Nurse Jackie has hit rock bottom, again, but she won’t go down.The finale of Showtime’s second season of Nurse Jackie played out Monday night with pill-popping nurse Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) confronted in an intervention by her bisexual BFF, Dr. Eleanor O’Hara (Eve Best), and Jackie’s devoted puppy-dog-eyed husband, Kevin (Dominic Fumusa).Her response?She locks herself in the bathroom looks 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 played out.
That said, Season 2 did have its gay moments. For instance, when Harvey Fierstein guest stars as a man holding vigil with his dying husband, Dr. Fitch Cooper (Peter Facinelli) comforts him by revealing he has two mothers, and burly bear nurse Thor (Steven Wallem) confides to the grieving man that he is also gay. Finally, Dr. O’Hara, who is dealing with the emotional fallout of her cheating girlfriend enters the picture, leaving viewers to possibly wonder, “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 troubled leanings of the main, non-gay (so far) character of Jackie remain a mystery.
Midway through the season 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 arrives 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.
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O’Hara is a modern bisexual 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.
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