Intertextuality—Or is that Intersexuality?

Intertextuality—Or is that Intersexuality? by Roxanne McDonald

The “star” of “I Love New York” makes a cameo appearance on “Nip/Tuck”.

You might think it was a move of mammoth proportions. You’d expect armchair critics the nation over would be chafing about how low Ryan White has stooped. But you might also think the use of reality TV’s biggest celebrity—or biggest mouth—Tiffany Pollard was a

brilliant tongue-in-cheek effort to boost the drama “Nip/Tuck” even more (as if boosting “Nip/Tuck” is necessary).

In the best of post-modern coups, in the midst of a writers’ strike that has had viewers convinced no good TV would come out of Hollywood, Ryan White and his team have reassured us there is a future for entertainment in general and good entertainment in particular.

Giving nods to the Jerry Springer popularity of the Vh1 hit “I Love New York,” Murphy brought Tiffany Pollard (whom he said, in production, he was just gonna have to take away and marry: “”I think she should marry me and just leave the reality show business,” chuckle, chuckle) onto “Nip/Tuck” three weeks into the edgy drama’s new season which is spoofing on and simulating the working mechanism that is reality TV, among other things.

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Nip/Tuck Celebrities Great and Greater

Nip/Tuck Celebrities Great and Greater by Roxanne McDonald

It’s a good day for vidiots when the biggest news (good or bad) is who will be guest-starring on “Nip/Tuck”.

We already get sucked into “Nip/Tuck” for several aesthetic and other reasons—including the stunning sets, the succulent central characters (and the actors who portray them), the supremely relevant soundtrack, and the blade-runner dialogue and story

development. So it is not necessary but certainly a plus to have featured celebrities appear as multidimensional (or intentionally rendered uni-dimensional) characters who come to Troy/McNamara for cosmetic reconstruction.
Rosie O’Donnell made her second season’s appearance on Nip Tuck as the nouveau riche Dawn (or, “Dwan”) who this time went hang gliding and was attacked by a fully matured eagle in mid air soar. Ever the dismissive and sexist one, Christian stresses their procedure to repair her mangled face will include sewing her big mouth shut.

Jacqueline Bissett, the epitome of grace and class, made several visits to the show last year as the malevolent organ poacher who did none of the actual dirty work herself but commandeered the thefts by blackmail and coercion and contributed to the deliciously depraved closing episodes of the season.

Oliver Platt pleased many “Nip/Tuck” veteran viewers (and “Huff” lamenters) when he joined the show with performances only Platt could make into a character both smarmy and loveable at once.

And several seasoned stars have made their way to the OR doors for their characters’ vain purposes, greedy intentions, or salacious needfulness or desperation or depravity. While, for instance, while Peter Dinklage, Portia de Rossi, Andrew Leeds, Alanis Morissette, Paula Marshall, Vanessa Redgrave (playing Julia’s mother, appropriately), and Brooke Shields, among many others, have entered as marginal characters, they have exited as much more substantial and substantive additions to the “Nip/Tuck” script.

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White Finds Yet another Way to Top Himself with Nip/Tuck Finale

White Finds Yet another Way to Top Himself with Nip/Tuck Finale by Roxanne McDonald

From the first five minutes to the last, “Nip/Tuck” season finale is a tear-jerking heart-race—as usual, and with even more panache than usual.

Bemoaning the finality of the season of “Nip/Tuck” aside, we have to revel in the intensified elements of the finale. Not only was the “tell me what you don’t like about yourself” response of the evening the most dramatic – with Escobar Gallardo’s wife baring her heroin-smuggling savaged breasts, and not only was the commercial time intriguing with carefully positioned warp-party scenes and teasers for the Look Back at the Season show (which will air on December 19), but the closing scenes were

stunning: as is typical to the show, great music was playing during the surgery; but ala Magnolia (the only other place I’ve seen this technique, anyway), each of the main characters mouthed the lyrics to The Submarines’ song of disturbing dissatisfaction, “Brighter Discontent”—miming their malcontent, their malaise, their pain and worry for their futures, despite all they have and are that is good.
So in a stunning and over-the-top provocative montage, Christian (who we thought was finally happy) and Michelle (who, it is foreshadowed, is readying to split) are mouthing in tandem and separately how “All these things should make me happy/Make me happy to be home again/All these things should make me happy/Make me happy to be alone again.”

