"Rescue Me," or that Nirvana song?

As controversial as last week’s episode of “Rescue Me�" has become – it ended with Tommy Gavin (Denis Leary) raping his estranged wife Janet (Andrea Roth) (or did he? At the currently contentious “Rescue Me�" message board at televisionwithoutpity.com, even that’s up for debate) – tomorrow night’s episode may infuriate fans even more, for it leaves that fairly urgent matter on the back burner, so to speak.

To recap: After having achieved a brief rapprochement late last season, New York firefighter Tommy and Janet inextricably severed ties when their son was killed by a drunk driver while Tommy was (perhaps a bit too casually) watching him. (It’s also possible that there was little that Tommy could have done to avert the tragedy.) As with just about everything in Tommy’s life, the ongoing divorce proceedings have played out with an angry vitriol (Janet’s now seeing his brother, whom Tommy roundly thrashed a couple of episodes back). So, when a discussion of the separation of their property got pitched a little too high last week, Tommy forced himself on his ex for nonconsensual sex, which was bad enough, but what offended some viewers as much if not more was the manner in which the initially combative Janet ultimately accepted the rough treatment.

For the uninitiated, if not the show’s viewers, it should be pointed out that “Rescue Me�" is about extraordinarily damaged souls, something the title itself should make evident. Virtually every character on the show is massively screwed up, particularly Tommy, who is battling alcoholism, is haunted by the ghosts of those he could not save in his rescues, seems incapable of treating women as fellow human beings … and the list goes on and on.

None of this excuses what Tommy did, but it does suggest that such a volcanic personality could be capable of just about any sort of bad behavior. Nonetheless, after the episode aired, messages of the “I am done with this show�? nature began popping up at TWOP’s “RM�" message board from viewers offended by his latest bit of inexcusable behavior. From there, a debate raged over whether it was, in fact, an act of rape or merely the latest roundelay in an epically dysfunctional relationship. (In at least one interview, Roth herself offered a far less damning interpretation of the scene.)

Series co-creator (with Leary) and executive producer Peter Tolan popped up at TWOP in an attempt to unruffle fans’ feathers:

“We tried to be extremely careful about that scene. I did not direct the episode, but I did my most careful writing in preparing the scene. Our feeling has always been that Tommy and Janet are in a highly dysfunctional relationship (obviously), a negative vortex fueled by only one positive - a faint glimmer of love that is constantly overshadowed by truly fantastic physical attraction. In terms of the scene last night, I never wrote the words 'don't' or 'no' at any point in the scene, and when I talked to Andrea about the playing of the thing, I pretty much told her that she had to stand up to Tommy - that he had taken so much away from her over the years, that she had to stare him down from a position of strength while he was forcing himself on her. I told her to shame him with the words she was given - to let him know she couldn't hurt her anymore, no matter what he did.

“Did this come across? For many viewers, obviously not. I was not on set the day the scene was shot (I live in California and am only in NYC when I direct episodes), so maybe those ideas weren't followed through as well as they could have been. I'll admit this is extremely dicey stuff. The idea of any woman 'enjoying' being raped is repellant, and caused all of us (and the network) a great deal of concern. But again, these are seriously damaged people who are unable to express their emotions - and so expression through brutality has become expected.�"

(By the way, Tolan also conceded that the lame subplot involving the Probie’s (Michael Lombardi) casual gay sex while insisting he’s not gay is, well, lame.)

But Alan Sepinwall, one of the Newark Star-Ledger’s two perceptive TV critics, was just one viewer who wasn’t having any of it. “It made me uncomfortable and unhappy in a way even the most extreme TV and film almost never does,�? he wrote of the rape on his blog.

Well, this is a show that killed off Tommy’s son, then had him conspiring in having the drunk driver murdered, so it’s not like “Rescue Me�" isn’t utterly preoccupied with provoking its audience, with venturing into uncomfortable territory even other bold programs wouldn’t touch. And, certainly, Tommy’s had some rough, angry sex in the past, particularly with his cousin’s widow Sheila (Callie Thorne), whose anguished – and consensual – couplings could be nearly as difficult to watch as last week’s episode. (Much of the episode leading up to the rape was given over to Tommy suffering a series of sex-related humiliations.)

A primary argument against the rape sequence spun off Janet’s ultimate, queasy response to it – that “Rescue Me’s�" writers are tawdry horndogs who couldn’t write a decent female character if ordered to at gunpoint, and who probably personally enjoyed the scene. And it’s true – many of the women who trickle through the lives of the men at 62 Truck are little more than eye candy with sundry comic peccadilloes designed to make the guys suffer more. But this show makes it very clear that these guys are clueless – not just about women, but about anything that doesn’t involve saving lives and putting out fires; the show fairly screams “Don’t try this at home�" in every frame – so it seems highly unlikely that they’d have much success with intelligent, well-adjusted women who quite reasonably would steer a wide berth if they encountered any of these louts.

(But, yes, the women the writers cook up can be awfully lame and rooted in puerile male fantasies lifted from a cheesy lad mag – the teacher who trades her student, Tommy’s late cousin’s son, for Tommy? Please. If it’s of any consolation, she gets her comeuppance tonight, but again, that perpetuates the women-suffer-for-having-sexual-appetites rubric. And viewers who were shocked that “Rescue Me�? seemed to have created an intelligent, even empathetic, female character in Susan Sarandon’s older woman who alternately manhandles and pampers Franco (Daniel Sunjata) will likely be disappointed in Tuesday’s episode, in which something that many TWOP posters predicted does in fact occur. Sarandon does, nonetheless, get off a withering line that nails Tommy between the eyes.) (On the other hand, the notion that three Oscar-winning actresses are on board this season – Sarandon, Tatum O’Neal and Marissa Tomei – suggests that there must be something in the writing that’s drawing such prominent names.)

Another conspicuous complaint suggested that, unlike “The Sopranos�" or “Deadwood�" – where the lovably despicable nature of certain characters was established at the outset and viewers admire them despite their shortcomings – on “Rescue Me,�" Leary’s Tommy continues to descend into an abyss; the show gets darker and darker and its tone gets ever more misanthropic.

While I’m not sure I agree that the tone is getting nastier – it’s always been plenty mean – it seems to me that Tommy’s downward spiral is pretty compelling. Those making this argument also suggest that characters on TV series have to be at least somewhat likable and, with this act, Tommy has ceased to be so. Perhaps, but the character remains fascinating, particularly since he hasn’t yet hit bottom. And while in tomorrow’s episode Tommy plots further revenge on Janet and his brother, one scene suggests that even he may be reaching his breaking point.

But it would've been nice if Tolan and the show's brain trust demonstrated a little more understanding as to why some viewers are so upset.

“Rescue Me�" airs Tuesdays at 10 p.m. on FX, if you can stand it.

(One might find bemusement in the fact that, mere hours after thrashing ABC Family for its prurient content, I turn around and defend a show in which the main protagonist commits an act that is at the very least in the neighborhood of rape. Clearly, there’s only one explanation: Schizophrenia.)