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Great episode. Seriously, best of the season so far.
Coop is asked by a tortured Akalitus to serve as the Face Of All Saints for a new PR campaign directed at higher-class, insured clientele. Seems evil -- and he douches it right up, of course -- but then you're reminded of the kind of worthless trash that All Saints is being forced to treat, even though they don't deserve healthcare: Marion Ross guest stars as a Farscape-looking elder-abuse case whose negligent (state-paid) caregiver is handed over to the cops to distract them from an undocumented worker that Jackie likes enough to usher out the back door so he can go back to stealing our jobs. This is exactly why the liberals want death panels, it's shit like this.
We finally catch a glimpse of Eleanor's lovely girlfriend, who is so real she's even on TV! Sam lets Eleanor down easy after following her around with puppydog eyes for most of the episode, since his girlfriend is back in town, too. He also gets the shit smacked out of his kissable face by Zoey when he reflexologically realizes something's going on with her uterus. In the end, she admits to Lenny -- not the father -- that she got knocked up by her crush's brother at a Staten Island barbecue, and rebuffs his attempts to be awesome some more.
Most shocking of all: When Jackie learns that Kevin and Jenny Flynn took the kids to the worst goddamn movie ever made -- which Jackie wanted to see for herself -- she sleeps on the couch, screwing up her back and sending her back into the sweet arms of Percocet. (Upside: Grace can finally once again see the inside of Tim Burton's head, where she came from.) Then, after a long day and no call back from Kevin, Jackie shockingly calls Eddie for the movie instead. Yep.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Jackie gets home at two in the morning -- Kevin's asleep and looking dreamy as hell -- and puts on her jammies and cleans out her pockets. On the dresser, the music winks at us, are five tickets to the worst movie ever made in the history of cinema. She turns on the light and wakes him up: "Really? Alice in Wonderland?" My thoughts exactly.
He admits that he went with the girls, and -- with a little prodding -- Ginny and Kaitlyn Flinn. Dumb, dumb move. He swears it was a last minute thing, and for him it is -- this is the man who let Creepy Eddie play Uno with his kids after a week of knowing him only as a bar regular -- but Jackie assures him that for Ginny it was no such thing. "Last minute? Please. That woman has been planning what to wear since high school." Kevin calls her jealous and crazy, and Jackie brushes her teeth and reminds him that Ginny's marriage is falling apart. "Seriously, Jackie, you're nuts," he mumbles from his hands.
"Seriously, Kevin? You're mine." She flops into bed with him, and then decides to prove the point by boning him. Things are adorable, and then they get hot, and then it goes away again. It's painfully accurate how quickly this can happen. "Oh. Shit. I'm sleeping on the couch." Is she overreacting? Or is she reacting? (Does Jackie Peyton know the difference?)
He follows her downstairs, and she admits that she's partially pissed because she wanted to see that shitty movie. Why didn't he at least alert her to the fact that they were leaving her out? (This is the part that would bug me too.) Kevin says he didn't want to tell her because she would end up sleeping on the couch, which congratulations. "See where that gets ya," she says, and hurls herself away, into the couch. Very real. Too real. As is him standing there in his boxers like, "What now?"
The girls are staring down at her in the morning, eating cereal out of the box. Fiona wants to marry Johnny Depp (of course) and (also of course) this is Grace's spooky two-word review: "Tim Burton." I love the way she says this, shuffling cereal into her face, like that's all you need to know: Tim Burton, Grace's total inspiration in all areas of life. Fiona impresses upon Jackie that she needs to see it, that she'll really like it, and Jackie can't even open her eyes for a second. I love how kids don't even know what's going on, like, Jackie's half-awake but still pissed they went without her, and Fiona's not even being that normal tiny amount of mean when she's like, "Mom, this was so your movie." Jackie breathes for a sec and then grins without opening her eyes: "Okay. Done."
I believe that this is when the Eddie wheel starts turning in her crazy head: Oh, I'll go fucking see this movie, you betcha. And who better with than the man I've always used to keep you guys in suspense, without you knowing it. And thus I shall have my revenge. On my children.
