Rescue Me Recap (Zombies)

Title: “Zombies”
Original Airdate: July 11, 2006

Brushing his teeth in the bathroom, Tommy bursts into tears, which he hides when Lou interrupts him. Tommy heads out to a brutal street hockey game with the crew. (I’m beginning to think Leary puts these scenes in so he can get a workout without leaving work.) During the game the other captain mentions the Probie’s potential transfer to Tommy, who tells him hands off. Also, Sean gets checked and hurts his ankle, and the guys win money on the game.

Back at the firehouse, Sean asks for some painkillers, which Tommy supplies (after the obligatory heckling). He tells Sean to take the brown pills, as they other pills are leftovers from when he was a junkie.

At Janet’s, making dinner, Johnny is a model boyfriend. He’s involved with the kids, he helps out around the house, and he’s never sarcastic. Janet looks a little bored.

As the crew bitches about how to spend the money, Sean comes in, feeling revitalized after taking some of Tommy’s pills. The Chief then breaks the news to the crew that according to new regulations they must remove all their porn from the firehouse. They tear through, picking up their trashy mags, then notice Sean is out cold at the table, his face planted in Lou’s spinach dip. Guess he didn’t take the brown pills. Nope, he took the Somunal, a sleeping pill which apparently makes a person sleep-walk, sleep-drive, and sleep-eat.

As they deposit Sean’s unconscious body upstairs, the crew takes a couple very important moments to discuss the whether liking real boobs makes you un-American (uh-oh, nobody call HUAC on Tommy) before they’re called away to a fire.

The fire takes place in a converted warehouse, which Tommy warns the crew can be kind of labyrinthine. As it happens, Lou and Franco get turned around and trapped in a room by falling debris. After rescuing a couple people, Tommy has a vision of his dead son, which he drags himself away from to break Lou and Franco out.

I’ll say this: messed up as Tommy is, the guy knows his way around a fire. He’s fearless about everything except his personal life. His total capability as a firefighter is contrasted with his total ineptitude as a husband and father, which makes him really interesting to watch. It’s like a train wreck you can’t look away from. A train wreck that fights fires? Yeah, my analogy just died. At least Franco and Lou are still alive.

After the fire, everyone’s shaken. Tommy fights to hold back tears and Lou blames himself for messing up, something not even a pep talk from Franco can fix.

Zombie Sean wakes up, spinach dip still covering half his face, the other half of which is scratched from the hockey game. In a semi-catatonic state, he drives himself to the grocery store, where he leaves his car in the middle of the road. He then picks up, nibbles on, and discards food, insults customers, clerks, and a baby, and steals food as “a reward” for firefighting before leaving the store. A cop tries to write him a ticket, but he bails. He then shows up at Maggie’s house to find her with Nacho, who he stoically punches, prompting Maggie to say Sean’s her new boyfriend.

The scene is hilarious; it’s as if Sean is stoned, has ADD, and took truth serum all at once. It makes me wish I could watch The Sean Show at some point, like the Garrity version of Ed TV, wherein he’d traipse around being an adorable lunkhead 24-7. Count me in.

Back at the firehouse, the cop, clerks, and baby meet the just-arrived crew to try to find Sean, who they accuse of being “a brutally honest, scary, walk-the-Earth type of zombie”…which Sean completely validates by showing up disoriented, holding a bunny, talking stream-of-consciousness.

Angela (Johnny’s ex) calls Tommy to set up how they’ll go to dinner that night. They’re headed for a restaurant hosted by Shirley, a bitchy girl Angela used to know who’s up on all the Gavin gossip and is likely to spill it to Johnny or Janet if they show up at the restaurant together.

After he hangs up, Sheila calls, wanting to hang out with Tommy, encouraging him to talk to someone about his “crying jags.” She guesses he has a date, then tries to make him jealous by saying she’s “sampling” various guys. It almost seems to be working…

…if Tommy weren’t about to go make out with Angela under the guise of rehearsing for their pseudo-date. They do a little practice move-making on each other so it’ll look natural at the dinner, which both of them seem fairly enthusiastic about. Angela mentions their smooching will eventually result in a “deep tongue kiss with the mutual groping and the tit rub” on the sidewalk. Huh. There’s a new expression for Tommy: elated.

Probie calls his roommate to say he’ll be home late. The roommate seems irritated on the phone, but really he’s happy because he gets to spend more time with some “big boy” at the house who he gives an affectionate hug too. Ohhh….better watch it, roomie. Hell hath no fury like a Probie scorned—just ask his ex Theresa.

Lou has a drink with his uncle, who’s dying from cancer. Lou explains how he’s upset about how he messed up at work and in life, but the uncle gives him a little life-lesson about how you need to appreciate the people you have saved.

At the restaurant, Angela and Tommy talk to Shirley (played by Taylor “Tell It To My Heart” Dayne) for a minute before launching right into their kiss routine. Tommy seems quite easily bowled over by Angela, and I don’t blame him. She’s one of the more interesting female characters on the show in a while, and I hope they don’t turn her into a bitch just to serve some random plot.

Angela notices her crazy stalker ex-boyfriend outside, so Tommy heads out to scare him off. “Sebastian,” the ex, is a little chickenshit whippersnapper (who, unless my mind deceives me, I last recall motorboating Samantha on Sex and the City) and heads out quickly. Angela follows Tommy outside and engages in the groping maneuver described earlier. Needless to say, their tonsil hockey gets Shirley’s attention, and she gives someone a call. Could it be…

…Janet, who just called Tommy, urgently wanting to meet him at his house? When she gets there, she doesn’t look particularly irritated. No…she looks more aroused. (It’s the shoes that tip me off that she has only one thing on her mind. They’re definitely f— me shoes. And I guess that’s a f— me trenchcoat that she rips off to reveal black lingerie.) In full dominating mode, she pushes Tommy down on the couch and roughly has sex with him. Unlike last time, there’s no question they are both into it.

Afterwards, she moves right on to talking about their kids and how Colleen is going to see the school counselor to help talk through things, like her grief about Connor. Seeing an opportunity to resolve his problem with the crying, Tommy agrees to go with Colleen.

Angela calls to ask about how things went with Janet. But Janet didn’t know about Tommy’s dinner with Angela. So who was Shirley talking to? It’s Sheila, who at that very moment is having a loud, “I’ll kill you”, dish-throwing, cabinet-kicking hissy fit in her kitchen. Ruh-roh.

Next time: Denis Leary is seriously living out a male fantasy, having three hot chicks fight over him. He’s got the history with Janet and chemistry with Angela…but Sheila is one crazily devoted ex…who do you think round 1 will go to?

Julie is a GMMR recapper extraordinaire, but she also has her own fabulous TV website. Head over to TV and Sympathy to read more from Julie.