Nurse Jackie: Season Three Blu-ray Review
Physician's assistant, heal thyself.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, February 9, 2012
One of the unexpected hazards of being a stay at home Mr. Mom is the vast wasteland of afternoon television, when
even cable choices dwindle to Lifetime movies and NFL films from the mid sixties. Channel surfing can only lead to
disaster, and I must sheepishly admit to having been sucked into a
Dr. Phil episode a few weeks ago that had a
highly articulate, seemingly together woman who happened to be a highly trained and paid nurse. So why was she on
the good doctor's "analyze-a-thon"? It turns out this woman was addicted to prescription drugs and had repeatedly
stolen from various employers of hers to nourish her need for everything from pills to injectables. It of course
immediately reminded me of
Nurse Jackie, a midlevel success for Showtime which presents Emmy winner Edie
Falco as one Jackie Peyton, an emergency room nurse with an addictive personality that spills out into all sorts of
unexpected ways including (yep, you've guessed it) stealing prescription drugs from her employer.
Nurse Jackie
has raised the ire of some professional nursing organizations, who lament the show's kind of cavalier attitude about
drug use, not to mention its undeniably troubling focus of a nurse on various mind altering substances. This series
bears a certain resemblance to that other Showtime enterprise with drugs at its core, namely the Mary Louise Parker
starrer
Weeds, but unlike
Weeds,
Nurse Jackie has a somewhat harder time maintaining a
carefree attitude about its heroine and the various predicaments she finds herself in, many if not most of which she has
brought on herself. But as the
Dr. Phil episode proved, as sensationalized as it was, there
are those in
the medical community with addiction problems, and so it's perhaps a little less easy to just casually dismiss
Nurse
Jackie's premise as a "high concept" approach that might have sounded better in a pitch meeting than it ended up
playing on screen.
The same strengths and weaknesses that were on display in
Nurse Jackie: Season Two are still very much in evidence throughout the
third season of the series. Jackie's duplicity only ramps up in this third season, and one of the most troubling aspects of
the series, other than the fact that one of her main suppliers is the hospital's pharmacist, Eddie (Paul Schulze), is how
sanguine everyone around Jackie tends to be, even when confronted with her "condition." The fact that she's also
dallying with Eddie in an extramarital affair makes Jackie one of the most curiously unlikable major characters in a
supposed quasi-comedy (or perhaps more accurately dramedy) series, and even the charms of Edie Falco can't
completely overcome how kind of smarmy the character is at virtually every turn.
As with the previous seasons of the show, it's the supporting characters who manage to endear and sustain
entertainment value more than the focal character (never a great sign for a series' longevity, and one has to wonder
how many mini-seasons Showtime can suck out of this premise). There are several enjoyable arcs to this season,
including hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus (Anna Deveare Smith) desperately trying to get the religious statuary
returned to the hospital's chapel, and charming but slightly (or maybe more than slightly) neurotic Doctor "Coop"
Cooper (Peter Facinelli) attempting to find true love and tie the knot.
Probably the most unseemly elements of this season are the intertwined stories of Jackie's drug problem and her
infidelity. The first builds to a climax where the hospital's Human Resources department starts demanding random urine
tests, and the second builds to a climax where Jackie repeatedly attempts to avoid her husband Kevin (Dominic
Fumusa). The fact that both of these elements are dealt with in a completely cavalier manner in the season's final
episode may really upset some viewers who have invested so much time and attention in these characters. The
supposed twist of the final episode seems especially poorly conceived, and once again puts Jackie in the rare position of
being someone who does just about everything wrong but never ends up paying the price.
Despite these missteps, and against rather considerable odds, there's still something strangely winning about
Nurse Jackie, at least around the series' edges. The cast has their characters down pat by this time, but the
series isn't yet so long in the tooth that the actors have become stultifying in these roles. The writing is often quite
sharp, especially with regard to the supporting characters. The problem here is Jackie herself, both as a character and
as a focal point for a series that wants to be both wryly humorous and dramatically challenging. Both Nurse Jackie (the
character) and
Nurse Jackie (the series) are in need of an intervention. There's still hope, but it's starting to
dim. Otherwise, Jackie and the other denizens of All Saints Hospital may be hearing the dulcet tones of Dr. Phil
informing them, "That dog won't hunt."
Nurse Jackie: Season Three Blu-ray, Video Quality
Nurse Jackie: Season Three is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate and Showtime with an AVC encoded
1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Perhaps because so much of this series takes place under the harsh fluorescent lights of a
hospital, contrast often seems slightly pushed to the point where whites especially tend to bloom ever so slightly and fine
detail can be somewhat obscured, especially in midrange shots. A couple of these harshly lit sequences, notably a final
showdown between Jackie and Kevin in a basement room that looks like something out of a touring company of Sartre's
No Exit, are awash in a really ugly bluish tint that also tends to smooth out surface detail. On the other hand,
close-ups offer really fantastic fine
detail, and the overall image throughout the season is nicely sharp and well defined, with excellent, accurate looking color.
The series makes sporadic use of its New York locale, and fleeting outdoor shots provide some nice depth of field and
clarity.
Nurse Jackie: Season Three Blu-ray, Audio Quality
Like
Weeds, that other drug fueled Showtime series recently out on Blu-ray,
Nurse Jackie has a perhaps
unneeded DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track that is fun and involving, but offers little sonic "wow" factor that screams "7.1
surround mix." The best immersion here tends to be in the noisy hallways of the hospital, with are filled with clatter of
instruments, the beeps and whirrs of various high tech medical devices, and the low level white noise of the rabble of
various people moving through the building. But
Nurse Jackie is (again like
Weeds) a quieter, dialogue
driven show, frequently consisting of two character scenes, and there simply isn't a whale of a lot of opportunity here for a
spectacular sonic mix. Fidelity is excellent throughout this season, and the show's sparkling score sounds great on this 7.1
mix.
Nurse Jackie: Season Three Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Nurse Jackie has some built in problems that hobble its effectiveness. How many people want to think that their
medical care provider might be high on drugs? When you add in all of the character deficiencies that Jackie Peyton regularly
manifests, it deprives the series of a main character that audiences want to root for. Instead we're witness to a sort of
personal train wreck, as Jackie stumbles from bad decision to bad decision, never really having any major consequences
befall her. That seems especially true of this third season when two plot arcs which might have seriously revitalized the
show, one dealing with Jackie's "pee test" and the other with her serial infidelity, are both given short shrift as the season
winds to an anti-climactic close. The best thing about
Nurse Jackie is the uniform excellence of the performances.
While Falco can't quite overcome the unseemly elements of her character, the rest of the cast has a field day with quirky
supporting turns that still provide fitful sparks to this show. Fans will no doubt be well pleased with this Blu-ray set's good
looking video and fine audio, as well as some decent supplements, but others may want to just watch
Dr. Phil
instead.
