giving drama its much-needed double-D cups

Everyone wants to be a 'beautiful' person. Everyone wants the world to look at them with admiring eyes; stare with awe as they walk into a room; hold doors and smile for them as their gorgeous façade passes through. The trouble is, some people aren't content just to _want_ this and nothing more: that's where plastic surgeons come in. Sure, maybe I think my nose is a little wonky… and perhaps my abdominal muscles don't quite have the bulging, washboard look that I so desire… and, hey, the skin on my knees doesn't look too clever, having been worn away slowly with years of playing badminton/kneeling to stack shelves. But I wouldn't stoop to going 'under the knife', as they say, to amend any of these self-appointed flaws. I consider them part of who I am, and I'm pretty convinced -- oh, I'm sure someone will be able to tell you, right? -- that I'm a beautiful enough person on the inside to override all of these imperfections.

Well, what a generic first paragraph that was when my review concerns a show about plastic surgery. The show in question, Nip/Tuck, is one that I've only discovered in the past year -- through my lovely girlfriend, of course. But I'm a quick learner, and I've rapidly acquired both seasons on DVD (after watching the majority of this, the second, when they were on terrestrial TV). The drama, incase you're unschooled, is a fairly new one, its loveliness only evident on our screens in the past two years or so, particularly here in Britain. Creator Ryan Murphy, glimpsed by me on several occasions in the various documentaries that came with the first season DVD box, was apparently intent on creating a show about plastic surgery -- particularly one that had a sleekness that belied its disturbing murky depths. With Nip/Tuck he's been more than successful: the show centres around the plastic surgeon partnership of McNamara/Troy, exploring their everyday dealings and the operations they conduct, while, of course, delving deeply into the lives/families of the two doctors and everyone who encounters them in the process.

It's something of a staple of the show that it must have an obligatory 'surgery' in each episode -- see, when you're piecing together a drama about plastic surgery, it's probably important to display your characters at work, I'd guess. Nip/Tuck does this, and in very graphic detail. No drop of blood is spared from our eyes; no flesh ripping goes unnoticed; no squeamish souls are catered for. Apparently every case that the doctors face in the course of each season has been researched, and all are real: so, whether it's bulging man-boobs, or a guy who wants a pair of breasts, or building a clitoris, all have been faced before in real life (by some unlucky surgeons, no doubt). This chronically intrigues me, and is one of the things that fascinates me about the show: its dramatic realism, in every aspect (while being borderline 'over-the-top'). The realism theme runs much deeper, though -- into the lives of just about every character that hangs around the doors of McNamara/Troy, but I'll get to that a bit later. While we're on the whole blood 'n guts thing: you might not want to let your young 'uns watch Nip/Tuck for this reason, but also much more. Not to mention the swearing, which is, I assume, prevalent, though not focused on greatly (hence, the fact that I haven't noticed it much, but maybe that's because there's so much else going on); the sex scenes are brutally true-to-life, and often just about as graphic as the surgeries themselves, so you may want to keep the kiddies in bed when you flick that 'play' button.

(A note: for the remainder of this review -- in order to be appropriately analytical -- I'll probably be referring to major incidents in this season, and indeed the first and new third seasons, of the show. So, any readers who are interested in discovering Nip/Tuck in the near future may want to proceed with caution from hereon in. Don't say I didn't warn you!)

The one thing that you must understand about Nip/Tuck -- the most important thing to realise, and you may have already gathered this from my previous couple of paragraphs -- is that no matter how glamorous, happy, vibrant and confident the characters appear, they never stay quite as appealing visually as you'd like to think. Oh, sure, they always _look_ the same (aside from a few bang-ups here and there), but the light they're portrayed in under the surface is much gloomier. The theme tune to the program ("A Perfect Lie") goes, "Make me beautiful / make me… a perfect soul / a perfect mind / a perfect face / a perfect lie", and this reflects well on the show as a whole. In fact, it's indicative of most plastic surgery and the motivation behind it: while some, I'll admit, genuinely need it due to disfigurement or accidents (cases which are covered in the show from time to time), a lot of clients put themselves forward due to insecurities or sheer vanity. I assume that fixing the outer appearance is supposedly, in some way, meant to improve the way you feel on the inside. Well, the doctors in this show are no different to the patients they treat. Thriving on the normality and supposed superiority of their daily attire and utensils (nah, not the surgical ones; a flashy car or stylish pair of shades doesn't go amiss), you'd think they had nothing more to their character than an array of superficial luxuries. However, when the show explores their personal lives, it reveals the flaws -- and, hey, we're not just talking minor flaws here; we're talking freakin' huge ones -- in each and every character. Most of these would be enough for you to condemn them on sight, if you knew their gory inner workings immediately.

