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.”

Sean is alone in front of his TV dinner mouthing “Got myself a bottle of red wine/Got a night of nothing else to do/I think I might know/What I really want/But is a brighter discontent/The best that I could hope to find?”

and in front of his TV mouthing “Got a big black television set/Now I can watch just what I want/But I’m here staring up/At pictures on the wall/And where are you, You’re still stuck inside them all.”
Liz is assisting a cosmetic surgery and mouthing “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.”

And Kimber and Matt are each in their individual depressions mouthing “But love is not these belongings/That surround you/Though there’s meaning/In the memories they hold/A breaking heart in an empty apartment/Was the loudest sound I never heard…”

You get the idea. And if you were lucky enough, you got the full sensation of watching and hearing more of the darkest, most angst-riddled material on TV.

“Nip/Tuck” is deliciously disturbing and depressing at once, and the finale brought the terrible tenor of a show we can’t stop watching to an even lower high.

Wow. Wow. Wow. What catharsis. What utter and thorough satisfaction. Thank you again, Mr. Ryan White.

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