TV Tonight: Rescue Me (A Little)

Garrity (Steve Pasquale) tries to stick to a fast in an upcoming minisode. / FX

Remember Rescue Me? FX must be a little worried that by the time Denis Leary's fireman ensemble returns next year, you'll have plain forgotten it. To that end, the channel debuts the first of a summer series of roughly five-minute Rescue Me minisodes tonight in the show's regular timeslot of 10 p.m. I've seen the first three, and while they may not be the same as watching a full episode of the show at its best, I enjoyed them a lot more than I liked much of the last season of Rescue Me.

The series' daring, and its fault, is that it plays less like a dramedy, or comedy-drama, or drama-comedy than it does as two separate shows—one a dark comedy, one a melodrama—which happen to have the same cast, and have had their episodes spliced together to fill up an hour. The minisodes I've seen lean much more heavily on the comedy side, and are mainly focused on the characters at Tommy's FDNY job, so there's not much (so far) of his personal and family drama. Instead, it's mainly the anti-P.C., ballbusting comedy part of the show (basically, it's like watching only the pre-credits sequence of a typical Rescue Me).

If you have five minutes to spare, check it out, and let us know what you think. What, you're too busy?