One of the best series that not enough people saw last year returns tonight.

Like its channel-mates “The Shield” and “Nip/Tuck,” “Rescue Me” isn’t an easy watch and is too intense for many people. A line from this season’s second episode sums it up well: “America doesn’t like its heroes complicated.”

There’s the rub. Firefighter Tommy Gavin, played by series creator Denis Leary, is complicated. He’s one of the best while on the job. But he’s haunted by the ghost of 9/11, and his pain is visceral.

This season’s action picks up three months after the last one ended. After a falling out with his station-mates, Tommy gets a transfer to a house on Staten Island, where he’s bored out of his mind. His wife has stolen out of town with his three kids. He’s gotten the wife of his dead cousin, a firefighter killed on 9/11, pregnant. He’s slipping deeper and deeper into a bottle, but still he reaches out to his A.A. sponsor, a defrocked priest.

Tommy’s father (Charles Durning) is traveling around the world, his uncle Teddy (Lenny Clarke) is deeply in debt to bookies, and his cop brother Johnny wants him to clean up his act.

His old station-mates are having problems as well, despite Tommy being gone. Franco (Daniel Sunjata) blames Tommy for the accident that left him emotionally and physically scarred. He and female firefighter Laura (Diane Farr) are dancing around a relationship. The wife of Chief Reilly (Jack McGee) has worsening Alzheimer’s. Mike (Michael Lombardi) is stalking his overweight ex-girlfriend, who dumped him.

The trials of lapsed Catholic Tommy are almost Job-ian, if they weren’t so self-inflicted. Part of the appeal of “Rescue Me” is seeing if Tommy can pull himself up, or whether he’s going to fall into the abyss. It’s messy, like life itself, but entrancing. (Dale McGarrigle, NEWS staff)