Jackie, Take Four

Note: Spoilers for this episode

I thought episode four was fine. It dealt with the death of a character it had bothered to humanize quite a bit, and this unblinking treatment was surprising and affecting. The drawing used to illustrate Jackie’s daughter’s anxiety was an effective device, made more so by the counterpoint of another child’s drawing at the end. Her effortlessly caring approach for a worried parent and her instruction to Zoey in this matter were also powerful (you really want someone like Jackie to care for you when you are in the hospital).

But somehow the episode fell rather flat, I thought. The half-hour time frame continues to work against the show: our investment in the characters depends on their change over time, but the events here seem so rushed and episode-bound that I am diverted more than intrigued by the latest crisis. The daughter’s problem could certainly provoke some interesting conflicts, but her time onscreen so far has been quite limited. Presumably that will change if this subplot is going to develop. The hint of conflict with her husband also seems like it could become interesting, but so far her juggling of her multiple relationships is so nearly seamless that it’s hard to care about this issue. The text messages from her lover that she gets while with her husband (one is afraid he’ll see them) suggest the conflict here may intensify. That would be good. Because for all the messiness of Jackie’s life, she is handling things too smoothly for dramatic purposes. Even a comedy, especially one with not much good comedy, needs emotional stories to tell.

A Thriller That Is Also a Relationship Movie

A thriller that is willing to stop being a thriller and to become not merely “psychological” but a relationship movie of sorts, only to become a thriller again in climactic moments, and then to return again to relationship and character concerns in its conclusion is already a rare accomplishment. This structure suggests a satisfying perspective that we don’t encounter often enough in film: The thrills and trauma of violence are not what life or fiction needs fundamentally to be about even in a story focusing on adolescents, crime, and desperation. Our feelings are more generous and our interests broader than is indicated by the mindsets we exhibit in crisis. We tend to compartmentalize our broader, more vulnerable selves when struggling to control our feelings and behavior to address urgent situations; sometimes we tend temporarily to forget about that broader perspective entirely. When others genuinely help us, not through didactic means but through a subtle empathy, to recall our humanity during stressful circumstances, something lovely and substantive has happened.

The subject of these meditations is Cassandra Nicolaou’s 2006 Canadian thriller, Show Me. Aside from very convincing performances from its three leads, this film, shot mostly in a few locations with almost no other actors, creates an intimacy that suggests it might have worked even better as theater. Sarah, an apparently upper-middle class businesswoman, is kidnapped when she rolls down her car window to pay a teenage girl, Jenna, who had tried to clean her windshield. She and her boyfriend Jackson, in need of money and space to think out their next move, accompany Sarah to a cabin in the woods where she plans to meet her lover, detained by meetings, for what is later revealed to be their tenth anniversary. In a strange way, they get to know one another.

None of these characters is given an adequate back story; the explanation provided for the teenagers’ desperation is embarrassingly melodramatic (a single traumatic event involving an alcoholic parent seems to be crucial) and at the same time unpersuasive. Interesting and plausible accounts of motivation tend to recognize the significance of complex environments that affect people over time, including perhaps a number of explicit crisis points, or none at all.

But this movie is a psychological study, if not of individual characters or narratives then of relationships and how they affect people. At first, Sarah forms a strategy of trying to work on Jackson, whose tone is apologetic and practical (Jenna is initially angrier and meaner). Her efforts to escape eventually bring them into direct conflict, however. Meahwhile, it becomes apparent that Jenna is as angry with herself as she is with Sarah. As Sarah senses this, her sympathy for Jenna grows. The film really becomes interesting as the hostage dynamic recedes almost to nothing (indeed, Sarah actually manages to escape for a time). When Jenna, for her part, watches some home videos of Sarah and her lover, she comes to feel a grudging affection and longing for connection with her. Jackson is not thrown into stereotypical rage by this development--in a refreshing break with thriller clichés about paranoid criminals and the use of divide-and-conquer tactics by hostages or cops, his bonds with Jenna, however stormy, are unbreakable. Yet he senses the shifted dynamic and seems hurt in a background sort of way. In the later parts of the film, his anger, mingling with his fears and neediness, seem to dominate his motivation, carrying terrible consequences in a climactic, unforeseen crisis.

