NURSE JACKIE

Even if it means you have to add Showtime to your cable bill for the summer, WATCH Nurse Jackie. This is coming from a guy who hardly watches "regular" TV. I watched it last night and DAMN!, that's a good show. OMFG it's a great watch.

Best frickin' show on TV since Hill Street Blues in the early 80's. NO spoiler alert needed here but DAMN! what a surprise ending.

At least as far as the pilot episode I saw last night is concerned, for once, TV rocks! Ask any cop who has spent time in an ER about some of the nurses he or she has gotten to know. It's not that far from fiction. Here's the PR blurb from the Showtime website:

Nurse Jackie Peyton is far from ordinary. As an ER nurse, she navigates the rough waters of a crumbling healthcare system, doing everything she can to provide her patients with the best care possible. Whether she’s lighting into a smug doctor for failing to heed her advice, or stealing a fat money clip from a man who stabbed a prostitute and giving it to a pregnant widow, or forging the organ donor card of a man who just died, Jackie Peyton is compelled to make sense of the chaos and to level the playing field whenever she can. Right or wrong, it’s Jackie’s brand of justice all made that more manageable by a daily diet of prescription pain medication.

Ok, You've heard it all before I'm sure. But Falco brings realism to big city ER nursing like Dennis Franz brought reality to big city policing in Hill Street Blues and NYPD Blue. Both of those shows were created by Steven Bochco, and one of the Steven Bochco's of Nurse Jackie is none other than Steven Buschemi, who directs a number of episodes.

The music is done by Wendy and Lisa of Prince fame, and they keep the show on edge with the soundtrack.

When the Fishing Musician was a wee single lad working as a cop at night in Houston, there were few avenues to meet decent women. It was pretty much court clerks downtown, female cops and nurses, since young street cops spend an inordinate time in the city's ER's. I had a policy of not dating female cops and so nurses were always ready it seemed to do something after work when you're getting off at 10 p.m. or 6 a.m., since they were working the same screwed up hours.

All I can say is, now that I've watched Nurse Jackie, I know why those night shift nurses were always so wide awake at the end of their shifts, even after working a double.

I used to hear a lot of stories from these nurses about ER life. Maybe the show's writers would find them good fodder for filler. In one story, the aged hooker enters the ER in intense female parts pain. Everyone in the ER can tell she is in real serious pain. Upon examination by the young just out of med school doc, the source of pain is found: a large 3" tall toy soldier is crammed into her nether regions. No explanation is ever given, but the pain is immediately relieved.

One urban legend that we used to hear about from our nurse drinking buddies was the child molester whose member had been severed by a child victim, who had grown tired of the abuse. And of how the nurse "accidentally" placed the detached member in formaldehyde, which immediately rendered said member unfit for reattachment.

My favorite scene *spoiler alert* was when Nurse Jackie was being harrassed by the diplomat (who had diplomatic immunity) who had slashed up a hooker pretty bad.

The hooker had fought back and managed to slice off the ear of the offending diplomat. After being told by the cops that diplomatic immunity prevented them from arresting the slasher diplomat, and after the diplomat began to psychologically and sexually harass Jackie in the exam room, our hero steps into the restroom, pulls the ear of the "above-the-law" diplomat that the hooker had given Jackie from her pocket, whispers "Fuck You" into the detached ear, and then flushes the ear down the toilet.

So anyway, from a guy who doesn't get entertained by TV shows as a rule, watch Nurse Jackie. I have a feeling she has some more surprises in store for us this summer.

Nurse Jackie. Love her. Hate her. But she's got her own idea of what's right or wrong in a world full of people who mostly don't give a shit.