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.

And, Pollard, who purportedly approached Murphy and asked to be on the show, appears to have a sense of the self-effacing, the ironic, as she goes along with spoofing herself. Hard to do, but New York pulls it off pretty well, explaining to the character, Christian, that to make their Troy McNamara reality bit fly, he must create conflict.

There’s a huge following of “I Love New York” viewers who are speculating on and suggesting who Pollard should pick to be her boyfriend. And there are hundreds (if not thousands) of Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) lovers out there, at the same time.

Hey, how bout hooking the two “characters” up? We could be left pondering over whether the two have made for really interesting, multi-layered, multi-textual TV drama (reality embedded in dramatized reality, ahem) or even more bizarre reality TV.

Whether either is possible—whether “Nip/Tuck could possibly get any BETTER…, whether reality TV in general or “I Love New York” in particular can get any stranger (any more real)…, well, that we will leave up to writers of all areas.

SirLInksAlot I Love New York links

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