As well as on Kevin for the Ginny thing, of course, but it's still very addict of her. Grace mumbles darkly, "You shouldn't be sleeping on the couch," before shambling away; Fiona shoves a handful of cereal in her mommy's mouth.
Lunch, at that airy, classy place they go. Jackie wonders aloud why not one stabbing or GSW is ever "the unsinkable Ginny Flynn," and Eleanor offers to let her bleed to death when that happens. "My two cents? No sleeping on couches. It makes people -- i.e. husbands -- ask questions like 'Is something wrong?' 'Can we talk?' Et cetera. No good comes of it, believe me." Plus the back issues the couch engenders, which has rendered her useless. Eleanor breezily/sweetly says she's many things but not useless, and offers her a half-a-Percocet.
Up on the bar's TV screen, sexy reporter Sarah Kohri is reporting on Gaza. Jackie gazes up at her admiringly, and Eleanor thinks for a second before dipping her toe into that one: "She's leaving Gaza to take a desk in Washington," she says, not looking up from the paper, and then admits that she knows Sarah. "Swanky life," Jackie laughs, and Eleanor nods. One more Percocet offer -- "too hard on the liver!" Jackie gasps, and Eleanor points out it's only true if you take it in "obscene" quantities. Girl, they don't have an MPAA rating for how obscene Jackie can get with a bottle of Percocet. Jackie's eyes are drawn back to Sarah: "God, I could not love her more!" Eleanor sucks her teeth and shakes out her paper and says sarcastically, "Yeah? Well. Get in line."
OMG O'Hara totally does have a girlfriend! Man, she gets all the hot ass. Speak of the devil, Sam tries to grab her coming into the hospital, but she brushes him off. "Quick and painless," she says, and Jackie points out that it's already not painless. "Well, then here's to quick." They don't look back.
Zoey's eating some kind of Homer Simpson donut and moaning while she works; scooting across the station when Thor informs her that she is hated. "Not that I'd wish diabetes on any of you, but look at the shit I have to eat. Wasa bread?" Zoey, of course, loves Wasa bread, which Thor hilariously says proves his point: Wasa bread, much like diabetes, is unglamorous in the extreme. And then because this show has taken the adorable stand of educating us a little bit on the overlooked but quite serious bullshit that diabetes represents, we talk about some famous diabetics.
Mary Tyler Moore? "Yeah, but her glamour comes more from her business acumen. And alcoholism. Big diff." Jackie will allow it. Halle Berry? Sam appears: "I'm not a big baby person, but have you seen her kid? Her kid is like gorgeous." I wish they would keep talking about this forever, famous diabetics. I love conversations like this. Jackie, of course, manages to leave the second Sam's talking as though she's on her way to grab a pitchfork, and Zoey groans audibly as she sits down. Thor asks her if she's okay -- remember the pregnancy scare -- and she's like, "What have you heard?"
Gloria suddenly appears, to inform everybody that Miguel from Admitting is going to be living in the Pill-O-Matix station from now on, until they figure out who's stealing all the drugs. Jackie, instantly terrified to the point that her hair stands on end, flips into brilliant manipulator mode and points out that you need ID for the Pharmacy, but "any nutjob can walk into Admitting," so she's rearranging security in a way that Jackie finds to be the stupidest thing she's ever heard in her entire life. There's just enough firmness behind her tone that you can almost believe her.
"Tell your nurses to keep their noses out of the Oxy. How about that?" Seriously, that's what I would say too. Jackie leans in and says quietly, "You are making things worse." For me! Thor offers Zoey some diabetes bread and she disdainfully pulls her donut back out of the garbage, where I guess she stowed it so Gloria wouldn't yell at her about eating near the urine or whatever. I love how for Zoey this is the glamour choice.
Well, wouldn't you know Jackie's couch-back started acting up the second Gloria installed a guy in the Pharmacy room. Do you think she even knows how easily that happens? Eleanor gives her the offered Percocet.
