The TV Zone

Denis Leary’s New York firefighters drama “Rescue Me” will return for a fifth season next year, and a fifth-and-a-half, too. FX has ordered 22 more episodes, to be aired in two separate cycles.

That’s good news not only for Leary and fans, but for NYC film crews, since the show shoots in a Queens studio and other city environs. Production is scheduled to restart in the spring.

That’s if and when we get past the threatened writers’ strike, of course.

Viewers of Wednesday night's "Rescue Me" were no doubt stunned after they saw the final scene in which chief Jerry Reilly (Jack McGee) killed himself.

Turns out McGee ain't too happy either.

In an in-depth interview with writer Matt Seitz for www.TelevisionWithoutPity.com, McGee claims he's been mistreated by executive producer and series star Denis Leary.

Here are some choice exercepts:

“My own true feeling is, I think the wrong character killed himself,”McGee says, referring to Leary's Tommy Gavin. Beyond that, he objects to his treatment by Leary. “I want to walk away from this as clean as possible, but I’m not gonna sugarcoat it.”

McGee says Leary, who declined requests to be interviewed by Television Without Pity, cultivates a public image as a bold, blunt, hands-on actor-writer-producer who loves collaboration, but is actually an insecure, controlling person who hogs the spotlight. (“The promos are all him -- you'd think there was nobody else on the show.”)

McGee says Leary demands deference from costars, ostracizes out those who don't grant it, and avoids taking responsibility for unpleasant creative decisions, preferring to subcontract the delivery of bad news to his fellow executive producers, Peter Tolan and Jim Serpico.

“He's a bully, is what he is,” McGee says. “Bullies most of the time don't have the guts to do things themselves.”

McGee says he isn't surprised that Leary never had a face-to-face discussion with him about the decision to write him out, because “that would take a real man to do that. Denis doesn't know how to do that. His persona would make you think he's straight up, he's honest and he's forthright. But I never got an indication of that..The truth is, if he knocked on my door right now, I'd be able to look him right in the eye. I don't know if he could do that.”

Peter Tolan, writer and co-producer, has a different version of events. “Jack is being disingenuous if he says nobody explained to him what was going on. The difference he's drawing is, apparently he wanted to hear [the bad news] from Denis, when the fact remains that Denis is wearing about eight different hats on the show and doesn't have anything to do with the hiring and firing of actors.”

Asked to justify Reilly's death dramatically, Tolan said it was about violating audience expectations.

What the heck does that mean?

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