TV is the New Reading

'Nip/Tuck' - Take us home, Murph

It’s the sixth and, according to show creator and producer Ryan Murphy, final season of "Nip/Tuck."

"Nip/Tuck," airing Wednesdays at 9 p.m. on FX, has always been about the glamorous life and has at times led the cutting edge of drama. I say at times because the cutting edge of drama crosses occasionally so far into the ridiculous it’s hard to keep a straight face -- even were it to be shot full of Botox.

They’ve pulled heroin-filled breast implants from Colombian drug mules, separated conjoined twins and then stitched them back together, conducted a face transplant, and separated a collection of limbs cobbled together by a serial killer. Heck, they’ve surgically separated fraternity pledges whose bummies got glued together as part of a hazing prank. They’ve also reconstructed a victim of female circumscision and a literal labial transplant for a burn patient, and removed someone else’s tooth from a suicide bombing survivor -- and they’ve performed more than one set of surgeries at gunpoint.

The show has explored the depths of what it means to be beautiful. Season Three focused around a serial mutilator and rapist, the Carver, who, as it turned out, was in fact a brother-sister team of their colleague and one-time partner, plastic surgeon Quentin Costa, and Carver investigator Kit McGraw. Despite his extraordinarily beautiful outward appearance, Quentin was born without genitalia and grew up to be a twisted sociopath who would appear from out of nowhere, paralyze and then assualt his victims with the use of a sexual implement and cut their faces open with a surgical blade. His sister helped him cover his tracks and indeed it’s very easy to investigate a crime if you’ve committed it.

They’ve had some great recurring characters -- Ava Moore, the Hope Diamond of transsexuals comes to mind. Mrs. Hedda Grubman the plastic surgery addict. Colleen Rose, Sean’s hack-and-slash agent from Season Five. Rival plastic surgeon Merrill Bobolit, and perennial ne’er-do-well Escobar Gallardo has popped in to add some drama, along with the many, many love interests, particularly of plastic surgeon rock star Christian Troy. Most notably we have perfect 10 Kimber Henry, sex addict Gina Russo, the blind and beautiful Natascha Charles and the devious Michelle Landau who gave up everything to be with Christian and then, in the end, lost him as well. All approximating but never completely eclipsing partner Sean McNamara’s wife, Julia, his one-night stand on the eve of Sean and Julia’s wedding.

That triad of Sean, Christian and Julia has anchored this show since its first season. It was revealed in Season Two that Christian fathered Sean’s son Matt, which caused the most beautiful arc of dramatic damage I’ve seen play out. Sean and Christian are brothers in all but biology, have been so since college. Christian is the strong paragon of male beauty while Sean is the family man, plucked from obscurity in their Season Five move from Miami to Hollywood and to leading man status on a silly hospital show called “Hearts and Scalpels.” His marriage broken, he’s pulled in by Eden, the daughter of Julia’s lesbian partner, Olivia. Eden tries to murder Julia, who she’s been poisoning with mercury, and Sean uses her temporary amnesia to try to reconcile. It’s a bad move.

This show has fearlessly examined themes of propriety, identity, crime -- Matt’s racially purist girlfriend whose family mutilated a pre-op transsexual, for instance, and his own mini crime spree of vandalism, along with his past involvement in a hit and run, the meth lab he ran until it blew up, his dabbling in Scientology and his marriage to Kimber, who’d slept with Sean and almost married Christian, his infant daughter whose lips got plumped for baby modeling, and the beginning of Season Six, where he’s pursuing a career as a mime, which isn’t going so well so he robs a café in masque. Along with his long-term affair with Ava, who transsexual or not was old enough to be his mother (in that she in fact had a boundary-free son, Aiden, who was, in fact, Matt’s age) and participation (however willing) in statutory rape, it raised the question whether Matt has ever not been involved in the breathtakingly weird if not actually criminal?

Heck, Matt was the inspiration for Sean and Cristian’s pilot episode crime, disposing the body of a pedophiliac drug lord in the Everglades by first trying hams to it so the gators would eat it.

Back to the current season, along with all of their history and baggage, Christian and Sean are broke. They’re eating off-brand yogurt and facing empty waiting rooms. Another blast from their past, Dr. Mike Hamoui, showed up and he’s as beautiful as ever. He’s identified a niche market, so to speak, in vaginal uplifts. In joining Sean and Christian’s practice, their practice gets a boost.

Not helping, however, is Christian’s divorce from lesbian and longtime anaesthetist Dr. Liz Cruz. He’d married her when his cancer seemed inoperable and put everything in her name so his son, Wilber, would be looked after. In that the lab made an egregious error, it turns out he’s not dying so he dumped Liz and bought a boat. Liz, for some reason, wanted to stay married to Christian (she still likes women, she rationalized, but she also loved Christian and in fact had enjoyed sex with him). Sean is sleeping with … oh wow … he’s still sleeping with anaesthetist, biker chick, free spirit and pathological liar Teddy Rowe from Season Five. I hadn’t really gotten a sense of who Sean’s latest squeeze was in the episode, and I figured they’d tell us if it was important. I had not even considered that it was the same character. As it happens, Rose McGowan took over the role from Katee Sackhoff who, fresh from her starring as Starbuck in “Battlestar Galactica,” could inhabit and present that character perfectly. Rose McGowan is a very different, very materialistic version of Dr. Teddy Rowe. I’m going to have to meet her all over again, I’m afraid.

I may not get the chance, of course. Sean ended this episode, narrated with comic darkness by roaming gnome Linda Hunt, with a handful of pills. I have no reason to assume he won’t survive, but it’s certainly one way to go when things aren’t looking so good.

Naturally I miss Julia -- I’ve been a big fan of Joely Richardson from the pilot episode, and with her back in New York the show is less interesting for me. But here’s the fun. I’m an even bigger fan of her mom. Vanessa Redgrave as psychologist Erica Naughton brings a delicious flavor of evil to the screen and there she was among the scenes from upcoming episodes. I’m going to be glued to my screen to see what she’ll do or say next.

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