Nurse Jackie

SHOWTIME | Release Date: June 8, 2009

CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION

75	METASCORE Generally favorable reviews based on 70 Critic Reviews

Positive:

Mixed:

Negative:

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Critic Reviews

Critic score Publication By date

100

Tom GliattoApr 6, 2012

Season 4 Review: Falco's performance never loses a weary, trudging toughness and, at the core two hard kernels of anger and sorrow. [16 Apr 2012, p.50]

100

Tom GliattoApr 14, 2011

Season 3 Review: Season 3 of Showtime's great Nurse Jackie brings romance to student nurse Zoey. [25 Apr 2011, p.44]

100

Robert Bianco

Season 1 Review: Once you get past the premiere, series are often a crapshoot. But Showtime made all 12 episodes available for preview, and through that run, the energy never flags and the performances get deeper and richer. Read full review

100

Robert Bianco

Season 2 Review: Jackie can be a dark show, and it's going to get darker. But there isn't an episode that doesn't leave you yearning to see the next. There also isn't a performance that doesn't work. Read full review

Verne GayApr 5, 2012

Season 4 Review: Falco, Eve Best (Ellie O'Hara) and Anna Deavere Smith (Gloria Akalitus) are flawless, and... very amusing. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineMatt RoushApr 6, 2012

Season 4 Review: Excellent questions propel us back into the world of one of TV's most uncompromising dark comedies. Read full review

Michael Abernethy

Season 1 Review: Nurse Jackie offers both gripping drama and outrageous comedy. Read full review

Tom GliattoApr 11, 2014

Season 6 Review: Edie Falco makes the stakes scarily real. [21 Apr 2014, p.43]

Maureen Ryan

Season 1 Review: The half-hour format is perfect for this deftly directed program, which is character-based storytelling concentrated to espresso strength. Read full review

Ken TuckerMay 11, 2012

Season 4 Review: We know that a guilty, defensive Jackie is the best Jackie to watch. Read full review

Alan SepinwallApr 6, 2012

Season 4 Review: Nurse Jackie season 4 is all consequences, all the time--and is much, much more satisfying overall as a result. Read full review

Ken Tucker

Season 1 Review: With Falco front and center, you don't really care if Nurse Jackie gets silly, as with the patient whose cat attacked his scrotum. Read full review

Verne Gay

Season 2 Review: Not consistently funny, perhaps, but when Best and/or Falco are on screen, the angels sing. Both are remarkable. Read full review

Hank StueverApr 24, 2015

Season 7 Review: Having co-starred in the most ambiguously concluded TV show in history (HBO’s “The Sopranos”), Falco certainly deserves the cleanest ending Jackie can get, and the first eight or nine episodes of this season suggest a satisfying and authentic outcome. Read full review

David HinckleyApr 15, 2013

Season 5 Review: Sunday’s opening of season five proves again that Falco makes this show, primarily by connecting all the passageways between comedy and tragedy. Read full review

Matthew GilbertApr 12, 2013

Season 5 Review: It’s honest, credible, trustworthy storytelling. Read full review

James PoniewozikJun 8, 2012

Season 4 Review: The people around Jackie made me stick with this show even when its main storyline was going nowhere, but now that it's committed to really engaging with its title character, it's become appointment TV for me again. Read full review

Rob OwenApr 9, 2012

Season 4 Review: Putting Jackie in rehab actually works out well comedically, too, because she's surrounded by a new batch of odd characters to bounce off. Read full review

David HinckleyApr 5, 2012

Season 4 Review: Season four continues the good work of past seasons by building on all the trouble Jackie has heaped upon herself. Read full review

Zap2it (Inside the Box)Mikey O'ConnellMar 29, 2011

Season 3 Review: Like so many Showtime comedies, Jackie leaves us feeling a bit conflicted. But the acting, caustic characters and looming consequences make Season 3 destination viewing for anyone who's already hooked--and a worthwhile pursuit for anyone still on the fence. Read full review

Matthew GilbertMar 28, 2011

Season 3 Review: With this bracing and comic new set of 12 episodes, Nurse Jackie has evolved into a rigorous, fascinating portrait of denial, of how it works when someone deceives herself and everyone around her Read full review

David HinckleyMar 28, 2011

Season 3 Review: Nurse Jackie is delivering quite nicely with the personnel on hand. Among other things, it confirms that the best comedy is often rooted in things that are not funny at all, but make people act in funny ways. Read full review

Randee Dawn

Season 1 Review: The fantastical creation of Jackie Peyton, perhaps surprisingly, has shades of gray that make her very real indeed. Both show and character are something wonderful to behold -- and worth taking multiple doses of. Read full review

Mary McNamara

Season 1 Review: Funny, yes, but in a revelatory way. It is not unusual for a working mother to view every relationship in her life as simply a matter of fulfilling the next indicated task, but I don't think it has ever been so wonderfully, and painfully, captured on television before. Read full review

Glenn Garvin

Season 1 Review: Grimly funny, streaked with sentimentality and malice, Nurse Jackie is the medical miracle of television's summer season, a blue-collar hospital show without a McDreamy in sight. Read full review

David Hinckley

Season 1 Review: A splendid new addition to pay-cable's stock of dark comedies that keep a human heart beating behind the laughs. Read full review

Ellen Gray

Season 1 Review: Falco's simply magnificent in a role that exploits a certain no-nonsense quality she's always brought to even the nonsensical aspects of her characters. Read full review

Tom Shales

Season 1 Review: The casting, like the writing and direction, is impeccable, and includes Eve Best as Jackie's doctor friend Eleanor; Peter Facinelli as cute but semi-competent ER physician Fitch "Coop" Cooper; Merritt Wever as a bleeding-heart novice; and Haaz Sleiman as a gay Muslim orderly. Read full review

Troy Patterson

Season 1 Review: Falco has the strength to sell the overwrought cliches and to force each important moment to its crisis. Read full review

Nancy Franklin

Season 1 Review: The result, with its strong, complex, funny, flawed central character, feels truer to life than the zillions of one-dimensional (or no-dimensional) nurses on television. Read full review

Matthew Gilbert

Season 2 Review: It’s a remarkable performance in its straightforward simplicity; she’s like a feral animal ferociously protecting her secrets. Read full review

David Hinckley

Season 2 Review: It's now even easier to get so caught up in the dramas that you can forget this show is really funny. Read full review

Ellen Gray

Season 2 Review: I watched all of Season 1 and have seen eight episodes of Season 2, and beyond noticing that she's good at her job and not so good at her life, I still haven't figured out Jackie Peyton. Which is the way I like it. Read full review

Rob Owen

Season 2 Review: Jackie remains the superior effort thanks to its writing and a top-of-their-game cast headed by Edie Falco as the title character. Read full review

Renee Scolaro Mora

Season 2 Review: What has been ramped up in this season are Jackie’s unexpected kindnesses and cruelties. And this is what makes the show so great. She constantly sidesteps all expectations and usually for the worse. Read full review

TV Guide MagazineMatt Roush

Season 2 Review: In its mix of the caustic and the compassionate, Jackie is as electrifying as its star. Read full review

Melissa MaerzApr 5, 2013

Season 5 Review: Emotionally, the show's been downward-spiraling for so long, it needs a break from all the bleakness. But the introductions of two new doctors should pep things up. [12 Apr 2013, p.69]