‘Nurse Jackie’: Secrets are hard to keep

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Holy Toledo! Eddie followed Jackie home. He saw her. With her kids. With her husband. I know I shouldn’t start with the ending, but wow! It’s probably the best shocker finale for ‘Nurse Jackie’ since the pilot when we first learned Jacks was married. Oh, so exciting, but we’ll get to that.

Jackie starts the day in the bar with her family. Grace bandages up her broken finger, and Fiona nearly lets slip the secret plan she and her dad have for the day. Jackie tells her “it’s really hard to keep secrets, isn’t it?” She should know. Jackie’s the master of keeping secrets. The fact that she broke her finger to cover for sawing off her wedding ring will probably never come out.

It must be Saturday because after she gets all taped up, Jackie takes Grace to mother-daughter tap. There they run into the Kaitlyn and Ginny again, literally. Kaitlyn repeatedly dances into Grace, and then blames her for not practicing. Jackie tries to get her daughter a little more space, but Ginny doesn’t care for her scolding her daughter and the whole situation escalates until Jackie says “the F” and leaves class.

Meanwhile, Kevin and Fiona go shopping for a replacement ring. Jewelers should promote ‘Bring Your Daughter’ days. Fiona goes straight for a ring that’s clearly out of Kevin’s price range, and when he tries to move onto less expensive ones, Fiona suggests that they get a bunch. You can just see that salesman’s face light up. In the end, Kevin goes for Fiona’s first choice, and I feel kinda bad for him. He’s spending all this money on a ring that Jackie’s just going to slip off every day she heads into work, and what if it gets stuck again?

At work, Jackie and the other nurses are taken through training for the Pill-O-Matix automated pharmacy machine. They went with a less expensive brand, which I don’t mind since I was never sure how to spell Pixus. The nurses take this opportunity to lash out at the instructor and Akalitus for replacing Eddie.

Then it’s off to work as usual. Dr. Cooper and Zoey have a conversation about Jackie over a nice Jewish gentleman’s stitches. You have to wonder what that guy is thinking. He just came in to get his cut finger taken care of and must sit through Coop quizzing Zoey on Jackie. You’d think Zoey would warn Coop that Jackie might not be available after seeing her and Eddie in the back room last week, but things don’t always come quickly to Zoey. She just figured out in this episode that Thor is gay. I mean, hello!?!

Dr. Cooper has fully fallen for Jackie, it seems. He breaks it off with his model girlfriend even though she tells him he’s free to date other people (crazy man!) and spends the rest of the day tormenting Jackie with flowers and gum. She tries to get rid of him, but Coop reminds her that she kissed him. I’m not sure what she was trying to accomplish when she did, but the lovesick puppy is what she got.

Jackie has bigger problems to deal with, whether they be Zoey nearly killing a film critic/potential love interest for Akalitus with a drug overdose or Eddie packing up to leave All Saints. Eddie leaves her with two presents: a packet of Oxy tabs and the secret to fooling the Pill-O-Matix machine. Talk about giving her the keys to the kingdom. Now she doesn’t even have to go through Eddie to get the pills she wants. But I’m sure she won’t abuse it, right?

Finally, Jackie heads home for the day. She meets up with her family in the bar and tries to smooth things over with Grace, who’s still upset about the scene at dance class. She hugs her daughters, hugs her husband, and outside the window we can see the familiar silhouette of our favorite pharmacist. Granted, it’s a little creepy to follow someone home, but you know Eddie just wants to break through the barriers Jackie has built between them. Little does he know there’s a husband and two kids behind those barriers.

Only one more episode in the inaugural season of ‘Nurse Jackie.’ I have a feeling that they’re going to leave us with an even bigger finale than they did this episode. Can’t wait to see what it is.

-- Andrew Hanson