Jackie’s work schedule is taking it’s toll on her family. There’s a picture, drawn by Grace, on the refrigerator. It’s supposed to be Florida. But it has a black sky, bent palm trees and ominous waves. The family sits down to dinner before Jackie goes to work the graveyard shift. Fiona asks Jackie “why do you always have to work?” Grace gets frustrated easily when she can’t get the gummy vitamins open. Fiona sits there with French fries in her nose. When she tries to put one in Grace’s nose, Grace flips out and leaves the table.
So begins this week’s installment of Nurse Jackie. A very real picture of family life, reminiscent of “Roseanne.” But instead of fart jokes and a wisecracking title character, we have a dark comedy and Jackie, the epitome of double identity.
Consistent with the duality theme, enter Stephanie, a 10 year old girl whose mom is sick with lupus. She keeps a detailed medical record for her mother. The information is in a folder of bright yellow construction paper. In bright pink bubble letters it says “emergency info” and there are hearts and rainbows and stars and glitter all over it. Stephanie is the same age as Grace. Stephanie’s mother is extremely ill and she draws rainbows, drawings of hope. Grace, with two perfectly healthy parents, is disaster obsessed and draws pictures of hurricanes in Florida.
After Stephanie and her mother leave, Jackie finds a couple flashcards, fallen from Stephanie’s backpack. This inspires Jackie to create cards for a stroke victim so that he can communicate with his irritatingly loud family. His wife is an instant naysayer, “notecards, you think he can read notecards?” She continues her tirade, “He won’t even nod his head yes or no.” But he flips through the cards and then he hands his wife two, which she reads aloud, “shut the fuck up” and then, “seriously”. He sits back, contended, and Jackie walks from the room smiling, another satisfied customer.
Jackie continues to juggle two men who love her. She’s hanging up the phone as Kevin says “I love you”, only to be handed a fortune cookie from Eddie with a hand written note “you’re pretty when you’re tired – love Eddie.” Jealous? Later, Mo-Mo offers to fix her up. No one knows the whole truth about Nurse Jackie. I doubt we do, either.
Dr. Cooper and Eddie are getting friendly. After bonding over a mutual love of Harleys, Coop insists that they get lunch together. Jackie is very displeased when she goes in to visit Eddie and finds him with Coop. Who can blame her? Coop’s the young upstart hanging out with Jackie’s “manstress.” She’s looking to follow her husband’s phone advice and “do something to take your mind off it,” but she can’t and is frustrated.
After Jackie turned down Dr. O’Hara’s invitation to get some dinner, Zoey pipes up and surprisingly enough, O’Hara agrees to take her. The pity card doesn’t look that great on Dr. O’Hara. She has to teach Zoey which fork to use, and then Zoey nervously blurts out that her dad’s in prison for manslaughter. This does seem to explain her niceness, nervousness and attachment to her mother.
Mrs. Akalitus is walking to the elevator and finds a taser on the ground. Waving the taser around she keeps shouting, “this is a weapon.” After muttering, “I’m running a special ed preschool”, she storms into the elevator, pushes a button, and starts convulsing. She tasered herself! Which is exactly what she had coming! When Thor pushes the elevator call button, the doors open to Mrs. Akalitus flopping on the ground like a fish out of water. He takes one look at her and says “taser? been there sister, 15 minutes and you’re good as new.”
When Jackie gets home she falls into Kevin’s arms. She learns that Grace had a meltdown because her pencil kept breaking. Jackie’s staring at Grace’s picture on the refrigerator of the so-called Sunshine State; black sky, bent palm trees and ominous waves; and after spending the evening with another 10 year old girl, Jackie is starting to believe that everything is not okay with Grace.
After Kevin goes to bed, Jackie gets a call from Stephanie. Stephanie’s mother had arm pain and Stephanie is scared and looking for help. Jackie tells Stephanie to get a Percoset, the blue one, take a butter knife and cut the pill in two. As Jackie is describing this to Stephanie, she’s doing the same thing at home. Then Jackie tells her to give her mother that with a little bit of juice. After Jackie swallows the pill, she tells Stephanie, “she’ll be fine.” The good nurse says this as much to convince herself that Grace will be fine, as she says it for Stephanie’s sake.
In this clip from Nurse Jackie Episode 6, “Tiny Bubbles,” O’Hara meets Coop’s second mom.
About Nurse Jackie Episode 6: Tiny Bubbles
Jackie is caught off-guard when a nurse (Judith Ivey) she used to work with, who is dying of lung cancer, asks Jackie to help her end her life. O’Hara steps up to the plate and offers to help Jackie navigate a very sad day with grace and humor. Meanwhile, Coop’s mother (Blythe Danner) is admitted with a gallbladder attack. A secret is revealed about Cooper that will have a significant change on the way the staff at All Saints, especially Jackie and O’Hara, sees him.
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