Nip/Tuck The Complete First Season

Review by: Tom Johnson
TomJohnson@TheCinemaSource.com

With Dylan Walsh, Julian McMahon, Joely Richardson, Valerie Cruz, John Hensley, Roma Maffia, and Kelly Carlson

Rated TV-MA for sex, partial nudity, profanity, violence and graphic operating scenes

FX’s Nip/Tuck is exactly what one might expect of a post-Sopranos era basic cable show. The Fox-owned cable network has given creator Ryan Murphy leeway to go places network tv couldn’t dream of. No matter how TV-MA the show may get, however, it never approaches HBO-like levels of raunchiness.

It’s for this reason that new viewers might be initially thrown off by the show: it initially feels as though it’s trapped between two worlds. As the show goes on, it occasionally falls into the trap of thinking it’s better than it actually is, producing a handful of cringe-inducing moments(out of corniness, not gore) along the way, but by season’s end, Murphy seems to have found his voice and the show’s direction. Simply put, what Nip/Tuck ultimately amounts to is the show Aaron Spelling always wanted to make, without any restrictions.

This statement can easily be misinterpreted, so let it be said that Nip/Tuck is above the likes of Melrose Place and Beverly Hills 90210, but only because of one subtle difference: it plays its ridiculous plots and over-the-top scenes up for black humor instead of melodrama. Just as things begin to exit the realm of believability, the audience is kindly asked to step back and laugh. And despite some lapses in this tone(namely, an embarrassingly bad episode surrounding child molestation, and an awkwardly managed funeral scene following a suicide), the show manages to make this concept work fairly well.

The “plot”? All right. Sean McNamara(Dylan Walsh) and his partner, Christian Troy(Julian McMahon) run one of the most successful plastic surgery practices in Miami. But tension is, of course, present. Sean, the “good doctor”, wants to do more pro-bono work, while Christian, the “bad doctor”, just wants to make money by whatever means necessary, even if that means excepting Columbian drug money to make-over a wanted man, or making house calls to provide botox parties for rich South Beach models. The viewer is quickly clued in to Sean and Christian’s differing lifestyles as a clumsy, awkward round of sex between Sean and his wife, Julia(Joely Richardson) is contrasted with a one-night-stand between Christian and washed-up model Kimber Henry(hot newcomer Kelly Carlson), which consists of thrusting, hard rock music, and sniffing coke off Kimber’s back. After this set-up, it quickly becomes apparent that the show doesn’t take itself too seriously.

As said earlier, the show hits a few faux-sentimental potholes on its path to cynical, trashy heaven, but even the least effective moments are given credence by the strong performances of the major players. As Sean, Dylan Walsh is initially, hammy, even obnoxious, but it soon becomes apparent that he “gets” the show’s tone perhaps better than anyone. As ...