STUDIO: Sony
RELEASE DATE: June 3, 2008
STARRING: Denis Leary, Andrea Roth, Steven Pasquale, Natalie Distler, Michael Lombardi, Larenz Tate, Charles Durning, John Scurti, Daniel Sunjata, Trevor Heins, and Olivia Crocicchia
CREATED BY: Denis Leary & Peter Tolan
FEATURES: Featurette: Walking Through Fire: The Stories of Rescue Me Season 4
Featurette: Real Stories from America’s Bravest
Featurette: Welcome to the Set
Featurette: This Is Not a Drill: Breaking Down Episode 407
Featurette: Captains
Featurette: Tools of the Trade
Featurette: Burning Embers: Gavin’s Girls
Deleted Scenes
Blooper Reel: Burned Out: Gag Reel
Minisode: Married …with Children – “If Al Had a Hammer”
Minisode: Starsky & Hutch – “Death Notice”

I'll miss Rescue Me this summer. It's become a regular part of my annual routine and the season won't be the same without one of the most wildly unpredictable shows on television. It's that seemingly random nature that has made Rescue Me such riveting television. It makes sense if you think about the genesis of the show. At its core, Rescue Me is about some of the people most affected by what happened on 9/11 - NYC firefighters. What went down on that horrible day came completely out of nowhere and changed everyone's life forever. Peter Tolan and Denis Leary have kind of adopted a model that works from that same concept - that life is anything but predictable. So, the history of Rescue Me has some of the funniest material on TV in the last few years followed, sometimes immediately, by some of the most heartbreaking and shocking. Life doesn't have foreshadowing. Why should TV? Every minute of every day a firefighter can get that call that will be his last. It's a shame that, according to some insider rumors, we'll have to wait until 2009 to see season five (damn you writers strike), but we can re-watch season four of Rescue Me, now on DVD shelves. This summer is going to be a very light one on the dial - it's the lasting effects of the writers strike. Your best option is to turn to DVD and watch the best series from last summer that you might have missed - start with Weeds and Rescue Me.

The consistently Emmy Award-worthy Denis Leary stars in Rescue Me as Tommy Gavin, a very disturbed firefighter. He's been through so much in the first three seasons that it's nearly impossible to recap in a review, but let me stress that I believe Leary does his best work in this season. He's developed this character to the point where every move he makes feels natural. In some of Leary's early work you could sense him "acting" but Tommy feels completely real now. He's one of the most three-dimensional, fully-developed characters on television. It could be argued that Tommy's development has been at the expense of the rest of the regular ensemble on Rescue Me, all of whom are very good and I wish could get more screen time and plot arcs of their own, but that's a minor complaint. While Paulie Walnuts and Meadow were always interesting on The Sopranos, that show worked primarily because of the development of Tony Soprano. Tommy has become nearly as fascinating a lead character and I can't wait to see where Leary and Tolan take him in season five.

Season four of Rescue Me features guest appearances by Susan Sarandon, Gina Gershon, and Jennifer Esposito over the 13-episode season. The Sony-produced season set comes with a host of excellent featurettes to round out the experience of the show. Seven mini-documentaries in all provide insight into the making of this complex series. There are action set-pieces around the fires that these characters have to fight that would be daunting for a major filmmaker. How they pull it off on basic cable should be something of interest to the fans. I've been lucky enough to speak to Tolan and Leary about Rescue Me and they're fascinating men, so it would have been nice to hear one or both on a commentary track, but when you get this many featurettes, deleted scenes, a blooper reel, and two minisodes for other Sony products, it's hard to complain too much about not getting enough. We can still complain about not getting any more Rescue Me until 2009 but with the season four set, it eases the pain.