Nurse Jackie – Is Our Favorite Addict in Denial About More than Drugs?
By K. Pearson Brown, originally published on SheWired
Nurse Jackie hit rock bottom, again, but she won’t go down, yet. The finale of Showtime’s second season of Nurse Jackie played out last night with pill-popping nurse Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) being confronted in an intervention by her bisexual BFF, Dr. Eleanor O’Hara (Eve Best), and Jackie’s devoted-puppy husband, Kevin (Dominic Fumusa). Her response? She looks herself in the mirror, laughs defiantly and scoffs, “Blow me.”
Too bad she didn’t say it to O’Hara, as many of us would have liked to have seen that acted out.
Season 2 did have its gay moments. In fact in Episode 8, when Harvey Fierstein guest stars as a man who sits vigil with his dying husband, he is comforted by Dr. Fitch Cooper (Peter Facinelli) who reveals that he has two mothers, and burly bear nurse Thor (Steven Wallem) confides to the grieving man that he is also gay, and then Dr. O’Hara, who is dealing with the emotional fallout of her cheating girlfriend enters the picture, viewers might have wondered, “Could this show get any gayer?”
Thanks to out lesbian writers/creators/executive producers Liz Brixius and Linda Wallem we have several gay storylines, though the leanings of the main, non-gay (so far) character of Jackie remain a mystery.
When Jackie and O’Hara are sitting in a bar (sorry, no hackneyed joke here), Jackie’s eye wanders to the TV where she sees renowned foreign correspondent Sarah Khouri (Julia Ormond), reporting from some war-torn country, and she remarks, “I couldn’t love her more,” to which O’Hara rejoins, “Get in line.”
In fact, Sarah is O’Hara’s secret lover, and she soon comes for a surprise visit at the hospital. Jackie is star struck at first, but she finds herself uncomfortable with O’Hara and Sarah’s public displays of affection, including a couple of nice long smooches that leave Jackie squirming.
Once Jackie learns that Sarah is double timing with another lover, Jackie feels compelled to tell O’Hara. As Jackie is a cheater herself, it seems more than hypocritical that she takes the higher moral ground, which leads one to question her motivation for trying to break up the two.
O’Hara is a modern bi-woman though, and while heartsick about it, she tolerates her lover’s philandering. In the end, O’Hara and Sarah go their separate ways, and Jackie admits to O’Hara she is glad Sarah is gone because, “I like being your girl.”
The feelings are not all one way, as O’Hara tells Jackie, in a subtly sexually charged scene between the two in their favorite private alcove in the hospital’s chapel, “You’re my favorite reason for coming to work.”
They could just be really close friends, or the writers could be laying the groundwork for another great lesbian storyline for Season 3. Now that would be a real high.
