Nip/Tuck is a medical show with a difference. Unlike Casualty, The Flying Doctors and all the other medical dramas we are accustomed to seeing this is a very different look at the medical profession. Definitely not family viewing, thus why it got a late slot on channel 4 when it was shown here, this show is still drawing in viewers now who eagerly await the final season of the violent and sex-filled show.
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What Is Nip/Tuck About?
Nip/Tuck follows the lives of two plastic surgeons who own a clinic in Miami, Florida called McNamara/Troy after its founders. The two surgeons have various different personal problems which quite often affect or get in the way of their work, with sometimes worrying results. Each episode focuses on one main patient who has come into the clinic and becomes the title of that episode. Far from just being about botox and boob jobs, there's a wide range of surgeries performed and for many different and sometimes heart-warming reasons.
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Who Is In It?
As this is primarily set in a clinic there are characters coming and going throughout every episode so here the focus will be on the doctors and those outside of the clinic.
Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh): One half of our duo of doctors, Sean is so tightly wound it's a wonder he doesn't explode into orbit. He's bored with his life, which consists of work and going home to his family and is suffering from a mid-life crisis. Oh woe is me, a wife, kids, huge house, nice car and a big balance. It is sometimes hard to feel bad for Sean but once the character grows on you you'll feel a lot more sympathy for him. In the midst of his marriage breakdown he gets his heart broken by a patient and has to make a big decision to put her happiness first.
Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon): The other half of the clinic comes in the form of the dashing sex addict Christian Troy, he and Sean have known each other since college and are like brothers to one another. Christian does have feelings, but he keeps them so deeply buried that he seems cold to most who meet him. He's not well liked by his ex's that he has loved and left usually within a night and in all honesty needs to grow up because the playboy lifestyle will only work for so long. His past has played a huge part in who and what he is now and when that is uncovered his character makes perfect sense and you will feel so awful for him.
Julia McNamara (Joely Richardson): Married to Sean and also went to the same college as him and Troy, she gave up all of her dreams in medicine when she found out she was pregnant with Matt, then along came daughter Annie and her only role in life became being a mother and supportive wife to the man who was living out her dream. She resents how much she's given up for her husband and children and desperately wants to get back into medicine, all of which causes extra tension in an already warring house. Maybe she married the wrong man at college?
Matt and Annie McNamara (John Hensley and Kelsey Batelaan): Sean and Julia's two children. Matt is a troubled teen that seems to have a knack of getting into trouble whilst Annie is the quiet and very observant younger child who sees what is going on with her parents.
Liz Cruz (Roma Maffia): Funny and witty, anesthesiologistLiz is always on hand to make Sean stop worrying, yell at Christian for sleeping with yet another woman and pretty much make sure the clinic doesn't collapse in all the madness. She is the rock of the clinic and when she isn't running around after the doctors she is trying to fix her troubled love-life. If only the woman of her dreams would come along and they could live happily ever after.
Escobar Gallardo (Robert LaSardo): Escobar is a Miami drug lord who after seeing something the doctors did that wasn't very professional, blackmails them into giving him huge amounts of their weekly takings and any operations he wants for anyone. He threatens not only Christian and Sean, but also Sean's family - which may seem like a harmless thing to do to the weak-willed doctor but Escobar finally makes our moralistic medic snap and seek revenge.
Dr. Merrill Bobolit (Joey Slotnick): A fellow student from the same medical school as Troy and McNamara, but unlike the dynamic duo Merrill wasn't exactly top of the class. He does however make a lot of money at his practice, he's even more well-known than the McNamara/Troy clinic and has billboards bearing his face scattered around Miami. The reason for this is that he has absolutely no scruples and will operate on anyone who wants surgery without counselling them against it or telling them to look at other options. He's just in it for the money.
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Episodes:
In this first season there are 13 episodes at about 60 minutes long each. These were aired in a post-10pm slot in the UK on channel 4 due to the violence, scenes of surgery and explicit sex.
