Grid Effect

Slow, slow TV weeks ahead. With no Office, Survivor or South Park, the next TV event we’ll write about is probably Recount which airs next Monday. Unless we start dating someone with Showtime, we should be on hiatus from all television series until Generation Kill in July. So, here is the first of what’s sure to be many links posts over the next couple months.

Ian Ziering, one of the cast members from the original 90210, is now a MySpace “star”. Funny, because I thought the term “star” implied that you were recognizable to the mainstream, not that you developed a miniseries then put it on your MySpace page. Because if that is the case, my niece is a “star” as well. Poor guy. Although he was probably sick to death of her, he went from being married to this, to developing an internet show that virtually no one realizes exists.

Jerry Springer officially apologized for the Jerry Springer Show, presumably because he’s running for office in the near future. He’s so sorry and was so aware that the show was contributing to the decay of culture in this country, that he starred in a film satire about the whole thing.

Portia de Rossi (Lyndsay Bluth) is marrying Ellen Degeneres. One of these two is marrying up, but I’m not really sure who. We have no barometer for things like this with same-sex couples, probably because they often seem too content to worry about such matters.

Aside from them both being women, this matrimony will probably be a lot more traditional than anyone will give it credit for.

Probably the best indicator of how poor these network crime dramas are in terms of character development, is how interchangeable the actors are, and cliche and ridiculous their characters descriptions tend to be.

The fourth season of Weeds is at least partially set in South America, and here are photos from it! We still haven’t seen but the first two episodes from the third season and we have them queued up on Netflix for their June 3rd release. We might due a brief synopsis of the third season before the fourth airs, simply for lack of anything else to do.

In a tragic blow to the film industry, Jimmy Fallon is retiring from the big screen to focus on his late night career. There are so many things wrong with that sentence, including Jimmy Fallon having a late night talk show and Jimmy Fallon having a movie career to retire from. I don’t think the nation understands the impact of this decision. This means no more Taxi, and no more minor Hornby. You know you’ll miss him when he’s gone.

And finally, some actress is going to be playing some doctor that “challenges” Sean on the next season of Nip Tuck. One, I can’t believe this shit was renewed. Two, “challenges” for an actress in Nip Tuck land means she collects penises and sells them on the black market in a third world country or something. Say Adios to your member, Sean, it’s not like you ever used it all that often, and the few times you did you were brow beaten by every other character on the show. So, maybe it’s for the best. Maybe now we can get along to a storyline that doesn’t resemble every other storyline the series has had.

And on that note, have a great day.

Welcome to what I can recall as the coldest day of the year in my fair city. You know how in some places, snow is actually accompanied with a degree of festivity? Like Chicago? Or Denver? Yeah, well, Columbus isn’t like that. All the snow and frigidly cold weather does is keep car thief’s and campus hooligans indoors, but the rest of the city is exponentially more miserable than they were when we had clear streets. So, if we’re a bit more petulant today than usual, please take it with a grain of salt. Thanks.

With the weather being how it is, we stayed in last night and caught the last twenty minutes of our fallen Grid Effect regular, Nip Tuck. It appears the series has now delved into incest. And not “haha, George Michael wants to sleep with Maebe” incest. But rather Matt is sleeping with Christian’s long lost daughter, and though they first did it unknowingly (and Christian doesn’t seem wise to the fact this girl is supposedly his daughter), even with the knowledge that they’re related, they fully intend to do it again. It’s good to see the producers aren’t desperate or anything.

We thought this was novel and will be unintentionally hysterical: MTV is going to hold a Real World awards show. We didn’t read the article because it sounds so ridiculous, but we imagine awards will be donned out for, among other categories: “Sluttiest”, “Craziest”, “Most Volatile”, “Most Docile”, “Most times drunkenly collapsing in public”, “Most Camera Time”, “Most club appearances post-Real World stint” and “Most children out of wedlock”.
We wonder if they’ll actually be able to pull most of the old timers away from whatever it is they’re doing right now. I mean, they couldn’t even get Dominic and Aaron from season two for a reunion leading into the fourth (maybe fifth) season…This is leading into the 20th. Good lord, even Television Without Pity quit recapping their episodes about two years ago. But that’s what MTV likes about them high school girls, they get older while the girls stay the same age.

We’d venture to guess that the entire Vegas cast finds time to reunite. Again.

Denise Richards pitch for a reality series has officially been greenlit by who else? E!. If not E! then obviously VH1. This raises an interesting question though: Who do you consider to be the more vile human being, Mike Vick or Denise Richards? The former brutally tortured and murdered canines for his own sick amusement. The latter throws her preschool aged kids on national television to upstart her pathetic, middling, acting career. Hmmm, it’s probably still Vick (After all, Richards isn’t murdering her children, just subjecting them to a lifetime of ridicule and therapy), but we’ll be damned if it’s not only by a nose. We said it once and we’ll say it again, you have to be really fucked in the head to make Charlie Sheen look like the good guy in a custody battle.

