Joanie loves you

Joanie turned out to be the most unlikely star of The Black Donnellys. In the beginning, she didn't have much going for her: she was a heroin addict and she was dating Jimmy Donnelly. But Joanie, with her adorably hoarse little voice and stringy hair, had more energy and sass than any of the other female characters on the show. She wasn't self-conscious. She threw dishes at Whitey. She embarrassed Sean in front of his new girlfriend, but only because she was so darn affectionate. In short, she was fabulous. And unexpectedly, she gave us the sweetest moment of the entire series (apologies for the bad lighting):

In one brief, nearly wordless scene in "The Black Drop," Joanie demonstrated more compassion and maturity than probably all the other major characters combined. The Black Donnellys is supposed to be about the love between the four brothers, and when Dokey humiliates Jimmy in "The Black Drop" the other brothers beat Dokey up in retaliation--but Joanie is the one sitting on the floor with Jimmy, telling him everything is going to be all right. The fact that Joanie, despite being so monumentally fucked up herself, is capable of showing that much love for Jimmy, a guy who doesn't even treat her well most of the time (remember how he called her a crackwhore to her face?) and is even more fucked up than she is, is pretty amazing. Unhealthy? To a degree, yes. But the love was definitely there.

This wasn't the relationship the writers wanted viewers to care about. If anything, Jimmy and Joanie's relationship was meant to provide a comical contrast to Tommy and Jenny's "serious" relationship. Jimmy and Joanie had an established relationship; Tommy and Jenny never got off the ground as a couple. Jimmy and Joanie had effective, if crude, communication; Tommy and Jenny were utterly incapable of expressing their true desires. Jimmy and Joanie were irresponsible and (seemingly) interested only in instant gratification; Tommy and Jenny were responsible and always paralyzed by needless guilt. Tom Guiry and Betsy Beutler had chemistry, Jonathan Tucker and Olivia Wilde didn't.

The formula for Tommy and Jenny's relationship is a pretty normal one for television drama: there's sexual tension and a sense that the male and female lead are "meant to be", but the writers avoid making it explicit for as long as possible. The reasoning seems to be that if the characters are explicitly together, the audience will lose interest. Sometimes this formula works, and sometimes it's simply frustrating. In The Black Donnellys, Tommy and Jenny's non-relationship just didn't go anywhere. Meanwhile, Jimmy and Joanie's relationship, which appeared to only be about sex and drugs at the beginning, ended up being about love. Funny how these things turn out...