Continuing with my effort to write about some under-recognized nuggets of cinematic goodness from the past year, I come to World’s Greatest Dad.  This movie is one of the most daring comedies of the year, and it is conclusive proof that you can never entirely write off anyone. 

World’s Greatest Dad was written and directed by Bobcat Goldthwait, who has actually had a very successful TV directing career (on Chappelle’s Show, among others) but will probably always be best known as the annoyingly “Grover voice” comedian from Police Academy 2 and Hot To Trot (the ‘80s movie with John Candy as the voice of a talking horse.)  It stars Robin Williams, the comedian of remarkable energy and career longevity who has been harshly derided for his choice of projects for the past couple of decades.  I have always liked Robin Williams, but it is admittedly impossible to defend the majority of his cinematic output.  For someone that talented, there’s a lot of shitstains on that resume.

In this movie, Robin plays Lance Clayton, a failed novelist who is stuck teaching poetry at the high school level.  He’s a single parent whose teenage son Kyle is a perverted, mean-spirited little asshole.  When would-be tragedy befalls the Claytons, Lance finds an opportunity to have his words heard on an increasingly larger stage.  I’m keeping the description as vague as I can, but trust me, this movie goes boldly to some dark, dark places.  It’s pitch-black satire that was amazingly prescient for this past summer, in the way that our modern culture’s tendency to sentimentalize the recently departed went into hyperdrive.  (Specifically, World’s Greatest Dad made me think of Michael Jackson and the way he went from a creepy, nose-less, possibly kid-fondling freak to a beloved, prodigiously talented national icon in the span of one morning.  Death was Michael’s single greatest career move.)

World’s Greatest Dad is unusual in its eagle-eyed observations of human (mis)behavior, and interestingly enough, as nasty and cruelly funny as it is, there are rare moments of weird and tender sweetness flavored in throughout.  Robin Williams is at his sad-faced best, and Daryl Sabara as his lost little shit deserves tons of credit for being willing to be so unlikable onscreen at such a young age.  Bold performances both.  I’m not at all reluctant to proclaim that Bobcat Goldthwait has a masterly command of comedic tone here; he navigates dangerous thematic terrain without ever losing audience interest or empathy.  Between this and his earlier feature Stay (released as Sleeping Dogs Lie), he’s got something of an auteur career going:  He has an uncanny ability to craft believable story development from shocking and disgusting inciting incidents.  He also has a way with music cues – the climactic double-whammy of “Under Pressure” by Queen & David Bowie and “Tiny Spark” by Brendan Benson provide a bizarrely exuberant backdrop for the thrilling liberation of self-destruction.  In a way I was reminded by the brilliant use of “Where Is My Mind?” by the Pixies at the end of Fight Club – there’s a similar nihilistic optimism at work here.  World’s Greatest Dad, like Stay (which felt like a strong warm-up exercise for the polish of the newer movie), both relish in the freedom that is found through truth-telling, as risky and potentially destructive as it can be.  Sometimes you have to tear it all down to feel truly refreshed.

World’s Greatest Dad is coming to DVD on December 8^th.  Watch it with your dad.  (I did with mine!  Only a little awkward.)

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With 2010 looming, Empire, the best movie magazine in the world, has just released their Icons Of The Decade issue.  This is a list of the ten movie characters that have loomed largest in the consciousness of film fans since the year 2000.  Empire also included the next ten runner-up characters in their feature.  It’s not really a list to be debated, as it was voted on by Empire readers – the voice of the people has been heard and counted and so it’s not worth arguing.  I do think it’s very interesting to look at, though, because it really crystallizes the major trends of the past ten years.

