Rescue Me

Starring/Written/Produced by: Denis Leary and some other guys.

What kid growing up didn't want to be a big, strong, heroic firefighter? Running into burning buildings, kicking down doors, throwing frightened women and children over your shoulder, scooping up the family pet, then running out again into the undying gratitude of your adoring public. Sounds great right? Well, I've never actually done any fire fightin' myself, but I get the feeling that the stories told in this FX original series are much closer to the reality of this dangerous profession than any childhood fantasy.

This is New York, post 9/11. Six years after the events of that fateful day the ubiquitous "never forget" bumper stickers, t-shirts and hats fill the city. Plastered onto the cars, torsos and heads of people who were miles away from ground zero when the towers came crashing down. For the firefighters who were there, however, "forgetting" isn't an option, it is something they do temporarily with lots of whiskey and the comaraderie of the their brothers in arms.

Broken homes, broken spirits and broken lives. These characters hide behind macho bravado and the fickle status of "hero" in order to get back on that truck one more time, get out alive one more time and perhaps find some kind of salvation at the end of it all. The dead haunt them (literally in the case of Leary's character) and the fires they extinguish serve as a fitting metaphor for the fires inside themselves that they can never hope to put out.

Check out a couple episodes of Rescue Me, then come back and tell me you still dream of being a firefighter. If you can, then you are made out of stronger stuff than I.

Score: 10/12 monkeys