Edie Falco, best known for her role as Carmela Soprano, stars in the Showtime television series Nurse Jackie.
In the pilot (which aired on June 8, 2009 and was Showtimes most successful premiere ever), Nurse Jackie, a no-nonsense nurse working at All Saints hospital in NYC, demonstrates her ability to show both a hard edge and a bottomless well of compassion. And she doesn’t hesitate to work as a sower of dark justice and good, taking risks to create small renegade reparations in an unjust world. She doesn’t hesitate to falsify a dead patient’s driver’s license to make him a registered organ donor, or steal a violent perpetrator’s wallet and give the cash to a recently widowed pregnant woman. A student nurse wonders aloud if Nurse Jackie might indeed be a saint. But if Jackie is a saint, she is one from the order of St. Augustine who lives by the mantra: “Dear God, make me good, but not just yet.”
In an average workday, Nurse Jackie snorts enough Oxycotin to tranquilize an elephant, an addiction ostensibly begun as a palliative for a very real back injury. And the narcotics are supplied by the hospital pharmacist Eddie (Paul Schulze) who Nurse Jackie meets everyday at noon in the hospital pharmacy for a lunchtime quickie.
After a 12 hour shift, Nurse Jackie leaves the insular and demanding world of the hospital, taking the subway home. On her doorstep, she slips on her wedding ring and heads inside to greet her very hot, sweet, younger husband and her two little girls.
The fictional Nurse Jackie is joined in her behavior by plenty of real life wives. Studies show that 45-55% of married women (and 50-60% of married men) “engage in extramarital sex at some time or other during their relationship” (Atwood and Schwartz, 2002 – Journal of Couple & Relationship Therapy). This is a truth that has not been fully explored in television and movies. Sure there have been some notable philandering wives in film (Mrs. Robinson of course leaps to mind—who doesn’t love a woman who wears a leopard print jacket to her own daughter’s wedding?). But more often television and film have ignored the reality of women’s infidelity, shying away from depictions of the “good” mother and wife who cheats. Instead, pop culture and the media often focus on the unfaithful husband, avoiding explorations of the idea that the beloved wife and mother could have a set of needs she’s meeting outside of the marriage.
The Oscar-nominated Up in the Air (2009) touched on this idea, but didn’t give us more than a glimpse through a cracked doorway of the extramaritally adventurous Alex Farna’s (Vera Farmiga) home life. But in Nurse Jackie we see that Jackie’s attentive, romantic husband appears to be the whole package, not just running his bar, but also uncomplainingly keeping the kids fed and nurtured while Jackie works yet another long overtime shift.
Jackie’s addiction and her pharmacist’s willingness to supply her with Oxycotin causes the viewer to wonder if she’s just using her lover as a med dispensary, or if she actually likes him. But there is clearly friendship and chemistry between the two, and Jackie doesn’t seem to be the kind of woman who would have sex with a man purely for the pharmaceuticals. (After receiving a ‘Me so horny’ text from the pharmacist, Jackie doesn’t hesitate to let him know that the adolescent booty call turned her cold).
Jackie’s renegade style at the hospital requires a major suspension of disbelief. But I’m not a stickler for realism in television. (If Law & Order showed courtroom scenes as they really are, would anyone be able to stay awake through an episode?) But what’s really worth watching is the show’s exploration of Nurse Jackie’s complicated and “flawed” character, of what it means to be a sinner and a saint, an imperfect human doing good work in the world.
Nurse Jackie has been greenlit for a third season. Season 1 of Nurse Jackie is now available on Netflix.