Let’s take a quick look at that list (which is in no particular order):

James Bond (Casino Royale, Quantum Of Solace)

Jason Bourne (The Bourne Trilogy)

The Bride (Kill Bill)

Maximus (Gladiator)

Wolverine (X-Men 1, 2, 3, and Dogshit Spinoff)

Aragorn (Lord Of The Rings)

Captain Jack Sparrow (Pirates Of The Caribbean)

Harry Potter (Harry Potter & The Endless Sequels)

The Joker (The Dark Knight)

Shaun Riley (Shaun Of The Dead)

Now, this may say as much for Empire’s readership as anything else, but I think it’s more telling than that:  I bet if you took a poll of the ten most popular (and financially successful) movies of the decade, it would break down along very similar lines. 

Here are the trends I noticed:  Nine out of those ten characters are men, ten out of ten are Caucasian.  (Six out of ten have British accents even!)  All ten characters come from movies that could generally be corralled within the action genre, and with the possible exception of the Harry Potter movies, all of those movies are aimed squarely to appeal at young men.  Most fascinating (or disturbing, depending on your point of view) is that seven out of ten characters originated in other media, usually popular novels or comic books.  Of the remaining three, two of them could not ever have existed without the inspiration of previous movies.  (Those two are Shaun and The Bride – Quentin Tarantino and Edgar Wright are talented, creative, and beloved directors, but I think they’d be among the first to admit that they’re pastiche artists more than absolute innovators.)  Maximus from Gladiator is the closest on this list to being a character created expressly for film, and even that character was based off of a hodgepodge of historical research.

Rather than refuting this trend, the runner-up list continues it.  Again, in no specific order:

Darth Vader (the baby-faced version from the Star Wars prequels)

Borat (Borat)

Gollum (Lord Of The Rings)

Shrek (Shrek)

Donna Sheridan (Mamma Mia)

Ron Burgundy (Anchorman)

Peter Parker (Spider-Man)

Donnie Darko (Donnie Darko)

Edward Cullen (Twilight)

Leonidas (300)

Ron Burgundy is actually the most refreshing name on this list, believe it or don’t.  While Donnie Darko is at least an original character, I’m not sure he’s particularly iconic.  (Frank The Bunny is that movie’s most iconic figure.  Swayze is its second.  Donnie is the third most memorable image in his own movie.)  Every other character here owes their existence to comic books, novels, children’s books, or musicals.  A couple of them even had me asking “WHO?” (Empire did not list the movie title on every entry.)  Here’s what I learned:

Donna Sheridan is the character Meryl Streep played in Mamma Mia – while it’s encouraging to see a female character without superpowers on a popularity list, she’s not in the least bit iconic.  This placing has a lot to do with the massive success of Mamma Mia in the United Kingdom; I doubt this character would rate so highly in the States.

Edward Cullen is the sulky vampire from Twilight.  I guess he could be considered an icon but I liked this character much better back when he was named “Angel” and he didn’t sit on dicks.

Let’s forge a quick but definitive definition of the word “icon” as it relates to film characters:  An iconic character is immediately recognizable, to the point where they can serve as a symbol of the film in which they appear, even as they are still effective as a believable and exciting component of that film.  An iconic character has depth and memorable dialogue and a unique look, of equal importance.  To the point:  A film icon is a memorable character with an unforgettable visual design.  Indiana Jones is an icon.  Godzilla is an icon.  Darth Vader is an icon (but not when played by Hayden Christensen.)

Again, I’m not writing this article to attack the Empire list – I’d like to think I’m beyond battling magazine features and tilting at windmills, and besides, I’d have to agree with many of those choices in the first place.  My point of interest here is the fact that fourteen out of the twenty most popular film characters of our nearly-past decade were not created FOR film.  Film history is full of iconic figures, from King Kong, to Rick and Ilsa from Casablanca, to Rita Hayworth in Gilda, to Clint Eastwood in Sergio Leone’s Westerns, to Robert DeNiro in Taxi Driver, and so on.  These days, television is more routinely creating the memorable icons (Buffy Summers, Tony Soprano, Stringer Bell, Omar Little, Vic Mackey, Tommy Gavin, Sydney Bristow, Benjamin Linus, Dwight Schrute, Tyrone Biggums, and so on).  But movies used to make the icons.  Recently, movies are mostly being made around pre-existing icons.  I don’t know if that’s necessarily a negative development, but the question is certainly worth considering:  Do we have movies nowadays that are yielding iconic figures not because of the power of the franchise, but because of the power of the MOVIES?

