Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 10, "Adelle Coffin"

Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode Ten: "Adelle Coffin"
Written by Ryan Murphy & Dell Chandler
Directed by Michael M. Robin

"You not only don't admit the error, you'd rather argue about it than correct it." -Sean, to Christian

As I've been re-watching the plastic surgery melodrama known as Nip/Tuck I've not only questioned my own enjoyment and gratification from it the first go around (admittedly, in a pre-Breaking Bad world) but I've also consistently wondered what made it such a breakout basic cable hit on FX. How "Adelle Coffin" starts out makes a pretty good case why, even if someone such as myself can see all of their downsides in a reflective nearly-ten-years-later landscape, Ryan Murphy's first foray into television was a successful microcosm of what was to come with a little shan't-be-mentioned teen musical dramedy on FOX a number of years later. From the outset, this episode manages to, like any proper and effective high school essay, grab your attention, offer a thesis, a preview of what's to come, and just enough balance of what the viewer/reader may already be familiar with and something new and exciting to delve into for 3-4 pages/40-44 minutes.

In this case, the "something new" is also the "something familiar", while the shocking attention-getter is a grisly medical procedure that has absolutely nothing to do with what your average plastic surgeon does. With a very quick "oh this patient is afraid of hospitals, so he came to our private practice" explanation, suddenly we're watching Christian Troy and Sean McNamara sew fingers back onto a plumber that put his hands down an active garbage disposal. It's a gruesome scene from the ER playbook in that they, per usual fashion, play cutesy rock music in the background so it's not overly serious like on network television, which is wacky! But wait: this isn't substance-less, they lead us to believe. For those that have been watching all season long, we get to see a new layer of Dr. Christian Troy's personality and background: the sad, untalented surgeon who cannot seem to do anything right, even something as simple as sewing the right fingertips back on the right digits. For those that are new to the wacky-doctor-soapy-funtime hour, well we are re-introduced to the dynamic between the two protagonists and their eternally playful-yet-dark BFF dynamic.

For what that's worth, Murphy's quite deft at combining the serial and procedural style, but employing an emotional and character-based method, rather than strictly the patient-of-the-week or problem-of-the-week formula. We don't need to know much about Christian, though it does enhance it, especially looking back on his arc with Kimber, to sympathize with his struggling to pass his re-certification medical exams in the wake of his revelations regarding his level of talent vs. hubris. Yes, it's a rather bland plot, even for a single episode, but as I've harped on ever since the pilot, Julian McMahon is brilliant even with the most hackneyed material, expressing more than adequately his complicated relationship with himself and those around him, ranging from supreme insecurity to overpowering cockiness. And with such a simple yet profoundly difficult (not just physically for him, as we learn that it's Sean who does all the complicated and delicate surgeries at their practice, but mentally too) task set in front of him, it's honestly quite mesmerizing to see him wade through it, despite Murphy's insistence at making it as quirky as possible, from him practicing on a Jane Doe in a morgue after bribing the guard to yet another encounter with the blackmailing Ms. Grubman.

Unfortunately, Christian Troy, like he does far too often in this show, got the B-plot in "Adelle Coffin." The titular patient is actually the cadaver of the head that Sean is given for his re-certification exam, and so we're forced to spend the majority of the episode with him and his problems. Not only are his problems very mixed up with his kind-of-mistress, the cancer-stricken Megan that's been around for far too long by now, which if you have not been able to tell is a storyline I have not been enamored with in the slightest, but it's also something that's so integral to us knowing/caring about what has been going on with Sean in recent episodes that I can't imagine it was very appealing to those dropping in off and on with the show. Luckily it steals from Six Feet Under and lets the disembodied Ms. Coffin speak as Sean's conscience and shame him for both his affair with Megan O'Hara as well as his implicit involvement with her suicide. Of course this happens because as he looks at his cadaver's chart (once again, conveniently made possible in a world where cadavers' histories are meant to be kept private because the test proctor preludes with "we've found it to be easier for doctors to know their patients before they perform surgery on them, even when they're dead," or something to that lame effect) and sees that Coffin's (speaking of heavy-handed convenience) cause of death was suicide.

The real reason to discuss this here, though, has naught to do with what they've been doing wrong with Sean's character since day one (that is, give the audience no reason to feel empathy for him and let Dylan Walsh overact his nervous/doe-eyed shtick) and everything to do with the fact that Megan has always felt like a transitory piece in Sean's character development. Walsh actually does a decent job in this episode, especially for having to talk with a ridiculously manic corpse about guilt blah blah, because he doesn't try anything too big or too self-serving. He suddenly leaves his exams and mutters "I don't care about anything" instead of screaming it, for instance. He lets anger and sadness well in his eyes as he admits his cheating to Julia after they come back from Megan's wake (which Julia wants to go to for some reason, of course, which could have been an interesting plot point if Murphy actually explored it rather than just give another convenient line that explains the weirdness away). No, what's most annoying this time around is that Megan, like Jude before her, only serves the purpose of driving Sean and Julia apart. It would have been monumentally more interesting to see Sean and Julia's failing marriage break apart for any other reason than infidelity, even if the first half was never consummated and the second half had a cancerous twist.

If I remember correctly, however, (per the last memorable quote mentioned below) this is finally what lets Sean and Julia's relationship (disintegrating or otherwise) start to become compelling. Because even though it took some boring and forced methods to get here, we realize that their family has been struggling to stay together for a long long time before we even met these characters. I did enjoy that, even though it was easy, it was effective to just end the episode with a slow zoom out as Sean cried at Julia's knees repeating "I'm sorry, I'm so sorry" over and over again as she sat there pushing her emotion away but still allowing him to grovel there before her. It's a staid and not necessarily soap-level illustration of their dependence, but it will allow us to get somewhere more natural and therefore more satisfying, even as other ephemera of the show get less and less realistic. And who knows, maybe that's part of its success as well: just as it knows how to gratify one half of its audience, it's quick to reboot itself in the next episode to gratify the other half. It's frustrating for both parties, but it still fosters a similar sick kind of dependency. So here I am, Murphy, groveling; won't you start reminding me why I loved your show for two-and-a-half seasons?

Grade: C

Nip/Tuck is available to watch on Netflix Watch Instantly.

Other Memorable Quotes: 

• "I'll assist with 'Beef Curtains' and you can wheel in 'Colonel Sanders.'" -Christian Troy, nicknaming Ms. Grubman and her fiance
• "Do you believe in it?" -Sean, asking Christian about suicide in the weirdest possible way
• "But the irony of it - instead of helping to mask your pain, your affair with O'Hara only made it worse!" -Adelle Coffin's head, aka his conscience, to Sean
• "Even your infidelity is passive aggressive!" -Julia, to Sean
• "We lost each other a long time ago, Sean." -Julia (a lame line delivered by a terrific actress)
  

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 9, "Sophia Lopez II"

Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode Nine: "Sophia Lopez II"
Written by Sean Jablonski
Directed by Nelson McCormick

"You fight me and I will make you ugly - I swear to God." -Kimber

I bet you thought I was done with these, right? Well I had no idea what to blog about this week since I haven't gotten a chance to see another Harry Potter movie due to an unfortunate Netflix queue mishap, so I went back to an old standby. Something I should prepare you for, because I'm sure you care: I'm done with the taking of notes, thoughtful reflecting, and careful composing. I'm writing this as I'm watching the episode listed above and I'm going to end my final paragraph as the credits roll. There are two reasons for this. One is that I don't want to invest the time. The second is that Nip/Tuck simply doesn't merit as much pontificating upon my second watch through of it as Six Feet Under does for Qualler or even as Salute Your Shorts does for DoktorPeace. Put frankly, it's not a very good show, but I'm going to see this first season through at the very least. I'm pretty sure all the grades I've given it thus far in the Classic Television Rundown were inflated for nostalgic purposes.

Anyway, it's aggravating that I end up deciding to redirect my course like this when I get an episode that's heavy on the Dr. Merril Bobolit character, who I always found under-utilized overall on the show. Joey Slotnick is a weird-looking dude, but he's one of the few guest actors on the show (actually one of the only actors on Nip/Tuck, period) that actually properly complements Ryan Murphy's tonal wackiness from absurdly comedic to absurdly dark, which is largely otherwise confusing. (Sidenote: here's hoping this problem doesn't arise in his new FX drama American Horror Story though I have a bad feeling it might.) Here Bobolit tries to make Christian's girlfriend Kimber into a business deal: he wants to hand over his Lamborghini to Dr. Troy in exchange for the dim-yet-beautiful-and-devoted blond, who, appropriately is also one of the show's few complexly magnetic characters. Unfortunately, Minnesota native Kelly Carlson doesn't always bring it, especially when they take her crazy tendencies to ridiculous extremes.

