‘Nurse Jackie’: Season Finale

 

So now we’ve come to the end of the inaugural season of "Nurse Jackie." Not quite the daring finale of a "Weeds" or "Dexter." No, Jackie continues the slow burn she’s been on these first dozen episodes, falling deeper and deeper into the hole she’s digging. And tonight she traveled a few hundred miles toward China.

Jackie’s day starts off easy enough. She ribs her husband about dating the terror of tap class Ginny Flynn back in high school.  Kevin promises her a little surprise for when she gets off work. He’s given the girls to his sister. It’s going to be quite a surprise. All Jackie needs to do is survive until midnight. Which might be a tall order.

As Jackie leaves for the hospital, stalker Eddie creeps ups behind her and slips into the bar. He spends the whole day there, drinking and talking to Kevin, who is none the wiser that his new patron has been having an affair with his wife for over a year. Eddie gets to hear about how amazing it is to be married to Jackie, who comes home after an overnight shift and asks Kevin what he wants for breakfast, and he even gets to see the ring Kevin bought Jacks. You can tell he’s always on the verge of saying something, but instead he just continues to drink and ignore her phone calls. Poor Eddie.

Jackie’s calling because she’s spending her first day without Eddie, and the trick he showed her to fool the Pill-O-Matrix isn’t working. That means she’s sober. On a day that seems to be pushing her to use.

First of all, Mr. Lederman is still in a coma from the overdose Zoey gave him last week. Zoey is depressed and showing her grief by wearing gray scrubs. Everyone tries to persuade her to switch back to her regular pink-with-bunnies wardrobe and, with hope, back to her cheery disposition. Zoey just wants Lederman to wake up. Though when he does, the surly film critic comes back singing the praises of "Showgirls," and Zoey’s reaction is, “I broke him.” Ah, Zoey. I’m going to miss you until next season.

Akalitus wants an official report on what happened to Lederman. Luckily for the nurses (and unluckily for her),  Akalitus gets stuck in the elevator for the entire episode. She cleans off gum, plays with her dress and imagines her interview by David Letterman.  Between this and her Tasering herself earlier in the season, I’d be surprised if Akalitus ever uses the elevator again.

Jackie continues to fend off the romantic advances of Dr. Cooper. Coop deduces that Jackie broke her own finger in an attempt to spend time with him. Get close enough for that infamous kiss. Of course, when Jackie hears this theory, she calls Coop an idiot and … kisses him again? I’ll have to trust Jackie on this one. I have no idea what she’s trying to do with Coop. Maybe she has a master plan on keeping him confused and chasing her around. Or maybe she’s just looking for a replacement for Eddie. You never know with Jacks.

In the background off all this, Dr. O’Hara has somehow managed to get her comatose mother transferred from London to New York and admitted to All Saints as a Jane Doe. Yeah, they must have purposefully given this story less time, so no one would have the opportunity to ask how any of that is possible. When her mother is brought to the hospital, Dr. O’Hara is desperate for Jackie’s moral support (and immoral fixing of records), but Jackie has too much going on. And seriously, smuggling a critical patient across the Atlantic is a little basic for Jackie. Call her when you have something a little bigger.

At the end of the day, Eddie shows up, drunk off Kevin’s beer and whiskey. He has his disgruntled-fired-employee moment near the nurses’ station while Jackie desperately tries to get him to leave. Before he goes, he leans in to whisper to her that he’s seen the bar and met her husband, which sends Jackie over the edge. She grabs three containers of morphine out of the Pill-O-Matrix (using her own sign-in) and downs them in an empty examination room. As she slowly drifts into another state of consciousness, she notices a rat running across the light fixture. That’s right. Last week we got the cliffhanger of Eddie watching Jackie and family through the window of the bar, this week we get a rat in the light. Doesn’t seem to carry the same weight.

And that’s how we fade out on the first season of "Nurse Jackie, " with her lying on her back in a drug-induced stupor. Same as we started it. Seems like Jackie’s going to have a lot of explaining to do come next season, though if there’s one thing we’ve learned this year, it’s that she’s just the one who could explain it.

