They're usually about the doctors.

That's why TV hospital series are generally classified as 'doctor shows.' The nurses play supporting roles, just like in real hospitals.

But suddenly, within the space of a week, two series about nurses. Showtime's acidic "Nurse Jackie," with Edie Falco, reviewed here last week, made its entry June 9. And TNT's "Hawthorne" gets admitted to practice Tuesday, June 16 (9 p.m.).

But while "Nurse Jackie" is a subversively satiric half-hour comedy forging new frontiers in TV medical practice, "Hawthorne" sticks with the tried-and-true, avoiding risky experimental procedures. And, seeing medical shows are not really medicine - "I'm not a doctor (or nurse), I just play one on television." - risky is usually better.

Admittedly, the practitioners behind "Nurse Jackie" have more room to play it fast and loose. Their show is a comedy, after all, and it's on pay-cable, where faster and looser is the rule. Not that basic cable can't stretch the limits now and then. (See: TV's all-time riskiest doctor show, "Nip/Tuck" on FX.)

So "Hawthorne" looks pretty tame once you've seen "Nurse Jackie." The comparison may be unfair, but it's also inescapable. And it's also true that "Hawthorne" offers little in the way of medical drama that we haven't seen before.

Likeable Jada Pinkett Smith does a fine job as Christina Hawthorne, head nurse at a Richmond, Va., hospital. She's a widow, who as the pilot begins is observing the first anniversary of her husband's death. Her bratty adolescent daughter (Hannah Hodson) and her snooty mother-in-law (Joanna Cassidy, good to see her again) both blame her for his demise. No doubt we'll hear more about that subject later.

Let's hope we also see more of Dr. Marshall (played with shark-tooth bite by Anne Ramsay), the high-and-mighty physician whose favorite hobby is treading on the down-trodden nurses, especially in a case where she's wrong enough to kill a patient and the nurse was right. If the writers don't try to make her cuddly and lovable, or try to explain later that she's just misunderstood, she could be a character we all love to hate.

But too many plotlines in “Hawthorne” strain credulity. One is the despairing fellow who jumps from the hospital roof, survives and is chatting again by day’s end. Not bloody likely. Another is the homeless woman who brings a newborn baby to the hospital door. Hawthorne and the doctors start treating the baby, which is fine. But wouldn’t they also ask who the mother is?

The basic problem with “Hawthorne,” even though it’s about a nurse, is that so little happens that we haven’t seen before in countless doctor shows. It’s all very predictable, and those parts that couldn’t be predicted just don’t make sense.

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Okay, here’s my analysis of what went wrong with the economy:

A: A whole bunch of people who were supposed to be really smart believed they could get rich by lending money to people who could never pay it back.

B: Those lenders kept dishing out the dough because they believed they’d never have to collect it anyway. They just sold the loans to Wall Street bankers and brokers. Those bankers and brokers, financial wizards every one, believed that the more more money owed to them by people who couldn't pay, the richer they’d be.

C: Everybody – the borrowers, the lenders, the brokers and bankers – believed home prices would keep going up forever.

Now that you’ve heard my explanation, check out the history of the crash as detailed on “Frontline,” TV’s deepest and smartest news-documentary series. Watch “Breaking the Bank.” (“Frontline” airs at 10 p.m. Tuesday, June 16, on KPBS/Cable 11.)

The sober, revealing hour-long documentary focuses on the wreckage wrought by that belief system, beginning with the single weekend last September when “the entire American banking system would be changed.” That was the weekend when then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson engineered Bank of America’s takeover of the Wall Street brokerage Merrill Lynch and began what some have termed the “nationalization” of America’s banks.

That merger, he thought, would blunt the negative impact of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, another huge Wall Street player. Didn’t quite work out that way, as we know now.

Interviewing most of the major players, including Bank of America chief Ken Lewis and ex-Merrill honcho John Thain and several top financial journalists (but not Paulson), the “Frontline” team reconstructs the development of events with the meticulous care of a CSI team poring over the scene of a mass killing.

A lot of supposedly smart people did a lot of stupid things that weekend and later. One of the dumbest, “Frontline” explains, was Lewis, who agreed to take over Merrill with less diligence than one might exercise before buying a used Chevy.

Lewis is still defending the merger, even though it cost taxpayers $20 billion, while at the same blaming Paulson for pressuring him to make it. “This course made sense for Bank of America and its shareholders, and made sense for the stability of the markets,” he told a congressional committee Thursday.

Says Andrew Ross Sorkin, of the New York Times: “The power on Wall Street has clearly shifted. There is no power on Wall Street any more. The power is in Washington. The chairman of the board of these banks now lives at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.”