In my opinion, the answer is yes – although the characters I’m thinking about may not be the most popular choices.  (Does an icon have to be the most popular character around?  Another good question.)  What does bother me is how much trouble I’m having coming up with diversity in terms of gender and ethnicity.  As a fan of monster movies, I’m also dismayed at the paucity of iconic new creatures and beasts.  Otherwise, I have a few suggestions and let’s get right to ‘em (no particular order):

Daniel Plainview (There Will Be Blood) – This one’s a no-brainer.  This guy is the boogeyman.  He’s the angry poltergeist of the 20^th century.  No character before or since has looked, sounded, or acted quite like this rotten bastard.  Daniel Day-Lewis also portrayed another remarkable villain, Bill The Butcher, in Gangs Of New York.  Both characters would eat the hearts of every other character mentioned in this article if given the chance.

Vincent (Collateral) – The tide of public opinion may have turned on Tom Cruise, but no one can take away from what he and Michael Mann created with this character, an unstoppable force, a creature of perpetual motion, a literal killing machine.  Vincent is pure determination, free of sentiment.  Great villain.

Barry Egan (Punch-Drunk Love) – Paul Thomas Anderson created another iconic character earlier in the decade, and he did it using Adam Sandler of all people, with the sad clown Barry Egan.  Barry Egan is bottled-up frustration contained in a bright blue suit, all emotion and promise just searching for a direction.  Essential.

Anton Chigurh (No Country For Old Men) – Another no-brainer.  Javier Bardem and the Coen Brothers dreamed up this weird-looking ghoul, one of the most memorable bad guys ever to haunt a pulp-crime movie.

Wall*E (Wall*E) – You could probably put any of the Pixar lead characters on this list; Marlin (Finding Nemo), Remy The Rat (Rataouille),  Bob Parr (The Incredibles), and so on.  I just happen to favor Wall*E because he’s the most unlikely, the most difficult to make as charming as he is, and therefore the most impressive feat of iconography.  His love interest, EVE, deserves equal consideration.

Andy Stitzer (The 40 Year Old Virgin) – As important for what he represents (the eventual dominance of 2000s film comedy by Judd Apatow) as for how he looks (bright yellow shirt, friendly smile, vaguely lost expression suggesting that something is lacking).  The New York Times agrees.

Theo Faron (Children Of Men) – Not much more than Clive Owen in a trenchcoat and a bleak scowl, but this is the lead character in what is hands-down one of the greatest films of the decade.  The movie doesn’t work without this character to ground us in the world it creates, and while I hate the phrase “emotional journey,” better words could not be chosen for the experience of watching this character change throughout the course of the movie.  This character and this movie do nothing less than lead their audience back to hope.

Randy The Ram Robinson (The Wrestler) – I think this is another no-brainer.  Mickey Rourke’s return to greatness in the most ideal vehicle.  I’m sure this character is good enough on the page, but on screen, he’s transcendent.

Latika (Slumdog Millionaire) – Her face sold the movie worldwide.  Her face is what makes you believe the movie.  Who knows if we’ll be watching Freida Pinto in movies ten years from now, but as I said once before, there’s plenty to be said for a woman who is described as the most beautiful woman in the world and when she finally shows up, no one disagrees.  I think this is more than a pretty face; there’s a soul present in this portrayal that again, makes the movie as effective as it is.

Walt Kowalski (Gran Torino) – Obviously 2008 was a good year for me.  This isn’t Clint Eastwood’s most iconic role or probably even his best.  But it may be his last, and it’s a solid one, and it’s Clint with a shotgun and a grimace, so of course it’s iconic.

