(S01E02) Nurse Jackie is such an interesting show. Just about every scene has both drama and humor, though sometimes it leans more one way than the other. Like the opening scene with Jackie cutting her hubby's hair that ends up with them having sex on the kitchen floor:

Kevin: "What am I rolling around on down here?"
Jackie: "Fruity Pebbles."
Kevin: "Feels more like Cap'n Crunch."

You do have to wonder how Jackie is able to function so well doing all those drugs. I guess she's built up a tolerance level, but it sort of drove the point home when hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus accidentally swiped some of Jackie's Percocet-laced Sweet-N-All and ended up loopy.

On Jackie's friendship with Dr. Eleanor O'Hara -- they seem so mismatched, but maybe that's why it works. They're certainly two very different types of people. Jackie doesn't mind grabbing a hotdog on the street; Eleanor would rather dine in a fine restaurant. It's a sort of gritty Sex and the City-type friendship.

Some of the storylines seem ER-ish to me; then again, anything can happen in a hospital setting. Like the guy who slaps Jackie because it turns out his morbidly obese mom just lost her legs and now he has to take care of her. You'd think Jackie would be royally ticked about the whole thing, but she isn't. She understands that he's got a tough road ahead, so she makes the cops take off his cuffs, then orders someone to get social services there to help him. "We're gonna help you, Louis," she says.

And she's beautifully blunt about things. When Nurse Zoey says she doesn't know if she can handle the job, Jackie says, "This job is wading through a shit-storm of people who come into this place on the very worst day of their life ... buck up. If you need to cry, go do it in the lady's room."

In some ways, Nurse Jackie follows other hospital shows like ER and Grey's Anatomy (yes, Grey's Anatomy), in that each episode (so far anyway), includes a mix of personal stuff and patients. Tonight, the patients included a woman who burned her face off while smoking near her oxygen tank, a skateboarder who suffered a head injury because his mom wanted to get a nice helmet-free photo with his long hair, and a cab driver who keels over, prompting Jackie to give him her last dose of Percocet.

But this is Showtime, so the quality is kicked up several notches, and it's clear that Edie Falco is already knocking this role out of the park. You'd think there would be some soul-searching on Jackie's part, what with practically leading a double life with the hospital sex and drugs. We'll see where all that leads.

I like the fact that you can't really predict (so far anyway) what's going to happen. When Dr. Cooper "heard" the abdominal aneurysm on the skater-boy, I didn't really know if he was being the clueless doc we saw in the first episode, or if he knew what he was talking about. Turns out he knew what he was talking about, for which Jackie gave him kudos, resulting in an awkward hug on his part.

Nurse Jackie has already been picked up for a second season, so I guess Showtime has high hopes that it will go the distance. What did you think of this episode?