Jackie’s in the park with her secret family. There’s some business involving red balloons, wherein it appears that Glum Gracie might actually be pulling out of her funk. (Littler Fiona is actually the brat for most of this scene.) Jackie and Kevin beam proudly as Gracie is nice to whiny Fiona.
Then Jackie has to go and ruin things by giving the kids money for a treat. (It NEVER pays to give children money in order to purchase worthless sugar products. Write that down, and live it.) Gracie tries using her dollar to convince Jackie that she should skip work today and play with them. Oh boy.
When Jackie refuses (she’s GOT to go to work, natch, there might be some unguarded drugs she can snatch), Gracie does not take kindly to this news. “I want the hospital to BURN DOWN!”
Okay then. Maybe Gracie has a little further to travel on that recovery road, hmm?
Jackie is about to enter the hospital when one of the apparent thousands of homeless people she knows drops to the ground in front of her. While administering to him, Jackie’s nose starts bleeding, apparently the result of all the hovering she’s been doing. Oh boy!
Jackie yells at people (she’s certified for this activity) and they drag the homeless guy in the hospital, where it turns out he’s diabetic and his body is in really bad shape. (Dr. O’Hara: “I love the smell of gangrene in the morning.”) He may have to lose a leg. And the laughs and chuckles continue at Saint…. Hey, what IS the name of this hospital?
Jackie and Dr. Cooper are babbling about something, when the younger daughter of the scheming mother from the last episode who almost died because she was too busy trying to get said daughter hitched to a doctor (just go with it if you don’t remember, not important right at the moment) walks up. She’s brought Coop lunch. (Okay, I guess there’s something going on with those two.)
During this, while Jackie is still there but trying to get away now that the princess is here with food, Coop’s pager clearly goes off and he ignores it. Once Jackie ambles off, the daughter claims not to remember Jackie from her mother’s ordeal. Coop: “She’s just a nurse.”
This is one of the many reasons why we can’t stand Dr. Cooper. Update your notes.
The reason Coop’s pager went off is that a brain-dead car crash victim has just been brought into the ER. It’s clear that he is not going to recover, and while people run around doing all the things you have to do when such a thing is clear, (and wondering where Dr. Cooper is), Jackie pretends to find an organ donor card among the victim’s belongings, and initiates the donor process before anyone can catch on.
Then Jackie has to deal with a snooty Park Avenue type who has actually brought her children to the ER because they have lice and she wants something done now. Lice. When there are people sitting in the ER, waiting their turn while clutching various limbs and whatnot that were still attached to their bodies a short time ago before somebody stupidly said, “hey, let’s try THIS.”
Of course Jackie starts to tell her where she can stick it, but the wealthy witch starts dropping names and next thing you know, Jackie is shampooing the kids’ heads with foaming insecticide. When Jackie tries to explain that the witch will need to perform a follow-up treatment on her own, this cold creature actually wants it all “done now. I really don’t want to touch them.”
Jackie twitches. Once that hot mess of a family heads off to their limo or whatever, Jackie calls a local pharmacy. Would they be so kind us to deliver some lice removal products to the doorman at this particular posh building? What’s that? Which brand? “Whichever has “lice” in bigger letters.” And don’t put it in a bag. Thanks so much!
Jackie meets with Eddie, where he’s a little bummed that tomorrow they will be installing the machine that will eventually replace him. Then he tells her a long story about atoms, that is supposed to be deep, but really IS just a long story about atoms.
Then he lets out that he doesn’t want their relationship to be a secret. That he wants to meet Jackie’s daughter. Wouldn’t that be swell?
Jackie, knowing full well that Eddie won’t be so excited about meeting all the other relatives and husbands that he doesn’t know about, hems, haws, and calculates the distance to the door. And whether or not she can snatch some samples on the way out.
Zoey confronts Jackie, trembling but determined, and says that if Jackie had told her the correct thing to do with the homeless guy the LAST time he was here, that he wouldn’t have lost his leg THIS time. Jackie denies it and falls short of calling her an idiot. Amazingly, Zoey whips out a pink and purple notebook where she apparently records everything that happens in the ER, especially when it involves Jackie. No evil intentions, she is just very thorough and trying to learn. Slightly creepy, but understandable.
Back to the brain-dead guy, everyone’s STILL waiting for Dr. Cooper to show up and do his part of the process, especially since the donor people are now here. Jackie storms into an exam room where Coop and the husband-hunting daughter are examining each OTHER, yells at the lying Coop, grabs his pager and shows him that he DID TOO get paged, then storms out. On top of all that, there are no drug samples lying around in this room either, so she’s really not happy.
Jackie races back to brain-dead guy, and lies to them that Coop has pronounced the guy, and they can proceed with the harvesting. She wanders out, to learn that the family has been located , they are on their way, and they DO NOT want any donating to take place. Too late.
Then we cut to Jackie in the chapel, all alone with the candles and the pretty statues. She then proceeds to snort something she’s carrying around (in CHURCH, people), and tries to look angelic and thoughtful. Then her nose starts to bleed again.
So she goes to Dr. O’Hara for help with THAT little issue. (O’Hara while examining: “WHAT are you sticking up here?”) They continue babbling while O’Hara checks things out, what should Jackie do about Eddie and her real husband and all that. O’Hara mentions that her sister was headed toward a similar dilemma, married but wanting to cat around, and O’Hara gave sis some advice based on Jackie.
Jackie is appalled at this for some reason. How dare O’Hara talk about Jackie’s private life with ANYONE? O’Hara is stunned at the reaction. It’s not like she gave specific details, her sister has no idea who Jackie is and will probably never meet her. Besides:
O’Hara: “I think of YOU as a sister.”
Jackie: “Think again.
Jackie, Jackie, Jackie. The ONE person who knows almost everything about you and still has your back. And you’re gonna slam her for something like this? You NEED this woman. She has loads of money, likes to terrorize people even more than you do, and she has great shoes.
To further underscore that Jackie has a confusing bad side, she then snatches up Zoey’s cute little notebook, finds the page where the homeless guy visited the last time (and Jackie gave the bad directions), and she rips the page out. Then wanders off.
But of course, just when you’re about fed up with Jackie being heartless at the wrong times and lying to everybody, she happens to catch a snippet of an old Shirley Temple movie (you know, because they play those all the time in the hospital), the scene where she’s dancing with the older guy whose name escapes me at the moment. This inspires Jackie to call Gracie, all fake bubbly and excited. “Let’s do something! Dance class maybe?’
What a character this is. Sometimes it’s hard to justify Jackie's actions, and there's always at least one scene in every episode where you're thinking, how could a decent person do that?
There’s a thin line between love and hate, right?
And in Jackie’s case, it can usually be snorted.
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