By Jacob
In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.So last season ended, you may remember, with a big intervention on Jackie by her husband Kevin and her BFF, Dr. O'Hara. Instead of leapfrogging over the consequences like happened last year, we pick up where we left off: With Jackie having a minor meltdown in the Peyton bathroom and eventually deciding she's not interested in rehab.
She sweeps all the contents of the bathroom cabinets into a big bag and throws this at Kevin and has some kind of fucking addict fit about god knows what and finally she makes enough noise, and makes it enough of his problem, that he gives in. It really should be harder to distract him than just yelling and lying, because she does those things anyway, but then, their marriage has never really made sense. So anyway, in order to prove that he's a man or something, Kevin enrolls the scary daughter in that same Catholic school that the weird one goes to; he is a total dick to a nun. Good thing he's crazy hot, because what an unappealing person he was this week.
At the hospital, mostly all they can talk about is the finale last year, specifically how Sam almost died of drinking and they tap-danced for him, and how Zoey slept with that hairy fellow. I mean, that's literally all they can talk about; there are like five scenes of them revisiting this information, over and over. Zoey is still awesome, Peter Facinelli's character is still a douchebag tool, Sam is still pretty, Thor is still comforting, and Pharmacist Eddie still looks like a pervert.
The major patient story in this episode has to do with this hot dude whose moving company accidentally moved two tons of books on top of his kid and now the kid is dead or dying, and it's very sad and all kinds of dramatic and with long pauses. O'Hara tosses around all kinds of metaphors about how their relationship will not survive, and I think she's going to feint at quitting work at this particular hospital just to get away from Jackie. Since their relationship is the best thing about the show, that's kind of tough.
Also it is too bad for Jackie, because she needs a friend once Kevin shows up at the hospital and she gets cornered into admitting her pill problem to Gloria Akalitus. Now everybody knows that she is married and sort of a drug addict, which are two things she didn't historically want people to know. Here's hoping week holds some kind of surprises or something, because -- even for this show -- this just seemed like treading water.
Want more? The full recap starts right below!There's something funny about the way this show ignores consequences, something that seems to be a thing with every Showtime show that has any popular traction: The high of watching Jackie Peyton or Dexter Morgan or Nancy Botwin get themselves into these impossible situations and then get themselves out of them again in the season. And every season, the stakes are higher and the scrape is closer and it's all very exciting, right up until the season starts.
Mileage varies as to how well the particular shows nail this thing, and it's the usual complaints come premiere time for every show regardless of how they're earned, but the funny part here is how hard this show fights itself about it. I mean, from a production standpoint you have a funny feedback loop having to do with wanting Jackie to succeed -- the creators talk about how you don't really want to see Jackie get caught -- but at the same time upping the stakes, all the time.
There's a metaphor to be drawn here to addiction, specifically the addiction of the consumer to the qualities of the product that keep you coming back, and how your high is never quite as good as the first time. I will say, though, that this season does a better job -- of answering the lingering questions and playing out the consequences -- than last year, when basically the entire thing got swept under the rug.
But still: Wouldn't it be nice if these particular shows trusted us to follow us when they go somewhere new? If they didn't have to keep telling the same stories over and over, desperately afraid they'll lose our interest? Think about the most beloved Dexter finales, for example: Not the same cliffhangers over and over, like Weeds, and not the icky redemption-just-kidding plays this show makes (often successfully, mind you), but the actual game-changers, if you know what I mean. Things that actually stick.
And I mean Dexter, I love it, but it's not really as good as this show when it's at its best (and neither of them hold a candle to Tara), but the audience is vocal about how they feel about actual stakes, actual changes, actual creative leaps. Something to think about.
So where we're at right now is that Jackie's best friend Eleanor O'Hara discovered she'd been passed a fake MRI, in order to beef up her casual Percocet-between-friends supply to actual, illegally giving her friend drugs. Same time, Jackie's husband Kevin discovered her secret post office box containing insane amounts of secret credit card debt at pharmacies all over town. He called O'Hara, and the two of them tried to throw Jackie a little intervention. Well of course she went apeshit on both of them, right for the jugular, and locked herself in the bathroom.