McNamara/Troy: A mobster turns up offering to pay a ridiculously huge sum of money to the two surgeons if they give him a new face. Christian decides to accept the money and angers Sean whilst putting them both in grave danger. At home things aren't any better for Sean, his marriage is in tatters and he's going head-long into a mid-life crisis.
Mandi/Randi: Twins come into the clinic both wanting surgery to make them look different, but will this backfire? Sean tries to flirt with Grace but she flatly rejects him, (Not a great start to his attempt to live like a single man) but accepts an offer of a job at the clinic. Christian is having naughty thoughts about someone close to him and Matt, worried about what his girlfriend thinks of a certain part of him, decides to tackle it with a bottle of vodka and some nail scissors.
Nanette Babcock: Julia and Sean have to have a serious talk with Matt after they discover what he has done. A potential patient is ruled out of having surgery when she is found to not be as mentally stable as she thinks whilst Christian offers "favours" to a rich widow who plans to file a malpractice suit against the clinic after Sean forgets to make sure he's got all of his surgical tools on the tray when closing up.
Sophia Lopez: Christian has a cunning plan that doesn't impress Sean; he wants to make the clinic the number one choice for porn stars seeking surgery with the help of surgeon Merrill Bobolit. Sean meets transsexual Sophia Lopez, who has ended up with problems following a botched backroom surgery.
Kurt Dempsey: A man in love comes to the clinic wanting the duo to make his eyes look Asian, sounds mad on paper but he has a very sweet reason for wanting it. Christian decides to try and deal with his addiction to sex, which ends up in a rather unhelpful place with fellow sex-addict Gina, and Julia finds out she is pregnant which is a light to the touch paper of her fraught relationship with Sean.
Megan O'Hara: Both doctors are being naughty boys today as they carry on inappropriate relationships with patients. Someone is upset with Christian and is getting back at him in a public way. Matt finds himself in a guy's complete fantasy but when you are more in the way than anything else it turns out it isn't quite as sexy as the idea seems.
Cliff Mantegna: In helping his sex addiction Christian goes to a very private swinger's party - great idea no? Whilst at Sean's house news of his son Matt's threesome becomes a very uncomfortable and hilarious intervention with all three families meeting under one roof to discuss it. Julia also makes a handsome young friend in Jude when studying, but what will Sean make of it when he finds out?
Cara Fitzgerald: Matt seems to think that visiting the girl he is responsible for almost killing makes up for what he did whilst Grace thinks that Sean may be carrying on a relationship with Megan O'Hara. The doctor's make a huge mistake when they remove an incriminating birthmark from a priest, leading to a dangerous face-off in a church and uncovering a lot about Christian's traumatic childhood and why he is the way he is.
Sophia Lopez II: Love is in the air for Sophia and a member of the clinic, giving Sophia doubts about the gender reassignment surgery that is shortly scheduled. Bartering is apparently back in with Christian trading Kimber, his on/off girlfriend for fellow surgeon (and downright cretin) Merrill Bobolit's rare Lamborghini. If ever you needed a reason to stay single girls...but don't worry, Kimber has some vengeful payback plans up her sleeve that involves handcuffs and a lipstick.
Adelle Coffin: During his recertification exam Sean starts feeling the pressure as the cadaver head he is working on comes to life and won't shut up about his dying lover Megan's urge to commit suicide. Will he manage to get recertified or will Christian be working on his own for a while? And will dying Megan get the release from pain that she wants so badly? Make sure you've got the Kleenex handy in this heartbreaking but beautiful episode.
Montana/Sassy/Justice: In an interesting episode that makes you question ethics the male persona of a woman's multiple personalities forcefully demands an operation for one of the other personalities. And Christian's life changes as Gina tells him that he's going to be a father. The girl that Matt nearly killed returns to school apparently unaware that he was the driver that hit her and an awkward love triangle forms between her, Matt and his friend Henry who was also in the car.
Antonia Ramos: The doctors are blackmailed by Escobar, who has been keeping a big secret for them. They are now stuck doing his bidding, removing heroin-filled breast implants from Escobar's naive drug mules who think they are on the road to stardom in Hollywood. Lovable and wise transsexual Sophia is in turn befriended by Julia and shunned by every other woman at the local gym and Christian's bank account, already low from the payments he and Sean are having to make to Escobar, is getting dangerously low coping with pregnant Gina's demands.
