Monday, June 29, 2009

#18 - "Nurse Jackie" - Season 1, Episode 4

Opening scenes with Jackie in a voice over letting us know that she can figure out how people are going to act and react: "It's not like I wanna know this stuff, I just always do." Nurse as medicated psychic.

A boy child is rushed in with a collapsed lung after a fall. More evidence that Dr. O'Hara just does not have adequate people skills and has no idea how to relate to emotionally distraught relatives. Of course not, the nurses clean up that mess. Dr. O'Hara sasheys off in stiletto heels, and Jackie pushes Zoey to provide the family with comfort.

Brief aside with Mo-Mo and Zoey, wherein we learn that Mo-Mo had a twin who died when they were very young (just like the boy with the collapsed lung!), but he warns Zoey to "never think you should feel sorry for me", then proceeds to explain how emotionally difficult the loss really was, and still is. Then he ends by asking Zoey "have you ever used hot rollers", but quickly decides that it would look even worse.

Poor Zoey. Never wins.

Then Jackie has to rush off with her bland husband to a conference at their daughter's school. Seems the counselors think their oldest daughter has "generalized anxiety disorder". Really? And what is that? Well, apparently, it means that said daughter circles her desk three times before sitting down so the planes won't crash on her (okay, a little odd) and she doesn't use much color in drawings of the family, all black and white and boring. No suns and pretty trees.

Hmmm. I can think of several artists who use that same duotone method and make millions. Doth the lady protest too much?

Anyway, they suggest putting the tyke on anti-anxiety meds. Jackie, no stranger to chemicals in the bloodstream, has an issue with that, snapping at the panel member who makes this suggestion that "that's enough out of you." Kettle black, perhaps?

Then Jackie stomps away and buys a new cell phone, because she's apparently tired of both her husband and her pill-dispensing lover calling her on the same phone and making things awkward. Like that's going to solve the overall problem.

Back at the hospital ranch, Zoey has just lost the first patient what was totally under her care. Jackie: "Everybody has a first." Zoey: "But mine's dead." Some more bonding, with Jackie tight-roping that good and bad mix that she is.

Next to last scene, in a darkened hospital room, Mo-Mo is quietly singing to the twin with the collapsed lung. Final scene, Jackie pulls out her daughter's picture that the mean counseling staff at the school presented as evidence of her daughter's trauma. Jackie draws in a sun, with little rays radiating, uttering "Was that so hard?"

And those two scenes pushed me over. I'm now in love. Call me?

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