom.

re: the episode called pussified

speaking to jim's comment above...that thought had run through my head (ooohhh...look how deftly is handling us...making the show suck and calling an episode pussified....what tommy gavin inspired madness awaits us in further episodes?...i'm all atwitter!), thoug at this point the whole season would have to be called pussified and leary would have to be going for a slow burn and leaning REALLY heavily on the good faith of his audience to pull this off. i as much as anyone hope this ship rights itself. but things need to change quickly.

as for movies with leary...all you need to see is the thomas crown affair, the best "bond" movie of the last decade. there you've got a proto tommy gavin pulling himself out of a downward spiral, with a lot of help from renée russo, and actually becoming a more interesting guy, as opposed to the current incarnation of gavin on rescue me, who has seems to have pulled himself out of a downward spiral to become a boring twat.

and i guess, certainly only for now, that's all i have to say about that.

I was going to leave a longer diatribe back, but I realized something...

Being an fan of anything while on the internet makes you way more ignorant than you really are, myself included.

People's opinions seem to come out in this steady crazy stream that just doesn't make sense sometimes.

I trust Leary, as he's never disappointed me yet, from his comedy specials to even his movies (well, at least Suicide Kings was good)...

Jump the shark, my ass.

Leary knows what he is doing. Just look at the title for this ep: "Pussified."

The Chief got the short end of the stick, I agree. Flushing him down the toilet is quite a metaphor that seems to fit within the context of the characters and how they think - while almost breaking the fourth wall as a disgraceful way to send off Jack McGee, if the rumors are true.

While I don't think the show is as good as prior seasons, Tommy's gone through so much in such a relatively short period of time that it seems almost like dark comedy.

While Andy Sipowicz weathered the loss of his wife, son and partner, plus dealt with serious alcoholism and racism-related issues, but this was over many, many more seasons.

While the show does suffer from too many self-aggrandizing Denis Leary monologues, and disjointed storytelling - it's still interesting, very watchable television for me. Lou and company have at least earned enough goodwill with me that even though it's not necessarily great, I still want to see what happens to these characters.

I have so much disdain for most network TV (National Bingo Night makes me want to vomit) - at least Rescue Me's never boring, or predictable which is the instant show kiss of death for me. And I still catch myself laughing out loud at least once a show. Sure the show grinds to a halt when Teddy's on. But Maggie still makes me laugh.

Nona's obsession with Tommy seem irrational? If he's as much of a legend as Troy seems to say, wouldn't Tommy Gavin be a notch on her bedpost? Does it seem weird that Tommy would try to date Nona while semi-reconciling with Janet? Well, he'd always seemed ambivalent about going out with her, and then Nona forced his hand for tonight's date when she repaired his carburetor-free Caddy by threatening to humiliate him in his house to his coworkers.

Leary getting too many glamourous monologues? Scurti seems to get the best jokes.

Is Ritchie a one-note joke? Yes. Is it still an amusing joke for me? Yes. But I also like the idea that he's portrayed as not some stereotypical helpless, useless retarded person, but someone with the same base desires and ability to act on them as all of us.

On the whole, I think television's better off with the show on, rather than off. Last I checked, Rescue Me's never tried to be The Shield (whose consistency over its run has been incredible), and it's not fair to compare it to the long-form lovingly crafted greatest show ever - The Wire - as a dramedy, I feel like Rescue Me still holds its own.

In the interest of full disclosure, I watched Studio 60 all the way through the end. Perhaps I have a soft spot for hard luck cases, I don't know.

BTW, how HOT was Mrs. Merritt in the closet? Andrea Roth in the hotpants? Damn.

re: shark jumping

maybe there's active shark jumping, a la fonzie, and then there's incremental, "the show changes so much that it doesn't have any of the characteristics that got you hooked in the first place" shark jumping. i suppose if you could saunter over a shark, that's what rescue me seems to have done.

let's see what i used to like about this show...

in a nutshell, it was about bad-ass firefighters being badass firefighters. now it seems to be about badass firefighters being metrosexuals. you can call it "character development" if you like, but if i want that kind of character development i'll find something to watch on lifetime.

i liked it when tommy talked to dead people (except for the jesus/mary interlude...that was just bad). i liked it when tommy was a badass. badasses make for interesting viewing. tommy used to have demons, and that's part of what made him interesting. now tommy's an impotent, snivelling little twit. again, if i wanted to watch this sort of thing i'd tune into dr. phil.

i liked it when the show was about camaraderie at the firehouse, instead of the firehouse being simply a device to bring all these disparate characters and their disparate plot lines together in the same place. they don't even seem to like each other any more.

my feeling is that leary is a one-trick pony when it comes to writing. and i happened to like that particular pony. rescue me at its best was part of a logical arc from his stand up. the problem is that for whatever reason (perhaps all that "critical acclaim") leary feels the need to branch out and take the show in new directions. and either those directions suck outright, or leary doesn't have the chops to lead down that road.

whatever the case may be....if it doesn't get better quick, i hope it just gets done.