Nurse Jackie: Torn Up From the Floor Up

In this premiere episode of Nurse Jackie, we meet Edie Falco as titular Nurse Jackie.  Jackie is a no nonsense type of gal around the hospital.  She calls out hot shot new doctors like Dr. Fitch Cooper (Peter Facinelli), who have a nervous tick of grabbing breasts and letting a bike messenger die over Jackie’s sound medical judgment.  She’s also a prescription drug abuser and has an ongoing sexual fling with the hospital pharmacist, Eddie, in exchange for drugs, MoonPies, and Dr. Pepper.  She’s facially apathetic but, thanks to her regular drug use, is high strung and cares deeply about her patients (i.e., a drug whore with a heart of gold).

We see this empathy in her flushing down the toilet the severed ear of a patient with diplomatic immunity, who attacked a more sympathetic patient.  She then steals money from the diplomat and gives it to the baby mama of the bike messenger.  That’s Jackie’s justice, and that’s how she rolls.

When she’s not doing all of the above, she unwinds on a church pew wondering what side dish goes with John the Baptist’s head.  Now here I thought everyone knew that, just like waffles, there are to be no side dishes to that meal.  Oh well!  After a stressful day, Jackie heads home to her two daughters and her . . . husband, who she keeps as a secret from everyone at work.

So I was bored to tears watching this episode.  The only interesting part came at the end when we learned of Jackie’s sort-of double life between work and home.  Of course this only became interesting because of the lengthy previews for the rest of the season.  If only everything in the previous 30 minutes had been that seamless and well-written.  Unfortunately, the best the dialogue could achieve was gratuitous profanity.  On the plus side, though, the cinematography of Jackie snorting drugs is pretty cool.  So they’ve got that going for them.

At this point and only because of the previews, I’d recommend giving this show one more week.  Otherwise, let’s spend our time lobbying to get Ms. Falco back on 30 Rock.

Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot (originally aired June 8, 2009)

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Photograph courtesy of Showtime, Ken Regan