(Spoiler alert for season three in general, the most recent two episodes in specific.)

I’m wary about discussing TV in comparison to real life because that’s not the point (ditto most entertainment; do you think people were sitting around a campfire thousands of years ago complaining of the problematic representations in The Odyssey?). But while I don’t go looking for it, and realism isn’t the bar by which I measure success, I am constantly taken when television does offer a real part of life in excruciatingly accurate detail.

One of the major criticisms of Nurse Jackie is that protagonist Jackie Peyton never suffers consequences. She lies, steals, cheats – hits every mark of addiction – and continues to sail as the ironclad head nurse. Some of that has changed as the third season draws to a close; she, for instance, is banned from administering narcotics. On one level, I get that criticism. After three seasons of an ill begotten and otherwise filched pill collection, an administrative pause is way too little way too late. And this is not just television, but American television. We have no ability to watch deviant behavior that doesn’t come with an immediate harsh backlash.

At first, I wanted to offer that, ultimately, Jackie has been experiencing slow-boil consequences since season one as her now-eleven-year-old daughter Grace grapples with anxiety issues. When the subject first arises from Grace’s teacher in season one, Jackie explodes. To deal with Grace’s severe anxiety would mean addressing her own, and since Jackie doesn’t exactly deal with her problems, she’s not about to admit that her daughter has any, either. So not only does Grace continue to suffer, but she’ll continue growing in her suffering in such a way that – eventually, inevitably – Jackie will have to deal on a level that far surpasses the effort she would have had to make if she had acted immediately.

I stand by that argument, especially now as Grace embarks on a tour de Xanax. Especially because Jackie is what happens when no one wants to deal with your problems, least of all you. We like to think, especially in our entertainment, that, say, doing drugs ends in death on the first try. (Thanks, Francine Pascal.) But we all know it usually doesn’t. We all know – have that friend, have been that friend – that uses undetected until she’s hollow-eyed. The friend who purges undetected until we accidentally stumble upon her in the bathroom. The friend whose depression goes untreated, whose anxiety goes untreated, on and on and on.

During last week’s “F*ck the Lemurs,” administrative powerhouse Mrs. Akalitus lets on, without ever saying so, just how long she’s known that Jackie has a drug problem. We know that she’s let the issue slide because Jackie’s superior work as a nurse remains untainted by her use. Never mind how much Jackie has been hurting herself. It’s just that sometimes it’s easier not to talk about it, you know?

Or, as Dr. O’Hara said, “I don’t talk about it because I don’t like talking about it. And I know full well that if I did start talking about it you’d go so far underground that no one would hear your cry for help, if in fact one day you need it.”

Eve Best’s O’Hara has been nothing short of magnificent as this storyline has surfaced. (Okay, for serious, she’s always amazing, but even more so right now.) She’s Jackie’s best friend. And, as a best friend, what are you supposed to do? You can say something. Maybe you do. Maybe you don’t. But it’s not something you can bring up every day. It’s not something you can harp on without end. As a friend, a parent, a sibling, a child, whatever, sometimes the best you can do by somebody you love is to just exist. To go to lunch. To talk in the chapel. To laugh over the silly things. But you know. And she knows. And it’s in that space you have to exist until she makes that next step.

In yesterday’s “Batting Practice,” Jackie admits to putting an end to her recent (and short-lived) sobriety by downing Grace’s Xanax. O’Hara doesn’t yell. She doesn’t scold. She just looks…crushed. All she can do is whisper Jackie’s name because what else can you do when you hope so hard for something that’s never going to happen?

O’Hara, who is something of a British lovechild of ER’s Drs. Romano and Weaver, doesn’t come easily to tears. She doesn’t fall to expressed emotion in general. She drinks, she spends money, she can avoid as well as Jackie can. In her final scene of the episode, she has a big Barneys’ shopping bag in view behind her desk, which Jackie notes upon entering O’Hara’s office. After giving Jackie a refill on Grace’s medication, O’Hara looks down at her desk and, without the show calling attention to it, brushes her fingers underneath one eye. She looks away, clears her throat, before listing the many ways she could truly help Jackie out of her addiction. Rehab, meetings, detox somewhere far away. Or, in her final offer, personal detox, O’Hara as “a very fancy methadone clinic.”  “You are in over your head,” she says. “I just want everything to be” – she pauses – “better.”

This pain, this intensity, this serious-problem-not-solved-in-twenty-two-minutes (thanks, DJ’s anorexia on Full House) is so much more satisfying for me as a viewer than the catch and release of television’s traditional format. (It’s, actually, an extension of what I really loved about Roseanne, but that’s for another day.) Odysseus eventually made it home, and Jackie will, too.