Lenny brings in a bunch of construction workers, one of whom fell off a second-story scaffolding: "No habla, any of 'em." They get him on the table, and Lenny tells Zoey how nice she looks, even mentioning her "glow." She whispers at him to shut up, and then finds a gun in the guy's pocket. Predictably, she freaks out, and Jackie with both hands tied behind her back cuts the entire pocket out of the guy's jeans in one second, holding it up and away. "Jackie Peyton, armed and dangerous," slimes Coop, and she's like, "Do not tempt me."
So now she needs security, and where is he? Pharmacy, of course. She heads on in there and kicks the guy awake before handing it off and calling Kevin. Her voicemail is awesome: "I thought the worst thing about sleeping on the couch would be how it fucks up my back, but I was wrong. It was waking up without you to me. So... There. Call me back."
Back to construction guy, who is "squishy," per Zoey, and needs stitches. Grosssssss. Gloria shoves into the room and pow-pow-pow rattles off procedure regarding the found gun, including cuffing him to the bed if he doesn't have proof of registration. Coop, Zoey and Jackie adorably chime in about how the guy is completely unconscious, but of course Akalitus doesn't see the connection. Just do it. She drags Coop away for one of their paint-peelingly awful conversations.
Coop shoots Jackie a compliment first up, in Gloria's office, about how occasionally she rises to the occasion -- "when there's like a gun or something" -- but doesn't get to say his "but," because Gloria doesn't want to talk about Jackie. I love talking about Jackie -- and I think I would love talking to Coop because he is sort of mindlessly goofy, like a cartoon shark in a movie -- but I can't see myself living through a conversation with Coop about Jackie. "You're a very good-looking man, Dr. Cooper."
See? Awful. Already hilarious and awful.
Coop stammers and manages to say he's not against banging old ladies before she can shush him -- "I'm heartbroken" -- and get to the point: They're doing a full, citywide campaign with Fitch Cooper as the Face of All Saints. ("There's glass between us! You can't deal with my infinite nature!") This is to attract more insured patients (or, as Coop grossly puts it, "a better grade of clientele") and thus impress the Sussman Foundation, who are looking to donate to "a distinguished medical facility, not a ramshackle urgent care center." (Remember the Sussman Foundation for later, because they are a big deal to All Saints.)
Coop, of course, connects the dots to his Top 25 Assholes listing and immediately says sixty douchey things in a row ("You want me to show up at a couple of black ties, deliver a few speeches ... hobnobbing is my gift," that sort of thing) but you know, at least he'll finally be shutting up about fucking Twitter. That was killing me. He'll be paid of course, and she hands over a contract that he'll be having his "team" give a "look-see." God. And then he goes, "I'll totally give the money to charity," with the inevitable "Or new skis" followup followed by the expected dithering and wandering-away mutter.
Jackie's at the Pill-O-Matix bothering Miguel ("Did you catch anybody stealing drugs yet? Did you lock the gun up yet? When do you eat? When do you pee?") and of course the whole time she's stealing drugs under Thor's PIN. "You're all idiots. If you need me to bring you lunch or a bedpan, let me know." And she's gone. Damn, Jackie.
Eleanor calls time of death on some old man and walks away in her black patent Batman boots, and Zoey tries to imply that they're close friends -- "Tough nut to crack, that one, but so worth it" -- and Sam of course agrees with her. That nut, he has cracked. Zoey tries to instruct Sam on the way of things and grabs a "death kit," which yikes, including a tarp that you put over the dead body. There's a Dead Poet's Society moment where she pulls it over the dude's face, and then down over his feet, and she's like, "Look how small." Off on her caregiving trip, WWJPD, Zoey starts complaining about how the old tarps used to cover the whole body. Sam, he does not care.
Gloria's walking by, and Zoey does that bizarre officious thing she does where she treats you like a maître d', all "May I have a wooord," and Gloria looks like she's about to stab her own eyes out before nodding wearily. She explains after more Zoey creepiness that the new death kits are half the price. "But now it takes two kits to cover one body. How's that saving anybody any money?" Gloria's response is priceless -- "Don't think so hard" -- but not as great as Zoey's whispered aside to herself: "Like I can help it."
