Rescue Me – third episode

Tommy takes the crew and fire truck to where Colleen is living with her boyfriend. Tommy charges in and demands to see Colleen. Colleen comes out of bedroom wearing bikini bottoms and a t-shirt. All the guys stare and Tommy looks at Sean and tells him not to put her in his “spank bank.” They all cover their eyes. She refuses to leave and Tommy hits the boyfriend in the nose right on his nose ring. When Tommy goes home and tells Janet, she starts berating him and saying what a prick and bad guy he is She tells Tommy he must apologize to boyfriend if they ever want Colleen back. She’s holding the baby, walking back and forth, criticizing Tommy and the baby stops crying. They decide it helps when she says bad things about him - - maybe that puts the baby to sleep. So that may be the program for a while. Janet leaves the room with baby saying, “Your daddy is a selfish, selfish prick,” and I think the baby giggles.

Sean finds Tommy reading a magazine about ED. He’s been freaked out ever since Sheila said he couldn’t get it up. He tells Sean he’s reading about John McCain. Then Sean asks what’s on TV, and Tommy said an advertisement for face cream. Tommy, of course, says it’s a gay cream. Sean remarks, “If you want cream on your face, blow your boyfriend.” They both laugh, but Tommy is intrigued and gets some from Mikey who has some in his locker. Mikey asks Tommy to go out to dinner with him as he needs to talk about his mother. They do and Mikey tells Tommy his mother wants him to kill her as she’s nearly dead already from cancer. Tommy says he has to obey her wishes. Mikey mentions using a pillow, but Tommy says no -- what with the struggling, arms flailing, muffled screaming – way too much work. He said morphine would be the best. So Mikey ends up in the hospital where he swipes some packets of something from a nurse’s cart. In one of the final scenes, Mikey’s mom dies while he’s asleep in the chair beside her bed. She died without his help. He tells her, “Sorry I let you down – sorry I didn’t kill you.”

Chief Jerry goes to son’s gay marriage ceremony as best man and says how happy he is for them. A complete turn-around from earlier times. Chief Reilly had earlier deleted arson info from Tommy’s file, thus letting Tommy off the hook. He told Tommy that’s what friends do for each other. I’m beginning to realize something bad is going to happen.

In final scene, Janet’s sitting down and baby cries. She picks up baby and starts crying herself. Lou, Sean, Franco and Tommy meet Colleen and boyfriend. The purpose is to let the boyfriend beat on Tommy and make Colleen feel bad enough to come home with him This scene switches back and forth between Tommy getting beaten up and the chief at home getting dinner. After dinner he plays with his new putting game and then it’s back to the fighting. Next scene it’s the chief brushing his teeth, filing nails and looking at himself in mirror. He’s looking good. Then back to the fighting that’s now all over and guys thinking it went well even though it didn’t work out as they’d planned. Colleen still won’t come home. Then it’s back to Chief Jerry, still looking at himself in the mirror and combing his hair. Then slowly from the bottom of the picture, a gun rises and Jerry puts it in his mouth. Everything fades to black and you hear a gunshot.

It was a very effective ending, one that you could see coming way in advance. But it was still a shock, and I hate to have his character gone forever.