Ellen Gray: 'Rescue Me': Beginning of the end for Tommy Gavin

RESCUE ME. 10 tonight, FX.

LOUIE. 11 tonight, FX.

TOMMY GAVIN is on his way out.

I say that without any particular glee, since I largely ceased recreational watching of FX's "Rescue Me" a few seasons ago.

But as the Denis Leary firefighter series returns tonight with the first of its final 19 episodes - 10 to air this summer, nine in 2011 - the ending has reportedly already been filmed.

And somehow I don't think it's going to leave Leary's angry, alcoholic Gavin an opening to spin off as a sitcom dad, or à la "24's" Jack Bauer (Kiefer Sutherland), a big-screen action star.

Maybe I'm wrong to expect the obvious from a show that's granted Tommy more than one narrow escape - yep, he survived last season's shooting, assuming this year isn't a "Lost" flash-sideways - even as it picked off those around him.

Since Sept. 11, 2001, he's lost a cousin, a son, a brother and his father: Why would Leary, who created the show with Peter Tolan, hesitate to kill Tommy, too?

Unless keeping him alive was the nastier choice.

Because the first four episodes of the new season are less annoying than most - beautiful women seem to have stopped, for the moment, falling at Tommy's feet - I find myself giving thought to appropriate endings for "Rescue Me." And, no, they don't all involve Gavin Flambé.

I'm thinking of something more along the lines if last week's "Saving Grace," an explosive finish for the TNT show that, despite the regular appearance of a guardian angel named Earl (Leon Rippy), had more than a little in common with "Rescue Me."

Starting with an unconventional main character in Holly Hunter's police Detective Grace Hanadarko, who, like Tommy, was haunted by an act of terrorism that killed someone close to her.

In Grace's case, it was the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building 15 years ago that killed her sister, and it was to the bombing that "Grace" returned in its final moments as the woman who claimed, after years of resisting, to have finally given up her life to God sacrificed herself, as she apparently was meant to all along, to prevent another such horror.

A week later, I'm still not entirely sure how I feel about it, except to say I didn't see it coming and yet can't really imagine it ending differently.

"Rescue Me" isn't "Saving Grace": Tommy and Grace may both behave badly, but they come from very different places and very different writers and not even Tommy's superstitious brand of religion would allow him to give head space to the likes of Grace's Earl.

But if, when "Rescue Me" comes to an end next year, the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, it leaves its fans feeling the way I did about "Grace" - surprised and yet not betrayed - I'd call it a job well finished.

"Animals must think we're idiots," Louis C.K. tells his audience in an upcoming episode of "Louie," which premieres tonight on FX, after "Rescue Me."

He goes on to explain exactly why that is in language that's maybe a bit too specific for me to repeat it here, though it's not the kind of discussion that would be out of place in Tommy Gavin's firehouse.

In fact, very little that goes on in "Louie" would be out of place in "Rescue Me," world, but while Leary's stuck-on-himself firefighter mostly leaves me bored, Louis C.K. - the initials, per Wikipedia, approximate the pronunciation of his Hungarian surname, Szekely - is a taste I seem lately to have acquired.

Though not in time for his first TV series, HBO's "Lucky Louie," an unfortunate attempt at producing an old-fashioned multi-camera sitcom with premium-cable content that left me cringing (even if I was happy to see its co-star, Pamela Adlon, turn up in Episode 4 of the new "Louie").

There's cringe humor aplenty in FX's "Louie," which was written and directed by C.K. (can we just pretend that's his last name?), but viewers, at least, won't be cringing alone. The actor is playing a version of himself, divorced with two young daughters and a career as a standup comic, and seems way too busy judging himself to be judging any of us.

The stories, which spring from his standup act, aren't exactly "Seinfeld"-ian in their breadth, but they're largely believable (except, perhaps, for that heavily promoted guest turn by Ricky Gervais in an upcoming episode in which he seems to have wandered in from a different show altogether): aborted school trips, bad dates, poker games with comedian friends where some of the language they employ comes in for a welcome bit of scrutiny.

Animals that presumably form attractions based on factors other than sense of humor might indeed think it idiotic to like a guy just because he puts himself down, but there's something undeniably endearing about "Louie," who even at his most shocking seems willing to acknowledge the force of language - and who generally reserves his most cutting words for himself. *

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