-- Andrew Hanson

Photo: Eve Best as Dr. O'Hara and Edie Falco as Jackie Peyton. Credit: Showtime Television

'Nurse Jackie': Secrets are hard to keep

 

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

Photo: Merritt Wever as Zoey and Victor Garber as Ian Lederman. Credit: Showtime Television

'Nurse Jackie': Tap tap tap

Saturday is for  mother/daughter tap dancing. That’s how Jackie remembers as she and Mohammed struggle over which day of the week it is. I sometimes struggle with that, and I don’t work nearly the hours of an RN. Though when Jackie brings up her dance class, Mohammed automatically assumes Jackie to be the daughter part of the equation. Jackie and her mother doing a little tap, now that’s something I would like to see.

Actually, it’s Jackie and Grace tapping away Saturday morning. Jackie’s next step to help Grace deal with her Generalized Anxiety Disorder included finding an activity for them to do together, presumably to keep Grace too busy to burn down the hospital. In class, Jackie runs into another mother from their parish. Literally. The other mom happens to be the homecoming queen from Jackie’s high school and apparently the ex-girlfriend of her husband, Kevin. It is a small world after all.

After her class/reunion, Jackie heads into work, where her dancing and awkward conversations continue. Jackie still hasn’t gotten over O’Hara using her as an example of how to balance families, work and affairs to her sister overseas. O’Hara makes a peace offering, including a magazine, some almond M&Ms, Chapstick, Kleenex and chocolate coins. Seems like a cup of coffee might have been a better choice, but Jackie overcomes her pouting when she finally needs something from O’Hara later on, so it all works out.

Jackie needs all her dancing skills at work. She has to tango with Dr. Cooper’s accusations over the brain-dead patient from last week, for whom she signed off on organ donation in his name, and at the same time she two-steps around her wedding ring that refuses to come off. She makes hard line decisions to combat both: She kisses Coop to quell his anger, then saws off the ring and breaks her finger. Jackie definitely does whatever’s necessary to keep her lifestyle. I’m not sure if O’Hara’s sister could go to these extremes.

The case of the day is a cardiac arrest. Just a guy out running errands. I know these episodes were written and filmed weeks in advance, but it’s eerily similar to another man who passed away in New York from a heart attack while out walking just a few days ago. Dr. Cooper and the nurses fight to keep him alive as his cellphone constantly rings, but it’s no use. Jackie stays behind to clean up and return the call, leaving a message for whoever’s worried he never returned from renting "Marley and Me" and dropping off the mail.

Just when it looks like Jackie has managed to dance her way through the day without consequences, Zoey walks in on her and Eddie sharing their break time in the back room of the pharmacy. I love Zoey. From her curiosity over whether "morbidly obese" is bigger than "super obese" to her sharing later that she went to second with her manager at Burger King, our little nursing student seems to brighten up whatever scene she sweeps into. I’m just concerned about how she’ll react if she ever finds out how far from a saint Jackie really is.

So, Jackie taps her way through another shift at All Saints. She gets away with just a broken finger, which is pretty good for everything she's had to deal with, and she even manages to finish the cardiac arrest victim’s to-do list by sending out his mail. Jackie’s buying back her karma one good deed at a time, but her dancing is far from over. They began to install the Pixus machine that will eventually replace Eddie. Somehow I think the repercussions of that will require all the fancy footwork she has.

-- Andrew Hanson

Photo: Paul Schulze as Eddie and Edie Falco as Jackie Peyton. Credit: Showtime

'Nurse Jackie': Jackie knows best

Monday’s "Nurse Jackie" spotlighted what I think is Jackie’s biggest character flaw. How can I pick out one and say it’s the biggest? There’s adultery, drug-use, lying, that haircut. They’re all good (or bad, depending on your point of view), but the biggest to me has to be her need for control. Jackie seems to think that she’s the only person capable of fixing the problems around her, and she does whatever she has to in order to make sure things happen the way she thinks they should.

Jackie starts the day with a walk through Central Park and breakfast with her family. Jackie and Kevin seem a little at ease as Grace doesn’t show any signs of her general anxiety disorder. In fact, it’s Fiona who’s causing most of the ruckus. Fiona loses her balloons, Fiona won’t stop blowing bubbles in her drinks, and Grace acts as a peace keeper. Grace’s only hint at her anxiety comes when she says she wishes the hospital would burn down. That might seem a bit harsh, but can you blame her? Jackie leaves nearly every day to go to this place where she’s taking drugs, having an affair and either yelling at or being yelled at most of the time. She has to be bringing some of that negative energy home.

