Nurse Jackie ended on an ambiguous observe 10 years in the past (on June 28, 2015), and even now, the Showtime dramedy’s cliffhanger of a finale nonetheless has followers pissed off.
So what precisely occurred within the collection nearer, and why? Let’s revisit the ultimate moments of the present and what folks mentioned about it beneath. Spoilers forward!
The present ended on an inconclusive observe.
In that collection finale, Season 7’s “I Say a Little Prayer,” Edie Falco’s titular character is again in scrubs following a nursing license listening to about her substance abuse, and she or he will get a job supply from Bellevue Hospital, a lifeline out of the soon-to-close All Saints Hospital. All appears nicely, however Jackie’s former coworker Eleanor (Eve Finest) is correct to suppose Jackie has relapsed in her habit restoration.
At a farewell get together together with her coworkers — together with mentee-turned-minder Zoey (Merritt Wever) — Jackie snorts strains of heroin and overdoses, collapsing to the ground of the All Saints ER. Jackie’s work household rushes to her aspect, however her destiny continues to be a query mark when the tip credit roll.
“What the heck sort of collection finale was that?!” one disgruntled fan wrote on Fb on the time.
“I hate how all these exhibits are beginning to have ambiguous/cliffhanger endings,” a commenter added, little question recalling the cut-to-black ending of The Sopranos, one other Falco undertaking.
“That s*** is beginning to suck massive time,” one other commenter wrote, bluntly.
Quick-forward a decade, and Nurse Jackie’s finale nonetheless has viewers flummoxed. “Can somebody please assist clarify the ending to me?” one consumer wrote on Reddit’s Nurse Jackie discussion board earlier this yr. “Zoey is saying to Jackie that she’s OK, and Jackie smiles and opens her eyes? Huh? So is she alive? I don’t get it?”
Controversy and ambiguity have been objectives for the Nurse Jackie writers.
In line with showrunner Clyde Phillips, who co-wrote that last episode, riling up the viewers was what they meant.
“We needed the ending to be genuine and controversial, and for the finale to proceed to be a part of the dialog,” Phillips instructed Leisure Weekly on the time. “David Nevins [Showtime’s then-CEO] and I mentioned how we needed it to occur and had some totally different selections. I made the pitch for conserving it considerably ambiguous and galvanizing. When the credit rolled, I needed folks to lean ahead and speak about what they only noticed.”
Phillips additionally mentioned neither he nor Falco needed a contented ending, and he credited the Emmy-winning actor with the uncertainty of the episode’s last moments. “One of many the reason why there’s a query is as a result of Edie Falco is so good,” he instructed The Hollywood Reporter. “Think about mendacity on the ground in the midst of 60 folks with a digicam in your face and giving simply sufficient of a watch flutter and simply sufficient of a transfer of her lips that you simply suppose, “Possibly!”
He additionally defined Zoey saying Jackie was “good” in that scene, because the latter nurse hovered between life and loss of life. “It goes again to the pilot the place on the finish of the pilot, we study that Jackie has a household, and she or he steps into the shadows and says, ‘Make me good Lord — however not but’ in voiceover. Initially of the collection finale, she’s in church by herself ready for her household to reach for her daughter’s affirmation, and she or he says, ‘Make me good.’ … These are the phrases that Jackie needed to listen to.”
Nurse Jackie virtually had a special ending altogether.
The Nurse Jackie writers truly had a special ending in thoughts as they plotted the present’s endgame, as Phillips revealed in a Selection interview. In that model, a fireplace breaks out within the All Saints ER, and Jackie heroically saves a affected person, a fellow addict, who’s handcuffed to a mattress within the hospital basement. The ceiling collapses on Jackie, however she finds a method out, squeezing out of a window “like a beginning,” Phillips mentioned. Then Jackie spots a crowd of individuals congregating outdoors the burning hospital and begins transferring towards them earlier than altering her thoughts and working in the other way. “She realizes that she’s free,” Phillips mentioned.
Nurse Jackie’s crew members constructed the basement set in Season 7 in preparation for that fiery climax, however the writers had a change of coronary heart. “About three quarters via the season, we realized that we had deliberate was an excessive amount of about story and never sufficient about character,” Phillips instructed EW. “We needed to flip this massive ship round and convey it all the way down to Jackie Peyton.” (And for the report, Phillips thinks Jackie survives the overdose within the filmed model of the finale and restarts her life from a brand new all-time low.)
In a 2016 interview with the Tv Academy Basis, Falco mentioned the Nurse Jackie writers have been “bandying about each risk and a few very massive dramatic stuff some very small stuff” as they approached the finale.
And Falco needed her character to die. “I actually thought it was necessary,” she mentioned. “I mentioned, I would like it to be clear that this isn’t one thing that goes away, that unexpectedly she doesn’t need to cope with this anymore. She’s not going to conferences, she’s not searching for herself, she’s not taking time to, I don’t know, meditate, no matter she would possibly do to fight her habit. It’s received to be clear that that gained’t final, that that gained’t abide. … I feel she ought to die, and we don’t try this on tv exhibits loads. In order that grew to become the battle on the finish, a little bit bit.”
Falco additionally indicated that the finale script unambiguously confirmed Jackie’s saying. “As written, I assumed, ‘Oh, good, excellent. We’ll get to do that.’ And I feel the community pushed again a little bit bit, like, ‘I don’t suppose you’ll be able to kill her. Individuals care about this girl.’ I mentioned, ‘That’s the purpose: the unfairness, the largeness of the ramifications of rampant drug use.’ So anyway, we ended up with some form of a compromise the place folks aren’t certain that she died. And in the event you ask me, she died.”
The larger level of the finale wasn’t simply whether or not she lived or died.
Particularly with its finale, Nurse Jackie confirmed the ravages of habit and the way restoration is usually not linear and definitely not assured. “One among our ambitions has at all times been to have folks perceive the ferocity of the illness she has, and to have compassion,” Phillips instructed Selection. “If Jackie had most cancers, everyone could be fully compassionate. This illness she has causes her to harm different folks as a result of it’s such a narcissistic illness. All she cares about is her subsequent hit.”
And irrespective of whether or not followers beloved or hated the episode — for what it’s value, “I Say a Little Prayer” is at present ranked twelfth greatest out of 80 episodes in IMDb consumer rankings — everybody should admire Falco’s efficiency in Nurse Jackie’s final episode and the present at massive.
“Jackie Peyton is a trainwreck,” Phillips noticed. “She’s a sociopathic drug addict who has destroyed all the things in her life. There’s one cause [viewers] have caught with it for seven years, and that one cause is Edie Falco.”
Nurse Jackie, streaming, Philo
If you happen to or somebody you already know has habit points, contact the Substance Abuse and Psychological Well being Companies Administration‘s Nationwide Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357). If you happen to or a beloved one are in instant hazard, name 911.