‘Rescue Me’

The last of the writers-strike MIAs have returned. After more than a year, the boys are back at FX’s “Rescue Me -- perhaps you’ve noticed them tromping around a Lilliputian New York in the ads for the new “Larger Than Life Season” -- and the vacation seems to have lightened their spirits considerably.

In recent months, star Denis Leary and his co-creator/producer Peter Tolan have repeatedly promised a different show, one less bleak and heavy-footed than Season 4, and on this they most certainly deliver.

Where once “Rescue Me” wallowed in the endless dark nights of its characters’ shattered souls, it is now so lighthearted it occasionally borders on glib.

There are reasons, besides audience unhappiness with how depressing the show had become. Part of the levity may be due to Tommy’s (Denis Leary) still fairly solid sobriety, or to the fact that he is in a happily furious state of denial over his father’s death last season.

Maybe it’s because his crazy sister Maggie (Tatum O’Neal) is no longer involved with his fellow firefighter Sean (Stephen Pasquale) or because all the ghosts that have been haunting him were sick of him and all his selfish behavior. They were sick of him.

What little tension opens Season 5 -- whether or not Tommy will be declared Section 8 crazy and kicked out of the station, his ongoing divorce wars with Janet (Andrea Roth), the secret relationship between Colleen and “Black Shawn” (Larenz Tate) -- is played much more for comedy than booze-addled Irish Catholic pathos.

Watching Tommy go at it with Janet’s new and physically challenged boyfriend (a remarkably tough and obnoxious Michael J. Fox) or attempting to persuade his daughter to break her new save-it-for-marriage vow, you have to wonder if Judd Apatow is lurking on the premises. Certainly the cheerfully obscene and occasionally violent firehouse round-robins, which previously served as contrast to the life-and-death tension of a firefighter’s life, now seem more like centerpiece skits.

In fact, the shift is so marked that fans may wonder what the heck is going on.

Well, for one thing, a sexy French journalist is conducting interviews for a book commemorating the 10th anniversary of 9/11. During the scenes that do not involve the firefighters attempting to sleep with her, we are reminded of why Leary and Peter Tolan created “Rescue Me” in the first place: as a tribute to and exploration of the irrevocable damage done to New York firefighters on that terrible day.

When the show premiered five years ago, its portrayal of those newly sanctified national heroes as alcoholic, chain-smoking, damaged-sometimes-into-psychosis individuals didn’t just push the envelope, it took a torch to the poor little sucker. (“There is no box,” remains the mantra.)

Since then, of course, the damaged, volatile, lovable but unlikable hero has taken over television. So if explosion has become passe, maybe implosion is the way to go.

Four episodes in, it’s hard to imagine that a raging (and hilarious) monologue from Tommy about how death does not change his father’s cold and withholding nature is as rough as it’s going to get. And it isn’t. Interspersing sitcom-like plot lines -- Mike (Michael Lombardi) buys a bar with his mother’s legacy and tries out one ridiculous theme after another, Sheila (Callie Thorne) works out her narcissistic rage toward Tommy with a “psycho-dramaturg” -- are mini-confessions of rage, paranoia and seemingly bottomless pain.

Franco (Daniel Sanjata) offers a chillingly articulate theory for why the attacks were an inside job, Lou (John Scurti) confesses that he has to look in the mirror two or three times a day to make sure he isn’t made of the things they used to fill out what was left of the fallen -- helmets and gear and bits of wood -- and Tommy mocks the woman for what he considers a pathetic attempt to exploit what for her is “just a date” and for him remains “a monster.”

These moments not only provide a solid bridge between the “old” “Rescue Me,” in which Tommy, you know, raped Janet, regularly engaged in murderous violence with his now-dead brother and almost threw an infant off a bridge, but they also seem to be providing a prelude for Something Big.

So Leary and Tolan will have to forgive us if our laughter, though welcome, is a little nervous. “Rescue Me” has prepared its viewers for many things, but a happy ending, or even one in which sanity triumphs, is not among them.

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mary.mcnamara@latimes.com

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‘Rescue Me’

Where: FX

When: 10 tonight

Rating: TV-MA-LSV (may be unsuitable for children under the age of 17 with advisories for coarse language, sex and violence)