Speaking of characters that have potential but are screwed up too often - Liz the anesthesiologist gets her first substantial-ish story arc this episode. I have to admit that one reason why I put off doing this next Nip/Tuck post was that the title harked back to the Sofia Lopez character, which was not one of my favorites from earlier this first season. But they bring her back with an interesting reason (to get her intimately involved with Liz), but they lack any actual teeth or foresight to properly make that dynamic work for anything more than a passing fancy. Is it shocking? Sure, but they play the notes so obviously in their "girls night gone sexy" scene that it almost ends up just being rote, especially because they don't really follow up with it (other than an obligatory pair of beat-long scenes) later in the episode, or to my knowledge, later in the series. It's too bad because, like Bobolit and Kimber, there is a nice undercurrent of weird-meets-tragic in Liz, but it's squandered in favor of, oh I don't know, Sean McNamara.

And oh how does Sean McNamara continue down his ugly spiral of self-doubting facial expressions gone horribly wrong. The apple doesn't fall far from the tree either, because when his son Matt finds out about his father's affair with Megan the breast cancer survivor, he puts on a particularly offensive sourpuss face. It's so distracting that all the hurt that the piano plunks suggest should be communicated, isn't, and it doesn't help that Sean seems to try to match his son's over-the-top melodramatic reaction. We already know that Dylan Walsh has his, shall I say, limitations, but when he's put to task by the equally inconsistent John Hensley, the father/son relationship just doesn't fly as emotionally or honestly as it should. Perhaps this is why (spoiler!) the producers decided to start playing up the Matt/Christian father/son angle so quickly. At least in their scene there's a semblance of a true chemistry.

The chemistry between Julia and Jude, on the other hand, is a little more complicated, because Joely Richardson is so good at playing oblivious, then curious, and then outraged, that, similar to Julian McMahon's excellence in comparison to Hensley in those Christian/Matt scenes, her outshining Phillip Rhys is actually an asset to the minor storyline instead of a disadvantage. I honestly don't care about Jude whatsoever, and maybe I'm not even supposed to, as he's used more often to bring out the inner identity of Julia instead of becoming his own character, but it can be frustrating when you sympathize so much with Julia (especially now in the wake of Sean's multi-episode fling with Megan) that you wished the person she gets emotionally entangled with would have more meat on their bones. But when she finds out that Jude is possibly a gigolo, it makes things not just complicated for her semi-innocent semi-flirting college buddy routing with him, but also mirrors the history she's dealing with regarding Sean, the straight-laced boring assface that became her husband. Richardson is that good that she can convey that, even if she's interacting with a vacant-eyed pretty boy that knows how to smile more than he knows to act and/or have a fully-realized personality.

And lastly there's the we've-been-waiting-for-it twist in which we discover Kimber is actually not that dim at all, but is rather a bit mentally unstable. This hints at the extreme future Murphy and co. will take with her character, but I remember the scene in this episode where she confronts Christian for trying to trade her for a car as particularly compelling and, as I shake my head ever so slightly, even a bit feminist as my young 20-year-old self (or whatever). Kelly Carlson may not be good at the naive and/or quietly damaged moments, but she is downright hypnotic when she fully commits to the unhinged wildness of Kimber the vengeful girlfriend, as long as it doesn't get too crazy. But since it's Ryan Murphy, we know it will. Oh well - this didn't play as well for me as it did back in 2003, and I'm sure it somewhat has to do with my ever-increasing bad attitude about this recap project, but it still was the highlight of revisiting the episode, as it at least kept my attention long enough to pause from typing throughout the whole thing.

Grade: C+

Nip/Tuck is available to watch on Netflix Watch Instantly.

Other Memorable Quotes:

• "If I wanted high maintenance, I woulda gotten a Fiat!" -Christian Troy, delivering a line that would have sounded more at home on Home Improvement
• "Once - in college - but he had long hair and when it swept across my face I pretended he was Joni Mitchell." -Liz, describing her one non-lesbian sexual encounter
• "It takes...balls." -Christian Troy, on Sofia deciding to have her penis surgically removed
• "I'm going to go play golf." -Nurse Linda (played by behind-the-scenes plastic surgery expert Linda Klein) in response to finding out her patient Sofia got involved romantically with Liz and wants to now cancel her surgery
• "Get it through your fuzzy head!" -Kimber, to Merril (played by real-life cu-tip Joey Slotnick)
• "If I cut you here do you think you'll bleed if you don't have a heart?" -Kimber, with her knife lingering above Christian's chest
• "You know what? I can't kill you. You're already dead." -Kimber, to Christian

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 8, "Cara Fitzgerald"

Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode Eight: "Cara Fitzgerald"
Written by Ryan Murphy
Directed by Jamie Babbit

"After all, aren't you in the business of lies?" -Father Mike, to Christian Troy

Here's where I usually get things rolling by starting with an excuse for not having written a Nip/Tuck review in a long time. Well, I'm not gonna this time. Instead I'm going to share with yallz that I'm finally at peace with the fact that while Nip/Tuck is not a great show (possibly not even a good show, even in these first couple seasons, which when I started this feature I still thought were near flawless), they have a certain effect when you watch them intermittently and also judge the episodes compared to each other rather than against David Simon-level gold standards of television. Because while even the biggest bombshell moments of the show come across as ham-fisted now, within the context of the world of characters and ridiculousness, they still pack a soap operatic wallop eight years after the fact.

This episode specifically is about as intimate, personal, and emotionally manipulative as they come, as it's the one in which we learn Dr. Christian Troy was molested by his father as a little boy. Now I don't remember if I was able to predict it when I watched "Cara Fitzgerald" for the first time back in the day, but if I didn't, I was pretty dumb. But rabbit hole conversations about twist endings aside, it didn't so much feel like bad plotting for a Shyamalan flick (and I still love Unbreakable) as much as informative and well-crafted (if not heavy-handed) suspense for Julian McMahon's character, especially considering what we already know about Christian. Whether or not we'll get the completely unnecessary "you see, you are an oversexed borderline deviant as an adult because of the sexual trauma you experienced as a child" speech from a therapist remains to be seen (I don't remember), but it's not even touched on here because it doesn't need to be. Also it leaves more room for the cheese and waterworks.

How does Dr. Troy come to admitting this revelation to Sean on a pew in a church as a priest is taken away in handcuffs? The way most people are able to finally open up about painful experiences from childhood, naturally - he turns in a child molester after threatening to cut his most vital arteries because he "knows exactly where they are," which reminds him of how he didn't have the power to do something so dominantly aggressive when he was little. Played by Jamie McShane of Sons of Anarchy fame, Father Mike is played almost too well in comparison to some of N/T's usual one-off guest appearances, especially because his character doesn't fit the show's mold. He comes in as your average McNamara/Troy client, wanting to get rid of a birthmark on his genitals because, as he purports, "my fiancee hates giving me head and I promised I'd get it removed for the honeymoon!" If it weren't for a look of judgment/hesitation on Sean's part, the twist that comes up later that he's actually a priest trying to get rid of the one piece of evidence that could put him in jail for pedophilia might not have worked. With another actor in any of the three roles, it could have been hackneyed, but Dylan Walsh's mediocre work is actually a godsend here, as he always makes that face, so it's just enough to make sense, but not so much that we could have predicted it. And McShane's reversal in the episode's second half is frighteningly impressive.

But back to Christian's confession (and yes, it's a Ryan Murphy show, so he had to confess in church, and he had to get Father Mike to confess to his sins and turn himself in while in a confessional booth) - one last interesting way in which it works so well is that Christian is barely a focus of this episode as a whole, which makes the last shot lingering on him and his broken confidence all the more haunting and effective. It doesn't divert attention like most shows would take advantage of, but rather reminds us of why we traipsed through all that Kimber/swinging scene/sex addiction stuff with him in the first half of the season. As we near the midway point, and we get a rather juicy and heady case of the week to also amp up the drama, coming back to Christian yelling "he raped boys!" at Sean when trying to convince him that something needed to be done when they realized they had just done plastic surgery on a pederast is a jolt above the melodrama and into the character's psyche. It's bold and way over the top, but if you're going to do a show this sensationalistic, if you tread the ground firmly yet sneakily, it will be effective. And it was.