The most vital thing about the people in Nip/Tuck, though, the thing that is probably the main factor in keeping me hooked to the program, is how relatable they all are. Sure, they have totally messed-up lives, they're totally messed-up people (psychologically, certainly), they make decisions that wouldn't even occur to the most deranged of us at the worst times -- but, and this is crucial, the show presents them to us in such a way that the viewer could quite happily say, "Oh, yeah, I can see why he/she reacted like that" without batting an eyelid. See, the problem with a lot of dramas nowadays is that very few of the characters come off as fully three-dimensional; with Nip/Tuck, every aspect of everyone is fine-tuned obsessively -- they react to things like _real_ people would. Maybe not in exactly the same way, but we go through so many emotions with them that we can rationalise, understand why they did what they did, and still love them for it… or, indeed, in spite of it. It once crossed my mind that, given what I'd seen in the show, I really wouldn't want to associate with anyone in Nip/Tuck in real life; then it occurred to me: I _do_ interact with the same type of people, every single day. Because everyone is flawed and makes mistakes -- why should the characters in a drama be allowed any advantages that we don't get?

There are essentially four main characters, although all have episodes where they're more or less prominent than each other. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) is the talented one in the McNamara/Troy partnership -- he aced medical school, and can perform the most precise of operations to perfection. If only his family life ran as smoothly. His wife, Julia (Joely Richardson, of 101 Dalmations 'fame'), is dissatisfied with her position as, effectively, homemaker, and wants to pursue her college education. Unfortunately, their marriage also isn't the healthiest: the fact that she's pretty much in love with his partner, Christian Troy (Christian, Sean and Julia were best friends in college, and Christian dated Julia before she married Sean), aside, their relationship seems to be at an eternal stalemate; in other words, there's absolutely no passion left in it (aside from the occasional rampant sex scene when the frustration somehow lifts their libidos a little). Their son, Matt (John Hensley), is right at that age where the transition from boy to man is taking place, and he's a tad rebellious while, at the same time, desiring a closer relationship with his dad. So, as you can see, Sean's got a lot on his plate. It's to his credit that he manages to stay sane throughout it all, though there are a few occasions where this isn't the case. He's not exactly the best father, for example: in the current third season, his idea of repairing the damage after he's punched Matt on the nose is spreading his arms out and encouraging Matt to 'take his best shot', as it were. Matt responds with something along the lines of "You're very sad", and he's right, in a way. The viewer can see where Sean's coming from, though, and we can see that he's trying. He might not be getting it totally right, but at least he's doing something. We even manage to find sympathy for him in the first season, when he embarks on an affair with a cancer-stricken patient (Megan O'Hara, incase you're interested); it's shortly after Julia has miscarried, and he's clearly the more affected of the two by it. Surely an affair wasn't the best way to deal with it but, again, it's understandable in a sadistic sorta way. I didn't really like Sean up until midway through this second season, but he's rapidly became one of my favourite characters in the show. This is mainly down to Walsh's superb acting: in the first season, Sean was very repressed, and Walsh played the downcast, world-weary surgeon very well. In this season, though, Sean gets several pieces of news that try his patience to the point that he lashes out; here, Walsh still down-plays the character, even though he's yelling at the top of his voice, and does a fine job of it. His facial expressions really leave you feeling very sympathetic towards poor Sean, at times. And hey, they can be downright hilarious too.

Speaking of great facial expressions, look no further than Julian McMahon, who plays Sean's rather more attractive (or so I've heard) partner, Christian Troy. Technically we really should hate Christian: he's been riding on Sean's coat-tails since medical school, and seems to rely on his charm alone to feign credibility; he is an obsessive user of women, humping everything in sight before discarding them like soiled underwear (treating them about as respectfully as undergarments in the process); he makes irresponsible and silly decisions, that put the future of the practice at stake, on an almost daily basis; he is arrogant to the point of madness, referring to every lady he's looking to pick up as 'sweetheart', posing in his flashy cars and expensive Gucci suits like some sort of Roman god; he treats Matt like a miniature version of himself, taking him to strip clubs and porn parties, and giving him advice on threesomes (see: first season). Really, I could go on all day. Why _do_ we like Christian, then? Well, for one, McMahon is spot-on for the character -- he plays him expertly, and with one glowing smile or witty statement or heartbroken look, he's won us back again, no matter how much of an asshole his character's been. Plus, we can relate to why Christian Troy is the way he is: he was abused by his adopted father as a child, and his best friend married the only woman he's ever loved (yep, it's plain to see that he loves Julia too). In this season, he gets the chance to be a father for the first time, and it's one of the most tear-jerking moments in the whole show to see his 'child' (watch it to see why I use inverted commas there) taken from him. Oh, he also gets to have rampant sex with countless women as well, which is nothing unusual. He makes up for about 95% of the sex in Nip/Tuck; really, he's every red-blooded guy's hero. Then again, maybe not, if we understand _why_ he's the way he is with women -- one of the many things that makes Christian such an intriguing onion to peel.

