Rescue Me Recap (Chlamydia)

Title: Chlamydia
Original Airdate: June 27, 2006

Last time on Rescue Me: Lou contemplated suicide before shacking up with Tommy. Tommy continued his affair with Mrs. Turbody and had controversial sex with Janet. Probie insisted he wouldn’t go down without a fight. Sean told Tommy he was in love with Maggie, who then told Tommy she had four other boyfriends. Chief’s working at a bar. Franco overshared with Alicia about how he illegally took Keela away from her foster family.

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The crew’s over at Tommy’s removing furniture to take over to Janet’s. Sean’s in a bedroom taking a nap because Maggie kept him up all night. Tommy goes in to heckle him, saying that Sean’s a pussy because he didn’t confront Maggie about the ‘four other boyfriends’ thing. Tommy knows Maggie will be pissed if Sean does say anything.

Keela and Alicia have tea at the park. Keela asks if she’ll be going away soon like her mommy did. Alicia tells her no and that she once had a little girl who went away, up to heaven, and she knows how it feels when someone leaves so she won’t go. Keela says “I want us to be together forever.” Alicia says she’ll work on it. I’m going to work on hoping Alicia doesn’t do something sketchy.

As the guys move some of the last stuff out, Sheila stops by and tells Tommy she ran into Angela, Johnny’s ex. Angie’s looking great and doing great. (Knowing that Angela is played by Marisa Tomei, I’m really fighting making a My Cousin Vinny reference. Chances are good that I’ll lose the fight later in this recap. Fair warning.)

Chief stops to talk to his boss at the bar, who is betting on some sporting team…Gonzaga…I’m lost. Chief gets a $100 advance on pay, only to get nudged into betting it all on the competition. Tsk tsk, Jerry.

In his now-nearly-empty house, Tommy surveys the remains of his stuff. He finds one of Connor’s baseball mitts in a box. When Sheila walks in, he’s holding it and starting to cry. She goes to him and they have a quiet moment where she comforts him, but then she goes to kiss him and he gets irritated, asks what she’s doing. She thought it’s what he wanted. “I don’t know, Tommy, you were being all gay and crying, I thought I’d take a shot.” She tells him he keeps throwing her glances. She keeps doing so much for him at the house, and he doesn’t appreciate it. She storms out and Tommy tosses Connor’s glove aside.

Lenny, in jail, surveys letters and pictures from prospective brides with another inmate. He’s itchin’ for a conjugal visit.

Maggie (wearing Sean’s shirt) and Sean (wearing a satin leopard-print bathrobe, dear lord) have an argument about the men she’s dating. Sean doesn’t want to play “fifth fiddle” to anyone. He takes his shirt and leaves.

Tommy’s leaving the grocery store when he nearly drives into Janet and Johnny. Janet walks away, but Johnny stares hard at Tommy through the windshield. I guess these two won’t be exchanging friendship bracelets any time soon.

Franco arrives home to an empty apartment. It’s late and Keela isn’t in her room. He checks with a neighbor, who says Alicia picked her up around 4. Back in the apartment, Franco finds a note that makes him go over to Alicia’s apartment, where her doorman informs him that she’s gone to her country home for the week.

Probie comes in to talk to Chief Ron. He asks for another transfer form, which Ron gladly hands over, saying he’s surprised he didn’t ask for it sooner, with all the shit the crew puts him through. Probie protests that they’re his friends, but Ron just says: “With friends like that, who needs friends?”

Franco tells Tommy that Alicia took Keela after finding out the foster family info. Tommy tells him he’ll talk to his cousin to try to track her down. Franco’s distraught.

Sheila calls Tommy, while walking up to the firehouse, saying that word is that Mrs. Turbody raped three boys in Damian’s class. Sheila thinks Damien was raped too, with how obsessed he was with Mrs. T. (Hee. Mrs. T. I wonder if she pities the fool?) Rumor is that she also gave all the boys chlamydia. We see a lightbulb go off in Tommy’s head.

The crew talks about recent sports games (which Chief lost all his money on) as the news story about Mrs. T shows on the TV. Catching the end of the broadcast, Tommy asks if they said anything about chlamydia. Chlamydia is apparently the least understood STD, since Probie thinks it’s a band, Sean thinks it’s a country, and Gia thinks it’s growing on her trellis. Lou seems well informed, however, saying the symptoms include pissing fire. Lou also says Mrs. Turbody is too pretty to have raped anyone. “If she’s handing out rapes, pick me, teacher, pick me.” (I like to think if Lou knew the brouhaha over last week’s sex scene, he’d be a little less glib.) When they ask Tommy what he thinks, he gets squirrelly and ducks out.

Tommy looks over some Chlamydia pamphlets when Janet calls. He asks her how she’s doing, health-wise, but she spins it to ask about him nearly running her and Johnny over. They awkwardly get off the phone as Jimmy’s ghost appears in the truck for a little chat with Tommy. Jimmy points out the irony of Tommy boning his cousin’s widow only to have his brother bang his own ex. Tommy argues it isn’t irony, it’s karma. (Funny, I never pegged Tommy as the type to gain divine inspiration from Carson Daly…) As we notice, karma works in mysterious and slightly stalker-ish ways—turns out Tommy is watching Angela, Johnny’s ex, who’s out walking her dog.

