Nurse Jackie

Emmy-winning actress Edie Falco (The Sopranos) stars as a very different kind of health-care provider in the Showtime series Nurse Jackie. Falco plays Jackie Peyton, a seasoned, cynical nurse who works in a New York City emergency room, handling cases unconventionally, breaking rules (and laws) while battling her overwrought boss (a buffoonish Anna Deavere Smith). Jackie is an unusual female antihero for television--she smokes, drinks, takes pills, cheats on her husband, forgets to pick up one of her kids at school yet still remains sympathetic because of Falco's complex portrayal. Jackie goes out of her way to not let her coworkers know that she is happily married with children--she particularly won't tell pharmacist Eddie Walzer (Paul Schulze), whom she sleeps with so she can release stress and get an unending supply of painkillers. While juggling her family and her lover, Jackie also is training newbie nurse Zoey Barkow (Merritt Wever) and trying to keep Dr. Fitch Cooper (Peter Facinelli) from grabbing one of her breasts every time he's nervous. Like most hospital dramas, Nurse Jackie deals regularly with controversial issues, but it manages to add just enough of a twist to keep the stories from becoming tired and clichéd.