[Warning: The below contains MAJOR spoilers for City on a Hill Season 3 Episode 6 “Tenderness.”]
Could we see a bit of a new Jackie Rohr (Kevin Bacon) after the events of the latest City on a Hill?
The episode “Tenderness” begins with Jackie being brought into the ER, after he was shot in the leg right after trying to track down one of the young women his employer, Sinclair Dryden (Corbin Bernsen), drugged and assaulted. (Who’s responsible is still a question; he doesn’t think that Sinclair could know about him investigating him behind his back.) Before his surgery, Jackie worries, “I’ve never been afraid to die because I always thought that I would see death coming, but if I’m under anesthesia, how am I gonna know?”
Sinclair’s wife, Letitia (Joanne Kelly), with whom Jackie’s been having an affair, stops by — and his wife Jenny (Jill Hennessy) walks in on them together. He tries to cover, only calling Letitia “Mrs. Dryden” while Jenny’s there, but it’s too late, and Jenny walks out on the man she calls, without a badge to give him purpose, “just good for nothing.”
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That affair is “a terrible, terrible choice that he makes — in any kind of situation but to have a job, finally be getting what it is that he wanted, and to just right out of the gate screw it up by sleeping with her, it’s not just a lack of morality, it’s also a lack of self-control,” Bacon told TV Insider. “Jackie’s an addict in some ways. He’s still doing blow, he can’t stop smoking cigarettes, and he can’t stop thinking below the waist.”
The other patient in the hospital room, Xavier (Adam Jepsen), witnesses Jackie’s life imploding and calls him out later. “Someone shot you from what I hear and you’re surrounded by hate on all sides. I spy through my crystal ball one Jackie Rohr in the not so distant future …[an] old man in a flannel bathrobe with no wife, no daughter, no friends. Not even a stray dog.” And as much as Jackie might not want to hear that, he does seem to be rethinking some things at the end of the episode.
When he can’t reach Jenny — she’s out with Father Doyle (Mark Ryder) — Jackie calls their daughter, Benedetta (Lucia Ryan). Being under anesthesia, you don’t know if it’s been five minutes or five years, “it’s like you’re dead,” he says. “Then you wake up, you’re blurry and then you’re clear. And it just makes you appreciate what you got, you know?”
But has Jackie changed? “Getting shot is certainly something that makes you kind of question your life choices,” Bacon said. “We talked early in the first season about things that could happen with Jackie and having some kind of a physical scare — in this case actually having a bullet go through my leg — I think there’s a kind of vulnerability that starts to come in from that, you know what I mean? And you can sort of question what you’ve done with your life, for sure.”
City on a Hill, Sundays, 10/9c, Showtime