Grace asks Jackie to stay home, and she nearly does. Kevin says he’ll handle the situation, but you can tell how much Jackie wants to stay home and try to help fix her little girl. Who knows if Jackie would even be any help? She had to break away to the bathroom of the kid-friendly breakfast spot for a quick drug fix, an act normally reserved for just the employees of kid-friend breakfast spots.

‘Nurse Jackie’: Flashlight tag

All right. I was all excited for tonight’s "Nurse Jackie." From the previews, I knew two things were going to happen: Coop was going to find out that Jackie has a daughter, and when Jackie calls out the temp nurse for being high, he says, “Takes one to know one.” Oh, yeah. Jackie’s going to have some consequences. All her secrets and lies will finally come to light. She’ll have to really deal. Well, if you watched, you know how that all turned out.

Jackie’s day started out by walking with her family as they take Grace to school. I’m still not sure how pulling her out of her school and sticking her with the nuns is supposed to lower her anxiety, but that’s beside the point. Jackie stops to wipe the chocolate off Fiona’s mouth and accidentally spills Oxycontin or Xanax or whatever it she’s taking this week onto her daughter’s doughnut. Jackie quickly knocks the roofied pastry out of her hand. Nearly drugging Fiona! There’s gotta be consequences, right? Nope, a nonexistent dead bug takes the fall, and Jackie gets off scot-free. Well, she owes the swear jar a dollar, but that’s it.

Right after, she pops a pill waiting for the train and nearly gets caught by her family standing on the next platform. She didn’t even wait to make sure they were gone before getting her fix. She’s asking for consequences. Begging for them even. But no, no one notices.

Jackie makes it to work only to find out they’re four nurses short. Apparently it is four nurses we’ve never seen because Mo-Mo, Zoey and Thor are all on duty. Mrs. Akalitus won’t jump in or lend a hand, but she does get them temp nurse Sam, a guy who thinks pressing F8 on the computer involves two separate buttons. Great help.

Even if she wanted to, Mrs. Akalitus can’t assist because she’s tending to the baby she found in the nurses station last week. By the end of the episode, she still hasn’t pasted the kid off to anyone, which really seems out of character for the woman who’s everyone’s enemy.  Maybe Social Services is just that backed up. Hopefully this kid will either find a new home or start treating patients soon.

The pressure of being short-staffed builds until the point at which Jackie yells at Dr. Cooper for dodging pages about Edith Prickley’s CAT scan. Coop frantically snaps the rubber band on his wrist in an effort to quell his urges for inappropriate touching, but finally he discovers it is more therapeutic to yell back at her. Way to go, Coop. Only one problem. His momentary surge of backbone happens while Jackie’s fielding a call from Grace, who is having a panic attack at school (those nuns!). Trying to get Coop to leave her alone, Jackie admits that she has reproduced.

Jackie immediately snaps at Coop to keep it to himself. To Coop’s credit, he tells her that he has no interest in her life and didn’t go to medical school so he could gossip about nurses. Of course, he immediately goes off and tells Eddie the news, but for a couple of minutes he took the higher ground. Though it’s hard to get mad at Coop. He’s just trying so hard to be Eddie’s friend. He has no idea he’s confiding in the one person who Jackie least wants this information to reach.

So when Jackie finally gets around to meeting up with her pharmacist love muffin, he can’t wait to let slip that he knows. Oh, yeah. Here we are. Time for some consequences. Or not. Eddie is understanding. Tells her that he’ll be ready to listen when Jackie’s ready to talk. Not even a dollar in the swear jar for that one.

Meanwhile, Zoey becomes obsessed with pupils. She watched a special on eyes the night before and comes in bubbling with information. Jackie quickly informs her that the best use of pupils will be to weed out drug seekers. Apparently the last time Zoey was left alone, she passed out Valium like breath mints.  Good thing Zoey was on her ocular dilation crusade because it leads her to catching Sam the temp floating on a pharmaceutical cloud nine. She passes the info on to Jackie, who confronts Sam. His response: “It takes one to know one.”

Oh yeah. Jackie’s getting called out on her drug use by a drug user. Here’s the big moment … wait, no. Jackie responds with the iron-clad “What did you just say?” and Sam backs down.

