6.8 | / 10 |
Users | 0.0 | |
Reviewer | 3.5 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
Jackie Peyton is a nurse trying to survive the chaotic grind of saving lives in a hectic New York City hospital. Sharp-tongued and quick-witted, Jackie's a woman of substance who knows how to handle it all. With a white lie here, a bent rule there, and a steady dose of pain relievers for her chronic back pain, Jackie does whatever it takes to get the job done.
Starring: Edie Falco, Eve Best, Merritt Wever, Paul Schulze, Peter FacinelliComedy | 100% |
Drama | 42% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.78:1
English: DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1
English, English SDH, Spanish
50GB Blu-ray Disc
Two-disc set (2 BDs)
Region A (C untested)
Movie | 3.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 3.0 | |
Overall | 3.5 |
A close friend was talking about Flight at a get together, and she jokingly stated, “I’m not afraid of flying—I’m afraid of crashing,” going on to say she didn’t know what she would have done had she ever been on a plane and seen a glassy eyed pilot in the cockpit. All of us regularly entrust our lives to all sorts of people and we more often than not have absolutely no idea of the mental states and/or the health statuses of these folks. Everyone from the corner policeman to an EMT to someone as relatively mundane as a tour guide might be undergoing stresses that aren’t necessarily obvious to an outside observer, and yet if you need help (in the case of the cop or EMT) or directions (in the case of the tour guide), you probably wouldn’t think twice (or most likely even once) about what any of these people are experiencing in their lives. It’s kind of a case of a “user” economy, as it were, where we see people for what they can provide to us, without bothering too much on the niceties of what we could provide to them. But in a situation like that in Flight, or in fact the rather dark Showtime series Nurse Jackie, there are actual lives at stake and the mental wherewithal of the central characters is most definitely something that needs to be paid attention to. Much like Denzel Washington’s Whip Whitaker, Edie Falco’s Jackie Peyton is a professional who hides her inner demons (and addictions) more or less artfully, at least to those who only deal with her in passing. If Jackie hasn’t quite faced the trial by fire that greets Flight’s main character, she has repeatedly proven that even when she’s high as a kite she can still manage to perform at least some of her duties fairly effortlessly. But the seams have been showing in both Jackie’s personal and professional life for some time now, and in this fourth season of the series, some serious fraying occurs.
Nurse Jackie: Season Four is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Lionsgate Films and Showtime with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.78:1. Nurse Jackie continues to be a better than average looking series that nonetheless never really pops in total high definition magnificence simply because so much of it is set in the glaring fluorescent halls of a hospital or, alternatively, in kind of drab and dreary environments like Jackie's house or (in this season) the rehab facility. The best part of this high definition presentation is in the ubiquitous use of close-ups, which really do offer abundant fine detail (to the point that Falco as Jackie looks really haggard quite a bit throughout this season). Colors continue to be accurate looking and generally well saturated and contrast is also generally quite strong, able to navigate the effulgence of the hospital lights and the darkness of some of the other environments.
Nurse Jackie: Season Four, like its Showtime sibling Weeds, is presented with a lossless DTS-HD Master Audio 7.1 track that may strike some as somewhat needless, given the generally small scale sonic ambitions of the series. There is some really good surround activity in a lot of the hospital sequences, with extremely nuanced aural depth of field, but the vast bulk of Nurse Jackie is in dialogue scenes that typically play out between two or three characters at a time, making a 7.1 mix kind of unnecessary. That said, fidelity is extremely strong, and the occasional use of source cues also helps to fill out the surround channels. Dynamic range is pretty negligible, as should be expected in a series that focuses largely on characters and less on sonic fireworks.
- Kettle-Kettle-Black Black: Richie Jackson, Edie Falco and Anna Deveare Smith
- The Wall: Richie Jackson, Edie Falco and Liz Flahive
- Handle Your Scandal: Richie Jackson, Edie Falco and Liz Flahive
Don't get me wrong: there's still a lot to like about Nurse Jackie, not the least of which is Falco's pretty fearless portrayal this season. But I really am starting to feel the handwriting is on the wall for this series, and my hope is that it doesn't overstay its welcome. I'm especially concerned that there's going to be a Cheers-esque conflict between Jackie and Mike that is going to blossom into romance, something that I personally feel would be far too facile for a series that has so deliberately tried to push the envelope. On the whole, Nurse Jackie is still fairly compelling, but there are enough troubling signs that some kind of intervention might be in order.
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