Nurse Jackie: Season Two

TV's favorite maverick nurse is back for a season of tough-love nursing, distracted parenting, and pharmaceutical addiction, which gets harder since the introduction of a computerized pill dispenser that tracks all transactions (it seems the missing drugs from last season have caught the state's attention). Golden Globe winner Edie Falco stars as Jackie Peyton—head nurse at a New York hospital—a professional dedicated to her job and her patients who can justify all of her actions. But reality is catching up with Jackie: friends and relatives see her trip over her lies, former lover and pill provider Eddie (Paul Schulze) insinuates himself into her family life, and her youngest daughter's anxieties snowball into a serious condition. “We cannot have secrets in this house,” she concludes without a trace of irony (all the while sabotaging the Pill-O-Matic). Eve Best plays flinty Dr. Ellie O'Hara, Jackie's closest friend; Anna Deavere Smith costars as Gloria Akalitus, the emergency room administrator; and Peter Facinelli is Coop, the cocky young doctor cowed by Jackie's constant challenges, who fights his own Tourette's-like condition. Compiling all 12 episodes from the 2010 second season on DVD and Blu-ray, extras include episode audio commentaries, interview featurettes with Best and Facinelli, a musical montage, and a gag reel. A Showtime original series that combines fearless drama with a wicked sense of humor, this is recommended. (S. Axmaker)