---

And here are some runner-up suggestions…

Frank Costello (The Departed) – Screenwriter William Monahan based this character on Boston’s most wanted, Whitey Bulger, and Jack Nicholson brought him to skeezy, bastardy, racist, dildo-wielding life.  Iconic for the quotability alone.  “No ticky, no laundry!”

Alonzo Harris (Training Day) – Denzel got his Oscar for this role.  He’s been iconic all over the damn place, but controversy aside, this really is one of his better, more visually arresting, more surprising roles.

Charlie & Donald Kaufman (Adaptation) – Nic Cage’s best role of the decade.  Unrecognizable.  Brilliant.  Brian Cox as screenwriting legistlator Robert McKee is pretty memorable too.

Nancy Callahan (Sin City) – More an image than a character, but is there any straight male who wasn’t drawn to this movie after seeing Jessica Alba on this movie’s poster?  Has a contemporary ever looked better in black-and-white?

Maggie Fitzgerald (Million Dollar Baby) –She’s not the warmest, most relatable character, but she is striking and memorable.  I’m sorry, I’d push this character harder as an icon if I liked Hilary Swank better.  It’s not fair, I still have Alba on the brain.

El Chivo (Amores Perros) – This is the old guy who rescues the dogs and has an increasingly interesting backstory.  Arguably the most memorable character in a stellar movie; certainly the most visually compelling.  Rent the movie and see if it jogs your memory.

Harry (In Bruges) – I still won’t ruin which actor plays the villain in this great, great movie, the often-mentioned meany who doesn’t show up until the third act.  But he’s the most quotable character in a movie full of them, and his twisted code of honor is unforgettable.

Rita (Mulholland Drive) – Specifically designed to be iconic (she’s named after & made to resemble Rita Hayworth), Laura Harring in this movie is like a beckoning siren in a dark sea of horror and depression.  Creepy movie, but it’s David Lynch so you knew that already.

June Carter (Walk The Line) – I doubt many people would agree with me, but Reese Witherspoon did get an Oscar for the role, and I don’t think the movie would have worked at all without her.  She’s playing the grounding influence, the reason to clean up and do right, the reason to stay, not stray.  I’ve always thought Reese Witherspoon was perfectly cute, but in this movie she was something uniquely special.  To quote a different movie, she makes you want to be a better man.

Montgomery Brogan (25^th Hour) – Some people have major issues with this movie.  To me, it’s a touchstone.  I just relate.  As with many Spike Lee movies, there are moments included here that belong in a different movie thematically.  But so much of what is here is so brilliant, and one of those things is Edward Norton’s turn as the main character.  Give it another chance, if you haven’t in a while.

The Jaguar Shark (The Life Aquatic) – This is the almost-literal Great White Whale that Bill Murray’s character is dedicated to hunting.  It sounds so fantastical and unlikely, so mythological, that you begin to doubt it even exists.  But eventually, he does find this shark, and that moment is, I think, worthy of all the build-up.  It’s weird, spooky, and strangely awesome.

___

So what do you guys think?  I’d be eager to hear suggestions, assuming anyone’s interested in continuing the dialogue.  Do you have any personal favorites that belong with the cinematic icons of the Zero Decade?

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In recommending Black Dynamite, the temptation is to get caught up in the spirit and get silly.  Let me go another way, keep it relatively serious, and promise that this is the funniest movie currently playing in any movie theater – that is, unless you’re heading to the multiplex this weekend to make fun of the Michael Jackson people.  In that case, you got me.

But Black Dynamite is just so consistently funny throughout its running time that I feel compelled to get the word out.  I loved this movie.  It’s true that my viewing history has been steeped in blaxploitation movies from Shaft to Coffy to Truck Turner to Black Belt Jones, right back to Shaft’s Big Score! and Shaft In Africa – but I don’t think you need a doctorate in blaxploitation to get the jokes here.  However, you probably do need an R-rated sense of humor, but you’ll figure that one out pretty quickly, since the first three sets of titties make their collective open-air appearance in the first ten minutes.

