Jackie Peyton Falco is an ER nurse in a New York hospital who has back problems, and snorts OxyContin and other stuff for relief. She remains competent on the job - and seems to suggest her addiction has saved her from the unemployment line. Jackie's a dichotomy: cynical and profane but also loving and idealistic. A grade school nun told her that the people with "the greatest capacity for good
the greatest capacity for evil." A description, perhaps, of our heroine? She berates a glib doctor, Dr. Fitch "Coop" Cooper who misdiagnosed a bike messenger's fatal injuries. But she's also got a boyfriend at the hospital, Eddie , who supplies her with drugs and sex.
Meanwhile, there's some gold-plated Broadway talent on screen, notably Tony nominee Eve Best as Jackie's friend, Dr. Eleanor O'Hara; and playwright Anna Deavere Smith as hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus.
And that theme song? Dionne Warwick singing the Dory and Previn title song from 1967's "Valley of the Dolls."
BOTTOM LINE: Showtime's comedies - or at least " Weeds," "Californication" and now this one - have the whole God-Is-Dead thing down to a science. The universe is indifferent and so, by association, are their characters. They fornicate, get high and find time to craft one-liners that draw blood. "I don't like 'chatty,' " Jackie spits at an eager underling. "Quiet and mean - those are my people."
As she prepared to do her first post-"Sopranos" series, Edie Falco was looking for a New York-based show that would guarantee a stable home life for her and her young son and daughter, Anderson and Macy.
"And I wanted to be involved a lot," she adds. "On 'The Sopranos,' I would show up every third day and hear about things that happened while I wasn't there, and I hated that!" "The Sopranos" was not a committee project, she notes. David Chase was the undisputed auteur.
"It was totally his show, and I trusted that. So he told me to do this and wear this, and I said 'OK.' But now they're saying, 'What do you think Jackie should do, and what should she wear?' And I say, 'I have no idea.' And then I say, 'What if she wore pink shoes?' And they say, 'C'mon, let's try it.' I wanted her to have short hair - because I could. I was going to cut my hair, anyway."
0 comments:
Post a Comment