It has been a while since we last caught a glimpse of dear Nurse Jackie.
Last season, we have seen Jackie's fallout with her family, O'Hara's pregnancy and the giving birth of her child, the new boss and his connection with Jackie in and out of All Saints.
This season premiere, we are given double episodes.
Episode one. Happy F*cking Birthday.
We open with Jackie's dream (flashback) where we see her happily married life with Kevin. Later on, she wakes up to her new reality. Kevin is still mean to Jackie (who wouldn't, right?). He comes in to pick up Grace and Fiona for school. Jackie asks Kevin if she could have the kids for her birthday, to which Kevin replies with the age-old "I'll think about it" answer.
At the hospital, people are going nuts with the new pill dispenser. After seeing a super long line of impatient nurses, Eddie busts the machine open and asks someone to jot down all the pills he's distributing to all the nurses. Problem solved e?
Jackie takes some "party favors" from a famous NFL player's southern part. Yes, the back side. After he swallow three condoms filled with drugs to save him from an arrest following the accident he's been in. After cleaning up the recovered condoms, Jackie takes all the now-cleaned-drug-filled-condoms as she checks on a new patient. She looks at the drug condoms and has to face the dilemma of a recovering junkie seeing her poison of choice.
Zoey apologizes to Jackie after she walks in on her and Kevin that morning while having an argument as they wait for the kids. Zoey tries to compare it to her relationship with Lenny. Really, Zoey? Compare three months to a 16-year-marriage???
New doctors in All Saints are in. The hospital's got a new trauma guy, who has served in the Army, in the name of Dr. Ike Prentiss and a slutty new doctor, Carrie Roman. Dr. Prentiss was first thought to be a hobo by Jackie after he comes in to the ER, wearing filthy clothing. Jackie isn't the only one typecasting the new doc. A patient also bitched out, saying that Prentiss looks like a drug dealer. Ouch! We also meet Dr. Roman, who was first seen doing another doctor, which according to Jackie, isn't new. Yep, you guessed it. Almost everyone had already done her. Unfortunately, Roman isn't really that good at being a doctor compared to her being a wh_re.
By the way, Gloria Akalitus is now back as the hospital's administrator. She re-hires Eddie after his heroic deed at the pill dispenser. She realizes that she needs Eddie more than the pill machine.
Back to NFL dude. Jackie snitches him to the po-pos. He tries to bargain with Jackie, saying that he'll pay for her home in Queens, if she says she made a mistake. Instead, Jackie tells him that it wasn't her home that she wants him to pay for, but to but the hospital a new CT scanner, costing $425 grand. Athlete says yes, to avoid the arrest, and agrees to buy the hospital a new CT machine. Nice one, Jacks!
Eleanor drops some bad news on Jackie. She tells her that she'll be leaving All Saints to be with her child. She doesn't want O'Hara to leave, reasoning to her about the lives that she save everyday. O'Hara doesn't want to miss her son's first steps, words, and be blamed by her kid for not being present in his life. She tells Jackie that she's leaving the day before her birthday. That's pretty bad for Jackie as she also learns that Zoey's also moving out to find her own place as well. Awwww... Looks like Jackie's spending her birthday alone, after Kevin leaves her a message that the kids won't be there too.
Last scene shows Jackie in bed, slipping inside her ring, the last of the pill left from the condom drugs, after she flushes everything down the toilet. Clock strikes 12:00 midnight and she greets herself, "Happy F*cking Birthday".
Morris Chestnut, Betty Gilpin and Eric D. Hill, Jr. guest stars in this episode.
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Episode two. Luck of the Drawing
The show opens with Kevin and Jackie sitting down with their divorce lawyer, talking about their case. Kevin seeks primary custody of the girls, to Jackie's disapproval and disappointment. The lawyer wants them to meet halfway and settle for joint custody. Jackie agrees, thinking that she wants it fair. Unfortunately for her, Kevin doesn't want fair. He'd rather jump into a time machine, way before Jackie becomes an addict and ruins their marriage and family life. Kevin thinks it's unfair, considering her schedule, to which Jackie rebuts. She thinks it's more unfair when she was working with her crazy schedule to pay for Kevin's bar, but she never makes it a big deal then. The divorce attorney suggests that if Jackie makes her schedule predictable, he expects Kevin to agree into meeting Jackie halfway into the custody settlement. This way, they don't need the case to be tossed to the judge.
It's still Jackie's birthday and she once again asks Kevin to give her a day with the kids. Even bargaining to make it her last birthday, and then she promises to have no more birthdays after that. Kevin, still cold to her, wouldn't let her have the kids for the day.
At her NA meeting, her NA moderator encourages her to share. That way, she wouldn't feel as bad as she is at the moment, with O'Hara leaving, Zoey moving out and Kevin not letting her have the kids on her birthday. Jackie, instead, leaves the meeting.
Jackie is slowly becoming friends now with Dr. Prentiss as they form a small bond over a patient, a boy who had a spider on his ear. Zoey greets her a "happy work day" and offers Jackie herself, sensing that she's having a bad day. Jackie pushes her away.
A return patient from the Atlantic City accident from the day before, comes at the ER and is "examined" by Dr. Roman. She only wrote her a prescription for pain medication without even checking her thoroughly. Jackie suspects something else, while checking the patient's X-ray. Dr. Roman thinks that the kid is just an addict and is only after the pain medication. Jackie took the liberty of asking for lab exams for the patient, pretending to be Dr. Roman on the phone, and asks Prentiss' help instead. Just as she suspected, the patient indeed has a problem and was immediately sent to the ICU.
