S06.E08: The Lady with the Lamp

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Jackie detoxes at home and dreams she is back working at the hospital, where she meets a mysterious patient who exposes Jackie's greatest fear. Meanwhile, Frank objects to Grace moving back home; and Jackie makes a difficult decision concerning Frank.

 

Promo:

 

Clips:

 

[A Boston Gal]

Lovin' the early release On Demand of the following week's episode! Mr. Boston Gal is forever in my debt to alerting him of this feature.

 

Not for one minute did I buy that Jackie was really at work the following day.

[marsha]

Well, I'll say this: considering the character of Jackie that we've gotten to know all these years it's absolutely no surprise that the second she could she'd do drugs. It can really seem mind boggling to those who have not dealt (or tried to) with drug addiction but the hold it can have on you is massive and everyday (minute, second) you decide anew to be sober.

 

One of the times I went to detox there was a little bus stop-like shack area where you could smoke (cigarettes) and, it was also known, that at certain times a van would pull up by said shack and you could get drugs. Luckily I was not so inclined but I (and everyone else) knew about it and ... you made choices even in a detox unit. I'm just sharing this to say that I really get how much of a hold addiction can have on a person and it defies all logic. Obviously, on paper, Jackie knows the clock is ticking, ticking, ticking unlike ever before but she still thinks she can fool (most) everyone around her with her charm and all 'round 'Jackiness' and that she can go back to being a functioning addict.

 

I guess the question is, as it is a television show, is the way TPTB are handling the storyline dramatically appealing to the viewers (both old and new). I have to say it is for me and I find I can't wait until the actual air date to watch but do so before hand.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I usually don't like dream sequences (unless they're really good) and this was no exception.

 

I did laugh when Frank handed that girl her empty purse without any drugs. I remember her from Bunheads and I've seen her guest star on a few shows since Bunheads was canceled. I find it kind of funny because I thought she was the worst of the four main dancers/actresses, but good for her for still working.

 

Part of me feels like Jackie downed that pill at the end of the episode just to spite Frank because he said he couldn't go through that again. I'm sure her other two motivations were so she could deal with Grace and because duh, she's an addict.

[jonesingjay]

Part of me feels like Jackie downed that pill at the end of the episode just to spite Frank because he said he couldn't go through that again. I'm sure her other two motivations were so she could deal with Grace and because duh, she's an addict.

 

I also feel that she wants to get rid of Frank. I don't believe she really wanted him to move in. It's a big fuck you to Frank in a way. Even though he doesn't yet know she's already using again. 

[Mindymoo]

Yeah, that dream sequence was all kinds of nonsense. As someone who went through withdrawal, (I wasn't an addict, I was just on very high dosages of morphine and fentanyl for seven years) they put on you VERY high dosages of benzos and those knock you out so much that you don't know your ass from a hole in the ground. I started Monday. Two weeks went by and I thought it was only Tuesday. No hallucinations, no dreams, just a feeling of nothingness. Maybe there was something else in her drug cocktail that made her hallucinate, but that was straining credulity to me.

Edited May 29, 2014 by Mindy McIndy

[Irritable]

Would taking that one pill be enough to throw Jackie into full withdrawals again if she didn't do any more afterward?  I'm not sure how that works.  I yelled, "NOOOO JACKIE!   FUCK!" when she did it.  I had actually thought for a moment that Grace coming home and needing her to be Mommy again would be enough to keep Jackie moving forward, but then I remembered which show I'm watching.  Of course that wasn't enough. 

 

They are showing us pretty hard how much Eddie still inexplicably seems to care about Jackie.  He was an amazing support to her, and while I don't know what detoxing is like personally, I still would have thought she could have mustered up at least the word "thanks" for him at some point along the way. 

[kailess]

 

I did laugh when Frank handed that girl her empty purse without any drugs. I remember her from Bunheads

 

Thanks, ElectricBoogaloo! I was driving me crazy trying to remember where I had seen that actress before. 

I just saw an article saying NJ had been renewed for a seventh season. I guess we won't see a story line resolution for another year yet. 

