Nurse Jackie: Season One

In this acclaimed series launched on Showtime in 2009, Jackie Peyton (Edie Falco) is a dedicated emergency room nurse and veteran caregiver with compassion to spare for the fragile, the scared, and the forgotten. “Doctors diagnose; we heal” is her mantra, but she's no Florence Nightingale—and not simply because of the vindictive punishments she doles out to rude patients and thoughtless visitors. This wife and loving mother slips off her wedding ring for work and carries on an affair with the hospital pharmacist (Paul Schulze), who supplies her with a steady stream of prescription painkillers that she more often than not snorts like she's doing a line of cocaine. While the energy bump helps power her through another shift, Jackie's addiction starts to take its toll as she juggles job and family. Smartly written, Nurse Jackie eschews sentimentality or easy melodrama, while Falco convincingly embraces her character's contradictions and flaws, with Jackie also playing mentor to an idealistic young nurse trainee (Merritt Wever) and battling the heartless bureaucracy embodied by the emergency room administrator (Anna Deavere Smith). Peter Facinelli costars as a cocky young doctor with his own issues, including a Tourette's-like impulse of “inappropriate touching.” Compiling all 12 first-season episodes, DVD/Blu-ray extras include cast and crew audio commentaries, a trio of behind-the-scenes featurettes, and a collection of five “Nurses Stories” originally produced as promo spots. Recommended. (S. Axmaker)