She sighs, heading back to Sam, so he asks if she's okay. Once again, she wonders why people keep asking her that, and he takes her hand to do some reflexology on her. She takes it quietly for a second, and then sort of verbally wiggles. (This episode is Merritt Wever's to lose, the girl is just impeccable -- and so special!) There's something up with her uterus, Sam says, she leans in: "Am I gonna get my period?" He does it again, confirming that her uterus is acting up, and she jerks to the side and then slaps him across the face, amazingly -- "I KNOW! Stop!" -- before zipping around the corner as fast as possible. You never see Zoey Barkow coming. Never.
Sitting by that little commissary thing they have, Coop informs an uninterested Jackie that he's on the phone with his attorneys. Which at first you think he hired them at the same time as his publicist, his "team," but after Jackie's not-even-a-pause response ("And I am buying Chapstick for the Queen") you get the punchline on the other side of that: "Hey, Mom. Can you put Mom on? I have a legal question." Lesbian Attorney Mom! Cold WASPy Doctor Mom! When are they coming back? The Cooper Mermaid Coopers! I loved them so, so much.
Incoming: TV's immortal Marion Ross, with six-inch curling fingernails and hair so dirty you can smell it from here. Stable, but altered mentally. Not in fact homeless, but there was such a smell coming into the hallway that the neighbors thought she was dead. Zoey covers her nose with her scrubs, and Jackie -- sympathetic to a woman whose family deserted her when she needed them most -- shakes her head angrily. Zoey shows some respect.
Eleanor drags Jackie away to ask her to kill Sam -- who's in the nurse's station staring over at them while they argue about it -- and Jackie tells her she's a big girl: "Kill him yourself!" And here I thought she would do it no questions asked. Eleanor begs her to at least tell him to stop "cruising" doctors, as his superior, and Jackie reminds her she made her own bed. But there was no bed, there was a chapel pew and they didn't even sit or lie on it, so it doesn't even qualify as a one-night stand. Eleanor can't even get started on her rant before Jackie's gone, just walked the fuck off in the middle of it, and Eleanor has to finish with a lame, "I hope by big you meant tall!" She turns around, and there he is, so she tells him to stop staring at her -- but he just drinks her in. It's really hot. She fusses and runs away, and he just grins. How could you turn that down?
Construction guy is still cuffed, and complaining about it because he's trying to eat lunch one-handed, and -- neat image -- Jackie takes his pulse off his cuffed wrist, and asks him why he had the gun anyway. He sort of starts sounding crazy at this point, how people are constantly trying to steal his tools at work, on the train, wherever. Basically, people keep pulling out the things he needs to get his shit accomplished -- stuffing security guys in his Pharmacy, taking his kids to movies with bitches -- and he has no choice but to carry a gun. Whether or not they're real, whether or not he really needs these tools -- whether or not his tools are even helping him -- they can't be stolen. So: Gun. And who texts just then? Just then, as the guy's explaining that "people are bad"?
Still sweeping up vitamins -- love you anyway
Eddie, of course. The original gun. Jackie rolls her eyes and thinks about guns, and asks the guy if he's serious. Can't go to the police, because he's illegal. Jackie grunts that certain way where you know she's about to do something fucked up and heroic, a sort of asserting and assertive "fuck that," but the look she gives him when he says the police wouldn't care anyway, because he's just a laborer.
He's a man with tools, trying to get his shit done. And he's cuffed. Chained up. And because he's undocumented and unlicensed, they're going to come for him. And he can't move.
He's pretty cute. So he thanks her for lunch, and she goes to see the old crazy lady, who's explaining something nuts to Zoey about how she gets all kinds of visitors, particularly somebody named Caroline, who has lunch with her on Thursdays. "But no wigs! Sometimes she wears a fall. The hair is from China," she says meaningfully, and Zoey nods before looking up at Jackie and quickly explaining the situation: 24-hour caregiver, paid by the state. Zoey's very understated here, holding her hand, and not wanting to give the lady Renata any voice cues that things are awful.