Nope. No consequences for Jackie. Sure, she had a rough day at work, but all of her skeletons stay in the closet for another week. Though, I wouldn’t say she completely got away. She does get roped into karaoke, singing “Up on the Roof” at her husband’s bar. I think that might be punishment enough.

-- Andrew Hanson

Photo credit: Showtime Television

‘Nurse Jackie:’ God’s off his meds

As if a regular shift at All Saints' Hospital isn’t stressful enough, tonight all our favorite nurses have to do so while taking verbal abuse from God. Not the actual Yahweh. This Almighty is a disheveled mental case, shouting out his window like Statler and Waldorf from "the Muppet Show." He yells at Zoey that she has a bald spot, calls Mo Mo’s scrubs a woman’s blouse and, strangely enough, announces the time. 

God’s played by Michael Buscemi. His brother is Steve Buscemi, who has directed more than half the "Nurse Jackie" episodes so far. If you’re looking for an actor who can be both creepy and scary, that’s definitely the family to start with.

After getting an earful of God, Jackie’s day starts off with a victim of multiple knife wounds. I’ve had some bad first dates in my day, but I’ve never had an ex-husband stab me repeatedly. Not yet, at least. You never know what eHarmony will bring.

Dr. O’Hara passes the patient off to Coop. That, coupled with the fact that she managed to come to work wearing two different shoes, tips off Jackie that something is amiss with her British lunch buddy. Not that Jackie has time to deal with it. She’s got her own problems to deal with, and topping off that list of problems this week is Eddie.

Eddie surprises Jackie with a Cartier love bracelet for their anniversary. Jackie is more surprised that it’s been a year than she was by the jewelry. Her reaction or lack thereof doesn’t go down well with Eddie. He strikes back by saying she’d be more interested if the bracelet were made out of pills. That seems to hit a raw nerve because Jackie leaves and takes her anger out on an alleged pedophile by jerking out his catheter without deflating the balloon. Ouch.

Jackie and Eddie retreat to their opposite corners like prize fighters. Jackie confides in Dr. O’Hara. O’Hara’s not quite ready to spill the beans on what’s bothering her, but she is ready to share the Xanax. Jackie pretends to be a lightweight and only lets O’Hara give her half a pill. Though the good doctor must have taken quite a few herself because she doesn’t notice the bottle’s a whole lot lighter when Jackie hands it back.

Eddie ends up in a similar position with Dr. Cooper, though not really by choice. Poor Coop. It’s becoming more and more obvious that he just really wants to make some friends. Eddie talks about the problem in very vague, nameless terms and ends up giving the offending bracelet to Coop, which turns out to be the perfect move to get Jackie running back to apologize.

Meanwhile, Mrs. Akalitus wanders around the hospital with an unclaimed baby trying to find someone to claim it. She never did find out who it belonged to, so I have a feeling that baby will still be around next week. For most of the series, Akalitus has only really played the part of wacky comedy relief. Hopefully she’ll develop into a bit more of a foil for Jackie in the future because, right now, Jackie’s running around unchecked.

The guy yelling from the window might claim to be a supreme being, but it’s Jackie who’s playing God. Besides her vigilante justice against the pedophile, she also ups the stabbing victim’s morphine drip enough to get him in a suggestive state and tells him to give his first date a second chance. Hard to say if that’s a good idea. Jackie’s known them all of one morning, and she ready to risk his life for matchmaking.

At the end of the day, Dr. O’Hara invites herself over to spend the night with Jackie and her family to booze up and talk about whatever it was that was bothering her. Though, for the life of me, I’m still not sure what that was. Did they ever exactly explain it? I know it had something to do with her stepfather, but other than that I’m not quite sure. Hopefully they get a reveal more next week. Though I do know that O’Hara was looking pretty good in those sweats the next day. That’s good enough for me.

— Andrew Hanson

Photo: Showtime Television

'Nurse Jackie': a rough night

It never really occurred to me until tonight how female "Nurse Jackie" is. The show, not the character. I picked up right away that the character Nurse Jackie was female. I’m usually pretty good at that.

A vast majority of the television I watch is weighted heavily toward heterosexual males. Tonight on "Nurse Jackie," the heterosexual males we had were a guy in an abusive relationship with his cat, Dr. Cooper tending to his lesbian mothers, and Eddie, who – let’s face it – is basically eye candy. Why else would they keep him in a glass booth?

