When a show like Nurse Jackie returns for its second season, and its story lines appear as though they’re going to slowly unfold as they discretely drop potentially delicious dramatic nuggets here and there, I become optimistic. Maybe it’s because I’m a big fan of Mad Men, where the layers of the characters’ storylines are revealed gradually and the tension slowly builds. It doesn’t go for the cheap and shocking season premieres/finales with gimmicky plot twists.
As for the first episode of the sophomore season of Nurse Jackie, the Edie Falco vehicle, I thought it was promising. Very promising.
The tensions in the half-hour dramedy ticked upward in all the right places and at just the right pace. Take the first scene, which gave viewers a solid read on Jackie Peyton:
The episode kicked off with Dionne Warwick’s “I’ll Say a Little Prayer for You” playing in the background, as Jackie and her husband Kevin played cute on a beach blanket, their girls off in the distance near the water’s edge. Jackie gave Kevin a card with a heart on it. They kissed. And aside from some budding dysfunction — their daughter Grace brought soap to the beach to “wash” the dirty shells — the family of four was positively adorable as they went up to the snack bar . . . where Jackie proceeded to roughly floor some idiot who wouldn’t stop swearing in front of her two daughters.
That sets the tone for the whole show — Jackie may look, on the surface, like she’s living a nice, quiet, middle class life; she’s married to a handsome and doting husband and father with whom she has two beautiful girls. Kevin owns his own bar which, as far as we know, seems to be doing okay. At Jackie’s workplace, she’s simultaneously feared and respected. But under the surface, there’s a woman who shoves men to the ground in front of her kids, who spends three months avoiding phone calls from her spurned lover, who brazenly flouts the hospital’s rules when she thinks it’s in the best interests of her patients, and who’s always on the hunt for more illegally obtained prescription pain meds because she’s an addict, which has become more difficult given that her lover Eddie is no longer the hospital pharmacist.
Even the story line with Eddie, who in the season premiere took an overdose of time-release meds to make it look as though he’d attempted suicide, didn’t feel like one of those over-dramatic season premiere stunts. When Eddie finally gained consciousness, he told Jackie that he knew exactly what he was doing when he took the drugs, confident he’d be saved in time. He’d only staged the suicide attempt in order to make Jackie have to talk to him, a guy who’s as desperate to be with Jackie as Jackie is to get her next fix.
Other than the faux suicide attempt, other events which have potential to evolve into more interesting stories in the long-term included: Grace’s growing constellation of issues (like refusing to get french fries from the beach snack vendor because the employees weren’t wearing gloves), Coop’s unrequited affections for Jackie, and the new nurse, Sam, a recovering addict who was fired by Jackie a while back when he was high on the job, and who told Jackie that he knew she was an addict too.
What did you think of the Nurse Jackie premiere? What stories are you looking forward to seeing unfold this season?
Clacked by Meredith O'Brien 
on Mar 23, 2010 @ 11:00 EST5EDT
They got rid of her funny gay friend and never bothered to explain it, I won’t be watching it. he was the only funny thing about the show.
They did explain it, though briefly. Jackie told Akalitus that she shouldn’t have let Mo-Mo (de la Cruz, the friend to which you referred) go due to budget constraints, but rather cut costs elsewhere.
Just a little FYI so you know. That version of “I Say a Little Prayer” was recorded by Aretha Franklin and it is fabulous (I like Dionne Warkwick’s version, too, mind you).
*POST AUTHOR*
Thank you Rachel.