'Nurse Jackie': An Addict Who Needs Your Help

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Nurse Jackie goes into its final season with Edie Falco’s Jackie Peyton a woman brought low — addicted, arrested, her career as a nurse in peril. A half-hour that has frequently played out like a drama, Nurse Jackie has nevertheless maintained its comic edge, even in the midst of the trouble Jackie is in right now, and Falco’s performance has been a sustained depiction of a woman whose sarcasm and sense of the absurdity of the world around her are qualities that keep her from giving in to rage or despair.

The seventh season has gotten off to a solid start, with Jackie in a probationary position at the hospital, under severe scrutiny by not just boss Gloria Akalitus (Anna Deavere Smith) but also close colleagues like Merritt Wever’s Zoey, who is gravely disappointed in the woman she has considered her mentor.

Although the season premiere showed Jackie going through cold-turkey detox in a holding cell, the show hasn’t become a grim portrait of a junkie who’s lost control. Nurse Jackie, as conceived by writer and former showrunner Liz Brixius, has always been about a high-functioning addict whose use of pills and booze is a constantly momentary source of escape from stress.

Related: ‘Nurse Jackie’ Showrunner on Crafting a ‘Shocking and Surprising’ Ending

The new season — overseen since Season 5 by executive producer Clyde Phillips — places fresh emphasis on Paul Schulze’s Eddie as Jackie’s most genial, and therefore worst, enabler. He’s achieved his own personal goal, becoming Jackie’s lover, and getting into his own trouble: Who’d have thought, from the genial schlub Eddie we met at the start of Nurse Jackie, that the clever pharmacist would become a cool guy? And a cool guy who on some level is a villain, as well?

It’s tough being Nurse Jackie on Sunday nights right now: The nurse is also up against Game of Thrones, The Good Wife, and viewers busy getting their ashtrays arranged to watch Mad Men at 10 p.m. But even if your TV-watching doesn’t permit you to watch it in real time, Nurse Jackie is really worth keeping up with — seeing through to the very end.

Nurse Jackie airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on Showtime.