As if you needed a story, Black Dynamite is the tale of a real black kung-fu superhero named Black Dynamite (“Dyn-O-mite! Dyn-O-mite!”), created and played brilliantly by underrated action-movie presence Michael Jai White who deserves a skull-crushing franchise and a long career of shitkicking on the merits of this movie alone.  Credit also goes to his co-writers Scott Sanders (who directed) and Byron Minns (who also plays Black Dynamite’s sidekick Bullhorn) and to the entire cast and crew who always keep the tricky tone balanced just right.

Black Dynamite is by far the best blaxploitation parody/recreation since I’m Gonna Git You Sucka – appropriately, it finds a welcome return and a chest-burstingly funny role for In Living Color comedian Tommy Davidson as the elevator-shoes-wearing pimp Cream Corn – and it’s the best spoof of inept filmmaking that I can remember seeing.  (Not all blaxploitation was as shoddily constructed and acted as Black Dynamite might lead you to believe – sure there were plenty of laughable mis-steps but the genre was often a training ground for some true talents.  The jokes are funny enough though that it’s hardly good form to complain.)

This movie is just so full of performances, dialogue, and gags that I completely love – from the pimp summit full of recognizable faces (oh, and “Captain Kangaroo Pimp”), to the secret origin of my favorite restaurant in all of Los Angeles, Roscoe’s Chicken & Waffles, to the final kung fu fight with a anti-beloved national icon, to the delivery of this line: “But Black Dynamite, I sell drugs to the community”, and right back to those titties – that I could recount it for pages and pages and not get bored.  But this is such an impressively-crafted, thoroughly enjoyable movie that I’d rather just stamp it with my highest possible recommendation to see with a crowd, and leave you with the trailer:

http://www.blackdynamitemovie.com/

And yes, the rest of the movie really is just as good as that trailer promises, if not even better.

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I am SO belated here, but it’s a loose end, so let’s tie it up:  The news hit the trades a few weeks ago, just before the fifth season completed airing, that Rescue Me will finish for good on its final season in 2011.  Which makes sense, I suppose: most of the best modern serial dramas – The Sopranos, The Shield, The Wire – are able to wrap up their runs in five, six, or seven seasons.  Yes, I do place Rescue Me in that storied company; while Rescue Me is more outwardly comical and even arguably more flawed than those cited examples, when this show is at its best, it is just as evocative, perceptive, and gut-wrenching as any other great work of fiction about American lives in the post-millenial era.  And Rescue Me in 2009 was very often at its best – at least, it was, for a good long stretch.

The season was full of series highlights – both in terms of isolated moments and in terms of entire episodes – but those were spread out over an extra-long series order (22 episodes this time around, rather than 13) that saw a little more story-stretching, abandoned plot developments, and character inconsistency than usual.  Let’s look at what sang this season, and what struck a false note (spoilers abound):

THE GOOD:

Well, there was a ton of good.  I feel like I covered that pretty well in my coverage of the first half of the season.  In my opinion, Season Five peaked with the brutal and affecting “Torch” – while the second half of the season had some high highs, it was never that good again, and in fact, it seemed to slowly run out of steam from there.  But let’s get to that in a minute, and stick to those high highs:

Denis Leary, as main character Tommy Gavin, continues to be underrated as an actor and a writer even as he’s the only member of this immensely talented bunch to even get the littlest amount of awards attention from those dumb Emmys.

Michael J. Fox as the belligerent paraplegic Dwight – every scene this guy had was pure combative joy.  The only criticism here is that he disappeared from the show in a way that called for a return (Dwight and Janet broke up off-camera), and that return, disappointingly, never came to pass.

Maura Tierney (best known for ER) arrived late in the season and made a real impact.  She was abrasive, mean, maddening, likable, and yeah, pretty, and it’s really too bad she won’t be sticking around.  While I think the idea of her character as the female Tommy Gavin was played a little too on-the-nose at times, there were real moments of insight between them that captured what it’s like to find those rare intersections of feeling between complete strangers in this open wound of a city.