Tommy and Angela do the small talk and then agree to meet up at a bar/bookstore (is there such a thing?) shortly. When there, Angela tells him she knows all about the Sheila/Tommy/Janet/Johnny sordid mess. “Throw in a brain tumor, throw in an evil twin, it’s an episode of The Young and the Restless.” She ain’t far from the truth, people. She explains how she realized she was Johnny’s second choice; Janet, apparently, being numero uno. When Tommy asks her out, Angela catches on right away to his “secret evil plan” and ditches him.

Chief and Edna get back from karaoke night. He asks her to spend the night, and she says she’ll have to think about it. They share a kiss before she leaves.

Lou walks in on Tommy in the bathroom, “checking his cock,” which Tommy explains by saying he was checking for Chlamydia. (Listen, honey: if Veronica, a trained detective, couldn’t find it, I’m pretty sure you won’t be able to track it down.) Tommy lays out the whole situation that led him to having sex with Mrs. Turbody. Lou mocks appropriately.

Probie and his roommate, whose name I can’t remember, get into an argument about who is gayer. It is broken up when someone gets a great hit in the baseball game on TV, prompting them to grab beers and lay down their verbal swords. (In their case, more like verbal toothpicks. These two simpletons aren’t exactly armed for a battle of wits.)

Maggie arrives at Tommy’s apartment, angry at him for sabotaging her least dysfunctional relationship yet. She tells him if he messes things up more, she’ll hurt him worse than he hurt Johnny.

At the jail, Lenny’s got a visitor—a prospective wife. Confirming the details with the guard, Lenny’s pretty keen on the ‘one hour every ten days’ regular sex–along with the regular guard phone calls throughout each visit as an excuse for avoiding chit-chat. What a romantic, that Lenny.

Bob, Jeanie’s brother, arrives to explain why he had a falling out with Jeanie so many years ago. Turns out it was because he thought Jerry was no good, didn’t deserve her. Bob figured he might’ve made a mistake, seeing how Jerry is sticking by his sister through all this, so he’s about to hand over a check for $5000…until Edna walks down the stairs. Bob rips up the check and walks away, saying, “That’s the most expensive piece of ass you ever had, my friend.”

Meanwhile, at the jail, Lenny’s making a serious love connection. The broad on the other side of the plastic partition is a pistol. She comes onto him, then explains her life philosophy about how nobody’s accountable anymore and people should tell it like it is. Starry-eyed by her declarations, Lenny asks her to marry him.

Alicia arrives at the firehouse and approaches Tommy to ask where Franco is. When Tommy explains he’s been looking for his daughter and Alicia’s going to be in serious trouble, she tells him she knows a few things about the situation and Franco’s the one who’ll be in trouble. Keela may love her dad, but she needs a mom: “In her daddy’s house, girls are things that disappear. She’s a girl, and she’s wondering when her time is gonna come.” She says they should think about how little girls grow up to marry men like their dads. Would Tommy want his daughters to marry someone like Franco? Alicia gets under Tommy’s skin before saying Franco should give her a call and he can come see his daughter.

I don’t usually say this about women, but Alicia is one cocky bitch. She may also have a point. Even if she does, she has a piss-poor way of making it.

A call to the firehouse sends the crew out. Sean and Tommy get into an altercation in the truck about how Sean can’t win: he’s torn between being a pussy and an asshole. Is that like a rock and a hard place? Or should I make some dirty comments here? As Sean puts it, “she’s the best thing that ever happened to me, and you ruined it.” Accordingly, Sean breaks up with Tommy. OMG NO SEAN-TOMMY OTP!!1!

Franco bursts into the firehouse, pushing Tommy up against the rig, angry that he wouldn’t tell Franco what Alicia said over the phone. Tommy calms him down by saying that she said a lot of things, including how little girls grow up to marry men who are like their fathers. Franco takes this stonily, saying “So what’s the problem, right? It’s not like I’m going to win any goddamn father of the year awards. My baby’s going to grow up wanting for nothing, and I get my life back the way it was before. It’s good for everybody, right?” Even thinking that, he starts to go ballistic, grabbing a crowbar and beating on a trash can and the lockers. His anger spent, his voice full of emotion, he apologizes for grabbing Tommy and stalks out.

Angela calls Tommy out of the blue to tell him she in. In for what? In for messing with Johnny and Janet. It should be “a blast.” Tommy says he’ll think about it for a couple days, then call her back with a plan. Driving along in his truck, Tommy sees several ghostly passengers – dead firefighters, his dead son – appear, then disappear quickly, disturbingly, disorienting him. He pulls over by the side of the road, sobbing.

Tommy needs a hug. Franco, too, and maybe Lou. Group hug, guys?

In two weeks: A fire (hey, it’s been a while since we’ve had one of those) appears to trap some of the crew; Angela and Tommy set a trap of their own to make Johnny and Janet jealous.

Also, I got through the recap without talking about how well Marisa fit in with the rest of the cast (oh yeah, she blends), or how now Angela will want to have sex with Tommy because her biological clock is TICKING. Yay me! Do I win a 1963 Pontiac Tempest in metallic mint green?

Julie is a GMMR recapper extraordinaire, but she also has her own fabulous TV website. Head over to TV and Sympathy to read more from Julie.