We’ll send you people out on a high-note: a sort of “behind the scenes” look into the Colbert and Stewart-O’Brien mock feud. We haven’t gotten a chance to watch it with volume, but it looks damn funny. Were sure their was plenty of European ethnic and height jokes, but ever since The Office went into hiatus we can’t think of anything funnier we’ve seen on television (unless you include the dark humor on The Wire). Personally, we prefer what Colbert did in wake of the strike by just interviewing more people (virtually one interview for all three of his acts) since he excels at improvisation, whereas Stewart just seemed to increase his commercial length.

Anyhow, enjoy. We’ll be back tomorrow with a Survivor recap.

Just a few odds and ends to kick off the day here. The world of television is currently seeing the bottom fall out from under it in terms of quality (we don’t give a shit about Nielsen’s or quantity). Sure, we watched The Wire last night, and just like every Wire episode, it left us wanting more. Nip Tuck is officially off the schedule after Christian fucked an AIDS ridden girl off a balcony and she plummeted to her death, so that is no longer an option. Other than that…Well, HBO debuted a new series, which we chose to avoid.

For those who don’t know it is called In Treatment, and the basic premise is they make it as close to actual therapy without the viewer spilling any of his or her own guts. It’s a half hour long and airs Monday through Friday, taking place solely in the shrinks office. The therapist, played by Gabriel Byrne, treats the same patient once a week on the same day before visiting his own therapist to end the week. It’s an interesting approach, as therapy has become a popular TV tool ever since The Sopranos debuted. But with no back story, no frame of reference outside of the office, we’re not entirely sure what the drawing point is.

Television is ultimately about entertainment, and while it can be gritty, insightful, nuanced and metaphorical, there also has to be some enjoyable motive that keeps me watching or even convince me to watch in the first place. Random characters being portrayed on screen that I know nothing about sitting in a shrinks office does not qualify as such. Now, this series has gotten especially mixed reviews. Some like it, while others don’t. But while we can see the originality embedded in this series, were going to have to take a pass. If it had received universal praise, we would have sat down and at least taken in the first half hour (and we still might, should we be so restless). But with so many reviewers saying they were bored senseless combined with the unappealing premise, we opted to stay away.

This seems like yet another indicator to how far HBO has fallen. We’re not sure if Chris Albrecht is responsible for this or not, but the last few original programming efforts have been so futile, that it’s a wonder they didn’t hold a ceremony to officially hand the crown over to Showtime (who in their current success, isn’t anywhere as good as HBO in their heyday) with his departure.

Anyhow, what’s past is prologue, we’re sure to see HBO reclaim the throne eventually, they invest too much money in it to keep coming up empty. We will say that we are immensely looking forward to this John Adams miniseries with Paul Giamatti. Coincidentally, this miniseries is essentially as long as any series of television Ricky Gervais and Stephen Merchant have produced. How patriotic. On this side of the pond we buy in bulk, baby!

Now this is something that draws our attention.

Switching gears, CBS has extended Survivor too a 17th and 18th season. It seems like CBS keeps adding seasons on to a series that no one is all that interested in seeing canceled, which is fine but the announcement like it’s something unexpected is getting tiresome, since they add new seasons every four-six months. Why don’t they just come out and say that despite not pulling the same audience it did in its inaugural season, it still draws a loyal 15 million viewers every week, is still easy to cross promote with morning shows, and with the right cast can be as suspenseful and entertaining as anything else on network television; thus they’re keeping it around indefinitely?

And yes, they have a new season starting in the next week or so, and we will be recapping it in spite of that horrible, 15th season.

And we also kept forgetting to mention, that there is a new series on Starz that we caught the pilot a few weeks ago entitled Hollywood Residential. It’s improvisational and takes place on the set of a home improvement-esque series. We have only seen about twenty minutes of the first episode (we no longer have Starz) but it showed promise, the cast seemed to have an instant repore and invoked some great situational humor. If you’re a fan of Curb and wish to give it a try, the first episode has been posted online.

That’s it for today, probably a “what’s on tonight!” post or more links tomorrow.

Yeesh, still haven’t gotten around to watching Breaking Bad, but man is the suspense building. We’ll probably watch it on Sunday before the sophomore effort in lieu of any football to consume. We did, however, watch Nip Tuck. And after foregoing all recaps from here on out, we felt validated. That’s all we’ll say.

Also, something we discovered recently, the reason we liked the hideously deformed Rachel Ben Nattan character so much is because she is played by Maggie Siff, the same Maggie Siff who played our favorite female character on Mad Men: Rachel Menken. We never would have guessed that. As little as six months ago we’d never heard of this woman, now she’s playing two of our favorite characters on, two of the, roughly ten, series’ we watch.

