Episode Report Card Jacob Clifton: A+ | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT Anthony and Christopher
By Jacob Clifton | Season 1 | Episode 10 | Aired on 08.10.2009
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.Whew! That was a delicious one. Last week was pretty much a total downer, but even with the intense moments this episode is a laugh riot. Jackie takes Gracie to their dance lesson, where they meet up with another member of the parish, Mrs. Flynn, who went to high school with Jackie and Kevin. She was Homecoming Queen, and dated Kevin before he married Jackie.
Eleanor makes peace with Jackie in a really sweet way, very in character for both of them, down to Jackie's desperate attempts to stay angry at her before giving in. The Pyxis is finally installed, leading to a last-chance Valium trip for Eddie, some really amazing sex for Jackie, and a monumentally primal scene experience for Zoey, who walks in on them fucking. Once she puts her mind back together, she tries to be cool, and as usual fails adorably.
Jackie can't get her wedding ring off, so she has Eleanor saw it off with a bone saw. It's an incredible image, actually. Mo-Mo, thinking it's just some random ring she lost, prays to St. Anthony on her behalf, because she's such a good person. To prove it to herself, Jackie mails a DOA patient's last mail, and contacts the person who was waiting for him while he died.
Cooper is stressing right out about the whole forged-paperwork donation card snafu from last week, and Eleanor reminds her that driving Fitch Cooper crazy is the easiest thing in the universe. So she stalks him to the Harmacy, goads him into grabbing her boob, leaves his hand there while she gives him an amazing pep talk, and then rewards him with a kiss. While this doesn't drive him crazy, exactly, it does get him back on track and treating Jackie like she's God, which was the whole point. Well, that and delighting Eleanor, which it definitely does.
It is also about the awesomest thing I ever saw, only second to their conversation later -- after her crazy ass has taken a hammer to her own finger to explain the sawn-off ring -- where she apologizes for her reciprocal sexual harassment and he agrees to trust her... But he's keeping the kiss. This show is not like other shows.
Discuss this episode in our Nurse Jackie forums, then see how Jackie's bedside manner compares to Meredith Grey's in TV is the Answer!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!The needle drops on Jackie's dance class with Grace, all that shuffle-ball-step-chain stuff they always say, and everybody's clapping and having fun. Nobody's really in line, because they've forgotten they're adults for a moment. It won't last. But right now, all the moms and daughters are having the times of their lives, trying to focus, stepping hard with hair in the face. Jackie bumps into somebody and apologizes; Grace corrects her.
Jackie introduces her to a woman and daughter also in the class; the other little girl Kaitlyn is mean-looking and a year older than Grace, who is in the fourth grade. Kaitlyn's mom is also mean looking. She went to school with Jackie; she was Homecoming Queen, Kaitlyn informs them, and Jackie laughs: "Yes I know, I voted for her!" Not done, Kaitlyn whispers secrets.
Kaitlyn's mother welcomes them to the parish, and invites them for donuts after, but as Grace informs them, Jackie has to work. She nearly blushes, making a joke of it. "Yes. In case you thought I was going to the opera." There's a whole mom tug-of-war here, in Jackie's hands and forehead, about working women and women in the home and women with money and women without money, resentment and fascination and jealousy on both sides, and how it's best to just avoid people from the past and stop wondering how their lives went, after you knew them. To turn the other way in the grocery store, and know that they're doing the same, and that you're both grateful.
But the Peytons needs to be in this parish so Grace won't go crazy, and Jackie needs to be in this class so they both don't go crazy. So she revises all of high school -- collaborates, rewrites, re-imagines, nudges, erases -- so that she and this bitch, Kaitlyn's mother, are friends. So that they always have been. Then it's later and she's apologizing for having to go, asking if Grace wanted donuts with Kaitlyn and her mother. Of course she did not. Walking carefully, she asks Grace -- "unless it's private, which is fine" -- what Kaitlyn was whispering. She knows a bitch-in-training when she sees them, she's saying, and Grace's delicacy is such that you can't be too careful, because the world is dangerous. Everyone could be an enemy. Anything could be a weapon. Moments become emergencies.
Kaitlyn said her mom was Kevin's girlfriend before Jackie, back in high school. "Ugh, please!" Jackie laughs. "She wishes!" says Grace. They bond -- preposterous! -- and Jackie is happy to see her laughing, but somewhere else entirely that happy high school story, those new-forged memories start to corrode. Beneath them are several clichés Jackie always thought she was better than.