Nurse Jackie

2010_3_2 Nurse Jackie
Talked to Sam yesterday about the making of the TV commercial; but otherwise the experience is fading fast. As usual, life moves on. Sue and I between last Thursday night and last night watched 12 episodes of “Nurse Jackie,” another HBO serial, this one only half hour long per episode. The story lines are all built around Edie Falco who plays Jackie, a salty nurse who won’t take any shit from any doctor and is filled with empathy and compassion for patients. On the other hand she is a “tainted saint,” because she is a pill freak and she is fucking the Hospital Pharmacist in the hospital while being married with two daughters. Moreover, she is keeping the two lives separate. When she arrives to work she takes her wedding ring off and when she goes home she puts it back on. As a viewer, you say to yourself, this is going to eventually explode in her face, and it does in the 12th episode. The hospital ‘boy friend,’ after finding out she has a kid, follows her to the bar that Jackie’s husband owns and runs. Season two begins this month, on the same day the TV commercial I was in is suppose to debut.
Falco is excellent in the role which seems made for her. She is also surrounded by a complementary staff of considerable talent that she holds together as a cohesive unit. She is forcefully the hub of the wheel and all else circles around her. She has impeccable timing and a fine tuned sense of comic acting. The fact she is a painkiller addict has upset a Nurse associations but everything in the program is played for laughs, and the stress of the job and her double life is obviously at the root of her addiction, which is catching up with her. The thing I like about “Nurse Jackie” is the character of the black humor that drives the story; it is a thread through all 12 episodes. It is clever, consistent and fresh. I love it.
Sue and I also watched an interesting parenting story, a Australian film by Scott Hicks starring Clive Owens, the only name actor in the film. “The Boys are Back” is an unusual film for Owens who is usually an action hero or in romantic comedies. This is a family drama, a story of a single parent, a father, who wants to do right by his two boys.
Joe Warr (Owens) is a sports writer from Melbourne who lives with his wife, Katy (Laura Fraser) and his young son Artie (Nicholas McAnnulty) in a house somewhere outside the city. When we first saw the environment we both thought it was California as it has the same kind of golden hills that California has and the same sweep to the vistas. His mother in law Barbara (Julia Blake) is at the house often and Joe has a tension-filled relationship with her as she would prefer Artie be raised with more discipline. Then tragedy strikes which heightens those differences. Katy is struck down by cancer and dies, with Joe and Artie being there with her as she declined toward death.
Afterwards Joe was determined to raise Artie as he saw fit, as a free-ranging boy full of fun and mischief. (Artie is 6 or 7 years old.) They have pillow and water fights, laughing and roughhousing whenever Joe is home which is often in this period of grieving. He begins to see Katy and he even carries on conversations with her about Artie. He also meets and becomes friends with a neighbor woman, divorced with a young boy and he can ask her to baby sit Artie. She’s an attractive woman and one can imagine a romance blooming somewhere in the future. Joe does have to cope with Artie’s erratic moods; some of them are hard to deal with. Things become even more complicated when his ex-wife sends their 15 year old son to live in Melbourne with Joe and Artie. He is much different kid, more introspective, less physical, and full of resentment toward Joe for not taking him after the divorce, which made him feel Joe had abandoned him. But after a few months the two boys become tight, bond together nicely. But then Joe makes a crucial mistake. He goes to Sydney to cover the Australian Open Tennis Championship and lets Harry (George MacKay) be in charge while he is gone for a few days. But it turns into a disaster as Harry’s mates from school invade the house for a party and nearly demolish the place and Harry is forced to call Barbara and her husband who quell the riot with a shotgun, it was that bad. By the time Joe gets there Barbara has taken possession of Artie, calling Joe incompetent as a parent. As for Harry he’s on his way to London and boarding school. Joe removes Artie from Barbara’s clutches telling her she wants him as a portion of her dead daughter, which seems to hit home with the woman. Shortly after that the two guys fly to London to get Harry back. It takes some doing, but with the help of the ex-wife who thinks Harry should go with his father, the three fly back to Melbourne to resume their life together. The last part of the story deal with their reconciliation with Grandma.
I found the film credible and persuasive as a family drama. One could expect Owens to give a quality performance but it was young Nicholas who was the big surprise. He handled his part extremely well, with verve and authenticity.