Nip/Tuck kicked off its sixth and final season last week, and while I’ve enjoyed the fascinating and frequently sordid lives of Drs. Sean McNamara and Christian Troy over the past six years, it’s for the best that the show move into the process of wrapping things up. The show peaked around the end of season two (in one of the best season finales I’ve ever seen), and while it’s remained one of the better dramas on basic cable, it’s been slowly but surely losing ground since.
Apparently, the same has been happening to the plastic surgery practice of McNamara/Troy. The incomparable voice of Linda Hunt narrates the episode as a TV financial analyst dissecting the effect of the economic downturn on plastic surgeons in general and the lives of Sean and Christian in particular.
Those lives are, of course, a complete mess. After learning he doesn’t in fact have terminal breast cancer in last season’s finale, Christian has been living it up well beyond his means while trying to disentangle himself from his brief marriage to anesthesiologist Liz Cruz. Considering he pretty much only married her to be his live-in hospice nurse, and even then treated her pretty badly, it’s hard not to root for her as she tries to take him to the cleaners under California divorce law.
Meanwhile Sean’s been losing sleep over their financial woes, leading him to make some really bad mistakes including leaving surgical tools inside patients and considering marriage to nurse Teddy (between Rose McGowan replacing Katee Sackhoff in the role and the generally unimpressive nature of season five, I didn’t even realize that was the same character until I sat down to write this). When she suggests sleeping pills, and he starts hemming and hawing about his fear of taking medication, the show’s practically telegraphing his next big-time blunder.
As far as the extended family goes, Julia’s still MIA in New York with Sean’s younger kids, and Matt has decided to follow his obviously drug-addled muse to the blockbuster performance art of mime, with predictably disastrous results. Sad Mime Matt is almost enough to make you miss Angry Bigot Matt or even Desperate Meth-head Matt. That said, watching him rob a coffee shop using his trick prop gun and gestures was sort of absurdly brilliant.
In one of the show’s less subtle developments, Sean and Christian rent out their surgical suite to Dr. Mike Hamoui (Mario Lopez). He’s young, buff and specializes in vaginal reconstruction surgery for the aging female population of Los Angeles. Yes, we get it, Sean and Christian aren’t getting any younger, and they’re scrambling like crazy to hold onto their vitality, even if they have to do so by proxy.
Despite closing the episode with Sean’s sleeping pill overdose (it’s the first episode of the season, so it’s not like he’s in any real danger), this was kind of a slow start to the season. Still, there’s a definite sense that the clock is ticking for McNamara/Troy, and things are bound to get much crazier before the final bell tolls.