I think Eddie is Jackie's end game. He's seen her at her worst, he has experienced all of her manipulations, yet he so clearly still loves her. I thought Frank was going to get upset when he walked in on Eddie laying on the bed with her, but no. Maybe Frank is too nice? Or, judging by the end of the episode, maybe they are just done.

I like Antoinette. There has been a gal pal shaped hole In Jackie's life since Eve Best left the series. Jackie needs a buddy that she can't manipulate with sex and who calls her on her crap.

 

It may be a realistic portrayal, but I'll admit my heart sank with disappointment when Jackie took another pill after Grace came home. Oh, Jackie.....      

[The Solution]

And Nurse Carmela gets a dream sequence of her own. Why should Tony have all the fun?

[Tara Ariano]

Mark was not impressed by the episode's dream sequence!

[ElectricBoogaloo]

Behind the episode:

[Mama No Life]

This episode has stuck with me, as opposed to most of this season which has been largely forgettable. At first, I was upset with Jackie, and then I thought about all the times I blew a diet three days into it, and I suspect her habit is much more intense than Oreos.

Frank is showing himself to be a good boyfriend but a crappy dad. He's already on the outs with his kids, and now he's encouraging Jackie to turn her back on Grace to help the two grown-ups? And then the veiled threats? Yeah, bye. He might have been awesome with her detox, but you don't say that to a mother, esp a good one. Or one that thinks she's good, heh. Not cool, Frank.

I think Jackie was always a little unnerved by the way Eddie and Antoinette hit it off..."fun at a funeral"? Eddie clearly still loves Jackie...maybe they are end game.

Next week's previews look a bit absurd....hope it's not as contrived as it appeared.

[DrivingSideways]

I love this show but I have always found the way Jackie's family connections are written and acted to be extremely bad.  Kevin and Jackie always talked to their children they are developmentally challenged 4 yr olds and they still kind of do.  The kid's story lines have always been a bit over the top and soap operatic to me.  On a shallow note, I always felt Kevin was too attractive for Jackie but it makes more sense now that he's aged 6 yrs and Edie Falco hasn't, she looks better than ever.  But I never felt a drop of chemistry between them and always blamed it on Dominic Fumosa's acting, because Eddie and Jackie have amazing chemistry.

 

I'm also not feeling her new boo, he feels more like a storyline construct than an actual person.  I think I would have preferred more time spent with the hospital staff than all of these sidelines with the family.

[Jellybeans]

As someone who has dealt with two addicts in my family I watch this show with heightened emotions. They do a decent job of showing how real it is but the truth is, it is nastier than this show portrays. If they showed how it really was, no one would watch.

I was not surprised when Jackie relapsed. She has to become sober for herself, not because "her daughter needs her". A sad reality...

[LuciaMia]

You would think that random drug tests would have been a condition of Jackie's continued employment.  But perhaps that ended after her one year goal.

[iMonrey]

I was just mostly pissed off because we spent the whole episode watching Jackie go through withdrawal only to have her pop another pill at the very end. Yeah, I get it, she's an addict, she's going to relapse, but it just feels like they don't know where to go with this story anymore. I'm hoping we've seen the end of the one-note Grace keeps hitting over and over again.

[attica]

I thought those all-black tats (animated or no) were unusual and lovely.

[Jellybeans]

I was just mostly pissed off because we spent the whole episode watching Jackie go through withdrawal only to have her pop another pill at the very end. Yeah, I get it, she's an addict, she's going to relapse, but it just feels like they don't know where to go with this story anymore. I'm hoping we've seen the end of the one-note Grace keeps hitting over and over again.

But.... this is the life of an addict. Rehab, pop a pill, Rinse and Repeat, Rehab, pop a pill, .........ad nauseam. The story will end with either sobriety or death.

It is quite sad in real life.

[Blakeston]

Jackie taking the pill at the end didn't make much sense to me, until it hit me that it was presumably her plan all along.

 

She wasn't actually planning to quit drugs. She just knew that she had to go through withdrawal in order to get Frank and Antoinette off her back.

