And Don't Forget the Return of Nurse Jackie

Showtime broadcasts season four of Nurse Jackie this evening (9 pm EST).  Yes, after everything she has put herself and her family through the first three seasons, she is still with us.  Without giving too much away, let's just say relationships and drugs continue to be a problem for Jackie.  Enough said.  

I like this 2009 New York magazine commentary on the first season (particularly the comparison to Hawkeye Pierce), which equally applies as we go into this latest season: 

It’ll be interesting to see how audiences react to such a female character: Like Mad Men’s Don Draper, Jackie is never entirely knowable. She’s a charismatic cipher, a con woman in the scrubs of a saint—loving but manipulative, with a trickster’s impulses. Hugh Laurie’s Dr. House is one obvious analog; Jackie’s got a bit of Hawkeye Pierce in her too—a sharp-elbowed player who earns her sanctimony with the intelligence of her outrage. But the fact that she’s a woman, and a mother, is unsettling and new for TV: With her hair in flattened porcupine prickles, eyes squinting shrewdly, Falco’s bold, aggressive adult physicality (and her sneaky, bossy sexuality) is a welcome jolt in a universe of coltish supermodels. When the first episode mimics Mad Men’s final-curtain revelation, it’s a jolt to realize that this is a working mom who is perpetually stoned.