I’ve always loved TV medical drama, because the moral and ethical choices people have to make during medical crises create amazing drama. Whether it was “ER” or “House,” medicine seemed an impeccable vehicle for exploring the human condition. My favorite medical drama was FX’s “nip/tuck,” in which plastic surgery tended to reveal the more amoral choices.
Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) usually provided the pro and con. Christian voiced the sleaziest desires and was highly entertaining for his shameless womanizing bravado. Sean was the sensitive one, but when even he lost his cool, watch out. I love that they asked their patients to “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself” which no doctor would really say and was a totally leading question that assumed all plastic surgery was done out of insecurity.
Unfortunately, “nip/tuck” peaked early and the best episode was surely going to come from the first two seasons. Season three went off the rails making The Carver its entire arc, and went even further astray when it tried to course correct in season four. How they thought a gang of organ thieves was a step up from The Carver, I don’t know. They actually got back on track once they moved McNamara/Troy to Los Angeles and dealt head on with the superficiality of L.A., but nothing topped the fascinating procedures, ethical quandaries, and debaucherous escapades of early “nip/tuck.”
The Best Episode Ever of “nip/tuck” exemplifies all three of those qualities. Season one, episode five, “Kurt Dempsey,” has two provocative surgeries, one with immediate moral question and the other revealing itself later, and Christian’s most outrageous conquest. Dempsey (Vincent Angell) wants to have his eyes made to resemble an Asian so his fiance’s strict mother will approve of their marriage. The doctors express the obvious objections: Why go to this much trouble to please a disapproving mother-in-law? Also, it won’t really work either. But, Dempsey is so sincere that it puts a different spin on the usual question of plastic surgery. Most patients are trying to look “beautiful.” Dempsey is simply trying to look more like the woman he loves.
I must admit, I did always relish in the surgery porn of “nip/tuck.” Dempsey’s procedure is rather mild by comparison. Usually they’re lifting up faces or digging under people’s skin, and I say bravo. If you’re doing an edgy show about the consequences of elective surgery, don’t let viewers off the hook. For “Kurt Dempsey” we’ll have to settle for some slices around the eyes and a nose job later.
That nose job is for Ellie Collins (Gabrielle Carteris), who claims she has been in a car accident and wants her nose fixed while she’s at it. Seems like an open and shut case, and Christian even calls in psych consultant Grace Santiago (Valerie Cruz), a character who completely disappeared after season one. I guess there was no room for moral analysis the more outrageous the plots got.
Anyway, it seems Collins slipped one by both Christian and Grace. During surgery, Christian discovers she’s had a ton of corrective surgery on her nose. This leads to the assumption that Collins’ husband has been beating her and she’s just covering for him with stories of accidents and plastic surgeries. Here’s where “nip/tuck” always gave the extra twist. David Collins (Don McManus) did break Ellie’s nose, but not in a bout of spousal abuse. Ellie is addicted to plastic surgery and knows that no ethical doctor would continue performing elective procedures on her nose. She came up with the story of a broken nose and made David whack her with a hammer for the cover story. David couldn’t deny his wife if it would make her happy, but of course he’s just enabling her.
Now how messed up is that? Someone so insecure that no matter how much love she has in her life, she has to keep “fixing” her nose. It’s tragic because we know no matter how many times David concedes and lets her get surgery, she’ll never overcome her body image issues. “nip/tuck” would have drug dealers smuggle heroin in breast implants and give a male journalist breast implants for a story, but those outrageous plots were a little on the nose. (God, could you imagine if I’d said they were on point? Ha!) Ellie Collins speaks to the complicated issue of how people take advantage of medical advancements, looking for that elusive self-confidence that really only comes from within.
Back to the title patient, Kurt Dempsey’s surgery was a success, although it didn’t fool the mother-in-law. That story has a happy ending though, if a bittersweet one. He won her approval by being willing to go so far to please the family into which he was marrying. So he gets a happily ever after, although maybe it would have been nicer if he hadn’t had to permanently alter himself to prove his love.
Meanwhile, Christian is at his most incorrigible in this episode. First he has sex with a delivery girl in his office. Then, he attends a sex addicts meeting, and sleeps with his new sponsor! It’s a beautiful cut too. He reluctantly takes her phone number, decides to call her and then cut to them post coital. The sponsor, Gina (Jessalyn Gilsig) became a recurring character and proved to have far more problems than sex addiction. But this introduction, which Christian turned the one place for redemption into another conquest, was his most unapologetic moment.
“nip/tuck” did some other great surgical storylines too. The priest having his incriminating birthmark removed was topical. The beginning of the Carver story was a good way to deal with using McNamara/Troy’s skills for something positive in response to a horrible crime. Even getting embroiled with gangster Escobar Gallardo (Robert LaSardo) by inadvertently altering the face of a criminal on the run from him spoke to the far-reaching consequences of doing their job without doing their research. I look back fondly on the early seasons of “nip/tuck” and it was fun to revisit them this week to determine that “Kurt Dempsey” is the Best Episode Ever.