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Julia is Gone from Nip/Tuck!

Julia is Gone from Nip/Tuck! by Roxanne McDonald

Actress Joely Richardson has had to leave Nip/Tuck, so Julia has of course left her family—or what’s left of it.

If you saw the futuristic episode of Nip/Tuck, with Conor and Annie grown and fussing at a reunion dinner with retiring Sean, polygamous Christian (two wives is legal), and Doctor Matt, you saw that a grown Conor revealed to his therapist that his Mom left his Dad when he was still a baby (about six months old). You then can infer that it was likely over the clawed hands, Sean wanting to operate immediately and Julia wanting to wait, or over Julia having slept with Marlowe and Sean having done the original nanny.

And some of you are griping about the aesthetic options made on the part of the show’s creator, Ryan Murphy.

One writer, for instance, bitches about how the futuristic scenes make for cheesy, hacky drama (see Tim Stack’s article, “Future Schlock”).

But I’m thinking that the future-tripping episode functioned quite well on many levels: we get to see the unique kinds of technology in Murphy’s vision—like the phone chips imbedded in people’s heads that they access with a touch to the temple. We get to see a really great development of Annie (played by the adorable Jennifer Elise Cox), who is agoraphobic, anorexic, and apoplectic over her parents’ neglect and who gets into trouble with the law, smokes, and rags on her aging and appropriately tired-looking parents, saying that this is what they get in a daughter who was psychologically warped, so “deal”. And we get to witness the departure and the reasons for the departure of Julia.

Actually, we understand that with Julia having left Sean twice before, that her taking off a third and final time makes sense, especially after she explains the mess the family has become because of the toxic nature of Sean’s business. Julia is the whiniest, and we might be glad to see her off.

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I Really Wanna Know…What Do You Ask Nip/Tuck Actors?

I Really Wanna Know…What Do You Ask Nip/Tuck Actors? by Roxanne McDonald

As per the interactivity efforts of a number of shows, Nip/Tuck actors take turn answering fan questions. But what do you ask?

A few weeks back, you could post a question at the FX interactive fancast section to Joely Richardson (Julia), then to Ryan Murphy the absolutely brilliant—we’re not worthy!—creator of Nip/Tuck), Julian McMahon (Christian), and others…. This week you can “talk to” Dylan Walsh (Sean)!

But how do you avoid babbling, blubbering, bungling your rare chance to get close to the wings of the genii? How do you avoid asking whether Annie goes to school or has a tutor, or if Matt takes lessons from mentors on or off the show, or if Dr. Liz is gay in real life, or if Peter Dinkle (Marlowe) feels somehow redeemed in the best-played “little person” role ever?

I am in love with Julian McMahon and have been since he

was Cole on Charmed (the only reason I tuned in to Nip/Tuck to begin with), so what would I ask? I am profoundly taken by his acting technique, which has his character(s) showing passion, love, rage, egotism, solitude, desperation, and disappointment (and many other emotions and states) in a myriad of facial rather than vocal/tonal or bodily gestures.

His performing skills are so subtle, so acutely on point that I could ask a technical question, but have no knowledge of character acting versus Stanislavski versus…well, you get the idea, so I wouldn’t elicit a response I would get anyway.

So do I ask, “Do you miss being the ruler of the underworld?” Does he look like he misses it?

Or, could try to get more intimate than a stalker should be allowed, and ask whether he is as well-endowed as his character purportedly is. (Hey. A girl can dream.)

