A new locale here, a little added glitz there, and you have a lighter, funnier -- kinkier? -- 'Nip/Tuck'
October 28, 2007
By Doug Elfman
TV Critic
This summer, I went to a TV star party at an amusement park and won a giant stuffed doll of Peter, from "Family Guy," for Kelly Carlson, the actress who plays Kimber the porn star on "Nip/Tuck." I'm not bragging. There's relevance to this story, in addition to full disclosure, for my "Nip/Tuck" review.
Carlson couldn't knock three milk jugs off of a platform by throwing a beanbag at them. I was standing there. She asked if I'd try. I won.
She gave me a polite hug, I told her I like her performances on the show, and I walked to the short bus we TV critics rode into the night. I thought it was funny, but I didn't take any of this personally.
What I'm getting at is, not every guy who steps off the plane at LAX immediately becomes entranced with celebrity to the point that they fantasize about ingratiating themselves into stars' lives. Maybe we rub elbows because of sheer geography, yet we don't all feel the need to try to become buddy-buddy beyond chance settings.
On the other hand, in the season premiere of FX's "Nip/Tuck," Drs. Christian Troy and Sean McNamara move from Miami to Hollywood, and they immediately succumb to the corrupting star-sucking-up of L.A.
They're new to the shimmer-glimmer, and they hope they, too, will become stars, first by proxy and then by design.
Over four years, these doctors have faced a serial killer, blackmail and seriously crazy sex and doctoring. Seeking fame will clearly become their next undoing.
As the fifth season opens, they pad around their new, beautifully decorated but empty offices. No one's coming in for plastic surgery. After all, how many people in L.A. don't already have their own personal face-lifters?
"I feel like I'm trying to sell semen in a whorehouse," Christian says.
Then they hit the jackpot. A publicist (Lauren Hutton) gets them working as consultants on a TV melodrama called "Hearts and Scalpels," a doctor show that's a send-up mostly of "Grey's Anatomy." The star of "Hearts" (Bradley Cooper) screams at nurses, "We are saving a life today, people!"
Once Sean (Dylan Walsh) and Christian (Julian McMahon) get into showbiz, their nipbiz picks up.
The producer behind "Nip/Tuck," Ryan Murphy, says this year will be lighter and funnier, as well as occasionally dark. I'm a longtime fan, so I'm interested to see how that develops.
My friends who are fellow fans worry the show might go south now that it's based in fluffier La-La Land, because a lot of the appeal has relied in seeing Christian, Sean and their extended family deal with the oddities of people in South Florida who are regularly strange (as opposed to Hollywood strange) and always getting caught up in the doctors' freaky lives.
To wit, the show has presented characters doing the following things: circumcising oneself; killing a murderous rapist; participating in a mother-daughter menage a trios; having tranny relationships; altering the voice of a phone-sex operator (guest star Kathleen Turner); replacing testicles (Larry Hagman), and transplanting an ear (Rosie O'Donnell).
But in L.A., Sean and Christian are older and a tad saggier. They begin there as unknown nobodies in America's town of everybodys.
Christian pines for his Miami status next week: "Men, women -- they all wanted to be me, or be with me."
"You should have picked a different venue to have a midlife crisis in," his publicist responds. "You're never going to be the new face in town; just some fortysomething dying to have a comeback."
This storyline is, in the first two hours, not as sexy as the Miami plots were, even though Cooper, Hutton and Tia Carrera (as a dominatrix) are on board. Other guest stars in the premiere include Oliver Platt, Daphne Zuniga and Jennifer Coolidge.
There's little of "Nip/Tuck's" usual sexcapades in the first two weeks. But it's still solidly entertaining (if less so) thanks to Walsh and McMahon's dependable character arcs.
The doctors, plus other major characters who also will move to Los Angeles, consistently behave the way you'd expect while doing bizarre things. Matt alone has killed a guy, done drugs, joined Scientology and hooked up with she-males. But you always believed Matt was capable of all these things.
John Hensley, who plays Matt, said during a promotion for the show, "I've honestly been waiting for Matt to commit suicide for three years now." (Me too.)
But unlike the ones on many TV shows, the writers and actors never force the men and women of "Nip/Tuck" to do or say something out of character.
So, it's totally believable within the "Nip/Tuck" universe when, next week, Christian sympathizes with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who feels inadequate enough to get a boob job -- before he crassly bids to bed her.
During a press conference, McMahon said he wants the show to ratchet up the kink. I asked him, like what?
In "Silence of the Lambs," he said, "remember when he cut the guy's face off and hung him up?" McMahon said. "I said, 'Do you think we could have sex like that? Could [Christian] be hung up like that?' "
Don't expect Murphy to allow that amazingly twisted scene to happen. But of all the dramas on TV, it would be least surprising to see such a spectacle on "Nip/Tuck." It remains the nuttiest show on TV.