Jackie is, of course, horrified -- somebody dropped the ball on someone they were meant to be protecting? -- and immediately gets up in her grill and puts on her nicest and most caring Nurse Jackie persona. She offers food and the lonely lady wants to wait for their company, and it just breaks Jackie's heart. "There's a lot of traffic today." Renata nods like this makes sense, and asks Jackie to fetch Zoey some coffee. Zoey's horrified, but of course Jackie goes. On her way back Kevin calls, to tell her that the car's down. Nervous that she'll wonder where he is, or come home and something else is broken in her home. She laughs like it's no big deal and he's being silly, but she's beyond grateful that he called to talk about normal shit.
Renata really enjoys her food; they're grateful to be the ones to feed her. She tells them all about this Caroline, lovingly. Caroline who comes on lunch, Tuesdays and the occasional Thursday. Caroline, whose children are beautiful, every single one of them blonde. Caroline, who takes such good care of her. Thor appears, having recognized her name from the computer and asks for a moment.
"Renata Thurber. You did the hair for Mame! And Follies, and Company!" He smiles at her and she asks if he's a dancer, and he smiles for a second before nodding: "I'm an understudy." She grins, and pokes one finger at him, like she's about to give him an apple. This grand lady.
Up at the station Zoey's shivering, thinking about kids and getting old and dying. People forgetting you're even alive, or not caring anymore. Jackie tells her there are more reasons than that to have kids, and Zoey's eyes lock on her face before she realizes what she's doing: "Just as many not to..." She feels Zoey looking at her face and makes a deal with herself: "I have two girls." In return for what Zoey gave her last week, in Maternity. A slow smile creeps across Zoey's face; she gets so excited about every little thing that you can tell has no idea what a serious gift Jackie just gave her. "That's all you're getting," Jackie says, without looking up.
Jackie's on the phone, letting it ring; Eleanor grabs her and drags her outside, won't brook no for an answer, and they sit outside on the curb, and she gives Jackie her secret: Sarah Kohri. "You don't do anything half-assed, do ya?" Sarah is beautiful. "I guess I shouldn't be surprised. You are pretty sophisticated." That's such a great response! Eleanor can do anything. I think if you were coming from a situation where being gay was not totally normal, this would seem really lame, like a shocking reveal that wasn't one, or a twist that isn't one, but remember that 99% of this entire show is gay. It is literally what is keeping lesbians employed in this dicey economy.
So for Eleanor, who's been doing drugs in the middle of the day and Sam in the middle of the chapel, to throw herself a hot news anchor, that's not shocking lesbianism, it's just another secret these people have started telling. Another way to go wild after her nasty little family finally flew apart. I mean, you can tell Eleanor's sort of blown her own mind, but I think only in that it matters. They hooked up, just for a couple days, when Sarah was on her way up to Washington. "I thought this was behind me, I really did," she says. The butterflies, the cheating, the whole wild mess.
Jackie asks to meet Sarah, but then scoots madly when they spot Sam coming up, looking fine as hell. Like she literally vaporizes. He sits down and breaks up with her, quickly and in a somewhat kind way, and you can tell she thinks it's just a hoot until he says the problem is A) Having indiscriminate sex when you're a sex addict (which is offensive when you're talking to the person) and B) His girlfriend is back. And this time when Eleanor pats him on the head and says hers is too, he finally hears her. Coop's constant douchey jaw --dropping now -- has competition, even if lesbians are the only thing about real life that don't shock him.
Coop shows up with the contract and informs Gloria that "the whole good-looking thing" is a blessing, not a curse. Gloria takes this information -- or the relaying of this information -- way better than probably anybody else would, because to her he is a puny ant.
