From the people who brought us such light fair as Californication and Weeds, comes Nurse Jackie. Well, okay, not the people, but the network. That’s right: Showtime’s back at it again, with a new show and another star: Edie Falco.
After a wild ride on The Sopranos, and a rather questionable one on 30 Rock, Falco returns as the titular Nurse Jackie, caregiver extraordinaire in the ER at a fictitious New York Hospital, in this case, All Saints. She’s a been-there-done-that, no nonsense kind of lady, who also happens to be one of the most depraved human beings on television today. Tony Soprano, meet your independent wife.
I wish I were joking, or at least exaggerating, but by the middle of the pilot episode, I already saw Falco trying to be Mini-Me to James Gandolfini. And, she falls short not just because she’s not his equal as an actor, but also because, while Gandolfini’s Tony Soprano did all that he did as a mobster, Falco’s Nurse Jackie is who she is as a nurse. An RN doesn’t ignore a choking woman in a restaurant just because her lunch hour is ticking away.
I’d like to get into more of a specific review, so, for those of you who will kill me with a spoon for ruining the show for you, I’m going to sum up now, and follow with some general observations that I made, non-spoilery (I’ll let you know where to stop).
So, in conclusion: While I found most all of the characters horrible human beings, who have virtually no saving graces whatsoever, and while I have a laundry list of complaints about the first six episodes that I got to screen (see below), I will continue to watch Nurse Jackie. But not for Edie Falco, who I just caught a glimpse of on the pilot of Oz, and used to actually be good. I guess it’s for the same reason I have Californication season-passed, even though all of those people are horrible (I do like David Duchovny). And that is … I don’t know the reason. The intangible drew me in. Let it violate you, too.
A number of general observations stuck with me, both about Nurse Jackie, and its ER:
- The campy music, in the pilot and the theme, will throw you. It’s supposed to be a juxtaposition, but its just kind of weird. I don’t know.
- The pilot uses a lot of impromptu cut-scenes; I’m sure this was a stylistic thing, as different directors were used for different episodes (Steve Buscemi in episodes 4, 5, and 8), but it did leave me with a bit of a headache.
- The lighting within the hospital is very dark, presumably to set a certain mood. However, as we all unfortunately know, hospitals, and particularly ERs, are very bright. The only subtle message I got from the lighting was that it was wrong.
- Nurse Jackie‘s doctors seem indifferent to the human side of medicine. While I’m the last person to defend doctors, I don’t buy the myth. ER attendings aren’t there just because they love trauma; they also want to save lives.
- Jackie is way too old for her family. While Dominic Fumusa is only a few years younger than the 45 year-old Falco, his Kevin looks to be 10-15 years younger than her Jackie, and their kids are both under the age of ten. A few years ago, Falco was very believable as the mother of a college graduate. Weird.
- To make reference to something that’s already out there, Jackie’s a drug addict, or more accurately, she’s dependent on pain meds to get her through the day, her shifts in the ER, and through life. I’m not going to be her conscience, or whatever; all I’ll say is the drug dependency makes her nurse a whole hell of a lot less worth being interested in.
- In a way, Jackie is Mary Shannon in scrubs. One problem with that, if I may: nurses don’t run hospitals, nor do they instruct doctors. Yes, they’re more involved than the nurses on Grey’s Anatomy, and yes, as Jackie puts it, they’re the caregivers, but nurses do not boss doctors, and hospital administrators, around. If they wanted Falco to be a type-A, they picked the wrong setting, or the wrong job, for her to be in.
- I have little experience with medical shows, but I felt like the medicine here was more than secondary; it was forgettable. Each time they swung back to a patient, I had already forgotten what was wrong with them. I feel like the only way the hospital scenes can be grounded is to have the medicine mean more. No?
- Explain to me how, on television, no matter how desperate one’s financial situation, they always have a flat screen TV. It just isn’t realistic.
- This happens in real life too, and I live in a city with more than a half dozen medical schools and major hospitals: to all medical personnel, DO NOT wear your dirty scrubs outside. It’s disgusting, and you are likely carrying a lot of disease with you out into the world. You also look like you’re wearing your pajamas to lunch.
- Do people out there seriously not use vibrate on their phones? I know most don’t go the extreme that I do, never turning on the volume on the ringer or the keypad, but, come on; nurses’ cells going off while they’re with patients in the ER? Are we that pathetic a society?
And now for some *****SPOILERS*****
Photo Credit: Showtime
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Clacked by Aryeh S.
on Jun 05, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
Ouch…. I’m shocked you made it through the six episodes… ouch….
The problem with Showtime these days are the characters are so much a group of assholes that you can’t care about them. They did the same thing with Weeds, and Californication is just bad… They need to have screwed up characters that you can like.
*POST AUTHOR*
It doesn’t keep me up at nights, but I’m surprised: if pressed, I would have guessed you were a Californication fan … just saying.
I would be a Californication fan if I didn’t feel like I was watching a completely different show every other week. I watched season 1 and out of the dozenish episodes it felt like three completely different people were making three different shows. Then season 2 started and it was horrible. I think I watched maybe 1.5 episodes.
*POST AUTHOR*
For some reason, I liked Lew Ashby a lot, until he started in on Karen. I think, overall, Duchovny really makes the show for me, everything else be damned.
I really enjoyed the first episode, at least enough to want to watch more. Personaaly I saw the restaurant scene as an attempt at humour, I don’t know what kind of overall tone they’re going for but I didn’t get the impression that they were wanting this to be just a drama.
And the thing about the TV is quite understandable, you see “poor” people all the time with expensive luxury goods that they shouldn’t be able to afford. I work in insurance and I see loads of long term unemployed people who have new cars, the reason they have them is a little thing called credit. It’s been in the news a lot recently, it seems that people with no money are given money and then can’t pay back the increased amount of money they then owe.
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It’s a dark comedy, whatever that is, but I still think there’s a line. Honestly, I think O’Hara was worse there, what with the Hippocratic Oath, and everything.
I “get it”, I just don’t get it. It’s always so jarring to see huge flat-screens in dumps of all sizes. Or Escalades in crappy neighborhoods. I understand the process, I just don’t get how we got here, and what we’re doing it for. So, sometimes, I hope that at least TV will be smart about things. Would it be so bad for them to have just hung onto their 35 inch tube TV, or whatever?
After watching the pilot on Youtube I never want to see a broken pill’s particles falling against a white backdrop ever again. I also actually liked Nurse Jackie as a character till the end when she came home. Everyone is just an unlikable hypocrite. Even Weeds has more likable characters than this. And that is saying alot.
*POST AUTHOR*
Unfortunately, it’s a recurring theme with the pill particles, amongst other things. But, Jackie does do some interesting stuff with sugar packets.
Yes, the worst part about her hit home when she got home to the family. Just awful. Is it hypocritical to have been okay with it when it was Tony Soprano? Maybe. But, for some reason, I see it as worse with a) a woman, and, b) THIS woman, a healer.
I have seen the first episode, My summary of the episode, blah blah blah, average medical show, why I will not watch another episode of this show. she has her hair cut way to short. this is a very disturbing trend on TV, I will not watch or support any show where one of the main female characters has a very short hair. what is the point of it even being a woman. apparently the role could have been played by a gay male nurse, and it would have been more interesting. I know the produces are feeding womens fantasys about equality and all that etc… but if women become any more masculine, men will have no choice to to treat them as not being men or women but something ambiguous and ultimately very much lesser. women you want to know how it feels to be treated like a man, watch The Sopranos. see how men are treated there.