Nip/Tuck: The Sixth and Final Season

Only on Nip/Tuck can a character utter a line like “Dildo sales are down. It’s the goddamn economy,” and make it sound a perfectly reasonable thing to say. There are aspects I will miss about Nip/Tuck, and one of them is its ability to take the most outlandishly offensive situation and make it seem relatively normal, at least within the context of the show. But all good and bad things must come to an end, and Nip/Tuck, from Season Three onwards, was equal parts of both. The Sixth Season aired in two parts (with a month break in the middle), which at the time were marketed as Seasons Six and Seven. There is no Season Seven, but there is a 19-episode sixth season, and all those episodes are collected in this set. Through watching this block, however, it certainly seems like two different seasons. Confused? Annoyed? Allow me to elaborate and pontificate.

The first ten episodes are all but unwatchable in their awfulness. Not merely content to disturb viewers, these episodes largely depress as well, although it seems unlikely that was the goal. The flaccid economy, and its effect on the plastic surgery business, is stressed in the first episode, but what does it say about a show when such a topic is one of the bright spots? Sean (Dylan Walsh) is still dating anesthesiologist Teddy Rowe, who used to be played by Katee Sackhoff, but now resides in the body of Rose McGowan, which is a true “what the fuck?” soap opera switch, given that it’s hard to think of two actresses that are any less alike in both their method and appearance. Teddy slowly begins revealing her true, black widow colors as the narrative progresses, and on the camping trip from hell, Teddy’s shit hits the fan and splatters all over the place.

And one must wonder how many viewers the show lost in that block. How many people failed to come back to the show in January for the final nine episodes? I’m willing to bet plenty, which is a shame because, believe it or not, after years of excess, Nip/Tuck managed to deliver a nicely restrained, oftentimes poignant batch of episodes to close out the series. The story picks up a few months after the first ten in the set, and Sean and Christian are going to pick up a lifetime achievement award. Only after they receive the award does Sean discover that Christian bought it via a hefty donation, at which point Sean goes ballistic. And from there, the season peels one layer of the onion away after the next, dissecting McNamara and Troy’s friendship and partnership, all while providing endings for every other character on the show as well (most are surprisingly happy, some a little warped, and in one case we lose a character altogether).

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Nip/Tuck: Season Five, Part Two

The press release for this set finishes up with two sentences: “And Liz says ‘I do’ to the last person you’d imagine. Time to stretch your imagination, fans.” When even the marketing department can no longer take a show seriously, it must be Nip/Tuck. As a fan since day one, I’m past resenting the show for failing to be as good as it once was, and have moved on to embracing Nip/Tuck for the freakshow it’s become. How freaky you ask? Well, in one episode, when Dr. Troy (Julian McMahon) refuses to give a woman an unnecessary mastectomy, she performs the surgery on herself – in the lobby of McNamara/Troy – with an electric carving knife.

Never a show to be too far behind the times, another installment features a pair of lovers who’ve taken their vampiric bloodlust a bit too far. You’ve seen these folks at goth clubs, I’m sure, but have secretly hoped it was all an act. Nip/Tuck is here to show you that the freakshow never ends, and that people do indeed partake in mutual bloodsucking. Surely the most outrageous display of hedonistic debasement comes in the form of the guy who likes to fuck furniture. If I hadn’t been laughing so hard, I might have turned away. What’s most noteworthy about this block of episodes, is that there isn’t a villain in the traditional Nip/Tuck sense – no Carver, or Escobar – although Eden (AnnaLynne McCord) does show up a couple times to fan a few flames.

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Nip/Tuck: Season Five, Part One

Nip/Tuck is the kind of show that people often refer to as a guilty pleasure. Normally, that’s a phrase that seems sort of hollow to me. After all, if you enjoy a TV show or movie, why feel guilty about it? But in the case of Nip/Tuck, and coming from someone who’s been with it every sordid step of the way, I can understand where the guilt might start creeping in. It is, after all, tasteless, vulgar, trashy, over-the-top fare that most people probably don’t care to admit they enjoy. I can count the number of people I know that watch it on one hand. And, yet, it’s FX’s biggest ratings grabber, so either I move in some strange circles, or some people are lying about what they’re doing on Tuesday nights.

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The Sexy, Surreal Slice & Dice of Nip/Tuck

Tonight FX delivers the Season Four finale of its highest rated series, Nip/Tuck. Based on the 14 episodes presented thus far, this season's subtitle should be “The Apology”, because after the disaster that was Season Three, that’s what was owed to long-term fans -- and it’s largely what producer/writer Ryan Murphy and his band of twisted lunatics delivered.

Nip/Tuck's charter mission—a commentary about the evils (and occasional benefits) of cosmetic surgery—has been all but abandoned at this point. There's still at least one patient/surgery per episode, but most of them are played for laughs or shock value (and sometimes both) and rarely leave lasting impressions. After three seasons of exploring themes that were tidily summed up by the oft-repeated catchphrase of the Carver ("Beauty is a curse on the world"), maybe there isn't much left to say? The show has often been accused of promoting sexist themes, which is a tad shortsighted, as it primarily holds up a mirror to what's beneath the surface, that which cannot be fixed through botox injections and boob jobs: Nip/Tuck is really about people making atrocious life decisions (surgery being only the tip of that iceberg). On the rare occasion someone on Nip/Tuck makes a good decision, you can bet the positive fallout won't last long, as they'll soon enough make another bad one, dragging the character back to their moral drawing board. It's impossible for anyone on this series to be content for any length of time, and the day someone finds true happiness, it'll be time to close up shop.