Speaking of that case of the week, it's likely the episode's low point, as it usually is for most good shows that attempt to combine serial and self-contained formats. Actually as I'm typing this, I'm realizing that the Father Mike deal and also another with a Miss Greco, who wants to get rid of her nose because it reminds her of her father who molested her (okay, so maybe it was a theme suffering from overkill), were also one-off clients for Sean and Christian. Somehow, though, they don't feel as disconnected as your average self-contained plot because they lead distinctly into Christian's teary-eyed admittance. But the one the episode is named after really only has forced links back to either Sean (who's still dealing with trying to keep the secret of his affair with Megan, the breast cancer survivor, as he gives her implants and in-house psychologist Grace senses the two are getting their bang on) or Christian. Per the Six Feet Under & Law and Order formulas, we witness Matt & his friend Henry get high and accidentally run over a girl from their school named Cara Fitzgerald. Except instead of dying she goes into a coma, because corpses don't get plastic surgery (though I wouldn't put it past the later seasons of this show).

As can be expected, Matt feels awful throughout the whole thing and one of the subplot's only high points is the fact that for at least a handful of scenes of N/T we don't have to deal with Matt being a snot. He's genuinely remorseful, and John Hensley actually does a decent job at conveying this with his performance, and he wants (you guessed it) Sean to fix her face. Oh, why her face? Because when Matt hit her she was bending down to pick up some paper that skateboarders knocked out of her hand because she's a loser in school no one likes, so she looked up when the grill met her skull. And of course Matt and Henry were distracted because (other than being high) they were arguing about whether to listen to heavy metal or gangster rap. But wait, there's more! When Matt finally goes to the hospital to see that damage he hath wrought, it turns out Cara's family are Christian scientists, so they don't believe in surgery or medicine. Yeah, I hope I don't need to go into why this was all kinds of suck. Eventually Sean convinces the mom to let him work on her so her broken face bones don't hit her optic nerve and make her go blind. Apparently it didn't work for Murphy though, because all these years later and he's still blind as to how to write adolescent characters. Burnathon 3000!

Grade: A- (and that's a big minus)

Nip/Tuck is available to watch on Netflix Watch Instantly.

Other Memorable Quotes:

• "Would you like to see if your prayers are working?" -Sean, to Mrs. Fitzgerald before he takes off Cara's bandages
  
• "Since we have medical custody, does that mean we have to pay for her college? -Christian, during Cara's surgery
• "I thought I could get it all out, but I couldn't. I felt nothing." -Miss Greco, on the confrontation of her rapist father
  
• "Are you ready to make a confession, father?" -Christian, in confessional booth with child molester Father Mike
• "Whether you go to hell is up to you." -Christian, with another powerful/gaudy one-liner to Father Mike
  

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 7, Cliff Mantegna

Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode Seven: "Cliff Mantegna"
Written by Brad Falchuk
Directed by Scott Brazil

"Sometimes people can be too honest." -Megan

Somehow the sexiest episode of Nip/Tuck thus far in my reflection of the first season is also the creepiest. But as I've hinted at throughout this series of posts, I have never quite been able to tell when Ryan Murphy and co. are commenting on the lustful inclinations of society and how much they're just indulging in their lust-tooth, so to speak. With "Cliff Mantegna", I found myself pretty wildly oscillating between both opinions, which may itself very well be the show's ultimate goal, which while questionable, is undeniably compelling television. In addition, I watched this episode at work after hours, which just made me feel all the more dirty afterward, which goes back to my desire to give the show props and also banish it altogether.

There's really no other conclusion to come to, if you ask me, when you begin your episode with Christian and Kimber role-playing and going at it in his car one moment, followed by Kimber getting fed up with trying to fulfill all of her partner's kinky desires, exiting the car, only to have a slow pan of Julian McMahon's subtle chain reaction of facial expressions, which communicate more than a post-coital scene in a sports car should ever successfully communicate. And to top it off? He regains his composure, simply driving back up to the object of his desire, telling her to get back in the car...which she does almost without a flinch.

It's a nice metaphor, really, for where the show's aiming to go as a whole in its first season, forcing its characters to face their shortcomings and give their egos a reality check, only to allow their self-aggrandized power win out, hopefully (crossing fingers) to repeat the process in the future with more revelatory results. In showing how alternately vulnerable and invincible Christian (and even Sean, in a simultaneously much less subtle and much more aggravating way) can be, we are given the space to both sympathize with despise him, but nevertheless remain curious enough to stick with him for a few more episodes. Especially when this one ends with quite the plot-mover/shocker: he is and has always been quite madly in love with Julia, his best friend and partner's wife.

And this is the other clincher that makes "Cliff Mantegna" work so well on the good-sexy end of the spectrum: Joely Richardson. Her performance here is the best yet of the season, largely because she gets a lot of time to spend mugging for the camera, both as Sean's wife, Matt's mother, Jude's love interest, and now, Christian's unattainable Juliet. More than anything though, here's where she truly becomes her own character, with her own neuroses and dimensions, not all having to do with Sean for once. But since that's her primary reason for being a character in the first place, let's start there: I love that Sean and Julia don't fight much here, but rather try to work idly by each other while each pursues their individual interests. That writer Brad Falchuk (one of the show's key authors, also one of Murphy's main henchmen for Glee) uses a "three-way intervention" scene for humor, pathos/deepening of Matt's character, and the dryly highlight the main differences between Julia and Sean shows just how dense and morally gray Nip/Tuck can get when it's trying to not just shock and awe. Here Julia comes off as straitlaced but confused when she tries to talk with the parents of the girls who's Matt caught gallivanting with, whereas Sean comes off as overly open-minded and confused. They have commonality, but are on too different wavelengths to actually work together as parents.

And what does Julia have her eye on? Jude, the British-Indian student that she studies with a little too often, who isn't too shy to invite her classmate to a swingers party that, incidentally, Christian also invites Kimber to in another effort to spice up his newly monogamous sex life. Jude is a very problematic character for a number of reasons, not even the first of which is that he just happens to be into whatever strange thing Julia is not into but Christian and/or Sean definitely are into, so that the jealousy/love triangle works out exactly the way it needs. But hackneyed plotting aside, the twisty coincidental turns are mapped just loosely enough to distract us from analyzing it too much. Julia convinces Sean to hire Jude as an intern, but Christian helps him find an excuse to fire him when he suspects him of encroaching in on Julia: he saw him at that very same aforementioned swingers party with a Troy/McNamara patient, a big no-no. Bad thing is that Jude now has leverage, because somehow he inferred that when Christian saw him with the 40ish blonde at the party, he could have sworn it was Julia, and since he's just as protective of Julia as Sean is, he must be jealous and therefore in love with her.

It's quite the stretch, but McMahon plays the reaction to the just-competent Phillip Rhys so quietly emotional that we can't but believe that Jude's far-fetched accusation is indeed true. So when the episode goes just one scene too far (as they are wont to do, being the edgy program they are) and actually has Christian and Julia kiss, it's both frustrating and maddeningly exciting, because it opens up a whole new array of messy possibilities for the two main characters, and once again we cross our fingers that it won't splay out onto the screen too quickly, though we know it will, because, you know, it's Nip/Tuck. But that's for another week.

Obviously there's little focus on Sean's idiocy-of-the-week here, and that's part of what makes it a better episode, as they're taking a break from that. However, still reeling in jealousy and also super antsy about the prospective new relationship with breast cancer survivor Megan (who he's now hired as his chiropractor - real nuanced, guys), Sean once again goes in for a kiss, this time with the camera cutting away mid-embrace, suggesting that perhaps something else went on in the back-cracker's office, if you catch my meaning. Having two halves of a married couple cheat on each other in a single episode is a bit much, but with how melodramatic they're seemingly wanting to get, they manage to make it more "wow" and less "ugh" with the actors they've chosen in at least half of the equation.

Oh and the case of the week, Mr. Cliff Mantegna himself, was a cautionary tale about the swinger lifestyle, which Julia declined and Christian/Kimber exited, due, one can assume, to its creepiness. Mantegna is a swinger with man-boobs that he'd like removed so he can be a more successful poly-amorous playboy, but when Christian offensively gets him a free STD blood test ("just to be safe, based on your lifestyle"), turns out dude's got Hep C. So much for getting prime time TV to advocate Eyes Wide Shut shenanigans!

Grade: B

Nip/Tuck is available to watch on Netflix Watch Instantly.

