Showtime
Blowtime manage to fuck most things up but they haven’t done here so good for them. In attempting to show the gritty real-life travails of a gifted but flawed pill-popping nurse and mother, Nurse Jackie has almost endless scope to nause me out with trite, contrived, issue-driven drama by committee but instead delivers an engaging, human, unfussed 30 minute drama that skewers hypocrisy and is rarely precious about its own place in the world. So, let’s meet Jackie shall we? Her life is all (cue Queen of the Stone Age‘s Feelgood Hit of the Summer) Vicodin, Adderall, Percocet , Oxycontin boredom and b-b-b-b-b-back pain. She’s also into extramarital sex – a daily 12 noon fuck with pharmacy dude Eddie (Paul Schulze). Eddie’s not much to look at but he’s there, he gets her free drugs and he’s a ride whenever she wants one. No, it’s not The Thorn Birds but then what is in New York City?
Her cuckolded husband Kevin (Dominic Fumusa) is quite a catch on the face of it. Handsome fella, bar owner, mucks in around the house, worships the ground she and their two daughters shuffle on so why must she take another man’s cock so enthusiastically each day as ante-meridian turns post? Well, stress affects people in different ways. Everyone’s got their vice and she just happens to have two: Vicodin and cock. Can any of us judge her? ¹
Well, stress affects people in different ways. Everyone’s got their vice and she just happens to have two: Vicodin and cock. Can any of us judge her?
I’ll tell you who won’t get judgey: Jackie’s nausey British friend Dr O’Hara (Eve Best). Ignoring the empirical truth that there has never been any recorded friendship between a female doctor and nurse, the show ploughs on with a character who seems parachuted in from Sex and the City, (“Samantha’s British Rival Comes to Town!”) Dr Blow’Hara makes you killy very quickly and is the weakest thing in the show.
Ignoring the empirical truth that there has never been any recorded friendship between a female doctor and nurse, the show ploughs on with a character who seems parachuted in from Sex and the City, (“Samantha’s British Rival Comes to Town!”)
Don’t let that put you off. It wouldn’t be a Blowtime show if they didn’t fuck one thing up. What they’ve done right is portray a convincing female fuck up – brilliant professionally and chaotic personally. A woman with a work-life balance so skewed she’s banging the pharmacist for drugs to take the edge off the pain. But the show doesn’t rag on her for that and nor will you. If you haven’t had a late-night knee trembler with a strung out nurse with a borefriend at home then frankly you haven’t lived.
The verdict: Bad medicine is what I need.
Marks out of 10: 7
¹ We can totally judge the dope addled skank.