Black Shawn (Larenz Tate) finally feels like a comfortably integrated (pardon the indelicate phrasing) member of the ensemble, as does Chief Feinberg (Jerry Adler).  The whole “new character” vibe is gone and these guys are interesting and funny enough to hang with the O.G. crew.  Black Shawn is one of the rare characters, like Lou, that I think works better as an ally to Tommy (as twisted as it can get) rather than a foil.

The development of the three main younger guys, Garrity, Franco, and Mike (previously best known as The Probie), particularly Steven Pasquale as Garrity and Daniel Sunjata as Franco.  These two characters are the most recognizable and relatable to the younger-skewing end of the show’s fanbase (older fans can easier relate to the middle-aged characters with their varied marital problems).  So personally, I’ve always responded to what’s going on with Garrity and Franco, and this season, they were pushed into some newer territory.  Garrity was diagnosed with life-threatening cancer, and spent most of the season battling it and dealing with his bizarre mother and obnoxious brother.  Meanwhile, Franco began to indulge his 9/11 conspiracy theories, putting him at odds with his coworkers and bringing him bad press.  (Mike got a band and started mentoring the new Probie; not quite as extreme but still character-building.)  The downside?  These two subplots seemed to fizzle out and evaporate midway through the season, with Garrity, the show’s funniest character, becoming an uncharacteristically background presence for the latter half of the season, while Franco dropped the whole Loose Change thing for boxing.  Much as I love boxing, I’d rather watch it for real – it didn’t do much at all to develop Franco’s character.

More strife in the firehouse and at home.  It’s always good to have strong and unusual characters in opposition to Tommy, making his life that much closer to hell.  So it was fun to see the rare friction between Tommy and his best friend Lou (the pitch-perfect John Scurti).  It was also cool to see Needles (Adam Ferarra) evolve into a contender for lead ball-breaker in Tommy’s life, though the scenes of Needles buddying up to Lou undermined that in a way – Needles is still a little too likable.  Most unexpected was the idea of young Mike becoming a rival of Tommy’s.  He learned everything he knows from Tommy  so it stands to reason that he’d become more of a prick even as he becomes more of a firefighter.  Of course, he’s still a moron so he can never reach major levels of threat.

THE BAD:

Tommy’s entire extended family going back to booze.  Sure, it’s a little funny that one tirade from Tommy and they all leapt off the wagon into a sea of hard liquor – all except for the most likely, his sister Maggie (Tatum O’Neal in a greatly reduced role.)  But that’s what some of my writer friends call a “dick joke” – easy humor.  It completely sells out a bunch of characters for an easy laugh and one eventual misstep of a cliffhanger (see below).  Uncle Teddy (Lenny Clarke, see below) doesn’t need booze to be an entertaining, boisterous character, and Cousin Eddie (Terry Serpico) only ever came into focus as Tommy’s embattled lawyer.  The worst is what’s become of Cousin Mick (Robert John Burke) – sure, his steadfast and hard-assed riding of Tommy could be one-note at times, but he provided a balance of morality that I think benefits the show.  Of course, with all of them laughing it up and drinking out of control again, it brought us to…

The season-ending cliffhanger.  Uncle Teddy shoots Tommy, blaming him for his wife’s fatal drunk-driving accident.  Tommy is left bleeding on the floor, his friends and family helpless to save him because Teddy is holding them at gunpoint.  This felt both derivative (Season Two ended with a gunshot from Uncle Teddy; Season Three ended with Tommy looking like a goner) and uncharacteristic – while Uncle Teddy has always been unbalanced and obviously prone to violence, he killed a man out of LOVE FOR TOMMY.  It’s just too easy a line to draw to somehow conjure up a reason for Teddy to turn on Tommy.  I didn’t believe it, and there’s no bigger Rescue Me fan than me.  