 

At least, that's my take on it.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Blakeston

[bunnywithanaxe]

Or she might not be intending to relapse at all, just wanted to get rid of Frank. Unless she follows up on that pill she will recover from it completely in a couple of hours.

[qtpye]

Yeah, I do not think Jackie is all that into Frank, even though he has been good to her.  I think she just does not want to be alone, particularly now that her ex has moved on.

[Lone Wolf]

I thought Jackie was very take-it-or-leave-it with her No Promises, I'm An Addict attitude to Frank, and I wrote that off as her being in Mama Bear mode after Grace finally reached out to her.  Also, initially I thought a thank you to from her to everyone who got her through her detox would have been nice, and I was irritated that snorted up right after. However, after reading the posts here, I'm inclined to think that either she couldn't help herself/had no intention of staying clean.  I'd also speculate that she was too self-involved to express gratitude to her purported love interest and her support group, or alternatively, that if she didn't want to clean up in the first place it not only wouldn't occur to her to say thanks but she'd probably resent them.  Any of the above would seem to be characteristic of an addict.

 

"What's a payphone?"  I saw that one coming, but it was humorous anyway.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Lone Wolf

[Blakeston]

Or she might not be intending to relapse at all, just wanted to get rid of Frank. Unless she follows up on that pill she will recover from it completely in a couple of hours.

 

But she didn't tell Frank that she'd just snorted some pills, did she?

 

Telling him that she could relapse at any time was probably done to drive him away, but I don't see why she'd take those drugs behind his back if that was part of her effort to get rid of him.

Edited June 3, 2014 by Blakeston

[Jellybeans]

Telling him that she could relapse at any time was probably done to drive him away, but I don't see why she'd take those drugs behind his back if that was part of her effort to get rid of him.

My boyfriend is an alcoholic who has been sober for 25 years. After we watched this episode I asked him if he could relapsed. He said.... "i am always one drink away from relapsing". A sobering thought, no pun intended.

Addiction is not about other people, it is about being powerless to a substance. :-(

[Blakeston]

My boyfriend is an alcoholic who has been sober for 25 years. After we watched this episode I asked him if he could relapsed. He said.... "i am always one drink away from relapsing". A sobering thought, no pun intended.

Addiction is not about other people, it is about being powerless to a substance. :-(

 

I agree completely. That's why I don't think she took the drugs for the purpose of driving Frank away - even if she wanted him gone.

 

I have no idea what to think about Frank. At some point last season, he was revealed to be a manipulative jerk. But throughout most of this season he's seemed like a decent guy who just doesn't understand addiction very well. It feels like they retconned his character - although I suppose his ugly side could come back.

[DrivingSideways]

The pay phone line and Zoey's blank stare back at Grace really cracked me up.  This episode was not up my alley otherwise.

[iMonrey]

I'm having a tough time buying into Grace's sudden turnaround WRT her mother. I'm not really sure what pushed her away in the first place, whether it was the divorce or learning about her addiction or her affair with Eddy or a combination of those things, or if it was just that she was hanging around with a bad crowd that encouraged her to diss her mother until they ditched her. If it wasn't the influence of her new friends I'm not sure how their abandonment of her sends her back into her mother's arms for comfort.

[ElectricBoogaloo]

I don't think that Grace's new friends specifically pressured her not to have a relationship with her mom. Teenagers, especially girls, get cranky at that age and they feel like their parents (especially their mothers) are smothering them. You ask a teenager girl how her day was and you never know if you'll get a 20 minute monologue or told that you're being nosy.

 

As for why she suddenly turned to Jackie, school was Grace's refuge from her homelife. At that age, school is great because your friends are there and you can look at boys and not be around your parents or annoying siblings for most of the day. But now that everyone at school is freezing her out because the Bunheads girl got her drugs confiscated by Frank, school is 7-8 hours of being miserable. Grace just wanted a hug and some comfort. as much as has been pushing Jackie away, she knows that Jackie will always welcome her back with open arms because she loves her.