Or, I could ask any number of obvious, been asked a zillion times questions, such as, “Are you like your character? Well, he is a hottie who makes the show sizzle and pop every time the camera is on his naked backside, but he is also so good an actor that his emotions play almost all in the eyes…so yes, he likely gets the women and might even scare the piss out of them when he gets pissed. Just one look in his angry eyes, for instance, and you would so snap to his every whim and wish, if you aren’t already seduced by his sensuality and self-centered stoicism. Oh, wait…. That’s Christian. See how easy it is to get the characters confused?

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Nip/Tuck Creator Ryan Murphy Takes Surreality from Reality…or, er, Popular Mythology

Nip/Tuck Creator Ryan Murphy Takes Surreality from Reality…or, er, Popular Mythology by Roxanne McDonald

Art is a response—to political fiascos, personal dilemmas, even other art. In Ryan Murphy’s case, his art is done in direct response to his obsessions, what he’s reading, what is happening on the popular culture circuit.

The creator of Nip/Tuck, Ryan Murphy, grants a televised interview to film institute students, Sarah Davidson, Darren Herczeg, and Mark Stern. In this interview, titled, “Life After Film School,” he speaks to what the success of the show, Nip/Tuck, is made of, and how (or when, or why) he writes, pointing to how in the writing of the episodes he works through/out his obsessions at the time, or uses something he is reading.

Loyalists to Nip/Tuck will note the use of real-life medical cases, for example: “Escobar Gillado” centers on a drug lord’s changing his appearance with plastic surgery. An aging “Mrs. Grubman” becomes obsessed with/addicted to repeated sessions of surgery. Men get breasts and men get balls the size of kiwis; women get face transplants and women get voice modifications; seventeen-year-old petrified fetuses are removed; Siamese twins are separated.

But equally fascinating are the stories that are not completely real

but are made big as life with the perpetuation by word of mouth, which Murphy and mates turn into brilliant TV. In episode four of season four, “Shari Noble” (get the play on Chernobyl?), for instance, Liz (after being challenged for not going out or getting involved all that much), is seduced by a stunning babe in a bar. She wakes to a ringing phone and a voice pacifying her with words of how the pain will be intense for a bit…as Liz has just been the victim of black market kidney theft.

While this is for some fans a “far-fetched” plotline, it is TV after all, and it is the stellar creativity of a writer (and his writing geniuses) who has taken off on the whole urban myth of underground organ-stealing rings. But the urbanity and the mythology had to have started somewhere. Just as art takes from other experiences, so does the urban myth take from the smallest of instigated incidents: in the 1990’s, from Great Britain to Delhi to Bombay to Bangalore, post-surgery patients began accusing surgeons and other medical practitioners of stealing their kidneys (when they were in for treatments for ulcers and such).

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Nip/Tuck Continues to Impress

Nip/Tuck Continues to Impress by Roxanne McDonald

“Cindy Plumb,” the first of the new Nip/Tuck season, comes through for fans as the poignant and suggestive masterpiece it has been promising to be in ads and previews and alluded to in interviews on the red carpet and behind the scenes.

Opening with a classic tune-to-do-plastic-surgery-by (“Boogie Oogie Oogie”), the episode features our heart (and other parts) throbs doing their 5,000th surgery. Sean presents Christian with a gold-dipped instrument (a thermometer? A scalpel?) and the two hit the bar for celebratory drinks, which would be better, as far as Christian is concerned, as a celebration with a “nice slice of hair pie.” Sean suggests Christian just needs to get close to someone again, as two babes, a smoky older woman and a sultry younger one approach and offer to buy the men drinks. Sean goes home to his wife and the two, mother and daughter go home to Christian’s lair.

In spectacular parallel scenes, Sean primps for Julia and Christian preps for the women (accessing his drawer of condoms). The women do Christian as Julia does Sean; and as Julia is showing pregnancy pain, Christian is shown as a man sandwich, with his own pain – a staring up at the ceiling look of dread or angst, loneliness in the midst of bodies.