Other Memorable Quotes:

• "A jockey doesn't want to come home to see his girlfriend dressed up like a horse!" -Christian, to Kimber, dressed up as a sexy nurse upon his arrival home
  
• "You can't just be the good guy, Sean, handing out prophylactics and slapping him on the back for his conquests." -Julia
• "Well you know what they say: for every beautiful woman, there is a guy that is tired of screwing her." -Christian, to Sean, as he complains about being married
• "Being open-minded isn't a cure-all, Sean." -Megan
• "There was a documentary in which a man named Marilyn Manson said if he could say anything to the kids of America, he wouldn't say anything. He would listen." -Sean, during the three-way intervention
• "Trust me honey, being on alimony isn't being unemployed." -Lexi, one of the girls' mothers
  
• "There's a big difference between monogamy and fidelity, Jules." -Jude
• "If I'm going to do this one-woman thing, it can't be with just...one woman." -Christian, upon entering The Scene
  

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 6, "Megan O'Hara"

Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode Six: "Megan O'Hara"
Written by Jennifer Salt
Directed by Craig Zisk

"If I don't feel it, I can't get past it - don't you see that?" -Megan

I could go on about how the year-end list-making kept me from writing regularly scheduled Nip/Tuck recaps, but Qualler's near-weekly updates on Six Feet Under would negate any half-hearted apology or excuse I'd be able to muster up here past the halfway mark now in January, so I won't even try. The truth is that this is a daunting task, trying to re-watch with a close analytical eye a show that I remember loving but only kinda like during these visits back to the past. And I've had trouble admitting that. However, I do aim to trudge through (obviously not as briskly as my blogging brethren) because while it takes a while to motivate myself to do this, when I am introduced all over again to characters like this episode's eponymous Megan O'Hara, I start reliving a roller coaster of TV emotions all over again, which is rewarding enough without all the nitpicking and critiquing that shall commence herein.

You see, Megan O'Hara's a pretty boring character. Then again, Sean McNamara isn't much of a thrill either: just an anxiety-ridden everyman who hates fun and seems to never realize when he's being a terrible husband, father, or best friend. So in that way, they're perfectly written for each other and it makes perfect sense why she's brought in (played by Julie Warner, possibly most well known as Chris Farley's love interest in Tommy Boy and most recently a regular on the Crash TV series) for a multi-episode arc so early in the show's run. And like they smartly did with Mrs. Grubman, they don't use her as the intro character and thrust her into the mix before any self-contained conflict is unsheathed, but rather wait until partway through the storyline and sneak her in, making it feel more natural.

So before we get to Megan, let's focus on the main thrusts provided in installment numero six of Nip/Tuck inaugural season. Starting with the rather drama-less client Ms. Berger, who simply wants to get rid of the superfluous flab after losing a hundred pounds the honest way so she can meet her online boyfriend, who sent her a picture of an attractive dude and told her he was a doctor, both of which must be true! Right? Hold on, because we don't get the unpredictable punchline of that story until the very end. For the moment she merely acts as a forced metaphor for Christian's problem: the age-old "don't judge a book by its cover" adage. Dealing with some neon pink graffiti vandalism on his car and boat, Sean helps implant the obvious: he's a prick to women, so it must be some past fling or one-night stand.

This search leads Nip/Tuck to bring not one, not two, but three past female characters back to the forefront, putting an end to one of them, hinting at a future for another, and bringing the third into the immediate fold. First he investigates Nanette Babcock, a mentally ill woman who freaked out at Christian for not wanting to give her liposuction, who we learn here, has committed suicide, which phases the man for all but two seconds. Then there's Gina, possibly the most interesting of Christian's love interests throughout the first season, whose second fiery shutdown of Christian's ego is just begging for her to come back later. And lastly, there's the first return of Kimber, who has finally landed a magazine cover as a model and whose fiance is the stereotypical ethnic criminal type and predictably comes into smash up Christian's office when he finds out him and Kimber are doing sexy things in the shower, just slightly obfuscating each others' genitals with their legs and steam.

Well it's probably not the dead one, and probably not the one he's taken to bang again, so it must be the crazy one, right? That's what Christian assumes anyway, especially when he sees Gina by his car in the parking garage one day, though she says she's just there to leave him a pamphlet about sex addiction therapy because she was feeling sorry for him, but as he merely reacts by berating and accusing her, she hypothesizes that the vandal won't stop until he changes. It's a nice melodramatic moment, but it goes by too quickly, because we go right back to Christian's meandering journey through future-exposition-ville or, worse, Sean's manufactured drama of the week, which somehow leads us to our titular character.

In a few ways, the grief that both Sean and Julia go through after their miscarried baby is actually very natural and welcome, even if it's heavy-handed at times. It gets its deserved focus in a tender scene where Matt discloses that he was hoping he'd get a little brother, but writer Jennifer Salt also smartly chooses not to dwell on it. Too bad it takes the usual Sean-as-self-centered-beast left-turn and leads him to decide he must get a vasectomy so he never experiences that kind of loss again. Luckily we're not subjected to too much of a fight between him and Julia about this because she's still too listless to care about things again, so we get something completely left-field instead: a new character that makes Sean stray.

Enter new patient Megan, whose recent post-chemo mastectomy has left her with a strange binary decision: get implants to satisfy her husband and save their marriage or do it completely for herself and leave her husband, realizing her marriage is broken. Apparently not getting the implants isn't an option, though it's hinted at during her initial consultation. She thinks she's being good enough not indulging in C-cups. Her dilemma distracts Sean from his own family enough that he ends up leaning in for a kiss, seemingly romanticizing her plight because he's a neurotic man attracted to situations that will spur his neuroses. It's a subtly clever conceit that will certainly up the soap factor, but the way they take to get there is silly (just because Megan ever-so-briefly and inexplicably sympathizes with Sean's vasectomy crisis, he goes straight to the smackers?) and upon this second viewing, demeans Julia's character, who deserves more play here before Sean royally screws things up with this new character.

Anyway, she's sticking around for the time being and hopefully I'll get my Julia fix soon. Because ultimately, this is a mediocre transitory episode setting up a new line of problems for the two leads to deal with. What gives it the "plus" in the grade below is the tiny Matt subplot, in which he tries to win his ex-girlfriend Vanessa's approval by agreeing to be the third wheel (in more ways than one) in a threesome with her and her newfound lesbian love, Ridley. It follows the predictable Chasing Amy beats, but at least it a) feels logical and b) isn't just done to introduce a new recurring character.

Grade: C+

Nip/Tuck is available to watch on Netflix Watch Instantly.

Other Memorable Quotes:

• "Be yourself. You know you could look better." -Christian's hare-brained idea for an advertising slogan
• "Suddenly the yearn for Uncle Christian makes perfect sense." -Christian, to Matt, after asking for advice about having a threesome
• "I haven't felt this powerless since the 90s and some chick stuck her finger up my butt without notice." -Christian, on his expensive toys getting vandalized
• "Don't be ashamed of those scars on your chest. You're just wearing on the outside what the rest of us wear on the inside." -Sean, to Megan, about her mastectomy

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 5, "Kurt Dempsey"

Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode Five: "Kurt Dempsey"
Written by Lynnie Greene & Richard Levine
Directed by Elodie Keene

"If you're strong, it makes you free, and if you're weak, it makes you...you." -Christian

The ending of the opening scene of this episode is alone what makes this otherwise A episode an A- instead. In fact, maybe I'll just put that minus in parentheses because it's such a silly little contrivance that raises my ire that I feel like I'm almost being unfair, but if you hadn't been able to tell by now, we here at The Blogulator take our TV very seriously. You see, here we have an almost perfectly constructed set of both recurring and guest character story lines that relate just enough to each other to make it all beautifully coherent, but not so much so that it makes for a forced metaphor being retold with every scene. That, in essence, is what makes the perfect spine of an episode of a television drama with an ensemble cast.

So what am I boiling my blood about rather than just letting the praise swing forth with pendulous idolatry? Once again it is Sean McNamara. But instead of what I've been bitching about thus far in the Classic Television Rundown series (how much of his naive self-involved portrayal and development is intentionally challenging to the viewer vs. simply an obnoxious by-product unforeseen by the writers and/or Dylan Walsh), it's something a lot more facile. Inherently having a character so weaselly unsympathetic should be an indication that this is a show that doesn't need to stoop to the lowest common denominator, but the problem is that Nip/Tuck is as much about flash and attention-grabbing tactics as it is about twisty-turny character analysis. So when the episode's titular patient comes in trying to convince the McNamara/Troy partners that he loves his Japanese wife so much he's willing to do anything for her, even alter his face to look Japanese to try to fool her "traditional and/or xenophobic" parents, he has to ask Sean if he's never loved anyone this much.

But that's not enough. We of course also have to hold the camera on Dylan Walsh's face for a seemingly interminable amount of time as the lens zooms ever so slowly and his face quivers ever so maddeningly. But wait! That's not all! We the viewers are still so dumb that you best show Sean gently tilt his lantern-jawed mug so that he sees, if only for a moment, his wife Julia's picture on his desk. Do you get it? They're trying to get us to see that Sean's not sure if he loves his wife so much that he'd have plastic surgery for her! Or something! And by Jove, I would have turned off the episode just then if I didn't already know that this episode was gonna be a good one, because even though those six-ish seconds irked me to no end, I still cared about the other characters (particularly Christian and Julia) and was still indelibly fascinated by the two-faced persona of Sean McNamara, so I had to see it through.

