Nurse Jackie: You Broke My Heart!

Cafe Society
1

**I used to love this show! The plots were incisive, unflinching, and unsentimental . . .

This, the final season, is bathed in dreck:**
-Dr. Prince, the amazing maverick doctor, is secretly dying of a brain tumor. Did the writers really really trot out this old, tired trope?!!
-I couldn’t care less about Jackie’s entitled and bratty kid. Leave her at the truckstop in PA and let her hitchhike to L.A. and become a teen hooker. Bratass.
-Evil Norwegians? A full-on middle school dance for Thor’s marriage? Who the Hell is working in the ER during the sockhop?
-Eddie: blech, blech, and blecccchhhhh. You were fired from the hospital for trafficking in Scheduled drugs and were immediately hired as a pharm rep? Plus, you always look dirty and unshaven – not pharm rep material :dubious:
-Jackie: please just OD. I can’t stand another round of using, cup peeing, and stern lectures from Akalitus.

This season has taken two fine actresses, Edie Falco and Anna Deavere Smith, and defanged them into stupid, whining caricatures.

RIP, thanks for four good seasons.

2

I would comment but I stopped watching in the middle of season three.

3

-shrug- I’ve enjoyed this season. After last year’s descent into absolute nihilism, this year is at least trending towards the positive. I hope it has a happy-ish ending, because I’m a sap.

That said, I think Eddie + Jackie is the absolute worst thing that could’ve happened (if this weren’t a TV show, that is) because he is such an enabling moron.

4

This is the show where in the pilot and first seasons she is snorting time released wax beads. She is using I forget the name but a type of time released morphine that comes as wax beads in a capsule, she dumps the beads out and snorts them.

:dubious: Yeaaaaaaaaaa

5

Was she snorting the beads or crushing them (I don’t remember). It is, in fact, possible to crush the little time release beads and snort those. Waaaaay back in college that’s what we would do with Dexadrine.

Also, don’t forget, people will snort anything. I’ve had friends that would snort Vicodins. That’s an awful lot of tylenol and fillers just to get the little extra buzz than what you would get from swallowing it.

6

I miss Coop.

7

Geez, it’s been like one episode, but, if I didn’t know better, it does seem like they’re dismantling the show. Coop’s gone, Eddy’s gone, Zoey hated Jackie, the hospital is shutting down, the new doctor only has a few months left…
It’s almost like they’re getting ready to end the show.
I wonder if they’re wrapping it up or planning to send Jackie off on a new drug fueled adventure next season.

8

I have come to hate this show.

Everything in the OP is spot on. They’ve pulled out every pathetic character hook in this season to keep the truly addicted watching. And now, the hospital is closing, everyone is leaving, and Jackie will somehow save the day!

I used to enjoy this show, but the character Jackie is not one to root for. I don’t have a problem with a flawed main character. However, Jackie is not believable, nor are the enablers she has surrounding her.

Even Kevin, who seemed to be a rational character who got himself and his children away from a pathological liar and drug user had to do something out of character to make things work out for Jackie.

Let’s get this straight. Kevin and Jackie are divorced. And yet, the house was still in both their names, and Kevin was able to take out a second mortgage by having his new wife forge his ex-wife’s signature? Really? When a couple divorced and it goes through the court system, is it usual for a couple to keep jointly held assets, or is it SOP to have the assets divided? I would think that, unless we are talking about uber rich people that have uber money tied up in assets, a normal couple would agree to divide the house as part of the settlement. They either sell it and split the proceeds, or one buys the house from the other and gets the ex off of the mortgage.

But no, Jackie needs $10 k for her lawyer, and she discovers that Kevin has not only done something very illegal, he is also conveniently wearing a $20k gold Rolex that Jackie can pawn to get the cash she needs. :rolleyes: Kevin, who has two kids to provide for and a new wife, takes out a massive loan for this blowout wedding, honeymoon, AND pours money into his business, and oh, by the way, buys a ridiculous watch… AND his new wife is pregnant! Not exactly good decision making, and not believable based on his character.