It appears the Grammy’s are so innocuous now the WGA isn’t even going to bother to picket them. Either the union is getting apathetic, or this should tell us something about the dire state of the music industry. Or the awards handed out at the Grammy’s aren’t reliant on the WGA for creative council. Whatever, I’m too lazy to read the article.

An article making the case for FNL being a commercial failure because they never marketed their product with additional supplemental products such as toys, lunch boxes, etc. Not sure if I really agree with any of this, the series makes the other peripheral products viable revenue options, not the other way around. This is like saying baseball never would have reached its apex without baseball cards, seems counter-intuitive. And secondly, I have a Crucifictorious t-shirt, so to say they haven’t franchised FNL is essentially a blatant falsehood.

Clearly the problem is the above was never transformed into a Barbie Doll.

In least expected marriage of all time news, Larry Gillard Jr. who played D’Angelo Barksdale on The Wire before his untimely death in the middle of season two, is married to Michelle Paress, aka Alma Gutierrez. Since no one watches The Wire, for you Sopranos fans, this is like Tony Blundetto marrying Meadow.

In one of the more petty, pointless, and ultimately ineffectual moves of all time, the FOX affiliate in Green Bay that airs Seinfeld reruns canceled their syndication for the day Eli Manning would be in town for the playoff game against The Packers. So Jerry Seinfeld sent the wide-eyed quarterback a free box set. It’s a move that almost made me glad the Giants won despite hating the fucking Giants. And the subsequent interference from Seinfeld almost redeems him from the whole cookbook fiasco, despite considering the decision to berate a woman rightfully looking for her fair share on national television to be completely irredeemable. All told, this was quite the enlightening series of events.

And finally, an interview with Linda Cardellini on her stint with the short lived but cult followed and critically praised Freaks and Geeks. We think she’s on ER now or something, but she’ll always be Lindsey Weir to this website. At least until she’s in a Judd Apatow movie, then she’ll be whoever that character is.

Kind of slow ’round these parts. Back with something more invigorating tomorrow.

Let’s consider this the last post we ever do on this series. We’ve made the suggestion before, but it does absolutely nothing for us and we end up loathing coming into work on Tuesdays because of it, so it’s probably about time to follow through. The only reason we’ve been recapping it this long is because of the strike, and really, that’s a piss poor reason. Like reading a terrible magazine because your daily newspaper folded. We assume Breaking Bad will occupy its space, should we ever get around to watching the premiere.

It’s not that last week’s episode was particularly bad. It featured Matt’s social worker, a character we actually find refreshing to this series, and Dawn Budge, who even though we’re down on this season we enjoyed her in the fourth. The downside is essentially everything else. The ridiculous Sean and Christian rivalry was highlighted, in which Sean gets shit on every time by him and his ex-wife, then is somehow convinced that he is in the wrong. Also, Rachel’s terrorist bomber showing up in hologram form was pretty heavy-handed, we can get the subtext and the themes of forgiveness and revenge without the optical illusion.

Wait a second. I know why this clown is dead. His insides are filled with….CANDY!

Still, for all its sensationalism and divergence from reality, Nip Tuck provided us with some memorable moments. Virtually all of them are soft-core sex scenes. But, a moment is a moment, that’s what we always say. More importantly it jump-started FX’s string of original series. If this had been a total flop, odds of us getting two of this websites favorites It’s Always Sunny and Rescue Me, and critically acclaimed series such as Damages and The Riches are slim to none. So we can appreciate and remember the series for that.

Still, with such a great premise and a relocation, we figured Nip Tuck would come back stronger than ever. Instead they just moved the entire cast across the country for remarkably frivolous and contrived reasons, then instead of jokes about models we got jokes about actresses, Mexicans replaced Cubans, and absolutely no changes were made in plot structure or character dynamics. Why? Because it was all the same characters with all the same pent up hostility towards each other, essentially what the series was founded on, literally from day one.

If anything, Nip Tuck should be a crash course in how to ruin a television series should you want to get out of a contract. Thing is, they still pull a decent audience, and the series shows no signs of letting up because I’m not sure how much of a future the majority of the actors have when this all ends. Many people still enjoy it, we do not, so we’re retiring it from this website. At least mandatory recaps anyways. Keep up posted if it ever picks up steam, or, you know, anything actually changes.

Damn, I was under the impression that we missed an episode of Nip Tuck last week while in New Orleans and we were therefore exempt from recapping the last episode we saw and the one we never did. But after some extensive research (going to IMDB and seeing the episode schedule, about as extensive as we ever get) it appears that we did no such thing, and thus are obligated to cover the most recent episode, which we haven’t seen in over a month.