Actually, after revisiting my notes on the episode, I feel I must not put that minus in parentheses. Because despite the brilliant parts, and there are many, the Nip/Tuck people decide to come back midway through the same forty-five minutes to the very line that begat one of the most horrendously piercing, most hollowly sculpted moments of the show thus far. Yes, when a second patient arrives to mirror the problems of our doctor protagonists, this time played by Andrea Zuckerman (or whatever the real name of the actress from the original 90210 is), and reveals that she was not in a car accident where only her nose was broken, but rather that she goaded her husband to do it with a hammer so that she'd finally get a plastic surgeon to say yes to operating on it (a perfectly shocking yet profound concept for a mirror), is wasted when it's resolved by the husband looking all dopey and saying, "Haven't you ever loved someone so much you'd do anything for them?"

Of course they haven't. That's why you're putting that line in the script. Twice.

Seriously though, check below for all the amazing quotage that comes out of such a wide spectrum of characters' voices in this episode. Pessimistic umbrage aside, there are some wondrous self-contained and ever-unraveling developments in "Kurt Dempsey" that really knock Christian's journey into high gear, from his flirtation with sex addiction (here we got to see our first glimpse of Gina, who we will come to largely love as the show's craziest and most interesting supporting character) to his incredibly loquacious demeanor that is equal parts horny teenager and existentialist madman. Then there's Julia miscarriage, which one could argue is a remnant from the show's first couple episode in which too much is crammed in too few scenes, but that Joely Richardson nails with such neurotic and lifelike aplomb that you truly feel as exhausted as she does throughout the whole ordeal.

Next time I swear I'll focus on the positive, but I swear when you watch so closely a show that is so mean-spirited and misanthropic, you can't help but dwell on the greeting card fizzies it tries to make you feel when all you want is more Christian Troy zingers.

Grade: A-

Other memorable quotes:

• "You know what potential is, Sean? Nothing." -Julia
• "Are you repeatedly flaunting this adolescent behavior in front of me because a woman has invaded your boys' club?" -Grace, to Christian
  
• "The price is the same; the currency's--" -Christian "Changed?" -Creepy mom who begs to trade plastic surgery for sex and when that doesn't work a three-way with her and her daughter, in tandem, in one of the most disturbing scenes of the show thus far
• "Under whose control? The anonymous sex-crazed sycophants who meet once a week to group-think their way out of desperation?" -Christian, in response to Gina's
  
• "Well, doctor, I wouldn't expect you to believe in a higher power. You already think you're God." -Gina, in response to the above
• "Now you can huddle in a group and face it one day at a time or you can be grateful that when your body rubs against someone else's that you explode with so much pleasure that you can forget even for a minute that you're not just a walking pile of ashes." -Christian, in response to Gina
• "Do you even wanna have another kid? Or are you just glad to have another reason you can't go after what you really want?" -Matt, to his momma
• "It's like a UFO sighting. It happened, clear as day, but no one'll believe it." -Grace, referring to getting a genuine apology from Christian Troy
• "Aren't you? Just a little? Or is it easier to live in denial and vilify me?" -Julia, to Sean, after he asks incredulously "Are you saying you're relieved?" in regards to losing the baby
  

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 4, "Sofia Lopez"

Nip/Tuck Season One, Episode Four: "Sofia Lopez"
Written by Sean Jablonski & Ryan Murphy
Directed by Michael M. Robin

"Real men want sons to be more than they are, not carbon copies." -Julia, to Christian

I am honestly not quite sure if I will ever give a Nip/Tuck episode a solid A grade. And the reason for that, very simply, is Sean McNamara. He's not only the worst character, he's arguably the character that Murphy continues to insist as our protagonist, when there's really no reason for it other than the man is a masochist and knows as long as there's wonderful supporting character that we'll keep watching, even if every scene Sean's in just makes us long for another Christian or Matt or Julia scene. And I get the whole anti-hero disguised as a straight man thing. Tony Soprano is a terrible person disguised as a likable middle-of-the-road mobster when compared to his compatriots. Nate Fisher is an egotistical jackwad but the centralized "normal" one in a family of misfits.

But the big difference here is that Tony and Nate go through multi-episode arcs of changing and reverting back to their awful selves, whereas Murphy (at least toward the beginning of the series) is too worried about making sure Sean goes back to his annoying charitably-minded-but-really-just-self-satisfying persona by the end of every episode. That said, while this dilemma is particularly prevalent in "Sofia Lopez", and in some scenes so on-the-nose it's painful to watch, there are so many brilliant supporting character moments that this is the first Nip/Tuck episode that I've considered giving an A in my nostalgic retread of the series' first couple seasons. Christian's duplicitous soul is becoming more and more nuanced and real, Matt's emotional adolescence is becoming more than just a gimmicky sideshow, and Julia finally is given enough screen time to come to life vividly and complexly through her actions and behaviors, not her reactions and freak-outs.

It all starts with Christian's trip to the luxury car dealership where he tries to negotiate some fake breasts for the girlfriend of his buddy and salesman Ron (played by Mark D. Espinoza aka Jesse from the original 90210) if he lets him drive off the lot with a disgustingly yellow Lamborghini. Enter recurring character numero uno in the form of a billboard: Dr. Merril Bobolit (played by Joey Slotnick aka Jonathan Silverman's friend in The Single Guy). Like Fitzgerald's Dr. TJ Eckleburg, Merril gazes down with an omniscient smirk at Christian as Ron tells him his girlfriend already has a pair of double D's from that guy up there. In Merril Christian suddenly has not only a rival but a temptress, as we see him at first make fun of Merril as he runs into him at a party for porn industry tycoons and actors, but then soon seduced when he is offered a partnership with the man. After all, he's not the fighting type. He just wants a good surgeon to help him out with the way too demanding flow of hardbodies that come in looking for a nip here or a tuck there. Plus, then he wouldn't have to deal with Sean 24/7.

The offer is so attractive that even though Sean's been with him through thick and thin as a brother-esque BFF, Christian can't deny that change is alluring, especially in the more libidinous direction. And when Sean once again is a stick-in-the-mud and doesn't want to invite the porn exec's girls into their practice because it would tarnish the new classier image they've been trying to cultivate with pro bonos and psychologically-sound image alterations, Christian is tempted even further with the idea. On top of this, which is interesting enough, especially when looking at the terminally flawed logic of Sean, who seems to not be able to come to grips with the fact that he is a plastic surgeon in Miami and that not only cleft pallette patients exist in a glamor-obsessed American metropolis, we also get the real deal introduction of Christian acting as a father figure to Matt while Sean is too obsessed with his identity/mid-life crisis.

So remember that porn party mentioned earlier? Well Christian brings Matt because, well, he wants to impress him and has a strange fixation on being the one responsible for helping Matt break his cherry. First a prostie and now a porn star - now THAT'S a real dad! Right? Well, yes, it's goofy, but Christian is very much stuck in one of Piaget's stages but plays it all off as just "confidence and romance" as he tells Sean, because that's really what all women are craving, and if he can pass this on to Matt (obviously Sean's a lost cause), then maybe he'll finally believe that old silly mantra he keeps hanging on because while it's never landed him a real relationship, it's at least gotten him some hot one night stands.

But of course Matt gets an STD from a fluffer who has a nervous tic with her mouth and just happens to be conversing awkwardly with Matt when she gets done with her lollipop. Yes she's in school girl outfit and yes her hair is in pigtails. Murphy may be clever, but he's certainly not original. In that same line of thought, we of course wind up with Matt saying no to Christian's next attempt at fatherhood-via-boyhood-wish-fulfillment when he shows up with his yellow Lamborghini at school trying to coax the boy to some truancy while riding in style on the freeway. You see, Matt has matured and Christian has not, and that in turn makes Christian want to mature. It sounds cheesy, and it certainly looks it with that garish car and some bad green screen work to make it look like they're oceanside, but Julian McMahon rules at this wait-I-forgot-I'm-an-adult shtick, so it's actually quite emotionally valid and we end up excited for any future scenes featuring Christian attempting to grow up, because his journey is honest, whereas Sean's is a mess.

Speaking of Sean, we should probably mention how 1) he almost ruined the episode and 2) also kind of saved it. Firstly, the titular character (pictured above), who is our recurring character numero dos, is a transgender woman looking for someone, anyone who will not judge her for her wish for gender reassignment, but rather help her, and well what a surprise that Sean's a bigoted dick to her at first but soon blossoms to understand that even though she looks different, she's a real person with real emotions and real family members and friends who love her. This whole thing is obnoxiously simplified, but I at least appreciate that transgender issues are getting talked about, because besides Nip/Tuck, they probably weren't elsewhere on TV until that point.

