DVD Reviews

Nurse Jackie: Season One - DVD Review

By June L. Mar 8, 2010, 15:41 GMT

Three-time Primetime Emmy® winner Edie Falco is "outstanding” (TIME Magazine) as Jackie Peyton, a nurse trying to survive the chaotic grind of saving lives in a hectic New York City hospital. Sharp-tongued and quick-witted, Jackie’s a woman of substance who knows how to handle it all. With a white lie here, a bent rule there, and a steady dose of pain relievers for her chronic back pain, Jackie does whatever ...more

Nurse Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) has the job of helping to save lives in a city hospital.  Each day is a new adventure as she seeks to calm the chaos, sooth the suffering and do something about the pain, hers and her patient’s.  This first season is irresistible viewing!

Edie Falco gives life to Nurse Jackie Peyton, in a wildly complex blending of compassion and anger, professional skill and daring, and a private life that is so varied it will make your head spin.  Professionally Nurse Jackie knows the rules, but she bends them ever so slightly, and sometimes blatantly to do what she feels is the right thing for her patients. 

She is a no-nonsense individual, with a skillful approach to nursing care, and is not afraid to challenge physicians and administrators alike when she thinks something is wrong.  One gets the sense that Jackie is armored for battle at all times.  Wearing a game face and a persona for each of the areas of her life professionally and personally, viewers rarely see her in a vulnerable moment. 

We catch glimpses of the “real” Jackie as she suffers with her chronic back, and when she deals with her children or with the patients that need her the most.  At those times her guard may be down for just a bit, but then it is back in place and Nurse Jackie moves on to her next challenge.  Part of the show’s appeal is the biting humor in Nurse Jackie’s approach to life.  Co-workers and friends play off this wit adding their own bits to lighten the darkness of the work environment. 

Reminiscent of “MASH” rather than the usual nighttime medical dramas in the portrayal of relationships among healthcare personnel, Nurse Jackie illuminates the lives of those caught in grim circumstances, bound to doing their best for others, but preserving their sanity with wit, anger and humor.

Nurse Jackie: Season One is presented on three discs containing the pilot and the eleven season one episodes.  The folder case is illustrated with stills and photographs of the actors.  There is also production information for each episode. 

Titles of the episodes might give new viewers a sense of variety in the show before ever watching it, “Sweet ‘N All” “Daffodil” and “Tiny Bubbles” are mixed in with “School Nurse” “Nosebleed” and “Pill-O-Matix.” 

There are some very nice special features in the DVD set including cast and crew commentaries for some of the episodes.  The featurettes “Prepping Nurse Jackie,” “Unsung Heroes” and “All about Edie” look at the series from a take-off point of learning about actual medical protocol and situations to how actress Edie Falco prepared herself to become Nurse Jackie. 

There are also Nurse Stories from real-life nurses illustrating unique challenges in the profession.

Visit the DVD database for more information.