TV is the New Reading

“Nip/Tuck” is showing its age

In the fall of 2003 a bolt of lightning struck a pile of gold and from that cataclysm was born “Nip/Tuck,” a crackling in-depth character study centered on two magnificently talented plastic surgeons with dark and twisted personal histories and a passion for their work.

From the very beginning the show has been shredding the boundaries of the possible in terms of sexuality, storytelling and excitement. In the intervening years viewers have been shocked by graphic violence, psychopathic and destructive personalities colliding in an environment of moral indifference and an insatiable hunger for youth and beauty at all costs, fueled by dark themes of betrayal, greed, retribution, obsession and lust. This high-wire tension worked to keep the show constantly fresh, new and exciting.

However, some 5½ years later, the writers have explored every motivation, every whim and everything else. The central characters – Sean and Christian – have faced bankruptcy, drug dealers, transsexuals, nymphomaniacs, serial rapists, white supremacists, organ-stealing black marketeers and murderous psychopaths.

When the fifth season resumed this week viewers weren’t terribly surprised to discover Sean had survived and was recovering from his run-in with the most recent of these – his estranged agent, Colleen, who was last seen stabbing him in the back with a butcher knife. Meanwhile, Christian discovered he had stage-two breast cancer.

While these would be front-and-center tragedies in anyone’s life, they’re a little tame for a show that has featured anesthesia-free sex changes and complications from quadruple-implant drug smuggling.

Anyway, while Sean is recovering, he’s taken a position teaching budding young plastic surgeons, and has met a rock star, a driven young surgeon named Raj Paresh. From the previews, it looks like Raj is going to have one heck of a year. Also, Christian’s illness has brought him a little closer to Liz, the long-suffering anesthesiologist for the practice, and it looks like their relationship is about to get even deeper.

But from the perspective of someone who has watched this show transform from something spectacular into a spectacle and then into a circus, the show is adrift from its moorings, is less interested in character development than scandal and is a shadow of its former self.

I have heard rumors that the production team wants to keep it going through 2011 and beyond. I guess my fondest wish as a long-time fan would be for them to back up and acknowledge that they haven’t had any solid new ideas for at least a couple of seasons. They should take the show from where it is right now, think really hard and come up with one good plotline to bring this thing in for a landing. The cast and crew have worked so hard for so long to make the production what it is, and they deserve the opportunity to recapture at least a glimmer of its former glory.

“Nip/Tuck” carries an MA rating for excellent reasons, and airs at 9 p.m. Tuesdays on FX.

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