“Nip/Tuck” — Joyce & Sharon Monroe
This show is crazy. Crazy good. Well, at least crazy good-ish. While this is only the second episode I’ve ever seen, I’m immediately drawn to the relationship at the core of the series, that of the strangely hostile give and take between McNamara and Troy. For two best friends they seem endlessly ready to destroy the life of the other, and yet right there under the surface is the whiff of homoeroticism. They’re first in love with themselves, then in love with each other. Everything else, I suppose, is icing. More after the jump…
There wasn’t all that much “Hearts and Scalpels” this week, though what we were treated to was perhaps the greatest hospital scene ever put on faux-film as Bradley Cooper rips off his clothes in an attempt to create a tourniquet for a severed arm. Rumor has it later in the season an episode of Nip/Tuck will actually be a full hour of “Hearts and Scalpels.” I can’t wait.
The rest of the episode involved two competing Marilyn Monroe impersonators looking for bigger boobs, an actress who McNamara likes needing some post-gastric-bypass skin removed, Troy posing nude in a magazine for reasons I’m kind of surprised he didn’t see coming, and copious amounts of back and front stabbing as Troy tries to justify his new place as #2 to McNamara’s #1. Oh, there was also the very lovely Portia de Rossi as the love interest for McNamara’s ex-wife. Being not all that familiar with the show I’m not really sure if those characters are expected to come around all that much or if this was a one-time send-off. Either way it was nice to see Lindsay Bluth on television.
Completely unrelated to the episode, I think what I find most appealing about this show is that the episode to episode drama doesn’t (or at least hasn’t this season… I think it did season three) hinge on a murder mystery or one someone escaping justice or being found out. In a way it’s a show about how people react when all of your secrets are out in the open and how characters change as their want increases. Because of this the series probably has a longer shelf life than something like Dexter or The Shield where eventually you expect those characters to be caught or killed. The good doctors of Nip/Tick are not up against such barriers, which in turn allows the show to delve into matters perhaps much darker (though through a veil of irony) than the “heavier” dramas on cable. I should add, however, that this doesn’t make it a better show, only that it won’t find itself trapped by eventual audience expectations for the narrative.
Either way, I like watching it.
