Nurse Jackie 1x06, "Tiny Bubbles"

“Nurse Jackie” is my favorite thing airing this summer. A large part of this is because Edie Flaco is amazing in practically every way. She could blink at the screen for twenty minutes and I would be riveted. She was brilliant in “The Sopranos,” and it’s wonderful to see her acting again in this convoluted role as a nurse who isn’t nearly as saint like as she sometimes gets painted out to be. (Unlike “HawthoRNe,” where Jada Pinkett Smith plays the Virgin Mary reborn every week.) The other half of why this show is so good is because it’s subtle enough to let the audience draw their own conclusions and it’s complex enough to tackle dark humor in conjunction with genuine tragedy and loss.


This isn’t a combination that the show always pulls off with as much grace as it would probably like, but this episode nailed the combination on the head, and all thanks to Judith Ivey. SPOILERS INSIDE...

For those who don’t know (because I sure didn’t), Judith Ivey is a Big Deal on the Broadway scene in addition to landing more than a few roles on the big and silver screens. This week she plays Paula, a former nurse dying of lung cancer who asks Jackie to give her that nudge into the great beyond before living becomes unbearable.

Thanks in part to Rick Cleveland’s script, the potential sob-fest became all the more powerful for the dry, heartbreaking humor that Paula approaches her terrible situation with. No, it wasn’t as dramatic and moving as it could have been, with Jackie sobbing at the foot of her mentor’s bed, but the Paula’s parting words of, “Here's to you and here's to me. And if we ever disagree fuck you. And here's to me.” was far more moving, and sad, than some long monologue about the wonders of ‘giving back’ to the world through such a noble profession. Cheers to the script, and a bigger huzzah to Ivey, who pulled of droll and tragic perfectly.

Good episode for Coop, with the reveal of his two moms and a hint of the actual human beneath all of the buddy-buddy façade. I love how it’s taken us six episodes to get a hint of the person beneath all of that smooth talking, and its patience like that makes the show so good. There aren’t many writers who, with only 12 episodes to play with, decide to slow things down and take exactly as long as they need to in order to tell their stories right. And it’s lovely to see Swoosie Kurtz around after the cancellation of “Pushing Daisies,” a loss I’m still mourning over here in network land.

And I’d just like to say that I adore Zoey. I know that she probably annoys plenty of people, but Merritt Wever gets the awkward timing of the enthusiastic nursing student spot-on, and there’s more than a little to be said about the newcomer to a world with already established rules and norms. That last bit is why I’m so impressed with her, as she’s able to ask all the questions the audience wants to (like asking Eddie if this sort of thing happens all the time, which, you know. In TV land maybe it could) without losing a bit of personality or believability in the process. Love it.

In sum, a brilliant episode and the best yet from the show. Here’s to hoping that the next six acts can follow the first!