TV Eye
This Won't Hurt a Bit
By Belinda Acosta, Fri., June 5, 2009
I can't stand Dr. Gregory House, but I love nurse Jackie Peyton. Yes, I know Hugh Laurie, who plays the title character on House, is a fine actor and that Dr. House is a brilliant though troubled diagnostician who hides his pain with his acerbic wit and painkillers. Readers tell me I'm wrong for not seeing how wonderful House is and how Dr. House eventually comes through for his patients (numbskulls that they are), who are all lucky to have fallen into his care. What I hate about House is that Dr. House's victories (he's always right) are full of I told you so's. (Okay, surely there are exceptions). But what I really, really hate about House (well, the doctor and the series) is that for all its main character's maddening peacockery, sneering, loathing of the human condition, and aloofness, House is deeply sentimental. Not so with Nurse Jackie, Showtime's new black-as-tar comedy starring the divine Edie Falco (The Sopranos) in the title role. Compared to Falco's Jackie Peyton, Gregory House is a candy striper. And yet the similarities are hard to ignore.
Like Dr. House, Jackie Peyton has a drug problem. Instead of a bum leg, she has chronic back pain from an unknown injury. I suspect how she sustained that injury is key to her view of the world and her terminally surly disposition. Keeping her busy job as an ER nurse depends on her being able to work long hours on her feet, which, of course, kills her back. Thankfully, she's friendly with the hospital pharmacist, who keeps her supplied with painkillers – and the occasional backroom tryst. That takes the edge off the annoying career bureaucrats and privileged nincompoops she has to work with, particularly the exceptionally overprivileged Dr. Cooper (the adorable Peter Facinelli). His inappropriate response to tense situations – and Jackie can make you tense with a glance – would have him fired were he not the new hotshot doctor.
Everyone who knows and works with nurse Jackie respects her, but not even her closest friends know some of her darkest secrets. The beneficiary of that knowledge is the viewer. Working in a crumbling health-care industry where "industry" usually trumps "care," Jackie spends a good deal of her time doing right by the wronged (in most cases, patients), even if it means bending the rules. It's this dance – one that is precariously close to the edge of what's ethical – that makes you root for Jackie and even, I think, eventually love her. And who wouldn't love a nurse who, instead of properly saving the sliced-off ear of a man who brutalized a woman, whispers into it, "Go to hell," then flushes it down the toilet? Did I mention the gallows humor?
Jackie's many questionable actions are done in isolation, when it's just Jackie wrestling with her conscience. And since Falco can make reading the newspaper interesting, all of those decisions made in those private moments are deeply compelling.
"Life is full of little pricks," the show's tagline teases. But just what nurse Jackie Peyton is willing to do to balance the scales is intriguing, worth tuning in to week after week, and just what the doctor ordered.
Nurse Jackie premieres Monday, June 8, at 9:30pm on Showtime.
What Else Is On?
Hospital dramas are not new to TV, but nurses seem to be getting a bump in visibility lately. The nurse-centric hospital drama Mercy is coming later this year, while Jada Pinkett Smith stars in Hawthorne, a new drama premiering later this month. Smith plays Christina Hawthorne, a dedicated nurse who has thrown herself into her work following her husband's untimely death. Michael Vartan (Alias) and Joanna Cassidy (Six Feet Under) co-star. While Smith is spunky and earnest and the supporting characters appealing, overall this hospital drama has a weak pulse.
Hawthorne premieres June 16 at 8pm on TNT.
Notable summer premieres:
June 4: Mark Feuerstein stars as a doctor tending to the needs of the idle rich after his girlfriend dumps him on Royal Pains (airs 9pm on USA). On The Listener, a paramedic (Craig Olejnik) can hear what people are thinking (airs 8pm on NBC).
June 8: Returning series The Closer premieres 8pm on TNT, and Weeds returns at 9pm on Showtime.
As always, stay tuned.
E-mail Belinda Acosta at [email protected].
