Nurse Jackie: Daffodil

From its objective description, "Daffodil" seems like it would be a nightmare of a Nurse Jackie episode. There's a lot of Mrs. Akalitus, a double dose of Gay Stereotype Theater and at least two stalled plots. While it won't have viewers waking up in a cold sweat, it also isn't much of a pleasant surprise, either. "Daffodil" is a thoroughly middling episode. It devotes too much time to the wrong things but has enough of what makes the show good to save it from being a complete disaster.

Pulling a night shift, Jackie is forced to juggle a lot of extra headaches on top of her usual patient-related troubles. Things at home have only gotten worse as Grace's anxiety issues deepen. Jackie fixates on a particularly sad drawing depicting a sunless Florida beach while Grace's every move seems to be an expression of frustration. This episode handles Jackie's gradual realization of her daughter's condition rather well, using meaningful analogs at the hospital to do what less original approaches (like the sad drawings) have only partly demonstrated.

One of the two (sorta three) patients of the night was a woman with Lupus (House fans are probably laughing their asses off about that one). The patient herself doesn't say a word, but that's because the thread is really about her 10-year-old daughter who has essentially acted as her primary caregiver. The fact that she's the same age as Grace is a little on-the-nose, but otherwise the parallels are nicely oblique.

The B-plot of the night surrounds Dr. Cooper's kinda sad attempts to get chummy with pharmacist Eddie. Coop seems to have a lot of hidden depth, his social awkwardness and everything-to-prove mindset are both fairly disarming behind his charm and good looks. As he unknowingly stymies Jackie and Eddie's every attempt to get together, it's hard to hate Coop but not so much to feel sorry for him.

The off-tone C-plot follows Mrs. Akalitus, the hospital administrator character that need not be, as she walks around being a one-dimensional battleaxe all night. At the end of the episode she accidentally tases herself and I think we're supposed to find this funny, but really it just feels like a waste of time.

What was funny and not so much a waste was our other patient, a Ukrainian man who suffers from a stroke. Unable to talk for himself, his bitter, argumentative family lays into Jackie at every opportunity. The resolution was nice, with Jackie making him some profane flash cards to shut his wife up.

The episode closes with a scene that is at once touching and a little tacked-on. Jackie instructs the 10-year-old Lupus girl on how to cut a Percocet in half and give it to her mother with some juice. At the same time, Jackie administers that very procedure to herself. While it was well-acted and creative, I can't help but feel that Jackie's drug abuse is often shoehorned into episodes. The story didn't focus on Jackie's addiction tonight, so they had to shove a pill scene in at the end.

Best Moment: For all its tacked-on-ness, the pill scene was still pretty cool.

Notes: Zoey's dinner with Dr. O'Hara was unexpectedly interesting. For all my hate in her direction, I'm starting to like what they're doing with Zoey's character.

Episode Rating: 3.5/5- I could have done without the Thor bits. Heck, I could do without the Thor character in general. Ditto Mrs. Akalitus. Otherwise, the plot progression in this episode was subtle but meaningful. Nurse Jackie is good when it's understated.