Mr. Nurse Jackie also made a brief appearance at the beginning of the episode, but in the background as Jackie sewed together an incredible sunflower costume for her youngest, Fiona. Seriously, Jackie could have a side gig on Broadway. Plus it’s durable enough to be worn as pajamas. Tailoring, healthcare, juggling lovers. All while on prescription narcotics. Is there nothing this woman can’t do?

The activity tonight centered on two patients. Jackie and the other nurses crowded around Maureen (Judith Ivey), a fellow RN who left the hospital a year ago to battle lung cancer. Ivey delivers a tour de force performance with a stress on the "force" part. Maureen has an ornery, snide comment for anyone or anything that crosses her path. It’s like she’s constantly trying to say her last words and make them as quotable as possible. Though her brash demeanor kept me at arm’s length, so I never fully invested in her or her story.

I say she was constantly trying to say her last words because Maureen came into the hospital to die. Instead of slowly fading away in hospice care, Maureen wants to control how she leaves this world, and asks Jackie to help. Euthanasia is a moral quandary for a nurse, but it didn’t really seem to be much of a quandary for Jackie. Right from the beginning, Jackie seemed ready to participate. The reasoning she gave Dr. O’Hara: “She’d do the same for me.”

There was never any doubt that Jackie was going to assist her friend, but I could tell it wasn’t an easy request to fulfill because of the amount of time she spent in the bathroom, thinking, prepping and snorting. Even her conversations on the topic weren’t really conversation. Jackie discussed the situation mostly through vague comments or plain silence, keeping her feelings bottled up until she placed the spiked glass of champagne in front of Maureen and let her do the rest. An understandable reaction, but again, as a viewer, I felt shut out.

Maureen was supposed to come off as a dark, funny character, but I was far more amused by Zoey. Her whole conversation with Dr. O’Hara about Jackie’s feelings and needs while Jackie was standing behind her the entire time, her moment with Eddie as she discussed not participating in this “rite of passage,” and even walking into the bathroom, seeing O’Hara and walking right out. I found that all more amusing than any of the witty dialogue Maureen cranked out. Just the way Zoey has been developed by the show’s writers and acted by Merritt Wever has made her my favorite character on the show. My least favorite character on the show? Akalitis. She spent tonight hounding the nurses about Maureen, not out of any ethical/professional reaction to what they might have been doing, but more just to be grinchy.

While the nurses were busy with Maureen, the doctors tended to Dr. Cooper’s “vagina mom.” Yep. Cooper was raised by lesbians. And you can’t get much better lesbian moms than Blythe Danner and Swoosie Kurtz. We got a little taste of Coop’s past and how he was teased as a child for his “funny” behavior or how he preferred his non-vagina mom. Plus it gave an opportunity for his inappropriate-touching Tourette’s syndrome to reappear, the one aspect of "Nurse Jackie" that always seems to break my suspension of disbelief.

Through all my disconnect with "Nurse Jackie" tonight, there was one moment that rang very true. After Maureen drank her final cocktail, she fearfully asked Jackie for a priest. That second of fear and weakness might not have carried as much weight if not for Maureen’s brash demeanor leading up to it.

Which brings us to the halfway point of "Nurse Jackie’s" first season. Only six more episodes to see how the stories of All Saints Hospital play out.

--Andrew Hanson

Photo: Edie Falco, left, and Judith Ivey in "Nurse Jackie." Credit: Showtime Television

'Nurse Jackie': Nights are different

Tonight, Jackie worked the night shift. Though she gets to do the schedule, so she made sure she was working with all her favorites. Plus Mrs. Akalitus hangs out to check on any fraternizing. Then the doctors are all on 24-hour shifts. And what the heck, Eddie’s working too. These actors are getting paid, so they'd better be showing up every day.

Jackie explains the difference in the night shift. “Stab wounds. More drunks. Less nut jobs. Less children.” Then we get a stroke, a woman who wants a pregnancy test and a woman with lupus with her 10-year-old daughter/caretaker. Come on. Can’t we get just one stab wound? The gun shot last week was off screen. We don’t get to see any of the fun.

