What the fuck, chief?

Spoiler Alert!

If you haven't watched last night's Rescue Me yet, you probably won't want to read this particular post. But hey, if you're reading this, chances are you're probably a fan of the show and can't wait until the day after to watch. So, without further suspense (unlike the NBA Draft):

Chief Reilly put a bullet in his brain at the end of last night's episode. He's dead. For real this time, not like the near-fatal heart attack he suffered mid-coitus last season.

Go ahead, take a moment. Good. Let's move on.

We always liked the chief's character, he was a calming presence in the face of the overflowing machismo that often floods the firehouse, but we're kind of glad he's finally gone. Truthfully, with his wife's vacant brain, his affair with he and his wife's longtime friend, his sexual adventure with the Jamaican woman, and his gay son's marriage - his character has run its course. There was no where left to take him.

That's why this episode set the stage for the his exit. The chief, an insurance risk after his heart attack, was essentially exiled from the FDNY. He was stuck pushing papers in an office, and with no wife or the guys from his team, he had nothing left. The actor who portrays him, Jack McGee, sees things a little differently, and in a revealing interview with Television Without Pity he lets his feelings be known.

"Tell me, how does the only guy [on the series], the guy who always does the right thing, a stand-up guy with all the other guys, the guy everybody goes to when they have a problem, the guy who stood by his wife after she developed Alzheimer's, go off and take his life?"

McGee says the character might have considered suicide after losing his dream job, but he wouldn't have followed through, because he was a tough, adaptable man with a wife who depended on him. "My own true feeling is, I think the wrong character killed himself," McGee says, referring to Gavin.

Beyond that, McGee objects to his treatment by Leary: "I want to walk away from this as clean as possible, but I'm not gonna sugarcoat it."

Friction in the fictional firehouse, huh? We can't say it surprises us. If you've ever seen Denis Leary's stand-up act (and if you haven't, Netflix it immediately), it's not a stretch to think he'd be difficult to work with. Funny, this never seems to happen when characters are killed off on Lost.