Like all the best second episodes, "Sweet N'All" continues elements from the pilot while fleshing the characters out. The ear that Jackie flushed down the toilet resurfaces, prompting an investigation into misconduct by bureaucrat Mrs. Akalitus (Anna Deavere Smith), even after Jackie blames the incident on newcomer Zoey (Merritt Weaver). A little later, a sachet of Jackie's Sweet N' All (containing ground-up Percocet), is accidentally drunk by Mrs. Akalitus, who then wanders around the hospital in a euphoric daze.
We were led to believe Dr. Cooper (Peter Facinelli) was a dangerously inexperienced idiot last week, but he proves otherwise here by diagnosing a patient's aneurysm simply by listening to their abdomen through a stethoscope. It was a remarkable show of medical intuition that half-irritates Dr. O'Hara (Eve Best), who doesn't want to inflate the new doc's ego with too much praise.
Right now, my primary interest is trying to get a handle on Jackie herself. She appears to have a healthy, sexually-active relationship with attractive barman Kevin (Dominic Fumusa) and two cute kids, but is having an affair with pharmacist Eddie Walzer (Paul Schulze), who supplies her with drugs. Is that the sole reason she's playing away, or is there more to it? Is she just easily bored? Maybe she finds Walzer more intellectually stimulating? Here, he regales her with details of the Large Hadron Collider's search for the "God Particle"; later, Kevin just looks perplexed by a news report about it.
Jackie's job is definitely tough and exhausting (necessitating her drug use to keep her going), but it should also be rewarding, too -- no? Jackie is quite cynical and hardnosed about her role and the challenges staff face each day; as she tells Zoey: "this job is wading through a shitstorm of people on the very worst day of their lives. And just so you know, doctors are here to diagnose, not heal. We heal." She's way past Zoey's days of bringing muffins in to share amongst colleagues, clearly.
However, Jackie's not entirely past caring about people: she helps a man who had slapped her across the face earlier, getting him a bed for the night when he explains the reason for his bad behaviour; then she helps revive a cab driver suffering chest pains that she pulls out of his taxi after he fails to stop for an invalid.
The best moments of the show so far has been seeing Jackie refuse to mollycoddle patients and family members, instead preferring to give them a reality-check. Here, Jackie discovers that the mother of a boy who suffered a brain injury (as a result of not wearing a bicycle helmet), was actually told to remove his helmet by her -- and gets both barrels in the face from Jackie over her mistake. We're accustomed to hospital staff turning the other cheek and ranting in private after hours, so it's quite cathartic to see someone speak the truth in a face-to-face situation. In that respect, Jackie's a fun character to watch -- doing and saying things unexpected of a medical professional.
Overall, this wasn't terrible and it had a few nice moments, but I'm not yet convinced Nurse Jackie's anything very special. Falco keeps me interested, even if I'm not very fond of Jackie herself right now, but I'm really only sticking around because each episode floats by in a breeze and there's not much else on.
15 June 2009
Showtime, 10.30pm
written by: Liz Brixius & Linda Wallem directed by: Craig Zisk starring: Edie Falco (Jackie Peyton, R.N), Eve Best (Dr. Eleanor O'Hara), Merritt Weaver (Zoey Barkow), Haaz Sleiman (Mohammed "Mo-Mo" de la Cruz), Paul Schulze (Eddie Walzer), Peter Facinelli (Dr. Fitch "Coop" Cooper), Dominic Fumusa (Kevin Peyton) & Anna Deavere Smith (Mrs. Glorua Akalitus)