By Doug Elfman
TV Critic
This summer, I went to a TV star party at an amusement park and won a giant stuffed doll of Peter, from "Family Guy," for Kelly Carlson, the actress who plays Kimber the porn star on "Nip/Tuck." I'm not bragging. There's relevance to this story, in addition to full disclosure, for my "Nip/Tuck" review.
Carlson couldn't knock three milk jugs off of a platform by throwing a beanbag at them. I was standing there. She asked if I'd try. I won.
She gave me a polite hug, I told her I like her performances on the show, and I walked to the short bus we TV critics rode into the night. I thought it was funny, but I didn't take any of this personally.
What I'm getting at is, not every guy who steps off the plane at LAX immediately becomes entranced with celebrity to the point that they fantasize about ingratiating themselves into stars' lives. Maybe we rub elbows because of sheer geography, yet we don't all feel the need to try to become buddy-buddy beyond chance settings.
On the other hand, in the season premiere of FX's "Nip/Tuck," Drs. Christian Troy and Sean McNamara move from Miami to Hollywood, and they immediately succumb to the corrupting star-sucking-up of L.A.
They're new to the shimmer-glimmer, and they hope they, too, will become stars, first by proxy and then by design.
Over four years, these doctors have faced a serial killer, blackmail and seriously crazy sex and doctoring. Seeking fame will clearly become their next undoing.
As the fifth season opens, they pad around their new, beautifully decorated but empty offices. No one's coming in for plastic surgery. After all, how many people in L.A. don't already have their own personal face-lifters?
"I feel like I'm trying to sell semen in a whorehouse," Christian says.
Then they hit the jackpot. A publicist (Lauren Hutton) gets them working as consultants on a TV melodrama called "Hearts and Scalpels," a doctor show that's a send-up mostly of "Grey's Anatomy." The star of "Hearts" (Bradley Cooper) screams at nurses, "We are saving a life today, people!"
Once Sean (Dylan Walsh) and Christian (Julian McMahon) get into showbiz, their nipbiz picks up.
The producer behind "Nip/Tuck," Ryan Murphy, says this year will be lighter and funnier, as well as occasionally dark. I'm a longtime fan, so I'm interested to see how that develops.
My friends who are fellow fans worry the show might go south now that it's based in fluffier La-La Land, because a lot of the appeal has relied in seeing Christian, Sean and their extended family deal with the oddities of people in South Florida who are regularly strange (as opposed to Hollywood strange) and always getting caught up in the doctors' freaky lives.
To wit, the show has presented characters doing the following things: circumcising oneself; killing a murderous rapist; participating in a mother-daughter menage a trios; having tranny relationships; altering the voice of a phone-sex operator (guest star Kathleen Turner); replacing testicles (Larry Hagman), and transplanting an ear (Rosie O'Donnell).
But in L.A., Sean and Christian are older and a tad saggier. They begin there as unknown nobodies in America's town of everybodys.
Christian pines for his Miami status next week: "Men, women -- they all wanted to be me, or be with me."
"You should have picked a different venue to have a midlife crisis in," his publicist responds. "You're never going to be the new face in town; just some fortysomething dying to have a comeback."
This storyline is, in the first two hours, not as sexy as the Miami plots were, even though Cooper, Hutton and Tia Carrera (as a dominatrix) are on board. Other guest stars in the premiere include Oliver Platt, Daphne Zuniga and Jennifer Coolidge.
There's little of "Nip/Tuck's" usual sexcapades in the first two weeks. But it's still solidly entertaining (if less so) thanks to Walsh and McMahon's dependable character arcs.
The doctors, plus other major characters who also will move to Los Angeles, consistently behave the way you'd expect while doing bizarre things. Matt alone has killed a guy, done drugs, joined Scientology and hooked up with she-males. But you always believed Matt was capable of all these things.
John Hensley, who plays Matt, said during a promotion for the show, "I've honestly been waiting for Matt to commit suicide for three years now." (Me too.)
But unlike the ones on many TV shows, the writers and actors never force the men and women of "Nip/Tuck" to do or say something out of character.
So, it's totally believable within the "Nip/Tuck" universe when, next week, Christian sympathizes with a Marilyn Monroe impersonator who feels inadequate enough to get a boob job -- before he crassly bids to bed her.
During a press conference, McMahon said he wants the show to ratchet up the kink. I asked him, like what?
In "Silence of the Lambs," he said, "remember when he cut the guy's face off and hung him up?" McMahon said. "I said, 'Do you think we could have sex like that? Could [Christian] be hung up like that?' "
Don't expect Murphy to allow that amazingly twisted scene to happen. But of all the dramas on TV, it would be least surprising to see such a spectacle on "Nip/Tuck." It remains the nuttiest show on TV.
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