Falco, ‘Nurse Jackie’ return

By Frazier Moore

AP Television Writer

NEW YORK

Edie Falco has performed the near impossible: She has made a clean break with the show that made her a star yet could have pegged her for a lifetime as mobster wife Carmela Soprano.

In the title role of “Nurse Jackie,” Falco has ably recast herself as a guardian angel with a cranky attitude, a bad back and a penchant for cheating on her husband with the guy who supplies her with pain pills.

Now, that was Carmela who?

At the end of last season, Jackie Peyton’s unsteady world seemed to be blowing up. Her loyal but running-out-of-patience husband (Dominic Fumusa) had discovered her latest deception.

“I keep telling you I’m no prize, and you won’t listen,” she confessed.

“Is that everything?” he asked her as she hugged him.

“I love you,” she said. “Yes, that’s everything.”

But it’s not everything.

Back for a third season (Monday at 10 p.m. on Showtime), Jackie, with her emergency-room scrubs, pixie haircut and caustic manner, resumes her hectic life of juggling lies.

“Anyone who knows you knows they don’t know you,” as the hospital pharmacist (Paul Schulze) who is Jackie’s source for drugs and on-the-job quickies once told her.

Even Falco doesn’t claim to know Jackie.

“I don’t know that I ever really feel like I’m getting my arms around the character,” Falco says.

“But I think that’s why I want to do it. What ends up getting on film is my attempts to get my arms around an idea of who this woman is.”

Last season, the role brought Falco an Emmy for best actress in a comedy series.