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Image: Showtime
The whirlwind show has already come and gone – for now. Nurse Jackie took her final bow for the season last night, making way for her quieter sister, HawthoRNe and hot, younger sib, Mercy (airing in September) to carry on the nurse show torch for the rest of ’09.
John Doyle of The Globe and Mail, upon Nurse Jackie’s closing, goes to bat for the controversial series:
Mind you, it’s a flawed show. Jackie’s close friendship with the hoity-toity English Dr. O’Hara (Eve Best) doesn’t quite ring true. And there are occasions when Jackie succumbs to a sentimentality that seems wrong for her. However, the series (originating on Showtime, created by Liz Brixius and Linda Wallem) is a subtly evolving character study, a drama – with bits of black comedy – about a very complex human being.
Among the many nurse shows that keep springing up this year, Doyle defends Jackie as the least nonsensical of them all. Nurses’ organizations have vociferously disagreed. Doyle points out that one of the few nurses portrayed on TV who has ever garnered an official nod of approval from real life nurses is “Hot Lips” Houlihan from M*A*S*H.
What made Houlihan so hot?
…she was about excellence in care; she was in charge of nursing and she was respected. (The Globe and Mail)
