If you ever find yourself in a hospital emergency room, will you want Nurse Jackie tending to your wounds? Showtime's new series starring the intelligent, non-Carmela Soprano coiffed Edie Falco gives you enough behind the scenes black humor in the form of snappy dialogue and sight gags to make anyone think twice about being in a hospital at all, even to visit, except from the safe remove of one's television. We've seen quite a bit of drama from the ER, but there hasn't been a vision like a human ear floating in a flushed toilet since the mind imagined the plight of Van Gogh. In the season's premiere, screened for an audience that included the show's stars Falco, a scene stealing Anna Deveare Smith, and many well wishers including Debra Winger, Richard Jenkins, Aida Turturro, Victor Garber, Juliana Marguiles, Stockard Channing, Griffin Dunne, Dick Cavett, Swoozie Kurtz, Ann Jackson, Eli Wallach, Lynn Cohen, Tova Feldshuh, that ear belonged to a diplomat who had cut up a call girl, an un-pretty sight preceding him into the hospital on a gurney, so we get a bit of Jackie's moral stance. The guy was loathsome, a scumbag who deserved another body part be severed if justice be served. But you cannot think Jackie a saint. A mom of two, she snorts pulverized Percosets and cheats on her pancake wielding husband, removing her wedding band on the job. Eve Best, whose leg was featured in last season's hit revival of Pinter's “The Homecoming,” plays a doctor and Jackie's friend with style and a penchant for Manolo Blahniks. Those eye candy legs are put to good use. At last night's after party at Nicola's in the Parker Maridien, Good and Plenties and Red Hots were served in pill cups and waiters wore scrubs. Ironically, one elderly guest collapsed for real in this room fitted with hospital beds and oxygen. The dark humor of Nurse Jackie seems especially well suited to the quirky mind of actor Steve Buscemi who, it turns out, directed some of the segments to come. I'm addicted already.
Meantime in midtown, HBO hosted a screening of its Oscar winning short, “Smile Pinki.” To some, a documentary is a message movie. Here, the narrative is propelled by great cinematography (by Nick Doob), excellent storytelling thanks to director Megan Mylan, and the movie's stars: a charismatic little girl of the title who, with several others whose stories interweave with hers, receive free cleft surgery provided by Smile Train. While the procedure to correct this severe disfigurement of a cavernous hare lip is simple, convincing families in rural India to bring their children, often traveling a distance, for this life-altering operation is less so. This season's feel-good movie airs tonight. Don't miss it.