While it was a compelling and organic idea to have Tommy’s nephew Damien become a firefighter with 62 Truck, the character never quite gelled with the group.  In a way that’s the point, as Damien proved to be a little mama’s-boy weasel in the penultimate episode – but I don’t think that bodes well for storytelling possibilities with this character in the final season.  On the one hand, I don’t think he’d play as a strong enough adversary for Tommy, and on the other, it’ll be hard for us to like him again after his behavior.

Maura Tierney’s exit from the show.  It was the occasional Rescue Me plot development that did not ring true, as the ugly cock-block from Tommy’s eternal pair of exes seemed to too quickly be able to convince this savvy character to head for the hills.  (See next complaint…)

THE UGLY:

Janet and Sheila, generally the two most thankless roles on the show, usually significantly more likable and ambiguously sympathetic than the impression they left by season’s end.  While the actresses playing them are forceful, brave, and up for anything (particularly Callie Thorne as Sheila), the whole love triangle dynamic has gone on so long that Rescue Me is sometimes like the darkest and most perverted riff on Archie comics imaginable.  You’ve got Betty and Veronica in there always, and the spin is that they’re both black-hearted hell queens.  It’s not that I didn’t believe that either one of them would conspire to ruin Tommy’s new relationship; it’s that I couldn’t believe  they’d TEAM UP to do it – that’s how catty those two have become.  At least Andrea Roth as Janet had a nicely-played brief moment of self-loathing for how far their secret evil plan went, but unfortunately that was at the expense of Sheila.

Lou marries Candy the porno hooker.  I can’t sugarcoat it – this is one of the worst things the show has ever done.  Back in Season Two, the recently divorced Lou got involved with a beautiful woman who was also a prostitute.  She convinced him that she wanted to get out of the business, and he gave her the money to do it.  She disappeared with the money, sending Lou on a near-suicidal (but somewhat funny) downward spiral.  As Lou was getting his life back on track, Candy dabbled in porn and was eventually arrested.  This season, she returned, hoping to get Lou’s forgiveness, or so she said.  Lou was initially furiously skeptical, but seemed to genuinely warm to her this time – which led to a seemingly-premature and ill-advised marriage.  That marriage (and the best man issue) created that aforementioned rare conflict between Tommy and his normally more composed best pal.  Turned out that Lou married Candy to turn the tables and rip HER off this time.  Gloating as he confided that he stole all of her savings before she could do it again to him, Lou kicked back as he warned a stunned Candy to leave before the cops arrived.  This, at best, is Desperate Housewives shit – it’s soap opera crap, trivial and bitch-like.  At worst, it’s hateful and cruel.  Worse, it sells out the show’s most likable character.  Sure, Lou is a cynical, tough-hearted guy with a black sense of humor, but this move feels too vindictive for him.  Encrusted by layers of sarcasm though it is, the guy still does have a heart.  Also, it was a total waste of time:  How many episodes did we follow this subplot for, only for such a mean-spirited payoff?  How is that satisfying?  Finally, it was just dumb:  If Lou was planning to screw Candy over all along, then why did he allow all that conflict with Tommy to happen?  Why get into it with him over the runner-up best man idea?  Why endanger his closest friendship just to get the angriest revenge?  This resolution really left a bad taste in my mouth after such a generally impressive Season Five – it was like finding a mouse turd on an ice cream cake.

Long story short, I’m not as broken up over the impending end of my favorite show as I might have expected.  It feels like it’s time.  All good things must come to the end (or else they could become not-very-good things), and Rescue Me will always exist on my well-worn DVD box sets.  I have every faith in Leary, Tolan, and company to end this phenomenal, bruising series in a satisfying way – and just in case it does not conclude on an entirely satisfying note, it will most certainly be surprising.  That is the astonishing track record that has been established with this thoroughly unique, never predictable series.

Here is the complete list of my previous Season Five Rescue Me articles:

And here is where you can get at me for all further news, thoughts, and reading entertainment:

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