Nurse Jackie RX Games: calling all bedpan balancers

If life imitated art, any real-world promotion for Showtime's dark and biting dramedy, Nurse Jackie, would revolve around pill popping and ear flushing (and not the prescribed kind). But the show, launching its second season later this month, has already had a few run-ins with the medical establishment, so producers may not be inclined to press their luck. Quick background: the title character, a superwoman in scrubs, is also a deeply flawed heroine, if you count her Vicodin addiction, her adulterous sex-for-drugs relationship with the hospital pharmacist and her vigilante streak. Professional RNs have taken issue with the ethics of the character, played by Emmy winner Edie Falco. So instead of an Adderall Derby, the folks at guerrilla marketing shop Interference Inc. have put together a promo event dubbed the Nurse Jackie RX Games, which will be held March 18 in New York. Nurses, nursing students and reps from various charities will compete in obstacle courses and other physical contests to win cash for themselves and the social causes of their choice. Participants might balance bedpans, in other words, but they won't be pounding painkillers. When last we saw Jackie, she'd overdosed and passed out on the hospital floor after her lover found out about her husband and kids. Awkward! The show returns March 22.

— Posted by T.L. Stanley