To many people, Tommy Gavin of the New York City Fire Department would be a hero. He fights fires, he goes into burning buildings, he rescues people.
But Gavin -- the flawed figure at the heart of FX's often extraordinary new series, ``Rescue Me'' -- and the other firefighters of Engine Co. 62 are not heroes but rather ordinary people who occasionally do heroic things. Gavin is estranged from his wife, distant with his children, drinks too much, spouts obscene jokes, can't talk about his emotions and talks to the ghosts of colleagues lost at the World Trade Center.
``I don't think firemen have ever been portrayed the way they really are,'' says actor-comedian Denis Leary, who not only plays Tommy Gavin but is also the creator and executive producer of the show. And that, Leary admits, may make ``Rescue Me'' something of a tough sell to viewers used to the more black-and-white portrayals on series such as ``Third Watch'' and the heroic image of the FDNY post-Sept. 11.
``I'm sure there will be some people who will be very ticked off by the show,'' says Leary. ``Even some people in the fire department and some fire department families.''
But Leary does have credibility with the firefighting community and a feeling for the lives of the women and (mostly) men who fight fires. His cousin Jerry Lucey was a longtime firefighter who died in a 1999 warehouse blaze in Worcester, Mass. So did one of Leary's childhood friends, Tommy Spencer.
Leary also spent a lot of time hanging around FDNY's Ladder 22, a firehouse near his New York City home. (Some of the men he met died at the World Trade Center.) And a member of the Ladder 22 crew, Terry Quinn, is the technical adviser on ``Rescue Me.''
``These guys picked it up'' when it came to reflecting the firefighting world, says Quinn of Leary and co-creator Peter Tolan. ``They picked up their language, the way they are.''
Undoubtedly, much will be made of how much of a role Sept. 11 plays in ``Rescue Me.'' The tragedy at the Trade Center permeates every day at the firehouse even if the members of Engine Co. 62 rarely speak openly of it.
``We've been very careful about 9/11 and not being disrespectful when we use it but, also, not being stupid and ignoring it,'' says Leary. ``It's tough.''
Adds Tolan, a veteran producer and writer on such series as ``The Larry Sanders Show'': ``It was the perfect time to do this show because you create heroes in American culture only to tear them down. And firefighters were such exaggerated heroes after 9/11.
``We cannot ignore it. And at the same time, we certainly don't want to seem as if we're appropriating a tragedy for our own use.''
There is no question ``Rescue Me'' walks a very thin artistic line. The miracle, in television terms, is how brilliantly it works. While heart-wrenching at times, it is also a very funny series. In the first three episodes, the dialogue crackles with authenticity, the fire scenes are so real you can almost feel the flames and the most emotionally charged scenes are gripping.
There is one scene in a later episode, shown to reporters here, in which Leary as Gavin comes to a church to pray for his teenage daughter, who has been in a car crash. A mesmerizing marriage of writing and acting that stretches over five minutes, the moment has a power unlike anything TV has seen since President Josiah Bartlet's rant against God a few years back on ``The West Wing.''
The problematic element of the show is Gavin's conversations with dead people, perhaps because the device has become something of a cliche in recent years.
But, argues Tolan, ``we're talking about guys who are emotionally closed off and who don't talk to anyone. And so when the ghosts become a projection of yourself, then you can have a conversation with yourself in a sense and say things that you've never said to anybody else.''
In terms of making television that challenges the audience, Leary and Tolan have been here before.
In 2001, the two created ``The Job'' -- a raw, darkly humorous look at the New York City police department. Unfortunately, the series was so out of sync with the rest of ABC's schedule at the time that it had no chance to find an audience.
It left both men bitter with the way the TV business works.
``Frankly, after `The Job,' I didn't really want to do television again,'' says Tolan. ``That pretty much knocked me out of television. I said: If we're going to do that level of work and that's the treatment we're going to get, why do it?''
But FX is very different from ABC, having already pushed the basic cable envelope in terms of language, content and themes with ``The Shield'' and ``Nip/Tuck.''
``The guys at FX, they're really honest,'' says Leary. ``In the sex scenes and language-wise and behavior-wise, they're pushing us to go as far as we can within reason.''
And in the end, Leary says, he believes that most firefighters, and their families, will come to see ``Rescue Me'' as a funny, dramatic depiction of their lives.
Earlier this year, FX showed the first episode to the top brass of the FDNY.
``I was outside the door when they were screening it for them,'' says Leary. ``I forget where the first big laugh was, but they just broke into laughter about five or 10 minutes into the show.
``Then they came out of the room and said, `What can we tell you? You got it right.' ''
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