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Nurse Jackie – Heart Review: Jackie Deals With Grace and Their Family Drama

The most recent episode of Nurse Jackie centers primarily on Jackie and her family that is falling apart once again. On the bright side, she and Kevin seem to be getting along a bit better as they've dealt with the crisis involving Grace and the boy that she has continued to date behind their back. In the final scene of the previous episode, we saw Grace doing drugs with him, and in this episode, Kevin finds drugs in her backpack, causing serious alarm for him and Jackie. At first, Kevin assumes that they belong to Jackie and that she has started to use again, but Jackie soon gets Grace to confess and forces her to spend the day with her at the hospital. Jackie wants Grace to be exposed to all of the people and hear stories of people in the hospital that have been hurt due to drugs, in order to understand the dangerous consequences of what she has been doing. As Eddie points out to Grace, the fact that her mom is a drug user has altered her a bit, causing her to be more likely to use herself. This often does seem to be the case, but one would think after someone sees how a drug affects them and hurts their family, they would not want to do it themselves.


Jackie and Frank are shown in bed together as the episode starts, but we do not see them together after that due to the complications with Grace that last throughout the episode. She invites Frank to stay over and he says he wants to, after telling her that he loves her in an awkward and surprising moment for Jackie and audiences. Frank later finds out that Kevin is over late at night and angrily tells her that he will talk to her later and hangs up. It is obvious that Frank cares about Jackie a lot and wants to treat her right, while expecting the same in return. In what could be a sign that Jackie wants to be more serious with him and not have extra things getting in the way, Jackie decides in a final moment of the episode to let Grace and Fiona live with Kevin. He does not want to let her do this simply due to one incident, knowing how much she cares about the girls. Audiences see a whole new side to Kevin, expressing his great concern for Grace and even wanting Jackie to be happy.

Dr. Roman and Dr. Prentiss continue to interact in a strange way; Dr. Roman has graduated from leeching off of Dr. Cooper to shadowing Dr. Prentiss as she continues to learn important lessons about being a doctor. Dr. Cooper accuses her of sleeping with Dr. Prentiss to advance her career, but Dr. Roman does seem like she is trying to improve her ways, especially compared to how she acted previously in this season. She even remarks to him that she had not thought about sleeping with him, but that seems like an interesting way to tease Dr. Cooper. Dr. Roman assists with a patient who has a problem with their eye, Zoe attempts to cheer him up and distract him from his pain, by joking around and showing him that wearing an eye patch can be fun. 


Other than this scene and a couple others sprinkled throughout the episode, there is little shown of the hospital, and Jackie does almost nothing as a nurse. When she is outside with Grace someone approaches them; he is in a great deal of pain. Grace is forced to help her mother by going inside to get a doctor and a gurney to wheel him into the hospital, giving her a bit of a shock in how real and intense her mother's job can be. After Gloria's encounter with Jackie and Eddie in the previous episode, she comes strutting into the hospital in a good mood. Gloria is acting surprisingly lucid and has not been so positive in years, which is great to see for her character. Thor helps Gloria set her up with a Spotify account, which gets her excited although she has no idea what she is doing. It is funny to watch as Jackie has never heard of Spotify, and Gloria asks to make sure that she is not doing something illegal. Jackie brings Grace to the two of them in order for them to talk some sense into her too during Grace's dramatic tour of the hospital.

Throughout the episode, Jackie and Kevin continue to deal with Grace and her drug problem involving her older boyfriend. At one point, Kevin even goes to the boyfriend's apartment and lets him know that he is her father and that he is not allowed to see his daughter anymore, being very aggressive about it. It is nice to see Kevin so helpful and assertive in assisting with their daughter while taking command as a father. Jackie and Kevin are able to get along again, focusing on the love of their daughter and wanting to make things right for her, which is also good. We are again forced to feel bad for Frank, as he is simply caught in the middle of their family drama and unable to do anything about it.


Their family is getting along, but there are still problems, and Jackie seems to think that the best decision is to hand over the girls to Kevin in order to hopefully prevent Grace from continuing to use drugs. In another interesting twist of events, Zoe and Dr. Prentiss are also seen in bed together at the end of the episode. This was fairly unexpected, as we have seen Zoe flirting with him for the past couple episodes, but Dr. Prentiss has taken little notice of it. Gloria confronted them about his behavior (Zoe being brought off the floor to act as his assistant by organizing his office) and assured them that it was not to happen again. After this, Zoe stormed out of the room and somehow in the next scene, the two were in bed. This was surprising to see and it's very weird to see the two of them together; I am curious to see how it will affect them at work. In the last episode before the finale, there are certainly a number of things that have occurred, setting us up for an exciting finale. There are a number of things that need to be resolved after this episode concludes, but possibly not for another season.

Thoughts and Quotes

-- Frank: "I love you. You know that, right?" He surprises Jackie and the audience with a loaded statement that she was clearly not ready to hear yet. He has clearly fallen for her too quickly, especially with all of the issues still going on in her life.

-- Grace: "Just because my mom is good at her job doesn't mean she is a good person." Grace tries in vain to defend herself, denying her drug use and blaming her mother because of her previous history. This does not seem like a good idea, Grace...

-- Thor: "You are him, Grace. Half the people in here are detoxing. Let's go see how that smells." Thor shows Grace a patient who will be paralyzed from the neck down due to being drugged and being in an accident.

-- After Grace gets a text that Kevin shoved her boyfriend into a wall, Jackie replies by saying, "Well I'm sure if he's texting, he's probably fine." Jackie and Kevin are certainly not afraid to show some forceful action in order to get Grace in line, and this is good to see. Jackie certainly cares about Grace and just does not want her to make the same mistakes that she did.

-- Gloria: "Dr. Prentiss, Zoe is not your assistant and I have a problem with taking a nurse off of the floor to help a doctor with his administrative work."

-- Zoe: "I was actually thinking of the hospital, not about you (Dr. Prentiss), global, not local, not personal." A very strange statement certainly, weird way for Zoe to defend herself, I'd say...

-- Zoe wants to assure Dr. Prentiss that she actually cares about what they are doing and says, "Can I just say...that I'm not the nurse who goes home with a doctor after a bad day..." Still not sure how I feel about this relationship; they are two of the most likable characters on the show though and it could be interesting to see them together.

Rating
8.8

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