What works better, however, are his scenes with Julia, where he dumbly attempts to "have unconventional sex" with her the first day of her first semester back at college and then tries to make up for the bad maneuver with take-out Indian food disguised as a home-cooked meal when she ends up coming home with a study buddy (new recurring character numero trois, Jude) and just wants to cram for her first test. And when Julia's stress with Sean is channeled into an awesome verbal explosion with Christian, as the two of them try to deal with Matt's STD without Sean getting involved, it becomes clear that Sean, while a complete mess of a character, is necessary to the balance of this show, and Sean haters like myself have to simply resign themselves to that fact.

And finally (I promise), there's also an awesome scene with Sean confronting his former teacher and should-be-retired practicing doctor Marcus, where he gets a Dickensian look at what his future could be if he ends up focusing on helping others rather than himself for the rest of his life. This is ultimately why it still gets the A(-), because while Sean's often a chore and a bore, Murphy knows how to use that tension between the viewer and his characters to turn it into something exciting and meaningful for the characters we can sympathize with. At least for now. I don't clearly remember, but I think this is where Nip/Tuck finally starts flying and giving us both a healthy does of tender and WTF moments that made the first two seasons of the show worth going back to in the first place.

Grade: A-

Other memorable quotes:

• "Erotic films are when you use a feather; porn films are when you use the whole chicken." -Sean
• "The truth is, doctor, that I don't care if you like me or if you don't. What I care about is feeling complete." -Sofia
  
• "I am gonna shmooze with some cooze and land us an exclusive contract." -Christian
• "Merril, you look like a cu-tip." -Christian's first words to Merril, getting the elephant out of the room right away about actor Joey Slotnick's ridiculous hair
  
• "You gotta have a gimmick. That's why I'm always sucking on something." -Unnamed Fluffer at the porn party, to Matt
• "The line that divides the plastic surgery industry and the porn industry is a thin one. We're both selling fantasy." -Christian
• "You sit around with your diplomas and your thoughts of people whose lives you've saved but your own, and you drink." -Marcus
• "This car tells the whole world what you've become." -Ron, to Christian, who replies, "That's why I'm returning it."
  

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 3, "Nanette Babcock"

Nip/Tuck Season One, Episode Three: "Nanette Babcock"
Written by Ryan Murphy
Directed by Lawrence Trilling

"You think you made me, with your scalpel, and your collagen, but I made you." -Mrs. Grubman, to Christian

It should make sense that the third episode of a serial drama is often the point of no return. You've been introduced in the pilot, you've been thrown a few curve balls in both plot and character development in the sophomore effort in an attempt to retain your future interest, and then finally things settle down in the third installment and you, the viewer, decides whether or not you're willing to accept the lives of these people or not. Either you're comfortable there without being too bored or you feel just a bit awkward and out of place there, but not enough to scare you away. As you may have guessed, Nip/Tuck is more an example of the latter. You sit and writhe through the characters' narcissism because there is a sliver of truth to each of them inside all of us, even if it's ugly and something we don't want to admit. Also, of course you're curious to see who's going to eff whom and who's going to eff over whom.

And while this episode satisfies those cravings in an almost procedural fashion (Matt finds out his girlfriend likes girls in addition to or instead of his non-circumcised junk, Christian almost sleeps with an old crabby rich lady, said old crabby rich lady gets a particularly grotesque on-screen tummy tuck procedure), we are largely left with an episode that is more about finding comfort in these characters' skins than it is about keeping us queasy and lusting for more weirdness. Sure, it even opens with (or gets out of the way) the joke of a Michael Jackson impersonator trying to get just one more plastic surgery to keep up with the real-life track record of his idol, but still, after that limp shock value skitters away, the soul of the show starts to slowly rear its head with the introduction of aforementioned crabby old rich lady, Mrs. Grubman. This is a character that will, for both better and worse, haunt the show for a few too many seasons, but at its outset, seemed like a perfectly fine conduit for Julian McMahon to inject humanity into his portrayal of Christian Troy.


As has been said before here on the Classic Television Rundown recaps of Nip/Tuck, the self-loathing and self-obsessed Christian is easily the more sympathetic character of the two leads, even when the more neurotic and annoying Sean is clearly meant to be the more "normal" of the two. At first I just assumed it was because the acting was better, but this episode kind of re-opened my eyes that while that's sometimes true, it's actually more about how we are forced to root for Christian as the underdog in this race of life Sean's kind of set up against his will. We want him to learn, change, and overcome, sure, but we also want him to succeed not because of his partnership with Sean, but despite it. You see, Sean's holding Christian down throughout the show, but especially here, and we feel smothered along with him. Sean's clearly hired this psychiatrist Grace Santiago just to make himself feel more noble, whereas Christian wants her out because he doesn't want judgment around his place of business, which is a much more logical line of reasoning, even if it isn't completely sound.

So while it is one of the more subverted plot lines in "Nanette Babcock", it is the one that helps us slip in between the friendship (and/or sometimes rivalry) of these two men and feel at home, even as it has us biting our fingernails. When the titular character comes in asking for multiple surgeries to feel pretty for her upcoming high school reunion, we side with Christian, the simple man who very plainly believes that he can help her with plastic surgery. Underneath he may secretly realize he can't help her change in the way a person should change to feel empowered, but he accepts the constraints of society and empathizes with Nanette to the point of wanting to take her money and do the job, not so that she changes permanently as a person from sad to happy, but so that she experiences the grand illusion of false happiness if only for a moment, because it feels a hell of a lot better than permanent sadness. McMahon plays him with just enough greed and hesitation that we get all that just from his interview with Nanette while psychiatrist Grace Santiago attempts to intervene. And he's able to come back to it throughout, even when he has to bend to Sean's whims in order to keep the business on its feet and not let his friend go off on another useless road trip of the soul.

Unfortunately, here's where the emotional and psychological depth of Nip/Tuck ends for the week. John Hensely tries his damnedest to make us care about his teenage turmoil as he cries on the other side of his bedroom door after finding out that his girlfriend is cheating on him with a fellow cheerleader and dad (Sean) is so oblivious that two seconds earlier he can't even notice that there's something disturbingly off about him. While Matt definitely has more misadventures to get into before we can do any kind of identification with him, Murphy attempts to flesh out Sean's character, and while no emotional connection is made between him and viewer yet, he at least succeeds at complicating his character without having him make any crazy rash decisions as he'd done in the first two drama-tastic eps. From trying to bribe communication out of his son with the carrot of a shiny new circumcision (professional surgeons and all!) to placing the blame for leaving a metal instrument inside a patient on anesthesiologist Liz, Sean's proving to be quite the bastard at this point in the show. While it's not stirring, it's at least baby steps toward expanding his character beyond the nice-guy-lost-in-a-cruel-world routine.

Then there's just the disappointing. Julia, arguably the third most important character in the show, is relegated to three or four short scenes in which she gets a door-knocking from the police about improper disposal of an animal (the daughter's gerbil down the toilet in panic attack mode) and then way too suddenly decides that instead of letting things make her angry, she's going to go back to med school after all, guldarnit! And throughout all of this she's doe-eyed and hugging Sean, even as Joely Richardson does everything she can to try to convey some kind of inner demons still rustling around inside. It's good that she does this, because her character does get more fair play later, but at this point, it just feels like she's getting brushed aside in favor of...

Mrs. Grubman. Man how I have mixed feelings about her. Her place here is clearly to mirror that of Nanette and the general theme of the episode, which is of trying to beautify oneself not only for self-satisfaction, but also to gain the attention of others. This is indeed the infamous episode in which Christian attempts to sleep with Mrs. Grubman (something she can't help but admit she's always wanted) in exchange for her not suing the practice for Sean accidentally leaving a metal instrument inside of her, but while he's ready and willing, she of course suddenly devolves into a sexless widow who only wants somebody close to her so she can try to remember what it's like to be laying next to her dead hubby. After all, he (and the fizzy connection she always felt when she got to look into Christian's eyes post-surgery) was the reason she felt compelled to get some many nose jobs and face lifts.

