We've been waiting all season for the show to open the Pandora's box that is Jackie's dual life, and the season finale exploded it with a bundle of dynamite. It was clear from the first episode that the center could not hold in Jackie's life. Nobody can effectively juggle a two-income marriage, children, a workplace romance and a drug addiction without the whole house of cards coming down, and we first met Jackie Peyton right at the point where the base began to wobble. First her older daughter, Grace, developed anxiety issues -- a byproduct of absorbing her mother's own anxiety -- then there was the growing dependency on the drugs to get her through the day. Later came the simple problem that people kept discovering things about Jackie -- and that's the annoying thing about friends, isn't it? They're there when you need them, but they also have a tendency to ask prying questions about your life and to remember personal details that you wish they'd forget. Jackie's increasingly desperate attempts to maintain secrecy became this season's central plot arc.
As chaotic as Jackie's personal life might have been, her complete control at the hospital was the flip side to that chaos. This was where we got the chance to see what makes Jackie a truly original antihero. Rules be damned, Jackie does exactly what she thinks is right. Sometimes the Right Thing is practically saintly, like answering a patient's cell phone so she can break news of his death to his girlfriend, or patiently reminding an abusive mental patient to take his meds while everyone else ignores him. More often, the lines are blurry to everyone but Jackie -- like her decision to forge Coop's signature so that organs could be harvested from a still-living patient, and her refusal to feel any sort of remorse afterward. (In her mind it was just punishment for Coop ignoring his pager to make out with his girlfriend.) Watching Jackie rule the nurse's station, we got the feeling that in this aspect of her life she wasn't just in charge, she was superb -- making it all the more tragic that her growing dependency on drugs kept threatening to get in the way.
If this show were just about Jackie, there'd be little hope of it finding a wide audience. The character's too polarizing, and Edie Falco's androgynous looks don't make her a conventional sex symbol. Fortunately, Nurse Jackie has a terrific supporting cast. Forget the cycle of guest stars who came and went in quick cameos -- Swoosie Kurtz and Blythe Danner as Coop's lesbian mothers, Victor Garber as a surly movie critic -- or the milquetoast actors who play Jackie's family members. The stars here are the hospital staff, all complicated and well-written in their own ways.
Zoey, Jackie's nursing student, isn't just the best character on the show, she's one of the funniest characters on television right now. This is all due to Merritt Wever's portrayal of her as an awkward social misfit who is desperate to please, but unable to take the temperature of a room well enough to do so. Over the course of the season we got to see Zoey form friendships with gay nurses Mo-Mo and Thor (great in their own right), go toe-to-toe with Jackie, and be enjoyably tortured by Dr. Eleanor O'Hara, Jackie's clotheshorse best friend and the other stand-out character on the show.
Maybe it's Eve Best's dry, crisp delivery, or Eleanor's utter disdain for anything sentimental, be it a used shoe or a hug from a sad child. I happen to think it's her ability to observe and comment on Jackie's dubious moral choices with impartiality and lack of judgment -- a relationship dynamic you'll often see between two male characters, but almost never between two women. The last few episodes of the season gave Eleanor new depth, introducing a storyline in which she arranged to have her comatose mother illegally transported from London -- the same mother who stole and then married her boyfriend years ago. Yeah, I don't know what that's all about either, but my interest is nothing if not piqued.
There are others. Anna Deveare Smith has carved out a weird little niche with her portrayal of Mrs. Akalitis, an ER administrator whose many years of thankless overlording have put her into sort of a cracked-out trance. And Peter Facinelli has done the same with Coop, who seemed at first to be your run-of-the-mill narcissist doctor but has subsequently revealed layers that are…unusual, to say the least.
All in all this was a pretty excellent season of television, and Edie Falco should have a Best Actress Emmy nomination in the bag. Hopefully, the extra attention and positive word of mouth will help the season second draw in the new viewers that Nurse Jackie rightly deserves.