Sex, Drugs and Bloody Gore: 'Nurse Jackie,' 'True Blood' Usher in Summer

Source: AOL

Posted: 06/03/09 2:38PM

Filed Under: Television

Edie Falco as Nurse Jackie; Anna Paquin as Sookie Stackhouse. (Astral)

Hearts ripped out of chests, pill-popping zombie nurses and supermodel centaurs are things you associate with Midnight Madness, not the heat of summer. But Showtime's new dark dramedy Nurse Jackie and the second season of Alan Ball’s vampire series True Blood have turned bikini season into a den of debauchery. And we can’t wait for it to heat up even further.

Nurse Jackie, Premieres June 8, 10pm, TMN

Edie Falco, famous for her turn as the long-suffering Carmella Soprano on HBO’s mafia bildungsroman The Sopranos, stars in Nurse Jackie as an RN whose life is anything but orderly. A competent and emotionally mature nurse, Jackie is as comfortable giving hugs to widows as she is at reaming young doctors with too much bravado.

"Your test scores are through the roof, but you’re a total f---ing retard when it comes to patients,” she yells at a handsome new doctor (Peter Facinelli of Twilight) who insists on being called Coop and misdiagnoses one of his patients in the first episode. But Jackie later witnesses Dr. Cooper putting his intuition to good use and doesn't hesitate to tell him that she thinks he's a good doctor, despite his previous error.

Jackie is simultaneously tough and tender; she’s the kind of woman you’d want around if you were dying. These conflicting sweet tart qualities unite the best nurses and are captured perfectly by Falco and Nurse Jackie scribe Evan Dunsky.

Conflict seems to be a theme that runs through Jackie's life - she also displays a heavy case of hypocrisy. Though she takes several hits of painkillers a day, Jackie takes issue with a school nurse who attempts to medicate her daughter's anxiety. And while she scolds the doctors around her for malpractice, she herself almost kills a man by upsetting his life support system while she is high on drugs.

In the aforementioned scenes, Jackie's professionalism cracks to reveal the dysfunction that structures her personal life. The second she enters the hospital doors, she removes her wedding band (if she forgets, she is prompted by her partner in crime, Dr. O’Hara) and proceeds to take a dose of percodan. At lunch time, she engages in her midday tryst with the hospital pharmacist, Eddie (Paul Schulze, a.k.a the priest who had a brief flirtation with Carmella Soprano), who also acts as Jackie's drug pusher. In the evening, she pops her ring back on and returns home to her husband and kids.

As Carmella Soprano, Falco proved she could play moral ambiguity like no other actor on the small screen. Here, she continues the streak, daring the audience to dislike her but seducing them at the same time.

Tony Soprano would no doubt have jumped at the chance to sleep with her.

True Blood, Premieres June 14, 10pm, HBO Canada

While Nurse Jackie remains G-rated in the skin department, True Blood's creators have stepped up the raunch for the show's second season. In one of the first few episodes, we even get to see Anna Paquin’s (Sookie Stackhouse) breasts. Naked. It’s a little gratuitous considering the show has included many sex scenes in the past that don't involve cuts to perky chests; but nonetheless, it is there for the taking.

We start where the last season left off and everyone was worried that the fabulous Lafayette was a goner. Well, he's not, but plenty of other bad stuff happens. For one thing, Sookie’s back basically gets torn off by a centaur-like creature who may or may not be the woman whose house Tara (Rutina Wesley) has been crashing in since last season. Either way, Sam Merlotte (Sam Trammell) has a history with her and he is not happy that she is insinuating herself into his friends' lives.

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One of the few vampires who can out-sexy Brad Pitt in Interview With the Vampire, Bill Compton's (Stephen Moyer) sallow cheeks and tall dark and handsome features set the heart of our TrueBlood heroine aflutter. Telepathic waitress Sookie Stackhouse (Anna Paquin) knows falling for a vampire could mean imminent death, but Compton's old-fashioned charm (he is 173 years old) and passion for the woman who saves his life is too tempting to ignore.

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The blood does not stop boiling there. Jason Stackhouse (Ryan Kwanten) has started wearing his heart on his sleeve as a member of a cult-y religion whose only commandment seems to be bad mouthing vampires. He starts to question the group (they are forming a crack unit called Soldiers of the Sun, for example), but when it turns out the leader’s wife (Anna Camp) looks like Barbie, Jason has second thoughts. With or without V, Jason is one big raging hormone.

Meanwhile Sookie and her vampire lover, Bill Compton (Stephen Moyer) feel some friction, on account of the whole feuding species thing, but, of course, it doesn’t last long (naked chest!). Sam, of course, still holds a candle for his pigment-challenged employee, but soon gets distracted by a skinny-dipping new waitress called Daphne. Something isn't entirely kosher about her, though, and she has a big old scar on her back that suggests she’s had some dealings with the aforementioned centaur.

All in all, a promising looking season. Let’s just hope the centaur doesn’t step up the gore. Sookie’s eviscerated back was a bit more than we could handle. Those surgery shows are less bloody than that.

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