Thirty- & Fortysomething Men Having Angst on 'Men of Certain Age' & 'The League'

We've had plenty of TV shows as of late spotlighting modern mid-life challenges faced by women -- on Sex and the City, Lipstick Jungle, The Cougar, Desperate Housewives, etc. And now, two brand, spankin' new freshmen shows have waded into the terrain of men's middle aged issues.

In my Mommy Tracked pop culture column this week I spotlighted the guys of TNT's Men of a Certain Age and FX's The League. One's a dramedy about fortysomething men which provides a kind of serious look at the death of one's life's dreams starring a melancholy Ray Romano, while the other's a crude comedy about thirtysomething men obsessed with their fantasy football league, as well as swilling beer and aiming sexually lewd commentary at one another:

"The guys in this fantasy football league see their hobby as a way to avoid facing the oftentimes difficult responsibilties of adulthood because they know that it's just a matter of time before these guys morph into the guys from Men of a Certain Age."

While The League's very raunchy, it does have funny stuff about parenting, including a storyline about a dad who wants to make his 5-year-old daughter hate a beloved character, Mr. McGibblets (he reminded me of Elmo) which she has in the form of a doll that sings and dances. You can catch the half-hour episodes, including the McGibblets one, on Hulu.

Image credit: FX.

'Rescue Me:' Darkness, Descending

This season's Rescue Me on FX has gone back to where it all began: 9/11. Or, more precisely, to, what Denis Leary's character Tommy Gavin this week dubbed, "What happens after."

What has lured me to the show again, after having left it for a few seasons, was this very development, its revisiting of the festering wound that hasn't yet fully healed. A French journalist working on a 9/11 book is serving as a catalyst who's rekindling nightmares anew as dramatized in the person of Tommy. Even after his son has been killed, his marriage has withered, his father has died, his resistance to alcohol has faltered (again), Tommy continues to willingly face the killer flames of fires to save people all across the city -- to rescue complete strangers -- but hasn't made peace with the ghosts of 9/11 who continue to haunt him.

While last week's episode wasn't as emotionally heavy as this week's (Sean Garrity's secret cancer diagnoses notwithstanding; Janet confronting the mean middle aged moms was fabulous, by the way), this week's installment has drawn viewers literally into Tommy's darkness with him, where the ghosts of his past taunt him, call him a coward for what he did or didn't do on that historic, horrific day. How his climbing back into bottle and facing his dead relatives is going to play out, I surely don't know, but it's been damned riveting this far.

Image credit: FX via the Charlotte Observer.