Salon.com > Nurse Jackie

What Anna Deveare Smith can teach us about dying

Mon, 11 Jul 2011 10:45:00 +0000

Chances are you've seen some of Anna Deveare Smith's performances over the past decade. From her recent turn as hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus on "Nurse Jackie" to her portrayal of the president's national security advisor on the "West Wing," the actress has become a fixture of smart TV.

Although less well-known, some of Smith's most critically acclaimed work has unfolded onstage, a medium for which she has written and performed a number of one-woman shows. In her latest work, "Let Me Down Easy," she portrays 20 characters ranging from Lance Armstrong to former Texas Gov. Ann Richards to a Buddhist monk to medical residents in New Orleans. The play, which she is currently touring around the nation, explores how individuals struggle to survive not only terminal illness but also our nation's flawed healthcare system.

Smith began mulling this piece over a decade ago, when she was invited to Yale Medical School as a visiting professor. There, she interviewed and then portrayed real patients, doctors and administrators as part of an educational lecture. Intrigued by the idea, she went on to interview more than 300 people in preparation for the current iteration of the project.

How TV illustrates a disturbing medical trend

Mon, 18 Apr 2011 11:01:00 +0000

On a recent episode of Showtime's "Nurse Jackie," a boy comes in to the emergency room with a handle protruding from his left nostril. The boy, it turns out, has shoved a small mirror into his sinus cavity.

Dr, Cooper (Peter Facinelli) orders an X-ray, but that's when Nurse Jackie intervenes. "Let's get him a scan," she whispers.

Cooper balks. "No, an X-ray is OK."

But Jackie presses him. "He wants to see his brain," she says. "Show him his brain."

Cooper smiles. "Using my powers for good -- I like it," he says, ordering the boy a Computerized Tomography scan, better known as a CT scan. CT scans give doctors the uncanny ability to illuminate cancerous tumors, blockages in blood vessels that cause strokes, an inflamed appendix, and other sicknesses inside the body (though they’re not at all necessary to find plastic stuck in a sinus cavity). They’re X-rays on steroids.

The scene is satire, but it demonstrates how easy it is for doctors to run unnecessary tests on their patients. The scene also had uncanny timing. Just after the episode aired, a study came out showing just how often kids in emergency rooms get CT scans. The real-life answer, as suggested by "Nurse Jackie," is "a whole lot more than they need."

“Nurse Jackie” hooks us again

Mon, 22 Mar 2010 19:41:00 +0000

"Nurse Jackie" may be the first show ever made about a drug addict who's very good at her job while high.

A bold central premise, to be sure, made even bolder by the fact that Jackie (Edie Falco) doesn't start the second season (premieres 10 p.m. Monday, March 22, on Showtime) in rehab, which is what you might expect after her world almost comes apart at the end of the show's first season. But then, the show's first season finale was filled with almosts: Jackie's lover Eddie (Paul Schulze) almost told her husband, Kevin (Dominic Fumusa), about their affair; Jackie's boss Gloria Akilitus (Anne Deavere Smith) almost discovered Jackie's habit of breaking rules (both on behalf of her patients and on behalf of her addiction); Jackie's older daughter, Grace (Ruby Jerins), almost had a nervous breakdown.

All of which almost made the first season a little disappointing, when taken as a whole. What did we learn about Jackie by the finale that we didn't know within the first few minutes of the show? There wasn't much character development -- or much of a complete season-long narrative arc for that matter. But the real issue may be that this show is almost a comedy, but not really, because it's too dark and not funny in the ways traditional TV comedies are. The show is almost a drama, but not really, because the characters aren't fleshed out enough and the show's storylines don't end conclusively the way that a drama's plotlines would.

Going down in flames

Sun, 30 Aug 2009 10:29:00 +0000

Ah, the many joys of Los Angeles in August! What's more romantic than a freeway of ants running through the kitchen? What's more exhilarating than thick clouds of brown smoke, billowing in the hills and threatening untold tracts of overpriced, overleveraged real estate below?

It's hard not to have a kick in your step on a day like today, when it's 103 degrees outside, the world is in flames, and even the ants are looting, looking to steal the water that the residents of Los Angeles stole from somewhere else, some lusher place where you nonetheless can't get a spray tan with your morning doughnut.

I wonder if, so many decades ago, the robber barons of Los Angeles paused in their diligent and important work of bloodily oppressing various indigenous and imported brown peoples to gaze across this scrubby desert basin with a sense of awe at what it might one day become: an enormous maze of pavement, thirsty lawns and overvalued stucco. How proud they might be, to see that their selfless efforts to rape the land and disempower the laboring classes have paid off in acre upon acre of foreclosures, punctuated only by auto body shops and shitty Chinese restaurants! Los Angeles, glorious and vast, land of roof rats, home of the Whopper!

I Like to Watch

Sun, 07 Jun 2009 10:45:00 +0000

TV today is very dark. We long ago replaced lovable stepmoms like Abby from "Eight Is Enough" with self-involved, irresponsible, adulterous moms and swapped out tirelessly righteous crime-fighters like Kojak with corrupt cops struggling to keep their atrocities hidden. Almost 40 years after Mary Tyler Moore brought her lovably haphazard but principled schtick to the workplace, our TV offices are populated by elitist corporate bosses, lazy, self-serving underlings, vaguely pathetic managerial chumps and endless variations on the vainglorious jackass.

While our TV shows paint us all as easily distracted, neurotic, spoiled, grumpy human beings, we chuckle along as if we're above it. "Ah yes, a dark comedy -- a warped, overly cynical take on life!" we say, then blow off even more work to troll the Internet for something shallow or despicable or depraved to distract us from our lazy, irritable, vainglorious selves.

Drugs, not hugs

"Quiet and mean, those are my people. I don't do chatty." -- Nurse Jackie

I Like to Watch

Sun, 31 May 2009 10:30:00 +0000

Modern life has a frustrating way of setting us up to fail seconds after we wake up. I didn't exercise this morning, and neither did my dogs, who sulked instead. I drank caffeine, which is bad for me, and wrote for a few hours instead of vacuuming the living room floor. I didn't shower. I drove my daughter to daycare and she didn't cry when I left, but I didn't spend the day with her. I walked the dogs but didn't run because I still have a cough, which must mean I'm doing something wrong. I paid some bills but didn't clean off my desk. I watched a screener of "Nurse Jackie" but didn't figure out what its central premise is. I made dinner but my daughter only ate bread. The baby nursed for an hour (good) then spent an hour sleeping in her automatic swing while I ate chocolate and watched "Make Me a Supermodel" (bad). I took my vitamins but didn't floss. I wrote this paragraph, but I'm pretty sure most of you won't like it, since it means waiting longer to find out what time "Jon & Kate Plus 8" is on (9 p.m. Mondays on TLC).