Word: falco
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...what do you do instead? Make a show about something. Showtime's Nurse Jackie (starring The Sopranos' Edie Falco), which aired over the summer, is a sort of civilian M*A*S*H, focusing on a pill-popping, overworked nurse, devoted to her work but cheating on her husband. Likewise, while it has polarized critics, HBO's Hung (about a high school coach turned gigolo in suburban Detroit) is at its best a darkly comic story about surviving after an economic bubble pops. These shows (like Showtime's multiple-personality comedy United States of Tara) handle deeper, more mature themes...
...Showtime's Nurse Jackie, Edie Falco's title character runs up against a hospital administration that wants to wring every possible dime out of patients. "All Saints [Hospital] is in the business of flipping beds," Jackie tells a colleague. "That's it. End of story. The fact that you have even the slightest inclination to help people puts you miles ahead of 100% of the population." (In real life, Falco is a health-care-reform activist.) Jada Pinkett Smith also plays an overworked nurse taking on bureaucracy, on TNT's Hawthorne. On NBC's fall drama Trauma...
...Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) is an angel of mercy, we quickly learn that she is, in more ways than one, a fallen one. And she is one of the most interesting people you're likely to meet on TV this year...
Nurse Jackie has a fine-grained sense of hospitals' feudal hierarchy, but it's ultimately about the paradox of Jackie: she's dedicated and moral in her professional life but - in ways it's better not to spoil - hurtful in her private life. As when Falco portrayed Carmela Soprano, she plays tough while letting her emotions spark from every nerve, and she shows a gift for tart comedy here too. To get her job done, Jackie needs to be part nurturer, part con artist, part stand-up comic. "What do you call a nurse with a bad back?" she asks...
Some of the supporting characters need work (especially a too sitcommy administrator played by Anna Deavere Smith), and some patients-of-the-week veer into clichés. But Falco is outstanding as a living reminder that you meet angels only in the next life. It takes a flawed, sloppy human to keep you in this...