Because of all the tough situations in “Nurse Jackie,” chief of which is the title character’s addiction to pills and drugs, people sometimes forget it’s a comedy until its cast members get comedy Emmys — Merritt Weaver was the latest to do so, last year.
But in addition to appealing characters, there are also a lot of funny lines hidden in each episode, and Sunday’s was no exception. The first guy rolling into ER was “hit by a ZipCar while riding a CityBike.” “Who didn’t see that one coming?” Weaver’s Zoey Barkow says.
Already Frank had invited Jackie to go out that night — to a place he was keeping a secret.
“I hate secrets,” jackie says. But she lives a life of them, mostly surrounding drugs, which look to be getting her into worse situations each week.
Stephen Wallem’s Thor is helping Peter Facinelli’s Coop with his online profile for dating sites, trying to make him seem more sensitive. So “Goodfella’s has to go as favorite movie, replaced by “The Notebook.” “The Shining” has to go as favorite book, replaced by “Catcher in the Rye.”
Thor’s not a great authority on relationships but he knows these websites. And the two have an exchange worthy of vaudeville:
“What happened with you and the mime?” “We never talked.”
“Nurse Jackie” is one of those where it seems like you can watch it after missing a handful of episodes and pick right up on the narrative. At the same time, a lot can happen in an episode. Like this one, where the increasingly distant teen daughter announces she’s going to France for the summer, the hospital seems to be falling apart so its head, Gloria Akalitus, decides to sell the ’65 Mustang she got in a poker game to pay for a new public address system.
Coop’s sensitive profile earned him responses from sperm bank who want his sample. He continues to decline the advances of Betty Gilpin’s Dr. Carrie Roman.
And Jackie’s attempts to get new dealer after her one at the pool was busted in the season premiere is getting more worrisome. She borrows Roman’s doctor ID to call in a prescription for herself, but has to hook up with a sleazy pharmacist in order to get the pills (she’s done that before, in the whole first season).
The show is built on little surprises. When the guy who was hit by the ZipCar only talks in Ukrainian, it is the assumed bimbo Roman who can translate (unfortunately he wants to confess to his wife that he has a second family in Queens before he dies — and then he doesn’t die).
And Frank’s surprise outing is to a hipster square dance, a square dance so hip that it is Rhiannon Giddens of the Carolina Chocolate Drops doing the calls.
Jackie has her own surprise up her sleeve, buttonholing (and more than that) a dealer there to get some product. Jackie may have a new sponsor this year in Julie White’s Antoinette, but it’s not helping her keep from drugs too well so far.
And if a lot happens in episodes, a lot happens in previews too: Next week, Coop finds his sperm count is low, Roman is on the upswing, and Jackie learns her daughter has shoplifted.