‘Nurse Jackie’: No secrets in this house

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Jackie juggles a lot of secrets: her drug addiction, her affair with Eddie, her family, her P.O. box. There doesn’t seem to be anyone in her life from whom she doesn’t keep a secret. That’s probably why it is such a problem when her daughter keeps secrets from her.

Grace has taken to locking herself in the bathroom for extended periods of private time. This, of course, drives Jackie crazy. How is she supposed to help when she doesn’t know what’s going on? I think that’s the reason Grace’s mental state is the one problem in Jackie’s life that gets under her skin. Jackie is able to come up with a quick solution for most problems, but she can’t fix Grace. Must be endlessly frustrating.

Jackie is also worried about Fiona after last week’s accusations over the source of her split lip and broken arm. Fiona is happy and the education is fine, but Jackie doesn’t like the way the teachers seem to notice warning signs of parental problems. Better to get Fiona in the same private school as Grace, but that costs money the Peytons don’t have.

Speaking of money the Peytons don’t have, Jackie also received a bill in the mail for all her pharmacy purchases. Too bad Kevin vetoed taking money from Dr. O’Hara for the girls’ education fund. And there’s no way Jackie would go behind his back after she promised, right?

Meanwhile, All Saints is a madhouse, possibly due to the full moon. The ER is so busy that even Akalitus (or Mrs. A as Zoey calls her) lends a hand. It’s like riding a bike, and the hands-on experience gives Akalitus an in-the-trenches understanding of how bad the pill machine can be. She vows to bring back the human pharmacist, and Eddie is the first name on her list.

Jackie’s primary patient is a male victim of domestic violence. The situation spawns the questions: Is it ever OK for a man to hit a woman? And later, if that woman wasn’t his wife, why is he taking all the abuse?

Zoey steps up to the “fixing patients’ lives” role Jackie normally fills by helping out a college kid with a hairline fracture get a bunch of coeds to help him around campus. I love her acknowledgment that the situation won’t end well, but the problem was temporarily solved. Just like Jackie.

Zoey also becomes the latest victim of Dr. Cooper’s stress grabs. Lenny the EMT jumps to defend her honor and punches Coop in the nose before he finds out it’s just a nervous tic. Zoey insists that her honor doesn’t need defending, but she does seem to be taking more of a shine to the poor schlub. It’s sweet to watch.

On the far opposite side of the romantic spectrum, Eddie comes with Georgia into the ER to check on Coop and his broken nose, but he stops to brag to Jackie about the possibility of coming back to the hospital. Eddie’s pursuit of Jackie has gone from sad to disturbing to plain scary. He’s becoming like the Joker in “The Dark Knight.” Whenever he shows up, you automatically brace yourself for destruction.

If Eddie wasn’t bad enough, Jackie ends the night breaking in on Grace after she locked herself in the bathroom once again. This time, Jackie finds the sink full of hair and patch on the back of Grace’s head where she’s been pulling it out. That must be a horrifying thing to discover as a parent, and it causes Jackie to proclaim that their home could not have any secrets. The way Kevin reacted to that statement makes me think that he knows Jackie has a few secrets of her own.

-- Andrew Hanson

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Photo: Edie Falco as Jackie Peyton and Ruby Jerins as Grace Peyton. Credit: Showtime Television