‘Nurse Jackie’: Saccharine sweet

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“Ears don’t just jump into toilets, do they?” No. They really don’t. I feel like I misjudged ‘Nurse Jackie.’ It’s a dark comedy. Last week we got the dark. This week we got the comedy.

First of all, I need to apologize. A commenter called me out last week for condoning Nurse Jackie’s drug use. My grandmother was a nurse, so were a couple of my aunts and cousins. My first job in Los Angeles was at a mental health clinic. I’ve known a lot of nurses in my life, and I only ever suspected one of them of using drugs. And she might have just been naturally twitchy.

The vast majority of nurses get through their shifts without pharmaceuticals.

Just not Nurse Jackie.

After packing lunches for her daughter, Jackie packs some supplies for herself: three doses of Vicodin hidden in Sweet-N-All packets. The name of the fictional sweetener reminds Jackie of Seconal, an anesthetic/sedative with hypnotic qualities known as Secoborbital (thanks, Wikipedia) that she remembers fondly.

She has one packet to start the day, one for mid-shift and one for the ride home. Though what are the odds of everything going as planned? Especially in a Showtime original series?

Jackie dumps her first packet into her coffee and takes the bolt of lightning, as she describes, only to be immediately called to attend to a kid who crashed while skateboarding sans helmet. The kid’s mom provides one of the two big reversals of the show, starting out as the concerned and helpless parent only later to be revealed as the neglecting stage mom.

The other reversal comes from an agitated patient who spends the entire episode tormenting the hospital staff by charging the station, throwing pudding (thankfully, only pudding) and slapping Jackie across the face. Later he confesses he is overwhelmed by his now-legless, diabetic, overweight mother. Eventually you’d think the staff would start assuming everyone was the opposite of what they seem, just like the staff working with Dr. House needs to start realizing that the first diagnosis is always wrong. Every time. Seriously, wouldn’t you start with Plan B at some point?

Jackie’s second Sweet-N-All packet gets snatched from her hands by Mrs. Akalitus, the nursing administrator, who’s obviously not the experienced user Jackie is. Akalitus spends the rest of the day wandering the hospital in a state of euphoria, providing the goofiest of the humor of the episode.

Jackie’s final packet of Sweet-N-All goes to a cabbie in cardiac arrest on the ground outside the hospital. Which defines Jackie in a way. In both of the first two episodes, Jackie has explained how doctors do the diagnosing and nurses do the healing. Regardless of her drug abuse, adultery and framing her nursing student, Jackie is deep down a healer. I’ll admit I found myself a little cold to the character after the pilot, but she won me back. I’m always a sucker for the flawed hero, the sinner who can’t help but do the right thing.

Jackie’s co-workers got their opportunities to shine as well. And they did so with a little more humor than last week. Along with Akalitus randomly hugging people or smearing her face on the window, Dr. “Coop” Cooper actually did something right. He detected a hemorrhage in the skater boy’s abdomen aurally, prompting Jackie to admit that he might actually be a good doctor.

Plus we also got to see Dr. O’Hara’s alternative to dry cleaning and her reaction to the possibility of a hot dog lunch. And then there was poor, poor Zoey. No one likes her muffins. She finds, and is blamed for, the previously mentioned toilet ear. It’s got to be an overwhelming job when the highlight of her day is inserting a catheter.

None of the humor of Sweet-N-All would have worked as well without the set-up in the pilot. Hopefully ‘Nurse Jackie’ will manage to find that balance of dark and comedy within each episode. If news that they were already picked up for a second season is any indication, they might have found their God particle.

--Andrew Hanson