There are any number of kidnapping movies featuring complex dynamics between criminals and their hostages. There are fine studies of kids on the cusp of adolescence like Lisa Krueger’s indie Manny & Lo (1996); there are vivid slice-of-life classics like Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon (1975). Despite its somewhat vague, stereotyped portrayals of its teenage characters, Show Me deserves a distinguished place in this suspense subgenre, because the dynamics between characters believably change so many times, just as real relationships are apt to evolve—hopefully, as here, to a measure of understanding. Such sympathy is not always enough to ensure a fully happy ending, but if nothing else it helps define life by something more than its crisis moments.

Are Doctors So Terrible?

Mary Carmichael at DoubleX makes a good point about Nurse Jackie. I noticed this a bit in episode two, but she draws out the point very well.

I would add that even if doctors are often as terrible as the show suggests (I’ve read evidence that many doctors have their share of issues), the dichotomy is not particularly well suited to television drama, or at least, not as portrayed here so far. If some of the doctors were shown to be fantastic and some of the nurses to be terrible, then the dichotomy would seem less facile. Or if Jackie wants to assert a sharp division in caring and attentiveness between doctors and nurses, it ought to explore the reasons for the difference, try to resolve it in a particular case, or otherwise treat the issue in a more complex fashion.

edited 26-Jun-2009

‘Jackie’: Things Are Looking Up

The third episode of Nurse Jackie was the best so far. Several subplots were deftly juggled, and I got the sense that the harried lifestyle of a nurse and parent (not to mention one carrying on an affair and with a drug habit) entails stress coming at her from all sides at a rapid pace. In particular, there seemed to be a subtle polarity between Jackie’s gracious support for a dying old man refusing treatment and his wife, suggesting a nurse’s pragmatic comfort with cruel existential facts, and, on the other hand, her bafflement with her ten-year-old daughter’s growing and seemingly inexplicable morbid anxiety. Jackie exhibits a rare maturity and competence, but also episodes of bewilderment, dread, and feelings of helplessness. (Does her daughter’s anxiety have something to do with her mother’s problems? It will be interesting to see if this is the case.)

I was less impressed with nurse-in-training Zoey’s again being used as a figure of ridicule. The writing and characterization with her so far are broader, for comic purposes, and less indiidualized. Coop’s character also seems more than a bit absurd. When I have enjoyed this show, it hasn’t been because of its allegedly comedic moments but because of Jackie’s character development and Falco’s portrayal.

Links Are Your Friend

Longer stuff coming up in the next couple days, but for now a bit of link happiness.

♦ This sharp, compassionate essay, by Jenny Turner, is one of the better pieces of writing about fiction (maybe the best) that I’ve read in the last couple years. It is written very well, and says some things that badly needed saying. (It’s about some vampire interlopers you may have heard of.)

♦ I’ve been reading the short story Web site 5 Chapters. I quite like some of the writing, and I also want to note that the serial format is a pleasure to find on the Web. In a box-set, download-friendly culture—and I write this as someone who loves box sets and the Web—suspense and a certain kind of fan experience can be casualties.

‘Nursing’ Is Hard Work: ‘Nurse Jackie,’ Episode 2

Note: spoilers for episode 2.

So, episode 2 … Our nurse continues her wise ways, subduing a violent patient with a well-timed dose of courtesy when physicians and police were having trouble. I liked this subplot, but not much the rest of the episode, in which a seemingly bizarre suggestion about a patient’s condition from Coop turns out to be correct (this outcome could be seen coming a mile away; also, why wouldn’t Dr. O’Hara listen briefly to a colleague? Is this normal? Healthcare professionals, clue me in …) and nervous nurse-in-training Zoey both becomes nervous about her chosen profession a bit too easily and then gets reassured a bit too easily by Jackie’s mix of moral support and sternness. Nor did I find the unknowingly-high antics of hospital official Gloria Akatilus (Anna Deveare Smith) to show any subtlety or humor.

The show continues to suggest that nursing is gritty work that allows a real sense of accomplishment and requires a quietly ingenious daily pragmatism to be done well. This message and the mood used to help convey it are compelling, but the narratives used to portray them are so rushed—again, this series needs a full hour—that the delivery feels didactic and a bit trite. A case in point is Jackie’s drug use—a harrowing, ambiguous narrative and emotional backdrop for the series, but one whose gravity is undercut by using Falco’s narration to discuss it, as though it’s a casual activity entirely under her control. Since it’s a solitary activity, this narrative technique is understandable, but so far the show hasn’t shown her to have any experiences with drug use that convey any deeper, more complex information about its role in her personality and coping that might make it interesting on its own terms. We’re just supposed to gather its meaning from what Jackie tells us about it.

