Release Date: Feb. 23
Creators: Linda Wallen, Liz Brixius, Evan Dunsley
Starring: Edie Falco, Eve Best, Peter Facinelli, Paul Schulze, Merrit Wever
Studio/Run Time: Showtime/Lionsgate, 20 mins.
_Showtime’s answer to House slightly frustrating but mostly fascinating_
Edie Falco plays Showtime’s latest morally ambiguous protagonist, a cranky ER nurse who’s snorting painkillers and having sex with the hospital pharmacist (how convenient) while the World’s Best Husband waits for her to come home to him and their two girls. Jackie Peyton is a maddening, two-faced character, kind and empathetic with her patients and stoically hurtful to the people closest to her.
Her moral code is erratic, but intriguing—she flushes a patient’s ear down the toilet because he stabbed a woman, and then promptly returns to her day-to-day routine of getting high and committing adultery. The supporting cast brings out the worst in her and the best moments in the show: Eager nursing student Zoey worships the ground Jackie walks on; narcissistic doctor Fitch Cooper has an inexplicable crush on her, and fashionista doctor friend Eleanor O’Hara knows about all her transgressions and refuses to judge her, creating a twisted friendship and an unusual dynamic for two female characters. But just as that ear Jackie flushed eventually surfaces—because body parts don’t exactly dissolve in the pipes—at first season’s end, so do some of her dirty secrets.