But before Jackie headed out for her action-packed shift, she had dinner with her family. Jackie and her husband continue to deal with their oldest, Grace’s, general anxiety and "sunless drawing" disorder. Her latest signs are throwing a container she couldn’t get opened and running out the room after her sister stuck a French fry up her nose. Doesn’t really seem that bad. Then at the end of the episode Jackie finds out that Grace had a meltdown because her pencil kept breaking. Now that goes in the same column as “if she doesn’t walk around her desk three times, airplanes fall out of the sky.” This girl has Issues. Capital “I.” Though her drawings are really good. Maybe she’s just a depressed artist.

The young girl Nurse Jackie seems most interested in is Stephanie, who came in with her mother. Jackie must see herself in the girl. Partially because she takes care of her mother’s lupus but probably more so because she knows how to work the system. Stephanie claims her grandmother is coming from Jersey. That’s a good way to keep a call to social services at bay. Jackie looks after Stephanie, gives her free medication and scolds Dr. Cooper for offering her a sticker (but seriously, who doesn’t like a sticker? I’d take one).

Jackie has only one other focus for her night shift, trying to get a little alone time with Eddie. Unfortunately, Coop kidnaps Eddie off to get food. You’d think Eddie would fight a little harder to get away from Dr. Cooper so he could get some lights-out fun with his girlfriend, but then Coop suggested Quiznos, and I, for one, thought that sounded delicious. Eddie must have thought so too.

Speaking of strange lunch-fellows, Dr. O’Hara and Zoey went out to grab a bite. And by “grab a bite,” I mean reservations at a five-star restaurant. Zoey sticks out like a sore thumb. At first I thought, “Jackie doesn’t stick out this much, and she’s in scrubs too.” Then I realized that Jackie’s clothes don’t have little bunnies all over them.

Akalitus spent the evening spoiling everyone’s fun. By the time she’d separated Stephanie from her mom and tried to get on Jackie and Mo-Mo’s case for smoking, I was prepped for something bad to happen to her. So when she noticed the taser lying oh, so perfectly on the tile, I knew it was coming. Anna Deavere Smith (Akalitus) has done some really great physical humor on the show so far. It’s just strange how much it sticks out from the rest of the show’s tone.

Jackie returns home as the sun is rising. She hears her husband describe Grace’s meltdown, responding simply with “OK.” Before she heads up to bed, Stephanie calls, asking for more advice in caring for her mother. Jackie perks up and walks her through cutting a percocet (while doing the same for herself). Again, Jackie proves to be much more adept and interested in solving other people’s problems than in taking care of her own.

— Andrew Hanson

Photo credit: Showtime Television

'Nurse Jackie': Problems and solutions

Problems.

Jackie’s got them, and no one is going fly in and save her from them. Not either of the men in her life (not that a woman needs a man to save her, but as an option, she’s out of luck). One seems to be obsessed with food. Twice in a discussion of their daughter’s anxiety, Jackie’s husband wildly tangented to food. And while arguing private school and pot roast, Jackie fended off some oh so poetic text messages from Eddie, her pharmacist/lover.

But you know what else Jackie has? Solutions.

What problems does Jackie have to solve? Besides her theme song?

First and foremost is her daughter's supposed anxiety disorder. Jackie slips out of work to attend a conference at Grace’s school with her husband. They meet with Grace’s teacher, the district psychologist and the school nurse, or as I like to call them, the Neapolitan Panel. They believe that Grace is exhibiting signs of general anxiety disorder. Their big piece of proof is that her drawings lack color and she never draws suns. Though I don’t understand why they don’t also point out that no one is smiling in her drawings either or why they bury the lead that she circles the desk three times before sitting down so “the planes don’t fall from the sky.” Seriously, wouldn't that be your star witness?

It’s strange that Jackie has such a volatile reaction to their diagnosis. She commented to Dr. O’Hare last episode that she herself thought that Grace might be coming unraveled. And for a woman who generously self-medicates, she was quite appalled when School Nurse Connie suggested that her daughter might need some pills. Jackie seems much more comfortable tackling problems before others even realize they are problems. Like when dealing with the young boy in trauma where it appeared that Jackie called for the chest tube before Dr. O’Hare. But when other people call out problems before she has her solutions, she kinda gets dismissive or defensive.

