Medical Waste

Thanks to Nurse Jackie and her fellow summer medical shows I have learned that doctors are stupid and will no doubt kill you given half the chance. Your only hope is a medical maverick. It's lucky that this summer is chock full of 'em!

I was excited about Edie Falco's return to TV. She's a fantastic actress and Nurse Jackie doesn't disappoint on that front. Falco's title character is frank and well worn. Even with what feels like a clichéd drug problem (so far it really seems like a problem-ish), she's real person bitchy, not House-level anti-social. She's likable, maybe even lovable, but I have no desire to become a regular viewer. For all its critical acclaim, the show's really nothing special. There's a stable full of stock characters - sassy gay nurse (though I do love Haaz Sleiman), overly emotional young nurse and lazily incompetent doctor (a wasted Peter Facinelli). The episode ended with a Mad Man-style reveal that pharmacist-screwing Jackie has a sweet husband and two little girls. Shock me, shock me, shock me with your predictable twist ending.

Speaking of sassy gay nurses (oh my bad, Ray's apparently a straight male nurse with no game), overly emotional young nurses ("Will I cry everyday?"), lazily incompetent doctors and the rule-bending bad-ass nurse who is better than them all... Jada Pinkett Smith is bringing her unique brand of intensity to TNT with HawthoRNe. Like Jackie, she's got one sane doctor with whom she can commiserate (hers is played by Michael Vartan!), but unlike her pill-snorting counterpart, she also has an angry teenage daughter, an angry mother-in-law and a dead husband. Thank God when she talks to that urn, it doesn't talk back.

HawthoRNe is benign. Our main character is smarter than everyone and we're never allowed to forget it. This makes for boring (and a weirdly preachy) entertainment. Also boring? Hawthorne's BFF having a deep, dark secret that is quickly revealed to be a prosthetic leg that her would-be beau is ambivalent about. No more damaged goods moping - the cute paramedic doesn't mind dating a hot amputee! Snooze. And I don't buy everyone being okay with one of the nurses doling out handjobs to returning war heroes.

You know what else I don't buy? Dr. Hank Lawson being fired for "letting" a rich friend of the hospital die while saving a more critical patient. I guess that's because the system is broken, man. Hank cares about patients, okay? So if you don't, you better go straight to hell. I now regret calling HawthoRNe preachy because Ms. Pinkett-Smith ain't got nothing on Mark Feuerstein's haughty Dr. Lawson. That's right, I said "haughty." After being blacklisted by the medical elite and dumped by his faintly sketched fiancé, he goes to the Hamptons with his brother and ends up saving a bunch of people (MacGyver-style, which is cool the first time, convenient the second time and laughable every time after that) and becoming a concierge doctor. This could be really fun lifestyle porn, but instead it turns into Hank's soapbox. We get to listen to him sound off on hospital bureaucracy, bad parenting and other crap you really don't care about.