Jackie's skills with an apple bong really came in handy when she taught a cancer patient how to smoke pot on 'Nurse Jackie' (Mon., 10PM ET on Showtime).

"You're gonna take a deep breath and hold it for a minute," she told him. And voila! He actually feels hungry. Yep, that's how it works. Nursing at its best.

Watch the video after the jump.

Whoa! I did NOT see that coming. One of the cases on last night's episode of Mercy was a woman suspected of having rabies after feeding a raccoon. So they brought the raccoon in to have it checked out. It was supposed to be dead, thanks to a poison apple and some peanut butter, but when the lid came off the styrofoam cooler, the coon jumped out and started running around the hospital floor.

Just the idea of a raccoon with rabies is creepy enough, but add in letting it loose in a hospital and the creep factor goes way up.

(S01E01) I often get complaints from my registered nurse parents about the inaccuracy of hospital drama shows. Don't even get me started on how much my mother hates Grey's Anatomy. I came to Hawthorne with hesitation: can the show balance the drama with the medical cases? I was surprised how well the show balanced meetings, patients, and outlying drama.

Anyone else think that Jada Pinkett Smith deserves a better career than she's gotten? Her IMDB page screams regrettable movies that didn't showcase her acting skills. I loved watching her in Hawthorne and truly think she can handle Oscar-caliber roles.

It's getting hard to remember all of these TV shows, isn't it? Right now we have both The Mentalist and Mental, and this fall we'll have CBS' Miami Trauma, which shouldn't be confused with another show, NBC's Trauma. And then there's The Good Wife, which isn't the same as The Goode Family.

We have about 27 new medical shows to keep track of this fall. Here's the other NBC hospital show coming this fall, Mercy. It stars Michelle Trachtenberg, James LeGros, Delroy Lindo, Jaime Lee Kirchner, and Taylor Schilling and follows each story through the eyes of the nurses. Maybe they'll like this show more than they like Nurse Jackie.

Mere hours after the series premiered on the cable net, Showtime has renewed Nurse Jackie for a second season. Why so fast, you might wonder? Well, Showtime could point to the biggest premiere since 2004, but because it was on pay cable the total number of viewers is less than two million. Those are the kind of numbers that would get it canceled on USA or TNT, not to mention ABC or CBS, but for Showtime it's excellent.

Excellent is also what a majority of TV critics and bloggers -- including Jane -- had to say about the Edie Falco dark comedy. Some were more effusive than others, but for all intents and purposes, the press was pro-Jackie from the get-go. But not everyone loved the show. Nurses complained loudly about the depiction of their profession.

I don't look for accuracy when it comes to professions on TV shows, even if that profession is a real-life profession too. So if I were to watch Nurse Jackie and see her popping Vicodin, I wouldn't say to myself, "hey, that's what all nurses might do!" I also don't think that all Madison Avenue advertising guys cheat on their wives (Mad Men) and I don't think that all politicians can fly (Heroes). I do, however, think that all of the hot women you see on those late-night chat line ads really do represent the type of women you'll talk to when you call.

But nurses are upset over Showtime's new Edie Falco show Nurse Jackie.

One of the Golden Girls has died.

Estelle Getty, who played Bea Arthur's mother (even though Arthur was a year older in real life) on the NBC hit comedy Golden Girls (which also starred Betty White and Rue McClanahan), passed away this morning in Los Angeles. Getty was 84 years old and had been suffering from a disease known as Lewy Body Dementia for a number of years.

Getty appeared in several other TV shows over the years, including the Golden Girls spinoff The Golden Palace (which also starred a young Don Cheadle), Empty Nest, Nurses, Brotherly Love, Mad About You, Touched By An Angel, Blossom, Newhart, Hotel, and many others. She also appeared in the movies Tootsie, Mask, Mannequin, and Stop Or My Mom Will Shoot!

Interesting trivia: Getty played her Sophia Petrillo character in no less than five different shows: Golden Girls, Empty Nest, The Golden Palace, Nurses, and Blossom. That's gotta be some sort of record. She also played a character named Sophia in an episode of Ladies Man in 2000, though the character had a different last name.

Courtesy of The Hollywood Reporter, here's some more casting news for upcoming network pilots:

Eliza Dushku will star in Nurses, a new dramedy pilot for FOX. Dushku joins Drew Sidora, who was also recently cast.

Nikki Cox will star in Fugly, a new comedy pilot for CBS, written by My Name if Earl creator Greg Garcia, about three sisters who decide to purchase one of them an extreme makeover.

Oliver Platt, last seen in the Showtime series Huff, will star in the ABC comedy pilot The Thick of It, about workers for a low-level congressman. The show is executive produced by Arrested Development creator Mitchell Hurwitz and based on the British comedy of the same name.

Chris Lowell (Veronica Mars) will join previously cast Tim Daly and Taye Diggs in the two-hour Grey's Anatomy episode meant to serve as a springboard to a possible Grey's Anatomy spinoff.

Steve Howey of Reba has been cast in The Beast, about a womanizing veterinarian who hates animals. Tucker Cawley, a writer and executive producer for Everybody Loves Raymond, will also write and executive produce the comedy pilot for FOX. The series is based on the British comedy Beast.

Fox has given the green light to three pilots that could appear on the network's fall schedule. The pilots are hour-long dramas about lawyers, nurses, and law clerks.

Canterbury's Law is about a "headstrong female defense attorney" who practically bends the law to get justice for her innocent clients. Supreme Courtships (arrrgh, what a dumb name) is an ensemble dramedy about the personal lives of six U.S. Supreme Court clerks. The untitled nurse project is another ensemble dramedy about nurses in a big-city hospital.

I think this is indicative of one of the main problems in television these days. Everything is either crime or medical. How many freakin' lawyer shows do we need? They're not that interesting! And I am sick to death of anything set in a hospital. At least with Heroes and Lost we have original settings and situations.

(S13E06) So, in the case of Ames vs. Kovac, the jury found in favor of the defendant. Shocker. What, Luka gets to keep his job? What will ER do now? Hi, I'm Jen, and I am reviewing ER this week for Rich Keller, who has a really cool gig tonight. In the interest of full disclosure, despite my opening snarkiness, I am a fervent, weekly fan of ER, and have been for years.

Poor Sam. First she breaks up with Luka, then she's kidnapped by her psycho ex-husband and is forced to kill him in cold blood. But things might be looking up for Linda Cardellini's character.

TV Guide is reporting that Kip Pardue is being brought on to the show as a love interest for Sam. He'll play a resident nurse.

You might not know the name, but Pardue (real name: Kevin Ian Pardue - that's where the Kip comes from) has been in on several TV shows, including House and 7th Heaven, and in movies such as Remember The Titans and The Rules of Attraction. Here's his IMDB page. The pics are all of the same person? He doesn't look the same in any two of them.