Lenny greets Zoey with a hearty, "What's up, boo?" She tells him to chill and he asks why she keeps shutting him down and should he just leave her alone, and she apologizes, stepping closer, finally telling him about the pregnancy. "Happy?" On this show people are constantly telling secrets and then making up new secrets to keep, and nobody is ever happy. But cute little Lenny with his puppydog goatee does a great impression of being happy, for her, if she is happy. Mostly he's just confused, because what was the cute girl at work with clearly few social skills and gay bunnies on her scrubs is now the kind of woman who is pregnant, which means rerouting about fifty different brain things.
Zoey being Zoey, of course, she has not yet begun to verbally destroy. "It's not with a guy I like. It's his brother. One less Jagermeister, I might have ended up with the one I wanted. Staten Island barbecues." Lenny is a fucking champ all through this, like basically manipulated by his own sweet nature and the awesomeness of Zoey into the corner of being like, "Yeah, Staten Island barbecues are the worst. I myself got a lot of pregnant on Staten Island." Then the champ steps back up to the plate and offers to be there for her, if nobody else -- the guys she likes or their brothers she fucks -- manages to be a man. She admits that that is sweet.
It's difficult to describe Merritt Wever's acting, because it's like she's hiding behind a mask that is also her face, and the mask isn't moving but she's back there giggling the whole time, and it's electrifying to watch, and so when he puts his arm on her shoulder and she rockets away with a one-word answer -- "Weird" -- you know exactly what she means: It's weird to be pregnant, it's weird that she told him, it's weird that he likes her, it's weird that they're discussing her pregnancy, it's weird that he totally means it, it's weird that it's touching, it's weird that he's touching her, it's time to go.
Bitch caregiver Caroline comes into Admitting looking for Renata, and Jackie quickly offers to have her sit down while she fetches the paperwork. Thor hates her silently, and she acts like this is all a huge deal. Jackie heads up to ER to deal with that, and Zoey's up there saying the cops are there for the gun. So now she's got two patients, Renata and construction guy. One of them was left all alone by the people who are supposed to care for her, the other one sleeps with his gun because they're stealing his tools. And she's not sending Renata back to Caroline, and she's not sending her guy with the cops. They need to both be free.
Jackie jets into the gun guy's room with a spare set of scrubs and swishes the curtain behind her. "Put this on, go out the front door, do not fall asleep, you've got a concussion, if you start vomiting go to an ER and tell them you fell, wash your wound daily with hydrogen peroxide." He asks for his gun back and she almost slaps him, or breaks down laughing, and sends him away while she distracts the cop.
Two problems, one very excellent solution: Take gun guy's cop down to Admissions, while gun guy goes out the back. This is Jackie's best trick: Balancing the broken pieces so they fit together as a whole. So she can't tell which is good and which is bad, as long as everybody gets out alive. Everybody has to get out of this alive.
"Can you come with me a second? I've got a call in to Adult Protective Services. They're gonna want to take her in for aggravated neglect and endangerment..." She introduces herself and the cop to the incensed Caroline, Caroline who left Renata to die, who came on Tuesdays and sometimes Thursday. Adding fraud to the list, Jackie leaves them there: The cop, and Caroline. Who is disgusted, and horrified, and will not be getting paid anymore. And Renata will be cared for. And gun guy is free.
Jackie calls a man on the phone: "Hi, it's me. Yeah, look, I'm sorry about all this. I'm... I'm tired. And my back's all fucked up and I'm sorry. You want to talk?" He does. Very much so. She's got a lot to answer for. Her face lights up when he says yes. And they meet at the theatre, and head inside. She tells him he needs to toughen up. She means: Even when she goes crazy on him. She means: Don't attempt suicide quite so often. She means: She cares for him. She means: She's not sending Renata back to Caroline, and she's not sending gun guy with the cops, because both of them need to be free. Two problems, one elegant solution.
Eddie dances up to Jackie under the marquee lights, in a suede jacket, lit up with relief, and they head inside to see Alice In Wonderland. Fiona said she'd love it.
Discuss this episode in our Nurse Jackie forums, then debate why men like a woman in scrubs in TV is the Answer!
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