Escobar Gallardo: Is the cosmetic clinic turning into a veterinary clinic? Well that's what one man seems to think as he offers to pay obscene money for a cosmetic procedure on his show dog. Talking of dogs, after trying to force the doctors to move into organ harvesting for him he gives them another option - he wants a brand new face. Escobar is given a new face by Sean, though Escobar will not be having the last laugh in this climatic finale to the first series.
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Why Should You Watch Nip/Tuck?
If you prefer your drama more adult themed than some of the popular British fare and have a strong stomach then this is a show that could be a winner. Nip/Tuck is a very well-written show that deals with ethical and moral dilemmas alongside more odd moments that show you just how different we all are - as soon as Sean and Christian ask the patient "Tell me what you don't like about yourself" you see how no matter how beautiful we may think a person is, if there is something they don't like (and in this show they tend to have a very good reason for their dislikes) they feel desperately ugly. Beauty really is in the eye of the beholder.
This has a mixture of characters you will love or hate - or in the case of Christian love AND hate. This is another show where they picked actors based on talent rather than how big their name was already and this shows that you don't have to be well-known to be arresting in your performance.
The soundtrack features big names played on the theatres stereo during operations, and more often than not the songs picked are brilliantly telling about either the patient under the knife or the feelings of the doctors at the time. Using big name songs in this way is rather fun as it's a very different way to bring music into a show - the rest of the time you won't notice the music that may be playing in the background of a shot.
Of course being set in Miami the people you see on screen are for the most part annoyingly beautiful, not something to watch when you're having a bad day as you will feel worse about your appearance seeing all of these gorgeous toned bodies on screen.
This is rated as an 18 certificate and definitely isn't recommended viewing for anyone under that age. I also, as with True Blood, wouldn't recommend this for watching with parents and certainly do not have this on if there's any chance your friendly neighbourhood vicar. Aside from the very graphic surgical scenes where you will see a lot more of the patients than you will probably care to there is also a lot of violence, drugs and bad language.
And oh did I forget that sometimes Nip/Tuck is more soft core pornography than medical drama? Yes, you will see a lot of sex - and not just the usual either, threesomes, orgies and more are shown here. This is an explicitly sexual show and though it is woven into the storyline and isn't just there for the sake of it this does mean that it is not suitable for anyone under 18.
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Final Verdict?
This was a favourite show of mine back when it first aired, and though I haven't caught up with the last two seasons yet still has pride of place in my DVD collection. I love medical dramas, and when this was shown it was just such a shock to see such a grown up take on the genre where they didn't censor anything from the viewer. In many shows the surgery scenes are kept to a minimum and when you do see what they are doing it quite often looks very fake. This wasn't like that and you feel like you have an all access pass to the O.R. That means it's not the best thing to watch whilst eating a meal but it is thoroughly engrossing and engaging when you do watch. It is truly fascinating to see surgery in that much depth, and much of the time you get to see the patients afterwards when they get their check-up giving you closure on that character and their story.
Though not a huge fan of plastic surgery watching this showed that people don't just want surgery to look pretty. Many do and in this they seek out alternative doctors such as Bobolit who is more than happy to oblige. But Sean and Christian take on cases that aren't based solely on attaining the perfect body that the magazines push, these patients have deeper reasons for the surgeries they want and it shatters the myth that the only people that want surgery are shallow and vain. Most of the patients in Nip/Tuck are anything but vain, they just need help.
Nip/Tuck sucked me in from the first episode and since then I have watched the exploits of doctors and patients at this clinic with great interest. Yes sometimes I have to watch surgery scenes through my hands because they are so horrific, or cringe as Christian has very energetic sex with another woman in some mad position. But they are integral parts of a very complex show and it wouldn't be the same without these moments. I've laughed and cried whilst rewatching this first season again and probably will again next time it's watched. If you are looking for a new medical fix since the end of ER and aren't squeamish, try Nip/Tuck - more gorgeous people saving lives, just in different ways.
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