Gripping story with well-crafted characters

A Brilliant Conflict

It’s an especially fun movie from a director and cast who are clearly having a good time allowing themselves to let loose.

Amazing worth wacthing. So good. Biased but well made with many good points.

1/24/18. Just finished watching the entire 7 seasons of Nurse Jackie. Wow. What a series! This is probably one of the best medical drama series I have seen, even though it is called a dramedy. Did not exactly liked the ending, but it was right for the series. Rather than call this Nurse Jackie, perhaps, they should have called it Jackie Peyton Addict, RN. The entire series was basically about a female addict who was a great nurse, despite her addiction and how she used drugs to deal with her hectic life. It is a well-done cautionary tale of how drug addiction ruins lives of those addicted and those who try to love and help them. Wonderful casting, great screenwriting and realistic depictions of emergency room medicine. Falco was excellent as Nurse Jackie and I am surprised she did not win more awards for her realistic portrayal of a high-functioning junkie until she wasn't. The 7 seasons just flew by. Catch this when you can.

Nurse Jackie is a good comedy because it is based on real life and nothing is more funny, horrible, tragic, {adjective here} than real life. Jackie is a great nurse who is not open to personal relationships even though she has the compassion of 100 people (making her a great nurse). She treats herself like crap while her patients get her best. Problem is she is hooked on pills. Pain killers seem to be the drug of choice but she isn't super particular just has the tolerance of a horse. She chomps down 80-100 mg oxy pills like a kid does gummy bears. She chews and snorts them to get the maximum effect from the dosage. Challenge is that this makes her an addict which comes with all the character flaws of an addict; lying, stealing, etc., doing anything to prevent running out of drugs. I think they go a little light on the severity of detox the few times she does. She has herself convinced that she does a better job when high, not an unusual self perception for an addict. The show has a lot of plot lines that take us through a well written story of her life and the supporting cast; mostly her co-workers at a city hospital's ER (which throws in its own set of funny and gross situations). Bad doctors accidentally killing people or being prevented from killing them through the nurses help. Some of the doctors grow and become good while others don't, but it is part of the humor.Jackie bottoms out, losing her family, children and almost her job; the thing that is more important to her than anything but her drugs. That pushes her to get sober and then use again in the hell of faking sobriety. They don't really inject a lot of 12 step BS. in the show. But that is because Jackie does go through detox for a couple of weeks and say she is in recovery but doesn't actually participate in recovery to where she even knows how the program works. She is though a master manipulator and the show entertains as she jumps through ever increasingly difficult hoops to keep her supplied with drugs and working. She has one person she seems to truly care about, but even that is questionable. When he throws himself under the bus to protect her from prosecution she reacts by rejecting him because it messes with her drug source.The show evolves over the seasons but the underlying story is that of an addict getting increasingly worse providing a lot of laughs in the process. You can't help but love her flaws and all because you are seeing life through her eyes. The end is tough. Having again dodged a bullet successfully keeping her nursing license by completing a probation program disaster strikes. A dealer who had his stash stolen runs into the ER with a gun looking for it. A doctor talks him out of believing the thief is there and he runs off. But Jackie realizes the likely culprit is a reoccurring character that comes into the ER with a heroine OD because it explains why the dealer would think the thief was there. In this final episode and scene Jackie realizes this guy would do such a thing and runs into the men's room finding our junkie with the huge stash he stole. She takes it from him ,saves him and sets him up in the ER. This occurs during a celebration for the ER treating their last patient and locking their doors (as the hospital is shutting down having been sold to be converted to condo's). She slips into the bathroom and snorts a big pile of the heroine she stole from the addict. At this point she appears to walk out of the party in a euphoric state and go join a large group of people in times square in meditation appearing like the show was ending with her getting worse and moving on... but then suddenly we are back in the ER where all her friends are trying to revive her as she really came out from snorting all the heroine and collapsed. The show then ends with her staring into the camera as we fade to credits unsure if she got revived or died from an OD. Something for fans to debate. I took it as her dying. Either way it signaled the end. Either her life ended or her addiction ended because she couldn't have O.D.'ed and continued on to her next job as a nurse as she would have lost her license after a heroine OD and her life would have been forever changed thus killing the character. Little difference as she either died or the character died thus ending the story.Great show with a lot of realism that goes where most don't with an ending leaving questions that regardless of the answer lead to the same ultimate end for those who understand the path of addiction. Good writing and a painful subject turned into great entertainment taking a horrible subject and making us laugh as we go along for the ride. Unusual and I'm sure for many who don't know the realities of addiction much of it likely lost on them. But the show is top notch regardless of the viewers knowledge. Though based on the popularity enough people have been touched by the disease to know enough to get it... and getting it is worth the trip!

Edie Falco, such a great mob wife on "The Sopranos," here does a turn as "Nurse Jackie" in this series, with each episode a half hour.Jackie works at All Saints Hospital in New York City. She's a wife and mother of two daughters. Her husband Kevin (Dominic Fumosa) owns a bar. Jackie is well liked, in fact beloved, by patients and staff alike at All Saints. There's her boss Gloria (Anna Deveare Smith), Eleanor (Eve Best), Zoey (Merritt Weaver), Thor (Stephen Wallam), Fitch (Peter Facinelli), and her some time boyfriend, the pharmacist Eddie (Paul Schulze).What most people aren't aware of is that Jackie is a major drug addict who pops pills constantly - she steals them, fakes prescriptions, buys them, suckers people out of them, whatever she has to do. She hides them at home. The sad thing is, she's an excellent nurse, a caring person, and a loving mother.As her condition worsens, her life falls apart.We follow Jackie through detox and 12-step meetings and watch her go through a series of friends and lovers. Her ability to lie right to people's faces is shocking, and the way she compartmentalizes her life is striking. When her husband visits her at the hospital, Zooey says to him, "Jackie isn't married." Even those who work closely with her don't really know her.Edie Falco is amazing as Jackie, who has you believing there is nothing wrong with her when she's high as a kite, and when she's clean, makes you suspect she's high. She is surrounded by a wonderful cast, the best being award-winner Merritt Weaver as Zooey, a nursing student who idolizes Jackie. Most of the actors have a background in stage work: Eve Best is from the British theater, Stephen Wallam from musicals, Anna Deavere Smith does remarkable one-woman shows, besides TV, stage and film.I was really sorry to see Eve Best go, with her insane Manolo Blahnik shoes and vivacious British humor.The series is filled with humor, sadness, surprises, darkness, with realistic hospital situations, though the show doesn't revolve around the hospital. Through it all, Falco gives an honest performance in her portrayal of a woman who lives a destructive secret life but puts on a normal face. It's so realistic it's chilling.

Edie Falco is just superb in this TV drama. She makes the character of Nurse Jackie very realistic. She has human flaws like all of us.The show has a perfect combination of lightheartedness, drama and reality to make it absorbing. I think they have done the right thing by keeping it to 30 minutes - it leaves you wanting more. Had it been an hour long show you would need a lot more characters to keep your interest.Knowing people in the nursing profession, Edie does a splendid job in portraying a fully qualified Nurse. She sounds like one and she looks like one (and I don't mean that in a stereotypical way!).She shows the challenges of mixing a home and personal life and dealing with all the periphery that entails. This is a well scripted, well acted TV drama - one of the few that I look forward to each episode! I've not enjoyed a TV drama as much since Friends and Dexter. I highly recommend it if you haven't seen it yet. Do watch it from the start though!!!