It’s not fair to review these shows together - they’re so different and “Rescue Me” has five seasons of inventive and startling drama to its credit. However, the shows themselves point to a divergence of attitude in what’s being produced these days versus what was once-upon-a-time the current market in television.
“Rookie Blue” is like “Twilight.” As “Twilight” is vampire-light with pretty people acting like there’s serious issues at stake, “Rookie Blue” is cop-light with pretty people acting like there’s issues at stake. No doubt, being a rookie is frightening, exhilarating, satisfying and frustrating work. This show isn’t going to make you really experience or understand that. Instead it’s “Gray’s Anatomy” for the police world - which is the trend, of course, these days in network television. Don’t dive too deep into those dark waters because there be monsters there.
Featuring four young rookies, the central character is Andy McNally (Missy Peregrym "Smallville" "Heroes") Her father was a cop 
who is now (probably) an alcoholic (he has a “past”) and she’s satisfactorily androgynous for him starting with her name (Andy) and her tom-boy approach to her life.
She can pick locks, shoot a weapon well, rundown a suspect with aplomb, and is uber intuitive as a cop. She’s also very, very attractive. In fact, Missy Peregrym has true star quality - expect her in a RomCom coming to a theater soon. I predict she is the next “It Girl” when it comes to looking cute, acting smart and breaking hearts in a really nice way like Julia Roberts or Katherine Heigl.
As a cop, Andy is the sensitive but tough one of the group; wears her heart on her sleeve, 
doncha’ know? She actually gives a drug user unprotected mouth-to-mouth and talks a nervous kid with a gun into not shooting her by telling him that it’s her first day and she really wants to do well (gack!)
And what about that kid-with-a-gun scenario? This dumb-ass geek shoots a drug dealer who is pumping his sister full of junk - and other fluids. So geekboy kills the drug dude, gets away completely free but is so stupid that he goes back to where he stashed the gun just as the pretty rookie is searching the abandoned building on a tip from an undercover cop whose cover Andy has blown - yeah, well, don’t ask and I won’t tell you anymore of this silliness.
No, plot isn’t exactly a strong suit of this series.
The rest of the rookies are handsome, pretty men and women with various generic stories. Honestly, none of them matter much because you can rotate the wheel and pick whatever backstory you want and it would work here.
All the non-rookie cops are cranky but likable role models. Where is the bad guys in this? Who will make it difficult on the rookies to succeed? Only pressure makes a diamond and there's nothing here - except the desire to be a good cop - that seems like it will form and define these young men and women. That's actually not just a problem but a huge problem dramatically.
Some horrible dialogue “Fake it ‘till you make it” (I think that is actually an Urkel phrase - really) and “I just got out of ladies prison, you’re the first man I’ve touched” are slammed into situations so unreal that you’ll find yourself losing focus on what the story is and wondering if your laundry is done yet so you have an excuse to leave. If you like your cop shows light and technically and emotionally unrealistic, then here’s one that you can really love. But it certainly isn't "NYPD Blue" and adding the word "blue" onto this title is a pure insult to that remarkable show.
I myself won’t be adding “Rookie Blue” to my queue anytime soon.
On the other end of the spectrum is “Rescue Me.” This is a show so audaciously different and disturbing at times that it wildly fails and wildly succeeds in the span of minutes. But it succeeds a great deal more than fails. Last season's dream-induced musical numbers were perhaps a bit of a fail - but the scenes involving Tommy and his romantic triangle were TV - drama in general - at its best.
The sixth season opens on self-destructive Tommy Gavin (co-writer/-producer Denis Leary) having a near-death experience and going to heaven? hell? both? While there he is greeted by all the firefighters who died on 9-11 including his cousin who has been a dead-like-me thorn in his side since the first ep.
At the close of last season drunk-ass Gavin was shot by his drunk-ass uncle for pouring the drinks that got the uncle’s drunk-ass girlfriend killed. The show leaves you with the uncle sitting calmly at a bar watching his nephew slowly bleed to death on the floor. A pretty grim scenario no matter how you slice it.
As the new season opens, Tommy is out of the hospital. They don’t bother to show the resolution to that scenario, content instead to talk about it instead. Okay - so it's anti-climactic but it works - sorta. Suffice to say that Tommy is fine. The uncle has been given a pass for his shooting (see what I mean about the sublime and the ridiculous?) and everyone in the cast is then given a moment to tell Tommy what an asshole he really is. Yes, he’s a jerk - admittedly so - but how the writers can come up with the idea that the uncle is justified and gets no punishement is beyond me. I guess the “some people just need shooting” is in play here.
Tommy isn't unaffected by this all although he pretends to be fine. The ending shows him drinking in a church, sitting on the priest's chair and raising a toast to Jesus on the cross. Similar to when Martin Sheen in "The West Wing" smokes in a church and puts his cigarette out in the aisle - dissing God and his holy horde. Or perhaps acknowleding that there is a greater power than Gavin's ego. Either way strap in - it's gonna be a bumpy ride knowing the creators/writers of this series.
I hate to say this but I was underwhelmed by this opening ep. It didn’t ring like the rest of the show has. There was a bad season - I think #3 - that I wasn’t wild about also but they roared back in Seasons 4 and 5. I will give the show the benefit of the doubt before I declare that it has jumped
the shark.
Why?
“Rescue Me” tries so many different and unique things, it’s really worth allowing for some slack. The writers and producers have proven themselves over and over again as putting together one of the best dramas on TV. I will wait (a month! what is it with these programmers, for f*ck’s sake?) for the next ep and hope that this opening ep was an anomaly. But my fear is that there may be only so many ways to make the Tommy Gavin character an alcoholic jerk and then somehow redeem him. Perhap the writers/producers have gone to the well one too many times and can’t “rescue” this season.
If you haven't seen this show before and plan to watch it start at the beginning which was inspired by the 
terrible sacrifices of the rescue workers caught in the 9-11 tragedy. To fully appreciate the nuanced and nightmarish world that these men and women work and live in, you need to understand where they’re coming from. Plus, trust me, you can never fully grasp the depth of character here without those crucial earlier episodes.
As to my opening statement about the divergence of what was once television to the television of now, you need look no further than the recent hiring of David Nevins to run Showtime. Nevins is known for his “family fare” and not the challenging and flawed characters of his predecessor. I see this as writing on the wall. A general sea change away from dramatic fare like “Dexter,” “The Sopranos,” and “Nurse Jackie.”
We have enough darkness to deal with in our personal lives these days - apparently we don’t want it in our entertainment too is the thinking. Monsters are being demystified and reclassified in an attempt to spin them into something new and perhaps less challenging.
It’s a hunky, shiny-vampire/sensitive-werewolf entertainment world now and we all live in it.
Ugh.
Quick - where are my DVDs of "Cracker?"