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The Doctors are In

Season Four of FX’s melodramatic black comedy Nip/Tuck begins on Sept. 5th. Disappointed with Season Three, and specifically by the finale, which included the revelation of the identity of the infamous Carver? Long-term disciples of the antics of Doctors McNamara & Troy (Dylan Walsh & Julian McMahon) felt betrayed, violated and used. We were all Ryan Murphy’s surgical tools, were we not? And yet we anxiously await S4, right? Of course we do. However drastically Nip/Tuck may have derailed, we'll give it another chance…as well we should.

Prior to the S3 train wreck, Murphy and Co. delivered two stellar seasons of some of the best high-concept television seen in years (and given the high quality of a lot of TV these days, that's saying something). When Nip/Tuck is “on”, nothing else is even remotely as satisfying. Not The Sopranos, not the recently laid-to-rest Six Feet Under – heck, not even the other Doctor who I gush about (no, not House).

Season One laid an ideal foundation which Season Two proceeded to bust into chunks by pulling everything and everyone apart, fracturing an already imperfect “family” into half a dozen splintered pieces. It’s not with any exaggeration that I say S2 of Nip/Tuck is one of the most slickly scripted, acted and filmed seasons of any TV show, ever. It was in fact so faultless that the S3 dip in quality was largely unsurprising. Even before it started, it was difficult to fathom that S2 could be topped, and certainly not by the season following it. Although it behooved the creators to give it a whirl, let’s face it: A show as edgy and daring as Nip/Tuck was destined to misfire sooner or later.

Like most viewers, I got sucked into the “Who’s the Carver?” zeitgeist – much of which was due to the expert seeding of the affair in the latter half of S2. Indeed, part of the fizzling of the storyline was due to it presiding over nearly half of the series. It built up to a “Who Shot J.R.?” level of suspense[1] . (Mildly noteworthy, though presumably unrelated, is Larry Hagman’s upcoming recurring presence.) The production team can’t really be blamed for riding the Carver gravy train and last year's finale delivered not only Nip/Tuck’s, but also FX’s biggest ratings ever with 5.7 million viewers. So while dramatically it may not have been sound, from a business standpoint someone had the right idea. Suffering through the Carver nonsense may have been painful, but it probably guaranteed us a few more years of the series.

I’ve not yet revisited S3, although I’ve gone back and viewed the last 30 or so minutes of the finale several times. It would be uncool to reveal the Carver’s identity to anyone who hasn’t seen it (so I won't), however I would like to posit a theory: S3 may very well work better if you know who the Carver is going into it. You’ll be spared the maddening moments of the finale in which you’re beating yourself up for spending too much time and thought on theories involving everyone but the obvious. Mind you, this theory doesn’t include S2's Carver buildup – that stuff works great not knowing a damn thing. But if you’re viewing Nip/Tuck on DVD, consider possibly spoiling yourself before spinning S3.

Some of Nip/Tuck’s strengths:

1) How rapidly it unfolds. What the show accomplishes in a single episode takes most series three installments to unveil; while a Nip/Tuck season may only be 13 episodes, by the time it ends it feels as if you’ve experienced 22.

2) What they’re able to get away with. For a series with commercial backing, it pushes more boundaries than anything on either HBO or Showtime. There’s something to be said for having just a few restrictions to work around and it makes for a creative atmosphere; you don’t always have to "see" a pair of tits to see a pair of tits. I often lovingly refer to it as “the most amoral show on TV”. [Note to the Parents Television Council: Just give up, OK? Or better yet…don’t. You folks give this show more publicity than FX can afford to.]

3) Murphy’s apparent ongoing mission to give jobs to actors whom nobody else seems to know what to do with. Joan Rivers, Alec Baldwin, Anne Heche, Jill Clayburgh, Kathy Baker, Julie Warner, Brittany Snow, Patti D’Arbanville, Geoffrey Lewis, J. E. Freeman & Brian Kerwin are just some of the familiar faces who’ve benefited from Murphy’s eye for utilizing underused talent. S4 looks to be taking the famous guest shots even further; in addition to Hagman, Catherine Deneuve, Richard Chamberlain, Melissa Gilbert, Kathleen Turner and Brooke Shields are only some of the names that you can - yet wouldn't - expect to see.

4) The plastic surgeries - as outrageous as they may often appear - are based at least in part on real-life cases.

5) Engaging storytelling and compelling characters, both of which keep you coming back week after week. Much of what makes the show work is rooted in a “What can they possibly do next?” mentality. It’s easy to focus on the frequent unpredictability of McMahon’s Dr. Troy, but the rest of the characters are just as wildly difficult to decipher. When a main character not named Troy fucks a RealDoll on the floor, one can safely say we’ve ventured far outside the boundaries of “been there, done that”.

[1] I vividly recall the J.R. phenom from back in the day, but I’ve got no memory whatsoever of the public’s reaction to the Kristin Shepard reveal, something I can only attribute to it being perceived of as anticlimactic...and perhaps in these cases, isn’t it always? [Note to Ryan Murphy – once you’re done with Hagman, consider looking up Mary Crosby for a guest shot.]