Nurse Jackie: I'm Already Addicted
Scored another win for Showtime. The pay cabler has come up with another buzzy show. For those of you who could not get enough of Edie Falco as Carmela Soprano, here she is–and absolutely riveting as the title character in “Nurse Jackie.”
From the opening sequence in which she expertly snorts tiny red pellets — I’m not familiar enough with pharmaceuticals to know exactly what sort of upper, tranquilizer or painkiller they are — Falco takes no prisoners during the course of her day as an ER nurse at a
First victim: a hotshot young doctor, whose misdiagnosis causes a young bike messenger to die from his injuries. After forging the victim’s name on an organ donor card and ordering the transplant people to get there pronto, Jackie reads Dr. Cooper (“Twilight’s” vampire patriarch Peter Facinelli) the riot act, telling him to “stay the f— out of my way,” and that she’s seen hundreds of jerk-offs like him. The rant ends in some inappropriate sexual touching on the doctor’s part, harassment he blames on a Tourette syndrome-like disorder—an issue that will rear its head throughout the season.
That’s not the only sex going on in this hospital, ironically named All Saint’s and run by the severe Gloria Akalitus (thus far one-dimensionally played by Anna Deavere Smith.) Jackie has a thing for the Eddie the pharmacist (Paul Schulze, who, with a wink and a nod, played the priest with whom Carmela had a chaste fling on “The Sopranos.”) Their brief workaday trysts usually end in declarations of love, and packages of Percocet. Jackie is a pro at keeping her addiction under wraps — filling packets of sweetener with crushed up Vicodin and even fishing out a pill dropped down the drain with a toothbrush and a piece of gum.
An arrogant, hot British doctor (Eve Best as Dr. Eleanor O’Hara) who loves impossibly high heels and tight skirts is Jackie’s unlikely best friend at the hospital, and somehow they manage to skip out regularly to lunch at elegant places nearby.
Another confidante is fellow nurse Mohammed “Mo-mo” de la Cruz (Haaz Sleiman), who is in an overly dramatic relationship with his boyfriend and constantly fending off passes from other hospital staffers and patients.
And then there’s Zoey (Merritt Wever), the zaftig, naïve nursing student who’s under Jackie’s wing, making her debut by barfing after being asked to put a severed body part on ice. Jackie had already told her, “I don’t do chatty. I like quiet. Quiet and mean. Those are my people.”
But Jackie does like people. Her compassion for many of her patients extends far beyond the call of duty. She’s been known to rob Peter to pay Paul, taking money from a scumbag’s coat pocket and giving it to a pregnant widow, or whizzing through the aisles of the hospital pharmacy picking up medications on the sly for a girl to give to her mother.
Addict. Adulterer. And mother. Yes. Jackie is married, although no one at the hospital seems to know that, as she takes off her wedding ring before work and puts it on only when she heads home. She and her handsome, loving husband — who owns a bar — have two fairly adorable young girls. But there is trouble brewing with one of the kids.
Secrets and lies, life and death situations. Through it all, through knowing blue eyes that match her scrubs, Falco’s performance — and this edgy, contemporary character — is exceptional.
