When was the last time you saw the Gavin family and the rest of the men of the New York City firehouse?  It seems like forever ago but luckily, the wait is finally over.  Tonight, FX brings back the acclaimed series Rescue Me for its fifth season, consisting of 22 episodes that will air over 23 weeks.

When we last saw Rescue Me, the sighting of Jimmy's “ghost” was the talk of the firehouse, while Colleen blamed Tommy for her failed relationship.  Tommy, on the other hand, came up with a way to fix his own problem.  Unfortunately, Tommy’s father died after spending time with him in a ball game.

"You're looking at 19 months off the air, which is technically cancellation, I believe," says Peter Tolan, Rescue Me writer and producer.  Due to the writers' strike, the FX dramedy series about New York firefighter Tommy Gavin (Dennis Leary) faces a prolonged break, which, in today's fast-paced world of ridiculously short attention span, almost automatically translates to fading into oblivion.  As new shows are being churned out by networks, even a critically acclaimed series like Rescue Me can just as easily be forgotten.

To remedy this delay (new episodes won't arrive until April), the people behind Rescue Me opted to launch a series of weekly five-minute segments they like to call “Minisodes” that will air Tuesdays at 10pm ET/PT.

Veteran actor Michael J. Fox is supposedly close to inking a contract with FX's Rescue Me for a multi-episode arc.  Entertainment Weekly reports that the former Spin City and Back to the Future star is considering a role in the firefighter comedy drama as the love interest of Janet, played by Andrea Roth, Denis Leary's ex.  Fox is reportedly seriously thinking about it, as he and Leary are longtime friends.  If this pushes through, however, fans have to wait a teeny bit as Rescue Me won't be back until March next year.

Meanwhile, according to E! Online, Fox, who is also renowned for battling Parkinson's Disease, is also in talks with creator Bill Lawrence to reprise his role on the ABC comedy Scrubs.  Now the two, Fox and Lawrence, go way back with Spin City, which Lawrence co-created. Fox's last appearance on the show was in 2004 for two episodes.

Following her controversial drug bust, Tatum O'Neal is back in shape and ready to reprise her role as Tommy's sister Maggie on the FX series Rescue Me, according to the actress' publicist.  Fortunately, producers of the show are also eager for her return.

"We want to bring her back, and I haven't heard anything about why she wouldn't be available to us," series co-creator Peter Tolan told TV Guide.  "It's a misdemeanor, so she's not going to do time, and nobody has said to us we can't insure her or anything like that.  So I'm assuming she's available to us and it's 'business as usual.'"

Fans of Rescue Me won't be able to catch the new season until March 2009, however FX will be releasing a number of “mini-sodes” airing in June and July to bridge the fourth and fifth season of the comedy-drama series.  To ease the long wait, the network has also released the highly anticipated fourth season DVD.

In case you have never watched a single episode of Rescue Me, the series stars Dennis Leary as Tommy Gavin, a firefighter with more problems than your average person.  While his occupation is already stressful as it is, his work  has also generated other side effects such as alcoholism.  Firefighting has also affected his personal relationships as professional traumas can have such in-depth effects that they can start to worsen existing personal problems.