What's with all of the new nurse shows on telly? Not one, not two, but three of them. Showtime's "Nurse Jackie," the dark tragicomedy with the scarily good/bad Percocet-snorting nurse played by Edie Falco, which premiered last summer, will be back. The notion of the talented but addicted caregiver is nothing new -- consider "House" -- but maybe the female perspective is. Do the House and Nurse Jackie characters serve as metaphors for our ailing health system or do functional junkies merely make for a rollicking story? Falco herself is as scarily good as her character; I once spent 45 bucks and a wrenching two hours watching her calmly prepare to kill herself in "Night, Mother" on Broadway, and when the curtain fell I was too pole-axed to move.
Despite its lousy reviews and gag-inducing capitalization, "HawthoRNe," which premiered on TNT last summer with the impossibly gorgeous and conveniently widowed title character played by Jada Pinkett Smith, is also back. And NBC is premiering another nurse series, "Mercy."
Of course, the collective unconscious is always percolating in pop culture -- it was passing strange when two movies about Truman Capote, who was passing strange himself, came out about the same time a few years ago. You have to wonder if the producers of this trio of nurse dramas knew about the others and decided the more catheters the merrier. I wonder, too, if the sudden popularity of nurse shows has to do with the languishing economy. Were they being developed before the recession gained traction? Maybe people are sick of rich narcissists and crave pink-collar stories. Shows about paramedics, "Trauma," and a community college, "Community," are also premiering this fall.
The woman who created "Mercy," Liz Heldens, told TVGuide.com, "These girls are drinking beer in New Jersey, not martinis in Manhattan. I mean, look, they manage to pull it together and look fantastic but they don't have a lot of money." (Form-fitting scrubs alert, guys.)
It's interesting to note that "HawthoRNe" is on the same cable station, TNT, as "The Closer," about a relationship-challenged top homicide investigator, and "Saving Grace," about a gifted detective who drinks (Holly Hunter, still working that determined little chin). All star females in their 40s or almost. Is the highly competent woman professional with a spectacularly messed up personal life becoming a cliche? And why do network channels have so few shows with females in the lead?
Of course, nursing stories have been around since Clara Barton and probably before. Does anybody else remember TV's "Nurse," with Michael Learned, and the "Cherry Ames, Student Nurse" book series, which by the way is back in print? How I loved Cherry's starched white cap! The new Nurseapalooza, as a blogger dubbed it, comes at a time when our population is aging and the shortage of nurses is so severe that we might have to import foreign nurses to fill jobs, especially at nursing homes.
A friend who left nursing says she hates to see anyone go into it because the instinct to nurture that drives people into the profession to start with is often frustrated by overwhelming paperwork, overwork, hours that don't jibe well with family life, salaries not commensurate with the stress and dedication entailed, and chronic back pain from having to hoist increasingly heavy patients.
I take her point, but having spent considerable time at loved ones' hospital bedsides, I have a different perspective. When the nurse dispenses kindness, competence and cheer along with the Darvocet, I'm so flooded with gratitude that I'd love to see the new nurse shows -- inaccurate as their portrayals of the profession may be -- encourage bighearted people to go into nursing.
Christian, a former Dubuquer, is a Des Moines writer whose e-mail address is rebecca.christian@mchsi.com. She and Katherine Fischer authored, "That's Our Story and We're Sticking to It!" which is published by the TH and available through THonline.com.