The big problem here, aside from the snotty ones trickled throughout that paragraph, is that Murphy begins a trend that he has not shaken so much as amplified (with Glee) throughout his career. He wants to have it both ways. He wants to get deep and melancholic, almost to the point of trite, but still wink-wink-nudge-nudge the whole while, making jokes about Christian and Grubman's age difference and eww how gross she is. And most of the time, McMahon can balance this, as expressed above, but honestly, Ruth Williamson cannot. And it's not even really her fault. She's really good in the next scene, in fact, at totally brushing off all notions of seriousness and demanding free plastic surgery for life instead of Christian's affection, sexual or otherwise. But the jostling back and forth between the over-the-top and the valid ruminations on image and change is going to be as much of a tug-and-pull between the viewers and the characters as plastic surgery can be on the patients and their loved ones that they are trying to (re-)connect to through the process.

Grade: B-

Other memorable quotes:

• "If there's something about your body you want changed, one of those nipple rings--whatever, we talk it out before you try self-mutilation." -Sean, to Matt after his attempted self-circumcision.
• "Kiss my tanned waxed ass, Sean." -Christian
• "You gonna take the opinion of Salsa Spice over me?" -Christian, to Sean, about their vaguely Latina psychiatrist Grace. (To which Jerksica says, "Ooh antiquated AND racist!")
• "Matt, have you urinated-- yet...today?" Sean, walking in on Matt with Vanessa just about to make-a-da-sex, in typical awesome awkward fashion
• "I didn't even dance at my own wedding." -Sean (No one's surprised, Sean.)
• "Hurry up, we have a his 'n' her lipo in half an hour!" -Sean
• "Loosen your braids and take a look, sweetheart. Do I look like a terrorist?" -Mrs. Grubman, to airport security
• "Ironic, isn't it, that years after my enduring your irresponsibility lectures that you are the one that screwed us over." -Christian, to Sean
• "Because I'm ugly, I'm naturally a crazy bitch too, am I right?" -Nanette, to Grace's accusation of her vandalizing Christian's car

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 2: "Mandi/Randi"

Nip/Tuck
Season One, Episode Two: "Mandi/Randi"
Written and Directed by Ryan Murphy

"There's a big difference between changing your outlook and changing your life, Sean." -Liz

And how quickly do I find myself agonizing over what grade to give an episode of Nip/Tuck. It's amazing that after hating a show for so long and then going back to the episodes you told yourself that you loved at one point, you can see just how easily it was for Murphy to chop (pun intended) the show into the fragmented and ugly mess it soon became. Take the first season's second episode, for example, "Mandi/Randi", whose centerpiece is a really well-developed and poignant (for N/T anyway) metaphor about the nature of relationships and change and how the two concepts often seem to be at odds with each other. Practically everything in this episode is carefully sculpted, a fresh blend of the subtle and realistic and the hyperbolic and melodramatic to hammer home a very worthwhile point. Everything, that is, except somehow already repeating the will-Sean-and-Julia-get-a-divorce plot device (that will wear itself out repeatedly over the course of the series) just after the first episode. But before I get ahead of myself, let's break down the episode to help yallz remember it.

As a welcome continuation from the pilot's main purpose, to show Sean and Christian experiencing life-changing revelations specifically regarding their profession and identity (in that order), we first see that the practice of McNamara and Troy have gone and hired themselves a psychologist to screen patients before performing plastic surgery all willy nilly on anyone. Of course Sean, not being a psychologist, and Murphy, like so many writers having a staunchly cynical view of psychotherapy, it doesn't turn out to be all one might hope it to be. Sean wants his newest employee, Dr. Pendleton (played by character actor Kevin Chamberlain), to simply be his yes man for whenever he has a crisis of conscious taking on a client who seems a little trigger-happy in their quick fixes for self esteem issues, but the doc fails to meet his expectations when he says that giving a dude with an already giant johnson another enlargement procedure just might be the thing he needs to finally enact positive change in his life. Chamberlain delivers this overly simply line of explanation with such mysterious aplomb that it hints he might get off on this whole plastic surgery thing just like the patients (and the doctors, to a certain degree), saving the scene, and when Sean fires Pendleton before the episode's over, it's one of the more forgiving moments of the man's impulsive drastic behavior.

Unfortunately, it's possibly Sean's only understandable lashing out of the episode. The rest musters up such a dislike for the character that it's hard to think Murphy ever wanted us to like him. But I often think, like I do in this episode, that while he's so concerned with giving Christian a fair shake (because he's supposed to be the loathsome Lothario from the get go and constantly dealing with it) that he forgets that just because Sean is a family man doesn't mean he's instantly sympathetic. Instead, we only see the Sean upon meeting with the therapist of twin clients (doesn't need Pendleton's approval here), who tells him that the titular twins Mandi and Randi should go under the knife because they are at a crossroads (college) and it's the perfect time for them to start fresh as new people rather than continue being treated as the same person, takes it as a sign that he should leave his wife while yelling at her for not changing. Douche-chill, am I right? Arguably Sean doesn't realize his hypocrisy and one of his biggest flaws is that he's unaware of his naive self-righteousness, but the pilot was so busy stirring up drama between Sean and Julia with outside influences (never got to go to college, Matt's adolescence, Christian's advances) that we never get to see that simmer; we only get the explosion, thus decreasing our sympathy for the dude.

If you can't tell yet, I'm silently comparing N/T to Mad Men, which I am aware is completely unfair, but I feel like Pete and Don are a good analog to Sean and Christian, with the notable exception being that Pete started realizing how much of an asshole he was pretty early on, and just accepted it. Sean just keeps wallowing in his blind shrine of himself and his desire to start a new life that he can never really follow through with. One thing that did make up for his crudeness was that when he and Julia finally stopped fighting and started effing, it was clear that this wasn't just lazy scriptwriting. Sean really does love Julia, and he's always trying to reconcile that feeling with the fact that he feels stuck everywhere else in his life, and Julia maybe doesn't love Sean, but she's still hot from her non-triste with Christian, so she's gotta do something with that energy. And here, Joely Richardson shines once again, doing a weird shakey hang over the shoulder thing that communicates Julia's longing for desire mixed with permanent anxiety so well that we are able for a moment to forget about Dylan Walsh's unpleasant droopy face.



Which brings me to Christian. The reason Christian is fun to watch, despite how many terrible things he does and how many times N/T has to turn on the generic funky-time music when he gives a random hottie the half-smirk of death, is because he embodies what sets this show apart from any other. It isn't afraid to hedonistic because you trust that underneath all the skin, there is a beating heart that's just trying to figure out to whom it belongs. To be as base as possible: Sean has no allure and therefore he is not as engaging of a character on this show, it being full of neon lights and white beaches, as Christian Troy. When he nonchalantly brings Matt to a whorehouse disguised as a strip club to encourage him to pop the ol' cherry in an effort to "gain confidence, which is all that really matters" so that his girlfriend Vanessa is so into his charms that she won't notice his uncircumcised penis next time they're under the covers (are you with me still?), the character (and the actor I should mention, Julian McMahon) completely sell it somehow. It comes off a tad creepy as a viewer, but if you're able to put yourself in Matt's teenage shoes, you end up at the scene's finish surprised and impressed that Matt was able to resist the persuasions of the great Christian Troy.

The parallel between client and doctor in this episode smacks us on the head later when after the aforementioned twins' surgery, Mandi has a breakdown when she sees a male nurse making eyes at Randi and not her, whereas before if a dude hit on one of them they basically had no reason not to hit on both of them. "We want to be the same again," Randi pleads to Christian as she holds her bawling sister in her arms. At this moment you know Christian may not be thinking about his indiscretion with Matt, but rather how he's been half-trying to woo Julia (not to mention having hallucinatory visions of her when sexing it up with other ladies) now that Sean's packed up and moved out, and how it might be better for her to like both of them but only have one of them instead of hate one and wholly love the other. So instead of just not pursuing Julia, he does her (and us) one better: he has her "accidentally" walk in on him equally loving Randi and Mandi (see photo above). Here is another place where Christian shines, because that's obviously only one of many interpretations this parallel could suggest, proving that this character's psychology is a bit more complex and loaded than our friend Sean's, thus once again making him the satisfying character to watch.

Lastly, as the love triangle that will never end happens in the foreground, surely there's going to be characters that suffer from the fallout. But in the meantime, they are simply suffering from the fact that it's taking up all the screen time while their characters are being ignored. I actually think this is a pretty clever way of introducing soon-to-be-vital supporting members of the cast, such as John Hensley (Matt, who's responsible for this week's cliffhanger as he attempts to give himself the circumcision with the help of the family's surgical tools, a bottle of red wine, and an online tutorial - so much for the whole parenting/building confidence thing, self-obsessed love trianglers) and also Roma Maffia, aka Liz, who's responsible for my favorite quote of the episode, placed above. Her on-again off-again relationship with McNamara/Troy as their anesthesiologist is at times gripping and candid and other times forced and unwelcome. We'll see as I revisit her as a character, but her re-hiring after last week's crazy druglord shenanigans seemed like an excellent script moment, as she will often act as the show's voice of reason - someone who understands she has to take her lumps, but also is going to stand up for herself when the ish hits the fan. We'll see if my opinions of any of these characters will change as we go from here. Also I will be the lookout for Mandi/Randi's therapist, Dr. Santiago (played by Valerie Cruz of Dexter and True Blood), who at the episode's close is hired as the new psychologist for McNamara/Troy.

