NURSE JACKIE  1.6 “TINY

BUBBLES”

As Jackie’s sixth episode “Tiny Bubbles” opens we see the happy, if not dysfunctionally that way, family at Kevin’s bar. The girls, having dinner at the bar, Dad behind the bar working and Mom sewing. We find out Grace is going to be attending Catholic School, and Fiona, so adorably dressed as a sunflower, which I think must have been used as symbolism for Grace’s not drawing the sun in any of her pictures. Fiona wants to go to school with her big sister, but is reminded by Mom that if she did that, who would play the sunflower in her school’s “What’s So Great About Mother Earth” pageant? And Fiona agrees.  Fiona later calls Mom at work to ask if she could wear her costume to bed. Awwwwwwwww. Is this girl the cutest or what?

At the hospital, Jackie gets an unexpected visit from her friend, and former nurse at All Saints, Paula (guest star Judith Ivey), who as she says “has always been a bitch on wheels.”  Paula is dying of lung cancer and instead of hospice, which she is told is her only choice now, wants to die with whatever scrap of dignity she has left, and asks for Jackie’s help in doing so. Jackie puts her in bed 5, per Paula’s request, which I’m guessing has a history of being a deathbed, and the rest of the nurses stick together telling Mrs. Akalitus that they are waiting for a bed in the hospice.

Zoey has a heart-to heart with Dr. O’hara about Jackie. She is concerned that she is going through some “stuff” and she wants to be there for her. O’Hara suggest that Jackie needs a hug, and that no matter how she struggles or tries to run, not to let her. Poor Zoey, all the while never realizes that Jackie had been standing behind her and when she turns around Jackie shouts, “Boo!”, by which Zoey does a double take and realizing that they were both fooling with her, playfully slaps them both on the arm saying “you guys!”

I forgot about the guy whose genitals were attacked by his cat in the previous episode, but he makes yet another visit. Again, allegedly attacked by his cat, but this time supposedly the cat turned the garbage disposal on when he had his hand in it to retrieve a fork.  Paula finds this completely hysterical, especially after hearing, and not being surprised at the fact that the cat already attacked his testicles.  Afterwards saying that “that cat has to be killed!”  I wonder if this was in any way a tribute to Roy Horn from “Sigfried and Roy”? Probably not.

Eddie drops by to pay his respects to Paula, as if she’s already died, Paula confides in Jackie that Eddie was a great help to her after her hysterectomy with keeping her supplied with Percoset. This doesn’t sit well with Jackie at all, especially after Eddie started hangin’ with Dr. Cooper in the last episode and now it looks like she isn’t the only one Eddie has given drugs to on the sneak.  Just seems to me that Eddie is a Percoset pimp. And did he have the same type of physical relationship with Paula that he now has with Jackie?  And are there others Jackie doesn’t even know about?

In the bathroom we see Jackie in one of the stalls loading up a syringe of morphine (after doing a line herself, of course) for Paula and putting it in a glass of champagne. All the while of course Dr. O’Hara stands beside Jackie trying to make the situation more tolerable with witty remarks, as she sees her very good friend going through a rough time. After she dopes herself up first of course. All the nurses drink a toast with Paula. With her glass raised, Paula quips, “Here’s to you and here’s to me, and if we ever disagree, f**k you, and here’s to me!” As Paula dies and the nurses start to giggle over what she said, Mrs. Akalitus comes in, looks at the iv bag, points and says, “If there’s anything funny with that bag, I’ll have all your asses. Every single one of them!” I seem to remember Akalitus telling Jackie at the end of the last episode, “Daffodil” as she was recuperating from tasing herself that she knew every trick in the book and there was nothing that she had not seen or done. Well, it looks like she was wrong. Or did she know, and deep down, the nurse in her let it slide because she would have done the same thing for Paula?

Dr. Cooper’s background gets a lot more interesting as his mother (guest star Blythe Danner) is wheeled into the E.R. needing her gall bladder removed and as they argue as why her son is not allowed to perform the surgery on her, his “other mother” walks in!  HUH??  We learn that “Coop” is the only child of Lesbians, and the mother needing surgery is his birth mother, who insists that her son assist Dr. O’Hara in surgery. When her blood pressure drops during surgery, “Coop” has another one of his “neurological turrets” attacks and grabs O’Hara’s boob. After she gives him a look that lasted for what seemed an hour, he lets go. Always dignified, she replies, “now there’s a good boy.”  ”Coop” decides to keep the gall bladder and puts it in a jar for his mother as a keepsake.  Not sure why, but he must know his “birth mother” pretty well.  While he is sitting with his “other” mother (guest star Swoosie Kurtz), and tells her he loves her best out of the two because of everything she did for him growing up like being the best cook and sewing buttons on his clothes and spending the most time with him, his “birth mother” wakes up, and upon seeing her gall bladder in the jar, quips, “for all the pain it caused, it sure doesn’t look like much, which is the same thing I said when they cut the chord and put you in my arms.”  If that doesn’t sum up “Coops” issues with insecurity, I don’t know what does!

Before Paula died she went through her purse and gave “Mo-mo” her subway tokens, which she must have had for years, and gave Jackie the keys to her apartment, and in the final scene we see her go to Paula’s apartment to get things cleared out.  And I was not surprised to see what gave Jackie the look of surprise when she went through the door: Paula had all of her things boxed up before she went to the hospital.

This show just keeps getting better all the time, and the closing song, “When it Don’t Come Easy” by Patty Griffin was the perfect touch to a perfect, albeit bittersweet episode.

Until Next Time

Michael Queenstown

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