Beyond that, the Eddie character is beyond pathetic. Eddie would NEVER get a job as a pharma rep on his best day. Add his baggage (oh, he was giving drugs to a woman who had sex with him in the hospital at the beginning of the series, and then he helps Jackie get drugs in this season and takes the bullet for Jackie and loses his job for her. Yeah, HE’S getting a job as a pharma rep. :rolleyes:

And Eddie… This is a guy who has been blown off by Jackie at every turn in the show, and he still wants to be with her? I know people do stupid things when they are in love, but Eddie is an unbelievable character. No one would stand by Jackie after what she’s done to him.

Entire arcs don’t work. Having ONE unbelievable story arc is one thing, but EVERY character? It’s like the writers have packed it in, and are just wrapping everything up with a nice big bow.
The only way I will ever watch this last season is if I find out that the last episode has Jackie OD-ing and Eddie blowing his brains out. I have come to dislike every character on the show.

I don’t want a happy ending.

9

You can find him on CBS in American Odyssey, which a decent series. It’s not a comedy.

10

What I dont get is why the Emmys (and SAG and Golden Globe) allow this show to compete as a Comedy. Falco even won once. Now, look, she’s great and the show started good.* But it’s as funny as a heart attack. *She even sez she’s not funny (and she’s right, altho I am sure if cast in a true comedy role she could be).

11

WHY they allowed it, I don’t know, but it put her up against shows like New Girl and Parks & Rec instead of Downton Abbey or Mad Men or Dexter.

I can understand why they call it a Dark Comedy, but don’t think anyone that didn’t have their palm greased would put it in the same category as a sitcom.

12

Why does Zoey now hate Jackie? I stopped watching around season 3.

13

Well, exactly.

14

She only recently found out that Jackie is an addict.
More than that, though, Akolitis has made Zoey ‘monitor’ Jackie (long story) and Zoey resents that and is taking it out on Jackie.
Zoey’s favorite person in the whole entire world was Jackie and and now her [Zoey’s] world is crumbling around her as she’s finding out that her mentor was just a lying, cheating, stealing fiend that would say or do anything to get a few pills.

Finding out that Jackie stole a few ID’s to get some pills really pushed Zoey over the edge last season.

ETA, she didn’t ‘steal a few ID’s’ she got a hold of Dr Roman’s DEA number to call in some scripts and, I don’t remember how it worked, but she did something with the dying nun’s name/ID. The dying nun thing was what Zoey caught on to. Whether or not to turn her in to Akolitis really caused Zoey a lot of internal turmoil.

15

I thought she was crushing them, then putting them into little packets of “artificial sweetener”, which she’d then dump in her coffee.

16

Jackie had a fake driver’s license in the name of “Nancy Wood” and was phoning in (and picking up) prescriptions using Roman’s ID number. When the circle was closing, she off-camera managed to convince the dying ex-nun to claim to be Nancy Wood (and Jackie had had a second phony license made up with the ex-nun’s picture - that she used a picture Zoey had taken and subsequently recognized gave it away).

How Jackie managed this is unclear at best, but it’s hardly the most improbable plot twist to date.

17

Just got done binge-watching Nurse Jackie on Netflix. The entire 7 seasons are available.

On one hand, I’m grateful that they didn’t end the show on a formulaic upnote with Jackie entering rehab. On the other hand, I really didn’t expect it to end on such a low note, either.

The whole Norwegian buyout was a joke, right down to the over-the-top smarmy dude. I work at a company that has acquired tons of other companies, and nobody takes up residence at the other company until the deal is sealed. No way would they allow someone to set up office in the hospital.

The supporting cast made the show tolerable, IMO. Had it just been about Jackie, viewers would have needed Xanax just to finish the show. Thor, Zoe and even Coop were enough of a breather from the downer that was Jackie.

I was aghast at Jackie’s crapping parenting. Her bratty daughter, Grace, complains that she can’t get a $600 dress and she basically steals two of them to try and make her happy. Then she runs away on a bus and gets rewarded with curb service.

I missed Kevin.

I guess it was a realistic portrayal of a drug abuser, but certainly doesn’t offer much hope. None of the addicts on the show made a permanent turnaround, did they?