Peter Tolan and Denis Leary on 'Rescue Me' and the finale

By April MacIntyre Sep 7, 2011, 14:47 GMT

Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) cloaked himself in acerbic NYFD Alpha male firefighter bravado and humor, and showrunner Peter Tolan and Denis Leary took us on a scathingly funny, heartbreaking and poignant seven year journey post 9/11 with him

Of all the television specials, events and moments, the FX drama "Rescue Me" embodies the black humor that comes from surviving the unthinkable, and the Herculean task of living with unimaginable grief and having to get up, put your clothes on, and function in your day to day.

Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) cloaked himself in acerbic NYFD Alpha male firefighter bravado and humor, and showrunner Peter Tolan and Denis Leary took us on a scathingly funny, heartbreaking and poignant seven year journey post 9/11 with him.

Now comes the series finale at a time when an important anniversary of the national tragedy is here, and it makes the ending of Tolan and Leary's tale of firefighters grappling with life after the "day" all the more bittersweet.

"Rescue Me" (10 ET/PT) ends tonight in an 80 minute finale, and the haunted hero of the series, Leary's Tommy Gavin, will be missed by fans of this series. His cast too, including Lenny Clarke, John Scurti, Daniel Sunjata, Steven Pasquale, Michael Lombardi, Adam Ferrara, Larenz Tate, Callie Thorne and Andrea Roth.

At the recent Television Critics' Association, Leary and Tolan talked about the importance of the timing of the end of the series.

Leary says, "One of my cousins was a firefighter, and he was killed in the line of duty in 1999. So, in 2009, the tenth anniversary of that event happened in Western Massachusetts. And so myself and my family went through the process of a couple days of dealing with it and sort of celebrating the memory of those guys, and so, on a much smaller sale, you deal with the same emotions. And the thing that comes out of it is, for the firefighters, especially the ones who are still working, there’s still a lot of what we dealt with on the series...is it’s all inside of them, but they don’t really deal with it directly or by talking to somebody because they are still jumping on the rig, which is kind of one of the issues Tommy Gavin and these guys have dealt with for seven years, which is avoiding a lot of it or drinking trying to drink it away or fuck it away, and the damage that does to them. That’s sort of a common thing for guys who are still at war, you know, on the job."

Leary continued his own personal connection to the story of the firefighters, and their sacrifice. "The other part of it that I have to say, which I find surprising with my cousin, was you are reluctant to go there because you think it’s going to be overwhelmingly sad. And it is sad, and it does dredge up all of those memories, but in the case of my cousin, there was a there was a monument that was dedicated that day. So, all of a sudden, there was a thing with his name on it that you realized, oh, there were kids there that evening that were that were 10 years old who wouldn’t have read about these guys when the event happened. So they were looking at this statue, and you were going, “Oh, I understand. Okay. Now I get it. Now I understand why we are going to have this remembrance event.”

"So I think, with 9/11, there’s a lot of the same thing, which is just remembering that the 300 out of all of the people that died that day, there were 343 guys that went down there and gave their lives in an extremely heroic circumstance. I just think that’s that’s probably a big part of it. I know, in the show, Tommy Gavin does not like going down to the site, and we deal with that in this season. But, ultimately, it is something that, hopefully for perpetuity, people like Pearl Harbor, if you go there, you’ll be very aware of what happened and what went on that day. So it’s kind of what the guys are dealing with in several of the episodes this year is the fact that it’s been 10 years. Some people don’t care. The world moves on. The world doesn’t necessarily want to hear about it, but the fact is, if you go to that site in New York, you’re going to be you’re going to be very aware of the guys and what they did that day."

Monsters and Critics asked Mr. Leary if he had any anecdotes from the firefighters and and his foundation.

"Almost every single one that was worthwhile, we put into the show. I mean, I don’t know if people realize that a lot of the actual fires were fires that Terry Quinn, our technical advisor, who is a FDNY member, and the guys on the other guys on the show, they would tell us. They would come from work to the set sometimes and say, “Yeah. Last night,” blah, blah, blah. And we would take it and use that fire. But, also, a lot of the funny conversations you know, the penis measuring episode from ages ago, we were on set, and some of the firefighters came from the firehouse they were working in the night before, and at breakfast, I overheard these two guys complaining about some guy who cheated in the penis measuring contest. My ear literally went, like, ting, and I was like, we are doing this story."

Leary continued, "Things like that. I mean, even going back to Terry Quinn’s firehouse before we were doing the series, when we were still doing the job and I was around that house a lot over the years, but I was there the day after 9/11 and several days. And there were a lot of funny things that happened that had to do with people working down at Ground Zero. When they came back to the firehouse, it’s you know, it’s very strange, and I think it’s true in I hope it’s true in the case of the finale."

"One of the funniest things we thought that we ever did on this show came out of the grief that’s contained in the final two episodes of the series, where we were writing and planning it, and we realized, Jesus, in the middle of this very heavy stuff, this funny thing popped up, that that’s a lot of it for us, where Terry Quinn literally might come in and go, “Last night, we had this bus fire with these kids, and it was you know, it was this and this and this. But then we were back at the firehouse, and so and so said this.” You know, it goes from sad to funny, you know, on the turn of a dime. So which is really what the show was."

Showrunner Peter Tolan also shared his experience of going to Washington DC to donate the show's props to the Smithsonian:

"Recently Denis and I went to Washington, D.C. and we donated his Tommy Gavin’s bunker gear to the Smithsonian museum, and I don’t think we thought about it much until we got there. And I remember you sort of we sat down for the induction ceremony, and Denis sort of said to me, “Hey, this is serious,” you know...And we realized at that point when they were talking about why this was happening, because the show was actually culturally significant. And, of course, working in television, that’s the last thing you expect to happen to anything you write. And I realized it made me really stop and think about how this show, really being the only piece of popular entertainment to spring from 9/11 it’s the only really successful thing from that."

Tolan continued, "There weren’t many, but it’s the only one that was sort of accepted and lasted. And I think the real reason is because of the humor of it, that we didn’t always approach it as this as the of course, it was an earth shattering a life changing event for so many people. But because there was so much humor in it, it’s just that this is how we really deal with things, and this is how people move forward. They continue to live, and they laugh, and they bust each other’s balls, and they you know, life goes on. I think that’s what it was. I mean, you don’t think that when you are starting it. You just think, “Oh, let’s do the show, and let’s make it the best it can be.” And then, all of a sudden, it’s significant, I guess. I don’t know. "