Ellen Gray: Jackie, Tara return, still hard to figure out (& that's good)

NURSE JACKIE. 10 tonight, Showtime.

UNITED STATES OF TARA. 10:30 tonight, Showtime.

WITH ALL DUE respect to Lifetime and Spike TV, which sometimes remind me of the separate pink and military-hardware aisles at Toys 'R' Us, cable is becoming more of a gender-neutral zone every season.

Long the home of Intriguingly Flawed Men like "The Sopranos' " Tony Soprano (James Gandolfini) and "The Shield's" Vic Mackey (Michael Chiklis), it's lately been welcoming Intriguingly Flawed Women, from Patty Hewes (Glenn Close) on "Damages" (10 tonight, FX) and Grace Hanadarko on "Saving Grace" (back on TNT March 29) to the many, many wives of HBO's "Big Love" (not to mention those of Showtime's "The Tudors," back for Henry's last, er, hurrahs on April 11).

And Edie Falco, who returns to Showtime tonight for a second season as "Nurse Jackie," has done the near-impossible in following up Carmela Soprano with a character who might be even a better match for her.

If not, perhaps, for Tony, who wouldn't have known what to make of this pill-popping emergency-room nurse who loves her family but maybe not as much as she hates feeling trapped.

Or something like that.

I watched all of Season 1 and have seen eight episodes of Season 2, and beyond noticing that she's good at her job and not so good at her life, I still haven't figured out Jackie Peyton.

Which is the way I like it, given how much of television, particularly broadcast television, consists of shows about easily understood characters doing easily understood things in the 43 minutes or so it takes to bring murderers to justice.

It doesn't hurt, either, that executive producers Liz Brixius and Linda Wallem, who have, after all, only a half-hour a week, have surrounded Falco and Jackie with actors and characters who deserve nearly equal time.

Anna Deavere Smith, who's turned out to be an unexpected hoot as hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus; Eve Best, as Jackie's unlikely best friend, Dr. Eleanor O'Hara; and the droll Merritt Wever, who plays newbie nurse Zoey Barkow - all get a little more attention this season, as do the men in Jackie's life, including her husband, Kevin (Dominic Fumusa), sometime lover Eddie Walzer (Paul Schulze) and chief irritant, Dr. Fitch "Coop" Cooper (Peter Facinelli).

Tonight also marks the return of another Showtime enigma: "United States of Tara's" Tara Gregson (Toni Collette) in the role (or roles) that won Collette an Emmy for lead actress in a comedy last year.

Not everyone would consider a show about a woman who's suffered most of her life from what's commonly called multiple personality disorder to be a comedy, but creator Diablo Cody ("Juno"), in writing a family that's been living for a long time with a skewed idea of normal, shows how resilient people can find the funny in situations that to outsiders might seem tragic.

Still, like "Dexter's" sympathetic serial killer, Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall), Tara's a character not often found in nature, much less on broadcast TV, where one personality per person has largely been the rule, aside from soaps (and "Lost").

I'd like to think that "Nurse Jackie" might stand a shot on commercial TV, given the millions who've embraced Fox's "House" and Hugh Laurie as a pill-popping medical professional.

But I'm not so sure.

Because it's hard to ignore the lesson of CBS' "The Good Wife."

One of the best new shows of the season, it stars Julianna Margulies as the wife of a disgraced politician (Chris Noth) who goes back to work as a lawyer when her husband's sent to prison.

As a junior associate competing with a considerably younger rival for a permanent job, she'd be a sympathetic figure to millions of women even if she weren't also the wife of a man who's admitted publicly that he slept with prostitutes.

"The Good Wife's" Alicia Florrick isn't flawless - last week, she finally kissed her cute boss before heading home to ravish her husband, who's now under house arrest.

And I do love her.

But she is awfully good.

Better, certainly, than Margulies' last TV character, who was a pretty good lawyer but a not-so-good wife.

In fact, Elizabeth Canterbury of Fox's "Canterbury's Law" was an attorney of Patty Hewes-like cunning (and similar ethics) who happened to be cheating on her spouse.

Little wonder that Margulies, when she first read the script for "Canterbury's Law," believed, thanks to a typo in a cover letter, that it had come from FX, not its broadcast sibling.

Little wonder, too, that it was gone after six episodes.

So, while I'm sorry more people won't get to see her, Falco's "Nurse Jackie" might be safer right where she is. *

Send e-mail to graye@phillynews.com.