Mr. Landau (Larry Hagman) is in their office with his new twenty-something bride, asking for new size appropriate prosthetic testes. His shrunk by radiation treatments, he wants kiwi-sized now. Info is dropped about who he is, a medical investment broker, foreshadowing the possibilities for McNamara/Troy.

Across town, Julia is going for another sonogram. She learns the baby is a boy, but also is told the baby has developed ectrodactylia, also grossly known as lobster claw syndrome.

Christian goes another round with the mother/daughter team, wherein the mother teaches her how to perform fellatio and the daughter, Riley, throws a snit that he won’t kiss her (once she confides happily that she and Mom have been doing this sort of thing since first practicing with step-dad). Mom starts the whores are the ones who don’t kiss lecture, and Christian tells them to get out. The mother exchanges snipes with Christian, the supreme verbal sniper, who suggests that should she hold the keys to her daughter’s puss long enough, Riley will turn out as bitter as she when she’s 40. This incites the classic bedroom psychoanalysis, whereby the woman tells Christian he is so afraid of connecting that he is going to die alone.

After a visit to

Sean’s home, where he fondly watches the family dynamics, Christian shows up in the office of therapist Dr. Faith Wolper (Brooke Shields). She asks challenging questions; he responds with come-ons, suggesting he can, for example, show her how he does his thing. After a history recall, identifying the fact that he has done 1,000s of women, most recently in celebration, the question of the absence of intimacy in his life is answered by Wolper, who suggests his intimacy is with his partner and best friend, Sean.

Cherry Plumb, a husky-voiced phone sex operator (Kathleen Turner) wants a voice lift. Sean offers to make a referral, as they don’t like to cut into the larynx, but Cherry wants them – the best in the biz.

Christian has to do some unconscious overcompensating, so he blows off his partner in favor of redecorating his pad in “butch” motifs … as Sean cuts into Cherry’s throat to the tune, “I Believe in Miracles,” (the music, as usual, a cheeky commentary on one topic or theme in the show).
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Nip/Tuck Characters as Compelling as Ever

Nip/Tuck Characters as Compelling as Ever by Roxanne McDonald

Let’s keep tabs on our Nip/Tuck peeps and babes, shall we?

Julia is still keeping the baby, despite its ectrodactylia. Her daughter Annie has turned all the hands of all her dolls into lobster claws, but while she did so to come to terms with how it will be to have a sibling with a condition like this, Mom mistakes it for disrespect and chastises Annie, telling her it will be hard enough with strangers laughing and staring and demanding she throw away every single doll.

Matt McNamara is pumped and pumping more at a local gym, when he spies a beauty across the room. The babe turns out to be a renewed Kimber. Upon her query, Matt reports he has clamed down, has no feelings really, as he is on anti-depressants and sees a shrink. Kimber goes nuts in response, suggesting he re-think his life and attitudes and feelings by futzing with this machine that measures a kind of mental/emotional homeostasis. Turns out, the whacky new technique that has changed Kimber into a make-up-free, health-conscious, but somewhat tendentious new woman is Scientology.

This brings us to

Sean and Christian. Both have been getting called on the carpet for doing pro bono work – Sean for work on a severely needful client (with what looks like craniodiaphyseal dysplasia) and Christian for doing a classic boob reduction job.

Besides facing the “boss” b.s. together and in contention with each other, they also share the concerns of a son who has chosen to go the way of Kimber and L. Ron Hubbard. Matt has come to Sean asking that the money spent on drugs and shrinks be used for Scientology instead, and Sean has refused, so Matt, in a typical offspring move, goes to Mom, who agrees to give him the money.

And Liz has accidentally happened upon the new boss getting seduced by an older femme, played by Jacqueline Bisset, in the building’s parking garage. When she alludes to it later, the freaked out Mrs. L. fires Liz. (read more…)