So lets talk Sunday night. It may be my lazy day for coasting around the house in a comfortable pair of sweats, and drinking copious amounts of coffee, but it is also a wonderful night of television. Such a smorgasbord of shows that my TiVo is whirs with excitement. Shows on cable (including my faves Showtime and HBO), run their shows in waves during their seasons. So as one series is ending, another begins, there are always new flavors and varieties.
At this point on Sundays two shows I adore on Showtime have just ended a couple of weeks ago, Nurse Jackie and The Big C. Nurse Jackie (Edie Falco)is a woman I truly am in love with. She is surly of character, drug addicted, very flawed, and yet basically has a good heart and is kind to her patients. She is a leader of the working class, and completely skilled in operating around management, well until this year. Last year poor Jackie hit bottom, split from her husband Kevin( Dominic Fumusa), and had her ex-lover Eddie (Paul Schulze) trying to befriend her husband. Jackie struggled to get the drugs she needed. The new season starts as Jackie is in rehab, trying to make an honest recovery.
Though I have heard Edie Falco sees her performances as dramatic, the performances are very funny. Cynical and tough Nurse Jackie moves sarcastically through her life. The supporting characters really provide humor. Peter Facinelli (who is doing great work in The Twilight Sagas as Dr. Carlisle Cullen), plays a doctor in this show too. He is the bumbling and socially inadequate Dr. Cooper. Dr. Cooper has a type of turrets where, when he nervous, he grabs the nearest nurses' breasts. He is becoming endearing. Jackie's best friend Dr. Eleanor O'Hara (Eve Best), is very rich and very British. She has been pregnant all season and recently just gave birth. She was artificially inseminated, which concerns her, as she believes Cooper may know her donor. O'Hara has mostly tried to be a force for good around Jackie (though she has practiced tough love when needed), as has Administrator Mrs. Gloria Akalitus. She is Jackie's enabling boss, demoted this season to floor nurse. The supporting cast is marvelous, Zoey (Merritt Wever) who is a new novice nurse, from the community college, and is now Jackie's roommate. Thor (Steven Wallem) and Mo Mo (Haas Sleiman) play male nurses to round the out the emergency room staff. I just can't wait for season 5.
The Big C is stranger each year. Cathy Jamison(Laura Linney) is an uptight school teacher who has discovered she has cancer, stage 4 melanoma. Personally, I think Cathy in her original form would have been too rigid and formal for my personal tastes. She has now had an affair, and confuses her family with her weird behavior. Cancer seems to have made her incredibly human, selfish and actually someone I could more relate to. I don't know what that says about me.
She is married to Paul (Oliver Platt) who last season had a heart attack and recovered to begin his own weird journey as a motivational speaker. They have a 15-16 year old son named Adam (Gabriel Basso). The last few seasons he has been left to his own devices(mostly sexual). Cathy has a brother who chose to drop out of society. Sean Tolke(John Benjamin Hickey) was homeless until Cathy gave him a house across the street to live in. The second season he got pregnant with none other than Sex and the City's, Cynthia Nixon (Rebecca). The baby died in womb and Rebecca went off on her own again. Sean had a relationship with a husband and wife this year, and seems to get a lot of sexual action. Cathy made friends with one of her students that lives with the Jamisons, Andrea (Gabourey Sidbe) She is really my favorite character, besides Sean. She seems to have more common sense that most of the adults. This year she was assistant to Paul, until she told him to "put it where the sun don't shine".(paraphrase)
This year Susan Sarandon (Bull Durham, Rocky Horror Picture Show) guest starred as a motivational speaker, and later was hit by a bus. This show puzzled me, until I realized they are covering the 5 stages of death, one each season; denial, anger, bargaining, depression and then acceptance. This year was bargaining. Cathy the main character, is really unlikable, though you want to feel sympathy for her. I guess I have judged Cathy in her journey. Her husband Paul Jamison, is a character you can like and have compassion for. He now has a successful career in motivational speaking and is coming in to his own. He was rather like a sad, limp man the first couple of seasons. Adam discovered God, and got disapproval from Cathy. He used religion as a way to cope with his parents illnesses and his life. So Cathy's husband and son find their own strengths as they go forward. Cathy and Paul separate this year, Paul says, "I don't know if I can do another 40 years of this." (again with the paraphrase) Originally Cathy did not tell her family she had cancer, they were left out as she floundered around and looked erratic. The writing is good, the story is clever, and I watch each week. I am not sure if I really like show. I will watch it next year to see what happens to these characters.
I could go on, but I think I will save the many shows I love on Sundays, for future blogs; Army Wives, Drop Dead Diva, Weeds, Dexter, Episodes, Walking Dead, and many more. This blog would become at least a novella. Though I am dying to cover Army Wives. I am loving the casting that goes into these programs. Let me say just this. Years ago I used to watched a show called Life goes on, with Kelli Martin, and Patty LuPone. Well this week Army Wives brought Kelli and Patty together again, as mother and daughter. I will cover it more on my next blog, but it is like dessert. You know the really rich kind that you don't often indulge in, but when you do it is bliss. So that is all for now, I am working on getting a site set up for this blog. I will have more information later. I am also wanting to have theme weeks, the first being the horror genre. So keep watching this blog this is only the bare beginning.
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