MovieChat Forums > Nurse Jackie (2009) Discussion > I have never detested a lead character i...

I have never detested a lead character in a series...


....as much as I detest Jackie. She has one good quality, she is a good nurse....but it is not enough to redeem her. She is a total POS that should man up and spike a double load and just get it over with.

Cancel my subscription to the Resurrection. Send my credentials to the house of detention.

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I liked her until she popped that pill before her one year sobriety celebration.

Liked her less while she was in her 'diversion' phase, she thinks she is god and the only one who can do the job well, she knows everything (or thinks she does), rules don't apply to her and I think she will do the biggest dirty to Eddie in the end.

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ITA Magpie55, that pill after everything everyone went through to help her achieve that one year (and everything she went through) was definitely a turning point as a viewer. I agree with everything else you said too.

I rewatched a season 4 episode recently and Jackie was still likeable then. Season 5 she was becoming unlikeable. But taking that pill at the end of 5, and then what she did to Antoinette, all the Nancy Wood stuff and the way she spoke to Zoey when Zoey confronted her about it in season 6 had me hating her. I don't really want her to die, or think she has to, but I would like to see her in jail for her criminal offenses.

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I agree. That was completely disappointing. Everyone went out of their way to help her and she was probably planning to use again the whole time.

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I think most addicts want to stop taking drugs and try to help themselves. Jackie doesn't want to stop, she never did. She was just jonesing until she got her license back. The Jackie character is just a loathsome slug.

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[deleted]

I think she has 2 good qualities:

1. shes an excellent nurse when shes not too drugged up( from last season)

2. She is a good person and will help people out as so long as it doesnt
interfere with her getting/take/staying on drugs.She has helped so many people remember? She clearly wants to do good.

Jackie isnt a monster. Shes a good person with a monster on her back.



If Jackie is a good person as long as it doesn't interfere with her getting/taking/staying on drugs, that would be never. We really have no way to know for sure if she was a good person before the drugs because we didn't see her then.

Jackie needed some leverage to get her job and her license back so she goaded Gloria into firing and "humiliating" her in front of everyone. Gloria is someone who protected Jackie by throwing away a urine sample, which Gloria later lost her job over. This and lying to Gloria to get pills is how Jackie shows her appreciation. Diagnosing Gloria's memory problem is the only thing I can think of where she helped someone for unselfish reasons.

Has she been a good person since she's been sober? She stole drugs from elderly people and then sold them. She's lied to and constantly manipulated Zoey, someone she knows would do anything for her.

Outside of acting in her capacity as a nurse, Jackie's rarely helped anyone without there being some benefit to herself. Some of her dealings in a nursing capacity aren't so great either. Remember the guy with all the drugs who had a seizure or something in an early season. After stealing his drugs Jackie told the paramedics to take him to another hospital further away. That wasn't in the patient's best interest.

How does she clearly want to do good? She doesn't even think her drug use is a problem.

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If Jackie is a good person as long as it doesn't interfere with her getting/taking/staying on drugs, that would be never. We really have no way to know for sure if she was a good person before the drugs because we didn't see her then.


IMO, being an addict doesn't make someone a "good" person nor a "bad person" - it makes him/her an unhealthy/sick person. And Jackie happens to be high up on the spectrum of drug abusers, in terms of how her addiction has affected her life (e.g., her relationships, her work, her health, etc.). I don't see her as a 'bad' person. Addicts are people who can behave badly, whether it's while they're under the influence or in withdrawal...

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[deleted]

Arent you forgetting something Polaris?? Jackie and Eddie looking out for Gloria when she started to forget things? it turned out it was a reaction to her medication?
This was something that was worrying Gloria- and could have gotten her dismissed from All Saints for health reasons. Jackie saved her and her career.


I didn't forget, I wrote
Diagnosing Gloria's memory problem is the only thing I can think of where she helped someone for unselfish reasons.


Also remember shen she and eddie went to see that guy who could buy drugs off of eddie? She wasnt going thru with the deal until they helped that person out in the waiting room. She was sober then too.


But as soon as they did help the woman, Jackie had no trouble going through with the deal to sell drugs she stole from seniors and Eddie stole from his work to a pill mill, likely where the woman got the drugs she OD'd on in the first place. She didn't give that woman a second thought when Eddie told her how much money they'd gotten, or stop to feel guilty about contributing to the problem. Nice lady that Jackie.


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I think that Jackie only helped Gloria out with her memory problem because Gloria was one of her enablers, someone she could manipulate, without her around then someone new in that position could have made many more problems for her.

This show is billed as a comedy, but to me it is a psychological drama. I like all the twists and turns. but Jackie is no nice lady!

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Im sure if you rewatch the series you would see more and more instances that she did good things- both while sober and not. however I have noticed that she has a much better track record sober.


I am realizing as I type this that it might sound a little bit - I dunno - nerdy or something. But one of the things I recall most from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People is the whole emotional bank account thing. Just because you're making daily deposits (the good things that you do for a relationship) doesn't necessarily mean that you're not still overdrawn (the bad things you've already done, or your drafts).

If you withdraw like $10,000 from your account (which Jackie has done more than once, literally) - which for me is an instance like when she purposely let Gloria run over her foot and supply her with drugs out of guilt - you can turn around and do a number of relatively good things for Gloria and still be WAY in the red from Gloria's standpoint even over months and years. But Gloria doesn't even know that or the half - which is why as a viewer I view Jackie even more harshly.

The thing is, just by using every day and compromising her integrity little by little, Jackie was canceling out all of the good things she does that are her JOB to do (a noble endeavor but still a vocation). And then the big things started to add up to where there's really no resolving it unless she really makes a commitment to change for good. Which of course she's not going to do. But from her standpoint she's doing OK and doesn't deserve much judgment which is how most people tend to look at themselves even if they're not addicts. It's easy to forget or downplay the bad things you've done to other people.

And something else I wrote earlier does make me wonder - does being good at your job as a nurse mean that you're a good person? I say the two aren't mutually exclusive, and Jackie is a perfect example of that. And she also mistakenly believes the opposite.

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The show is very clever I think, in that it puts the viewer in the role of someone who has to deal with an addict and her deceptiveness.
In real life, the time it takes for different people to figure out that they're systematically being lied to and to say 'enough is enough' can differ quite a bit - some maybe never figure it out or never want to lift that veil and see the ugly truth.
But the same is true - apparently - for the time it takes until people see through the character Jackie on this show.

_____
I don't know, Butchie, instead.

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I used to watch this until recently even though I never cared for the show. It just gave me something else to watch. The series sucks. Don't care for how it ends.

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[deleted]

She's an addict. She is a good person underneath it all but like most addicts she has no desire to stay clean and get into a true recovery.

Jackie is a great liar and manipulator. She mostly uses those powers to help others (her patients) which is her redeeming quality. But when backed into a corner over her addiction or with the threat of losing her nursing career she will not hesitate to use her powers to help herself.

I see this show as just a study of an addict and I neither like nor dislike her. It's like a train wreck you can't look a way from her because you don't know what you'll see her do next.

"I thought Nip Alert showed great promise." Erlich Bachman

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[deleted]

Yea, she is a pos but I love her. She is such a fascinating character and probably one of my favourite characters of any show I've ever watched. Most people do seem to hate her though, and I understand why.

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