It probably didn’t help that at the same time she was receiving “me so horny” texts from Eddie. Smooth. Nothing gets a woman in the mood like quoting a Da Nang hooker. And I don’t think that many women are fans of "Full Metal Jacket." They probably feel the same about it as men do about "The Notebook."
Jackie’s solution for the overlapping men situation? She bought a second phone. Jackie’s solution to Grace’s anxiety problem? She just drew a sun onto Grace’s picture. For a nurse, she doesn’t seem to notice the hazard of putting a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound. The two-phone deal works great until they both start ringing while Jackie’s checking on her nursing student. That doesn’t bode well for Grace. Chicken soup and private school aren’t going to fix her issues.

Though on a happier note, it appears that Zoey is proving herself much more competent around the hospital. Last week she was running around like a frightened mouse trying to snatch her stethoscope back from Dr. O’Hare. Tonight she watched over the mother and twin of the young boy in trauma, explaining why Dr. Coop appeared so excited about a gunshot wound and giving much-needed hugs. She also had her first patient death as well, and she came out of it pretty calm and professional. Her personal reaction was a desire to do the patient’s eyebrows, something that woman would have greatly appreciated. Zoey is really developing into the warm, gooey heart of the show. Even Mohammad opened up to her about his twin that passed away.  It’ll be interesting to see who affects the other more, Nurse Zoey or Nurse Jackie.

Oh, and if you haven’t had a chance to check out "Nurse Jackie" or want to introduce someone else to the show, they’re running a marathon over the Fourth of July weekend. You might want to check it out.

-- Andrew Hanson

PHOTO: Showtime Television

‘Nurse Jackie’: Ta-da

On Monday night, Jackie kept Mrs. Akalitis away from a dying man eating chicken soup, fought against Eddie’s replacement by a drug dispensing robot, and Googled for an Ohio woman who turned out not to be pregnant, all while dealing with her daughter's obsession with annihilation; and in the B story, Zoey tried to get her stethoscope back from Dr. O’Hara. It’s like watching one person juggling chainsaws, then turning to see another playing that game where you try to get a ball on a string in a cup. And she misses most of the time.

Zoey shows off her shiny new toy (the stethoscope, not the cup and ball) with a joyful ‘Ta-da’ to which Jackie replied, “The only people who say ta-da are magicians and idiots.” Zoey goes off and plays the idiot for the rest of the shift, but Jackie really is a magician.

Now I’m not talking the kind of magician who goes to a British school and takes classes in defense against the dark arts even though he should eventually realize the teacher is going to end up getting him killed (seriously, that kid and House. When will they learn?). No, I’m talking about real magicians. Those guys who do sleight of hand at kid’s parties or Vegas clubs or on other wonderful Showtime programming premiering Thursday at 10 p.m. (Penn & Teller).

Whenever a magician holds up a card and tells you to remember it, you gotta know that his other hand is doing something nefarious. That’s how they get things done, and that’s how Nurse Jackie gets things done.

Right off the bat she does a little magic to keep her husband from noticing her pill grabbing tool, and the fact that their daughter might be going off the deep end, and she repeatedly turns him down for lunch with only some vague double talk and the possibility of a future sexual act.

When going into her next trick of making prescription drugs appear in her system, Jackie ends up with a horrible massage and the news that Eddie is getting replaced with a PIXUS machine. She goes off on how it’s going to make it more difficult to get Motrin and complains to Dr. Coop about how it is squeezing Eddie out of a job, but you can tell what she’s really thinking is that her supply is about to get cut off. Nurse Jackie truly is an addict. As cartoony as she described Mohammed checking out Dr. Cooper, it couldn’t have been nearly as bad as how she leered at those pills.

During her spare time between tricks, Jackie stopped to check in on Eli Wallach as his wife slowly drowned him in a massive container of chicken soup. You might remember Eli Wallach from "The Magnificent Seven" or as the second Dr. Freeze in the '70s "Batman" TV show or from his frequent appearances in the Los Angeles Times crossword puzzle. Wallach forgoes medical treatment for his heart failure, instead opting for chicken soup, or as he calls it “Jewish penicillin.” Akalitis wants to kick both of them to the waiting room, but Jackie fends her off with the skillful use of curtains.

In the end, Jackie heads home with a little of her own chicken soup to try to heal her daughter of being scared of everything. 

Oh, and Zoey did finally get her stethoscope back. Seems Dr. O’Hara knew the whole time and enjoyed watching her squirm, and she makes Zoey grab it off her while she’s pretending to be asleep. Really? That’s O’Hara’s big laugh out of it? Must be that British sense of humor.

-- Andrew Hanson

Photo: Showtime Television