Starring: Edie Falco, Paul Schulze, Dominic Fumusa, Haaz Sleiman

Appears on: Showtime at 10:30 p.m. starting June 14 with the series premiere

Oh, Edie Falco. How we’ve missed you, the way your face shines when the light hits it just right, and, oh, your superb acting abilities, too.

Thanks to you, Edie, Showtime’s well-written, black-comedy ‘Nurse Jackie,’ has a lot of life.

Falco stars as the titular character, a New York City nurse who balances the stresses of the workplace with sex, prescription drugs and a few thoughtful musings on life (like what Salome served as a side dish with John the Baptist’s head. Potato salad, Jackie finally decides). Jackie works with both friend and fellow nurse Mohammed De La Cruz (Sleiman), and her hook-up, Eddie (Schulze), a hospital pharmacist. At home, two precious daughters and a husband (Fumusa) await Jackie’s return each day.

Falco aside, Liz Brixius, Linda Wallem and Rick Cleveland wrote a magnificently complex main character in only the way premium cable could show it. Jackie is addicted to painkillers and to being bad – she carries on an extramarital affair with the hospital pharmacist. The two are so hot to trot for each other they’ll screw in Eddie’s hospital office. At the end of the pilot episode, it’s clear Jackie relishes this life style, ‘Make me good, God. But not yet,’ she asks.

Jackie is more than that though. Think of her more as a Robin Hood who traded tights for scrubs, a woman who sees the wrongs in her hospital and tries to set them right as she can. When a young man dies because of a doctor’s negligence, she forges his signature on the back of his driver’s license so his organs can be donated and his death won’t be a total waste. The dead man’s girlfriend turns up, broke and distraught. Jackie sends her home with a wad of cash and a pair of Uggs. A man with diplomatic immunity who knifed a girl comes in to the hospital so they can reattach his ear. (His victim cut his ear off during the attack.) Jackie flushes the severed appendage down the toilet when she learns the man can’t be prosecuted.

But it’s Falco who makes the show great and the character stellar. She resonates both resiliency and assuredness throughout. Her calm delivery is perfect for a character that regularly faces the worst life brings.

Watching ‘Nurse Jackie’ will be a habit that’s too hard to break. But hey, what’s life without a little fun, right, Jackie?

(Check out our features blog at http://blogs.dailyorange.com/withoutconcentrate/ to satisfy your summer television fix, too.)

Published on June 5, 2009 at 12:00 pm