Jackie Finds A Way To Make Square Dancing Fun

I appreciate the challenge the producers of Nurse Jackie must have faced in following the titular character's sober season with a true-to-most-addicts'-lives relapse: how could they write new situations to put Jackie in that audiences hadn't already spent the first four seasons watching? So far, Season 6 is not bringing us a lot that's new: Jackie is once again using, once again hiding it from her significant other, and once again hustling to find new sources, particularly now that her most recent dealer has been fired from Jackie's gym.

So? Enter Roman. Distracted by the sight of Coop flirting with a patient, Roman busies herself by trying to look like she's also doing a little flirting of her own, when in fact she's just calling in his prescription to a pharmacy. Maybe if she wasn't multitasking, it might have occurred to Roman not to dictate her DEA number within the hearing of a known drug addict -- recovering, as far as Roman knows, but still -- and of course Jackie uses it to call in a prescription for oxycontin that she intends to pick up with a fake ID, though there's a twenty-four-hour waiting period and instead of boning the pharmacist to get a rush on it, she calls Antoinette. So that's new -- Jackie having some kind of support system that allows her to be honest about her drug cravings. What's not new is Jackie only telling as much of the truth as she needs to in order to get what she wants. However, I feel like Antoinette's frank, generous, seen-it-all attitude will stand Jackie in good stead when the full truth comes out, as it probably inevitably will; in fact, Antoinette very well might assume, based on her own experience as an addict, that Jackie is mostly lying to her anyway.

What Jackie "needs" pills to get through this week is more of the usual: feeling on the outside of her relationship with the girls -- particularly Grace, who's been offered the chance to intern at a friend's perfume factory for the summer, in France. Jackie immediately takes offense at not having been included in discussions about it -- she doesn't know the parents whose villa Grace would be staying in, etc. -- but Kevin knows better than to engage (especially since both girls AND Frank are there), and by mid-episode Jackie has gotten over herself enough to buy Grace a French travel guide, though I suppose there's still plenty of time for the opportunity to fall apart. Keep your drug use on the QT if you don't want to get busted out of your fun trip away from Queens, Grace!

Jackie conveniently gets to blow off meeting up with Kevin to talk about Grace's trip by accepting Frank's invitation to go out for a surprise date which...turns out to be a secret square dancing club full of Brooklyn hipsters. Jackie is admirably game to go along with it and looks like she's actually enjoying herself for real -- and her interest in the activity is only piqued when she sees a fellow dancer dealing. A minimum of chit-chat leads them to the bathroom, where they snort lines of something (he appreciates the chance to do it with someone else, since, he says, his "girlfriend hates this shit"), and then he goes down on her. (Guys, come on. That bathroom is obviously FILTHY and her bare ass should not be on that counter.) The saddest thing about this escapade -- other than that its not exactly an example of Jackie being her best self -- is that she misses most of Frank's turn as a square dance caller! I guess we'll find out next week if he thinks it's odd that, after disappearing to the bathroom for an abnormally long time, Jackie returns in such a good mood that she's twirling around the dance floor alone.

Elsewhere: Ike is disgusted at how All Saints is falling apart (the PA's busted, electrical's shorting out and starting fires, and lights are exploding on patients' heads); Akalitus won a vintage "penis car" in a poker game; and Roman is actually Romanov, and is fluent in Ukrainian, but how closely does it all hew to the Nurse Jackie formula?