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Of all the great things about television, the greatest is that it’s on every single day. TV history is being made, day in and day out, in ways big and small. In an effort to better appreciate this history, we’re taking a look back, every day, at one particular TV milestone.
IMPORTANT DATE IN TV HISTORY: June 7, 2010
PROGRAM ORIGINALLY AIRED ON THIS DATE: Nurse Jackie, “Years of Service” (Season 2, Episode 12). [Stream on Showtime Anytime.]
WHY IT’S IMPORTANT: Nurse Jackie‘s first two seasons were a white-knuckle ride to see if Jackie Peyton could actually keep getting away with it. A drug-addicted nurse working at a financially-struggling hospital, carrying on an affair with a co-worker, dealing with her and her husband’s financial difficulties, and with two daughters about to enter into those problematic adolescent years, Jackie had any of a hundred avenues down which lay disaster. But at every turn, she managed to pull it out; she saved the patients, she hid the drugs, she kept her head above water with her family.
With the second season finale, “Years of Service,” Jackie was finally unable to keep all those balls in the air. One of the reasons why Jackie was able to keep lying her way through her problems was because she was able to wall off the people in her life from each other. But with Kevin and O’Hara finally on the same page, the jig was up.
Nurse Jackie went on for five more seasons, with Jackie making progress and then backsliding, over and over again, nearly into infinity. This particular point in the story was the most harrowing, though. Near-death, near-jail, near-financial-disaster, there was nothing more intense than that moment Kevin and O’Hara came at her in the kitchen, knowing that they knew all about her.
[You can watch Nurse Jackie‘s “Years of Service” on Showtime Anytime.]
