Nurse Jackie

On an entirely different note, I've started watching the new Showtime series Nurse Jackie. I haven't necessarily been a huge Edie Falco fan, based on Carmella Soprano, but I thought she did a good job with a relatively unlikeable character.

Additionally, I wasn't sure what I thought of her new haircut.



Let me just say, the haircut and the show are delicious fun! While many of the characters are less than realistic, Jackie herself is the kind of brutally no-nonsense flawed mess of a woman that we could all use in our lives. Interesting I should feel so warmly towards the character, as she's got an addition to pain killers. I suppose this is the TV version of addiction, which is what makes it acceptable. It doesn't impair her ability to socialize or do her job...with one exception. She's cheating on her husband with a pharmacist who keeps her in pills.



The pain killer addiction aside, Jackie is all things that I believe more people should want to be. She's bullshit free, she doesn't filter herself in order to make other people comfortable, she breaks the rules when her conscience dictates and still manages to give off this enveloping comfort to her patients.



One of the most fascinating moments in the show, to me, was a conversation she was having with her husband about the "Super Collider". It referenced an earlier scene when she was having lunch with the pharmacist. Jackie's thoughts were along the lines of "Why would anyone spend 8 billion dollars on this?" The pharmacist, clearly a science geek, explained to her that they were searching for "the god molecule". They shared a moment when she laughed at him affectionately and then the scene ended. In the scene with Jackie's husband, he repeated what she had said earlier..."8 BILLION DOLLARS!" Jackie didn't miss a beat before answering, "They're looking for the god molecule." Her husband asked where she had heard that and she answered, "Oh, I get around." The look on Edie Falco's face sold the show for me completely. There was no remorse in her voice, no coyness of 'i've got a secret', no sidelong guilty glances to her husband, no pause at all. Either we're supposed to believe she's so numb from her painkillers that she feels nothing at all (it doesn't seem that way to me) or, she's so perfectly divorced herself from what goes on at the hospital that she's not clued into the fact that she's betraying her husband.

I can't wait to see more and hope this isn't a disappointment in the future. It could quickly show up on my top shows of all time list...right at the top.