Grade: A-

Other memorable quotes:

• "Once you get your sea legs, you can have a conversation with her about what your foreskin is and how it really won't affect her pleasure." -Sean, to Matt
  
• "Just a bed, please. I'm a traditionalist." -Christian, to the tanning salon clerk trying to sell him extra services
• "I believe in committing fully to change. It's the commitment that brings constructive results." -Dr. Santiago, in response to Sean's idiotic question "So you don't believe in half-measures?"
• "It looks like a Shar-Pei. Are you part Arab or something?" -Vanessa, after getting to see Matt's you-know-what
• "Au contraire, my little virginator." -Christian, to Matt
• "That which nourishes me, destroys me." -Dr. Pendleton, by way of latin saying
• "You made me forget there was ever another girl in the room." -Christian, to Julia
• "She needs to know that evil exists." -Matt, to Julia when asked to not show Annie The Exorcist again

Classic Television Rundown: Nip/Tuck, Season One, Episode 1: "Pilot"

Nip/Tuck
Season One, Episode 1: "Pilot"
Written and Directed by Ryan Murphy

"Tell me what you don't like about yourself." -Sean McNamara
"Tell me what you like about yourself." -Sean McNamara

When Qualler proposed we start doing classic TV recaps here on The Blogulator, my wide-eyed joy at the prospect soon morphed into a frenzied confusion. Simply put, aside from the usual suspects (The Wire, Lost, Mad Men), I at first couldn't think of a show that I distinctly consider my own. Now not only is TV a medium that is largely best enjoyed amongst group viewings, but also, and partly because of that unifying feeling that all our favorite stories tend to emit, I have almost always been late to the party, so to speak, reveling in the plot twists and character developments of shows that my friends have turned me onto, rather than seeking out my own to become obsessed with. Granted, the latter part of that statement's changed in recent years, with my love for Twin Peaks and Veronica Mars ruling a large section of my pop culture brain, but I didn't feel I was far enough removed from taking in those shows yet to go back to them as if they were "classics" (though I most certainly will in the future if we keep this feature up).

No, instead I have, after hours of considering all the DVDs and online re-watching options around me, to focus on a show that I most certainly don't love anymore (especially its later seasons, which I haven't even seen) but did love voraciously at one time, and actually, one that I believe was the first drama that I considered addictive. And frankly, even after going through the pilot for the first time in seven years (with much trepidation I might add), I'm not ashamed of it, and you shouldn't be either, other people who watched Nip/Tuck back in the day. In comparison, even, Nip/Tuck is still leagues better than creator Ryan Murphy's other endeavors, including the ugly, misanthropic film adaptation of Augusten Burroughs' Running with Scissors, and of course, the populist TV behemoth to end all populist TV behemoths, Glee. In actuality, the show about two best friend plastic surgeons is somewhere between his two other main efforts (one a massive failure, the other the most successful new television program in years). I haven't seen the WB's Popular, his first creation, but my odd curiosity with this man is making me wonder if I should remedy that.

But before we get ahead of ourselves talking about the big picture, though, let's focus on the actual episode in question. For dozens of episodes to come, every opening shot will contain the first line quoted above to a different patient by either Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh of Congo!) who plays the seemingly stereotypical uptight by-the-books half of the medical practice or whom he shares the practice with: the seemingly trite morally bankrupt playboy best friend Christian Troy (Julian McMahon of NBC's Profiler!). Of course these light outlines of characters are just that on the surface. (And here I shall introduce the phrase "in true Nip/Tuck fashion", which will surely be used multiple times throughout the recap of these first two seasons. Whether I continue after that point will depend on how this goes.) In true Nip/Tuck fashion, the pilot attempts to stuff in as many overly dramatic characters arcs as humanly possibly in an already overstuffed plot-wise 67 minute premiere. It does this, I assume, primarily to assure us that our superficial (get it?) protagonists are actually deeply complicated creatures of habit and impulse and that we're not going to be bored if we decide to invest ourselves in their lives on this series.

Well, Murphy's mostly right on this one, at least for a while. When I first decided I would go back and re-watch Nip/Tuck, my stomach almost immediately turned at the thought of having to watch Sean whine in every episode and watch Christian do something selfishly idiotic in ever episode. Luckily, that synesthetic feeling subsided pretty quickly and I remembered how solid these two main characters actually are (once again, at least for the first two seasons). Sure the whole opposites attract thing gets amplified to the point of ridiculous at least once every episode, but there's so much implied history and forward traction in their bromance that it's no wonder that the term wasn't invented with the advent of this show instead of Apatow movies. Really the fact that the show begins in medias res is its most affecting benefit because it allows the tension between Christian, Sean, and Sean's family (wife Julia who is also Christian's ex-girlfriend for whom he still has residual feelings for, and kids Matt and Annie, who both think Christian's way cooler than Sean) to be palpable and explosive rather than coyly build.


After all, this is a show about Miami and modern fantasy-centric America, so I admit that its premise always clamored for more than a little soap opera-y feel to it. That Murphy's mostly able to control this without it dampening the actual emotional impact of the characters' crises is laudable, if not constantly wavering between meaningful television and gaudy television. And while I don't quite think it's self-aware enough to be a scathing critique of the viewer's own fantasy drama impulses and voyeuristic tendencies, the Nip/Tuck pilot succeeds at introducing all the social critique within the characters' lives rather well. It takes as much guts as it does insensitivity to play "Paint It Black" while McNamara and Troy perform a grotesque face lift on someone they will later find out is a pedophile but already know is at least to some degree involved with a drug cartel. And it takes as much boldness as it does brusqueness to have a scene in your first episode in which one of the main characters' wives is using a line like this one: "You're a surgeon, Sean, and on your watch a death has occurred. The death of you and me."

And while I'm sure I'll complain about her later, Joely Richardson is the one that makes this pilot keep from fraying and self-destructing due to its testosterone-fueled dick-measuring contest between two far less competent actors, Walsh and McMahon. Yes, with reductive analysis, she's just the center of a soon-to-develop love triangle (so obvious from Christian's "your breasts are perfect" speech that it makes me second-guess how much camp has been in this show since the beginning), but she's also what grounds the craziness of the show, and not just because she can deliver badly written lines without batting an eyelash. She herself is being driven crazy by the perverted version of perfection that Sean and Christian have been attempting to capture since day one, possibly more so than them because she has to sit idly aside it all, but she is also driven to keep all three of her men in check (the introduction of Matt's circumcision plot line gave me goosebumps for future recaps already) throughout the series as well. Right now she's a footnote, but even in her little melodramatic actions like flushing Annie's gerbil down the toilet right after screaming "I'm not going to clean up any of your shit anymore!" she's setting the groundwork for what's to come.


I'd go into more detail about the plot at hand in this first episode, including Christian's initial rebuke of soon-to-be-main-character Kimber (Minnesota's own Kelly Carlson) because she's an eight, not a ten, Sean's first of many attempts to disband the McNamara/Troy partnership, and the death of the aforementioned pedophile Silvio Perez on the operating table, which helps initiate the meeting of the season's big bad, his former boss Escobar Gallardo (the still quite terrifying Robert LaSardo), but I've already filled this post to the brim with enough general thoughts and reactions to keep me on track to bringing you a recap on numero dos very soon.

Grade: B+

Other memorable quotes:

• "Drop that habla no English bullshit. It doesn't add to my confusion at all; it highlights your own." -Christian Troy
• "I don't want to be pretty. I want to be better." -Kimber
• "When you stop striving for perfection, you might as well be dead." -Christian Troy
• "What we do here is let people externalize the hate they feel about themselves." -Sean McNamara
• "Trivial? This is my life. For once, give me something that I need." -Matt McNamara
• "I think you're confusing Dr. Troy's pleasant and very thorough bedside manner with real emotion." -Sean McNamara
• "Thank you for becoming so repugnant to me that I am finally going to take charge of my life...starting today, I'm transforming MYSELF!"" -Sean McNamara
• "I don't want Annie to have to go to public school, Julia." -Christian Troy
• "You gave me nothing. I made this life with you." -Julia McNamara
• "This isn't change; it's a whim." -Julia McNamara
• "So I hear your marriage jumped the shark last week. My condolences." -Christian Troy