Jackie gets flowers for her birthday. She throws the card away. Zoey checks it out and finds out that it was from Jackie's father. Cooper was surprised after finding out that she still has a father, while Thor wasn't even shocked considering that Jackie has worked at All Saints for 10 years before people found out that she's married. Thor stops Jackie from throwing the flowers away. Jackie gives it to a patient instead.
Gloria calls in the employees for an assembly at the old hallway. Jackie's patient has incurred sepsis under the hospital's responsibility, All Saints' 10th case in the last year. Zoey volunteers to be the hand-hygiene monitor. Prentiss suggests that they ID patients with sepsis risk. Akalitus agrees, telling him that he's the new ER chief. Cooper feels bad about Dr. Prentiss' appointment as he has been in All Saints longer than him. Dr. Cooper tells Jackie that he would quit as a protest to Prentiss' appointment as the new ER chief. Jackie then tells him to not quit, but rather "man the f*ck up" to earn respect.
Jackie comes to Gloria to talk about her schedule. Akalitus wouldn't let her have an adjustment to her schedule due to conflict with other peoples' schedules--10 people to be precise. Jackie begs Gloria as this is her only shot at keeping her into the running for joint custody in her battle with Kevin. Disappointed, she storms out of Gloria's office.
Dr. Roman tries to charm Dr. Prentiss, but was immediately dismissed by him due to her previous misdiagnosis on a patient with sepsis for drug problems. He then gives Roman a crappy job of disimpacting a senior patient's bowels. Yuck.
Carrie (Dr. Roman) tries to make an alliance with Cooper by poisoning him into thinking that Prentiss is power-tripping. She tells Coop that she has been given extra work by Prentiss to disimpact the bowels of a patient. Little did he know, Carrie was just using him into taking her shift as well as take the icky job she was given by Prentiss. Haha! Sucker.
Jackie still tries to pursue a reasonable work schedule and presents it to Gloria. She tricks her into signing to a schedule she just made, knowing that Gloria's having memory issues lately due to a lot of administration problems that she has been working on since Cruz left. Jackie calls Kevin to tell him her new custody-friendly schedule, to Kevin's dismay. He still wants to fight for primary custody and hires a lawyer to help him win the custody battle. He files for psychological incapacity on Jackie's side so he can get custody of the kids. He have filed, through his lawyer, an order for a psych test on the girls. This way, he could prove that Jackie has been a bad influence on the girls, so that he could keep their children from their mom. Jackie, blindsided, was pissed after working on her new schedule only to find out that she wouldn't even get a chance to have Kevin settle for the mediation with the custody of their daughters. Zoey finds Jackie and she opens up to Zoey about the custody battle.
Jackie once again finds the flowers, obviously Thor took back from the patient. She then drops it on the floor, making it seem like an accident, so she could finally get rid of it.
Dr. Roman has been missing from the ER again, as Hanna is now having renal failure as a result of her sepsis. Ike and Jackie responds to the patient, since Roman's still not with her patient. She comes in just as Prentiss and Jackie's done checking on the patient and is once again on the hot seat after her absence in the ER to stabilize her sepsis patient. Her phone rings and just as she was about to answer her phone, Dr. Prentiss scolds her to put the phone down. Distracted, Roman didn't notice Jackie swiping her phone down the garbage. Oh snap! Lolz.
Jackie calls Charlie's phone--yes, dead Charlie Cruz's phone to open up about her effed-up day.
Eddie offers Jackie a ride home, knowing that it's her birthday. Still sad about how things turned out on her supposed-to-be-special-day, she declines Eddie's offer and talks to him about her horrible custody battle with her now-ex-husband. Eddie suggests that Jackie go to Dr. Saltzman so she could get an idea about what happens on a psych evaluation. He also offers his help, in case Jackie needs someone to talk to. She says that what Eddie has done for her that day is actually the best gift she has had for her birthday. She thanks Eddie, gives him a hug and leaves home. Unfortunately, Jackie wasn't able to see that her actual birthday from Eddie was indeed the ride home. Turns out, Eddie rented a horse-drawn carriage. How romantic.
Jackie comes to an empty home on her birthday, when Zoey enters shortly. Suddenly, Zoey surprises Jackie with a better present than Eddie--her daughters. Apparently, Zoey talked to Kevin and has convinced him to let the girls come over to see her on her birthday. The kids brought her cake and pinata. Zoey opens up her laptop, announces, "Live, from London..." and flips her laptop towards Jackie as Eleanor greets her happy birthday. Jackie was able to blow her candles with Fiona, Grace, Zoey and O'Hara.
The girls took turns in hitting the pinata. Grace got carried away and beat up the pinata when she got her turn. That's when Jackie notice that Grace was really affected by the divorce. Jackie talks to Fiona and asks her to draw a picture of their family, not knowing that she was doing an impromptu psych evaluation on the kid.
Jackie comes to Kevin and thanks him for letting the kids come to visit her on her birthday. She tells him about Grace's rage problem and Fiona's school struggles as a result of their divorce. She shows Kevin Fiona's drawing and he finds out that if he would still proceed with the psych evaluation, he would be on the losing end, and not Jackie.
