Denis Leary doesn’t care if you’re angry

IN a world in which apologies from public figures flow freely, you might admire Denis Leary’s refusal to say he’s sorry. Conversely, you may think that he’s been spending too much time with the volatile firefighter he plays on FX’s “Rescue Me.”

Loyal viewers will recall that last summer, Leary was at the center of an uproar over a now-notorious episode that culminated with Tommy Gavin, the tortured lout the actor portrays with such gusto, forcing himself sexually on his estranged wife, Janet (Andrea Roth). Reviewers and bloggers savaged the producers for making it seem as if rape wasn’t really a big deal; after the encounter, Tommy apologized -- for ripping his wife’s shirt.

“I’m just reporting what I know to be true,” the actor said.

Never a candidate for an ambassadorship, Leary, a stand-up comic by trade who’s also a co-creator, executive producer and writer on “Rescue Me,” practically taunted the show’s detractors by refusing, when discussing the controversy, to equivocate or make nice even a little bit. He insisted the scene made perfect sense in the context of Tommy’s dysfunctional marriage, and that anyone who couldn’t see that must be defective in some way.

“Anybody that called it rape wasn’t paying attention to the scene,” Leary told me last week, in preparation for Wednesday’s Season 4 opener. “But that’s this country for you. People would prefer to watch ‘According to Jim.’ They want to watch something and not be engaged, like eating Cheese Nips.”

Not that he’s bothered by the dust-up, mind you. “I didn’t really notice it,” he said. “I didn’t really care. I wish they were as angry at Bush as at me.”

For many fans, and I count myself among them, “Rescue Me” does vividly present truths, even if the show’s sensibility is too jaundiced, its tonal shifts too jarring, for the mainstream.

But the fact that the writers dare to tackle complicated subjects seldom seen on series TV -- the proper way to grieve in a post-9/11 world, say, or the intense ambivalence many straight-identified “regular guys” feel concerning homosexuality -- is what makes “Rescue Me” unique.

But even longtime fans might find themselves thrown off by the first three episodes of this season. Ever since the rape uproar, Leary and fellow co-creator-executive producer Peter Tolan have promised that, if viewers upset by last year’s marital assault would only be patient, Tommy would get his “karmic payback.”

Last season’s cliffhanger had Tommy’s girlfriend, Sheila (Callie Thorne), drugging him and accidentally setting her beach house on fire; the episode ended with the couple’s fate uncertain. In this season’s first episode, we learn that Tommy indeed survived the blaze, but he’s in trouble with the law and might wind up sacked by the New York Fire Department. Meanwhile, Colleen, Tommy and Janet’s teenage daughter, has run off with her boyfriend. And Janet has given birth to a son whose father could be either Tommy or his brother Johnny, the victim of a contract killer last season.

Tolan said the creative goal this season was to delve more deeply into Tommy’s tortured character. “We wanted to get a little bit more into what makes Tommy Tommy,” he said.

For Leary, that boils down to questions of faith. “What is God? Where the hell has he been?” he said, adding by way of prediction that the show’s treatment of the subject would upset religiously inclined viewers.

That Tommy’s life is complicated and often unpleasant has never been in doubt. But does any of this qualify as karmic payback? When asked if he thought Tommy had received his just desserts for the rape, Leary replied, “Don’t you? His wife’s pregnant and you don’t know who the father is.”

Dubious paternity is a serious issue in many places beyond an FDNY firehouse. But viewers probably aren’t going to see it as the equivalent of rape, in the same way that not many fans were mollified last season when, three episodes after he raped his wife, Tommy was drugged and “date-raped” by Sheila. (Not coincidentally, Janet also raped Tommy in the aftermath of his attack on her.)

The genius of “Rescue Me” has always been its wild tonal shifts, the sudden sprints from comedy to tragedy. In this season’s premiere, for example, a floor collapses beneath Tommy and the other firefighters as they battle a warehouse blaze. One by one, the team members lose their grip and fall toward flames, leaving the viewer expecting the worst -- until they’re seen landing safely, dusty and joking, after sliding through a hole in the shattered building.

In a subplot in next week’s episode, Mike Silletti (Michael Lombardi), the dim-witted former “probie” firefighter, is faced with his steely mother begging him to kill her in the hospital before cancer robs any more of her life. There’s a tender moment as Silletti slowly realizes the reality of his mother’s predicament. “Mama loves you, baby,” she tells him. “Now, go find something to kill me with.”

Leary says the distinctive tone is deliberately reflective of the torturous lives that firefighters live; confronted daily by life or death choices, they often find themselves acting out inappropriately.

With last season’s rape scene, however, the producers plunged deep into a burning building, and it’s still an open question whether they can find their way out. “When we did that story, we thought it was business as usual for the characters,” Tolan said. “We were taken aback by the reaction to that specific scene.... I think a lot of people felt we’d gone too far; they felt betrayed by the character. They may have thought his dysfunction was cute for a while.

“It’s a tightrope we walk every week,” Tolan added. “Viewers wonder, are we gonna fall or not? As hard as you go on one leg, you have to go on the other.”

The Channel Island column usually runs Mondays in Calendar. Contact Scott Collins at scott.collins@latimes.com