Matt was mentioned briefly earlier, and he's really one of the most disillusioned characters on the show, while at the same time often being the voice of reason when his parents overstep the line a little (and don't realise it themselves). You'd think he was heinous if I told you that he ran over a girl while high with his friend Henry and then left her at the side of the road to die, then later -- when it comes back to bite him in the butt -- is happy to see his friend dragged kicking and screaming into prison while he gets off without so much as a slap on the wrist. Or that he engages in a threesome to help his lesbian former-girlfriend get closer to her lover, then actually ends up dating the other girl himself. I guess he is a bit of a bastard in a few ways, but, hey, he's young -- his mistakes may be more extreme than most, but he still feels bad enough about them (in the end) that we're willing to forgive and forget. For instance, he goes to the hospital to visit the girl whom he horribly disfigured (y'know, that one he ran over?) every day, eventually persuading Sean to repair her injuries pro-bono. In this season, he finds out the truth about who his father actually is, begins dating his life coach, Ava (Famke Janssen) -- a woman the same age as his father -- and encounters other such things that a teenage boy really shouldn't. Hensley doesn't evoke as much sympathy for Matt as, say, McMahon does for Christian, but it's not for lack of trying: that puppy-dog face of his could melt anyone's heart, and he does a fine job of portraying the Jekyll-Hyde nature of Matt.

Julia McNamara is the least interesting of the main characters: I already basically described her part in the show in the paragraph about Sean. Julia is perpetually dissatisfied with her life, and that's basically the crux of her whole personality: in one fascinating episode in this season, she fantasises (while under anaesthetic) about what it would have been like if she'd married Christian instead of Sean. In the end, she comes out feeling as bad as she does in the _real_ scheme of things. She doesn't do anything quite as evil in this season as, say, flushing a perfectly healthy hamster down the toilet (heh), but she does have her breasts augmented merely for the purpose of trying to win Sean back, and ends up being mistaken for a hooker at a bar. Niiiiice. I really didn't like the way Richardson played the character in the first season -- she was much too expressive, shouting when it wasn't really necessary, and her character just became an annoyance. Here, she's more realistic, more restrained, and does a much better job. She's still nowhere near having the best acting chops on the show, but she's getting somewhere at least.

Then there are the periphery characters, some of which appear more than others. The main ones in season two are probably: Liz (Roma Maffia), the lesbian anaesthesiologist, an ever-present during the surgeries, and one of the more mundane characters in my opinion; Kimber (Kelly Carlson), the porn star, Christian's ex (well, duuuuh), who actually ends up dating Sean for a while here; and the earlier-mentioned Ava, the life coach, bringing more than a few surprises to the program (not even including her psychotic son Adrian).

I'd love to sit here for ages and discuss plot lines in this season, but I won't, for a few reasons. If you're reading this review, then you're either someone who's familiar with Nip/Tuck, or someone who's never watched an episode in their lives. Either way, you won't want to hear a run-down of what goes on in all sixteen episodes. I've already summarised quite a few of the main premises of this season's plots within my character summaries, anyway, and let's just say that you're never short of a bit of action with Nip/Tuck. Each 45-minute episode is packed to the brim with action, so that not a second of film is wasted in the camera. My only slight disappointment with this DVD was that it didn't have any of the nifty extras that the first season DVD did (e.g. documentaries, deleted scenes), but that's just a minor quibble.

Nip/Tuck certainly is one of the finest modern dramas I've ever laid my eyes on. Funny how a show about making people as flawless as can be turns out to be just as flawless in its execution. I'm just glad the characters don't turn out to be as flawless as all that; in fact, they're about as flawed as people can realistically be. As it happens, just about every single one wants, or _thinks_ they want, something they can't have (which is, ironically, something that plastic surgery aims to make a thing of the past): Sean wants a normal family life; Julia wants Christian; Christian wants Julia; Matt wants… well, everything, as your typical teenager does. And the list goes on. The bottom line is that Nip/Tuck is addictive as hell -- once you watch about two episodes, you'll be hooked. You'll also never have as much fun at, or be as moved by, another freak show in your life.