Callie Thorne: Wrapping Rescue Me was 'Terrible!'

Callie Thorne

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After seven seasons with the Rescue Me "boys club," Callie Thorne says she can more than hold her own with the guys.

"I developed my own truck driver mouth," the actress tells PEOPLE with a laugh. But when the cast filmed the final season – which will air Wednesdays (10 p.m. ET) on FX – the gang of tough guys softened up.

"The final days of Rescue Me were terrible," she says. "There were a lot of tears. Especially when people heard, 'That's a series wrap on Denis Leary.' A lot of the guys got really choked up."

Even the man who helmed the series?

"Denis didn't cry, but he was very quiet," says Thorne. "Which is a big deal for Denis Leary."

Still, Thorne says the reaction made her feel good because, "the show touched everybody that deeply," she explains. "This was a family – seven years together. The set of Rescue Me was our playground and our home."

Luckily, she's got a new project to keep her busy: Thorne stars on the new USA series Necessary Roughness, which also airs Wednesdays (10 p.m. ET).

"It's the millennium," she jokes of having two shows on at the same time. "You can TiVo!"

Tommy faces the backdraft on ‘Rescue Me’

Every hero’s journey comes to an end.

What Tommy Gavin has to hope is that his upcoming finish is more reflective of his good intentions than his bad decisions — because seldom in the annals of TV has a hero stepped more outrageously, hilariously and at times tragically wrong. Which is precisely what has made Rescue Me such a treasure, a groundbreaking, under-appreciated series that, like its firefighter hero, is willing to risk it all, even if that occasionally has meant going down in flames.

Born in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and out of star and co-creator Denis Leary’s fascination with firefighters, Rescue Me now begins a nine-episode final run that will conclude, fittingly enough, close to the 10th anniversary of that national catastrophe.

A complex, often darkly funny rumination of the nature of heroism, the cost of survivor guilt, and the joys and limitations of firehouse camaraderie, Rescue Me now prepares to answer its last, crucial question: Is redemption possible for a man like Tommy Gavin, a selfish, alcoholic philanderer who, thanks to Leary’s fully formed and insufficiently rewarded performance, is one of TV’s most fascinating characters?

After years of bizarre battles and reconciliations, his wife, Janet (Andrea Roth), is simply looking for something resembling a normal life.

But Tommy makes it clear tonight that what she wants may be beyond him: “Normal’s dead and buried underneath Ground Zero. I’m just trying to make sense of what’s left above ground.”

And in that speech, you have one of the factors that makes RescueMe an important, and yet for some, off-putting, work of art: its characters’ steadfast refusal to put 9/11 behind them. In a nation that prefers to move on, Rescue Me‘s firefighters are stuck.

Leary is working with a fabulous cast, which is why he and co-creator Peter Tolan can dance so nimbly between realism and surrealism, drama and comedy. This is a show that can make you laugh at the crew’s attempts to help John Scurti’s Lou pass his physical without letting you forget that someone may die, or Tommy may explode, at any moment.

The journey is ending. Surely you don’t want to jump off the firetruck before it does.

Copyright © 2010 USA TODAY, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.