Remembering that Nurse Jackie is a comedy, I feel a little friendlier toward it. Its settings and characters are more complex and interesting than what I associate with sitcoms, but this show purports to be about characters and institutions as well. So far it has not transcended cliché in these areas, but it’s still a young series, and I admit I enjoy it, in a voyeuristic sort of way. I just don’t find it as interesting or moving or thought-provoking as it seemed to want to be. Perhaps I can sum up my feelings thus far by saying that this is a “dark comedy” that seems to skip the “dark” part almost entirely.

A Brief Author Recommendation

I’ve been remiss in failing to note this. Last month, Alice Munro, who is primarily known for her short fiction, was awarded the Man Booker International Prize*. I don’t have time to write something detailed about her work right now, but let me at least say that her characters are portrayed with enough telling detail, narrative scope, and sense of place to become intensely real. Her work is therefore naturally poignant, but so unpretentious and thoughtful that it lacks the sentimentality to which, given that it has its share of sadness, it might easily have fallen prey. (I think of sentimentality, roughly, as a stifling didacticism—in particular, sympathy or other emotion achieved by using characters and situations that evoke facile identification or rejection, rather than, say, by creating well-developed personalities and highly individualized mileus.)

At any rate, if you haven’t read Munro, you should pick up one of her short story collections. This is a cliché about short stories, but it fits so well in this instance that it demands to be said: each story is a world unto itself, and correspondingly rich. (With some hesitation, I also suggest that you not start with “The View from Castle Rock,” which, given its historical settings, seems to me a bit less approachable than some of her other work.)



*Note: This honor, awarded every two years, should not be confused with the annual Man Booker Prize (“Booker Prize”), which is given to a Commonwealth novel.

‘Jackie’: Too Early to Judge

Note: Implied spoiler for pilot only.

THERE ARE SEVERAL commonly observed reasons to watch Nurse Jackie, Showtime’s new series airing at Monday nights at 10:30 EST, all of which are valid: Edie Falco; a medical show focusing on nursing; another show focusing on flawed genius—it’s been done, but hardly exhausted; and—I would add—the friendship between Falco and Edie Best’s Doctor O’Hara, which in its pairing of two women experiencing the medical profession from different angles, seems promising. Falco’s character abuses prescription drugs, apparently to keep up with a gruesome schedule, and perhaps for other reasons. This depiction of drug use—as problematic (at the very least, getting the drugs seems an alarmingly urgent matter for her) yet combined with her being a high-functioning, thoughtful person, is intriguing too.

Yet I have some quibbles after watching the pilot. This show deserves a full hour, it seems to me. The medical crises seem to play out too quickly to develop the emotional weight their content deserves: resolved so quickly, these crises come to seem almost sensationalistic. (For that matter, they also don’t last long enough to become interesting on a technical, philosophical, or other intellectual level.) Then there’s the milieu of the hospital setting, which surely carries a lot of potential to convey the burdens and messy dynamics of her distinctive workplace. Instead, so far, we’re only being given clichés: she’s tired, overworked, and dedicated; one or more of the doctors she works with may be nightmares.

Nor is Jackie—again, so far—a clearly defined personality outside of her nursing role. The closing scene conveyed that there are more complexities to her life than those she faces as a nurse, but it remains to be seen whether this moment, which takes place at her home, is going to be used enough to develop her character, or only has a site of romantic tensions.

Others have pointed out, and I agree, that her decisions in the pilot, including deliberately interfering with the treatment of a monster of a patient, are highly questionable, yet presented rather nonchalantly. Finally, I would note that she seems to take her drug use for granted, rather than being troubled by or conflicted about it. This portrayal might be fine, except that it’s arguably the defining feature of the character and the series; if she can entirely handle this choice well, where’s the ambiguity, the tension, the fodder for dramatic narrative? Her doubt or troubles on this score, obviously, no doubt will emerge over time; but it would have been nice to see some evidence in the pilot that the drug use is intended as a source of characterization rather than, say, for shock value. (The source of a serious error she makes, and quickly corrects, with one patient is ambiguous—arguably it’s merely due to fatigue.)

In all, I’d say it’s too early by far to judge the series. The show has lots of potential and, equally, plenty of pitfalls to avoid. Hospital shows have not exactly been lacking in the last two decades or so. It’s an inherently interesting setting and one most people can relate to at a human level. But many of its dilemmas have become painfully familiar. Nurse Jackie is going to have to prove itself.

edited for grammar and code 24-Jun

Don’t You Feel Like This Sometimes?

Beware of the Evil Robot Monkey.

Seriously, I thought this podcast short story was pretty awesome.