Things we remember about the last Nip Tuck we saw: Matt, forming a bond with his horribly deformed grief counselor, Christian and Julia all but telling Sean that they are sleeping together again before he discovers as such, and the title character getting shot in the face by his estranged son while playing Santa Clause. Oh, also, Kimber’s shacking up with the porn king (we can’t recall his name, so that is how he’ll be referred to from now on) and refusing to let Matt see his kid.

It was all kind of predictable and tired, as is Nip Tuck’s wont. Matt, for about the hundredth time in the series has had a revelation to lead him down a different path. This time it seems to be a more noble one than running off with a porn star and embracing Scientology, or exploring his proclivity for transexuals before beating one senseless. But still, the kid is troubled and wants his son back, who I’m almost positive will turn out to be Christian’s or someone else’s down the road, just because everything on this show has to be emotionally devastating for someone. Should I still be complaining about this series when I know exactly what its going to offer, and that’s what most people want out of the show? Probably not, but when I start watching a television series I hope to see it evolve and change over time. This has not been the case here.

Tell me what you don’t like about our characterization and plot structure?

With Christian sleeping with Julia, it is official: they should have kept the series in Miami to save the production costs that may have came with the move. There isn’t anything different about in this setting compared to its original, sans a few comments about “making it” in LA in the first few episodes. Maybe one of the characters from “Hearts and Scalpels” will hold them hostage for some unbeknownst reason, it may be completely contrived but at least it would happen as a result of the switch to SoCal.

And when do any of these characters become redeemable. For what Julia is doing to her ex-husband and doing it without even a semblance of guilt, it almost makes you glad that Eden is poisoning her. Slowly. Seriously, what the fuck? I’m pretty sure Julia is going to croak from obesity and/or heart disease long before this “poisoning”. Who the fuck eats fruit cake in this capacity? Does she walk around with it? Has Eden never heard of sodium cyanide? She’s certainly attractive enough to attain some, why the hold up? Oh yeah, for dramatic effect. What’s a good poisoning subplot without Joely Richardson really feigning some scenes of lightheadedness?

And the twist at the end with the kid shooter being Collins’ son wasn’t predictable by any means, but rather pointless and melodramatic. Especially when the mother pulls out the gun. How vengeful. Clearly this man deserves to die for falling behind on child support. Sean’s reaction to this news was almost transcendent, “what, your behind on paying your wife a monthly court ordered sum of money? Get out of my office. How dare you procreate without the financial means to do so; so ordered by the state!”

Anyhow, it goes without saying our last Nip Tuck experience was an unpleasant one. And with all this unpleasantness mounting from this series, our recaps for these series will be whim based instead of mandatory. Because while we like to see something through to its conclusion, the recaps are intended to highlight series that are enjoyable, interesting and groundbreaking. At the moment, we don’t consider Nip Tuck to be any of these things.

This episode, like so many others trudged out the same plot points and hammered them home again and again because of the series’ unwillingness to bring in and keep new characters.

In case you weren’t aware, Sean is up to his neck in mid-life crisis and is now actively trying to sleep with girls not yet legal to drink alcohol and, in some instances other age based activities. He ends up sustaining a small heart attack having sex (or some variation thereof) with Eden at one of the actors parties. No word yet as to whether or not he loses his practice.

Christian, meanwhile has morphed into the responsible one. Forcing Kimber to leave Matt for porno-industry demanded elective surgery. Thus rendering the young methhead a sobbing stump of uselessness. Christian, for better or worse, throws his coffee at Matt and tells him to get his shit together. This is the type of development we needed to see, if not for our sake then for the sake of the actors who have to be tired of working the same angles with all of the same characters. Instead of coddling Matt, Christian gets rid of his soul-sucking wife tries to veer him down the right path.

Of course, this is counter-intuitive because Matt’s emotionally unstable at the moment. And while trying to cook up his own stash, he lights himself on fire and runs out of his motel ala Richard Pryor only to jump in the pool from his second floor room. The episode ends with the camera on him floating in the water, presumably unconscious. Considering he’s in the previews for next week, it seems reasonable to assume that Matt makes it out alive.

Julia confronts Eden about her inappropriate behavior with her ex-husband that she always treated like shit. I guess if anyone is always going to use and manipulate Sean to their advantage, its going to be Julia. They have a heated little confrontation while Eden is in a two-piece (naturally) and things are left open-ended.

No word yet as to whether or not they’re making a cameo.

And finally, this weeks patient was presumably an old senile man who claimed to have been abducted by aliens. He’s wheeled in by a rail thin woman claiming to be his daughter, and their for exploratory surgery to have a tracking device removed from his back. He claims his daughter is heavy-set…And to no one’s surprise, when a woman comes in a couple days later after they release him in the custody of his “daughter”, a heavy set woman comes in claiming to be Dr. Lee’s actual daughter and wondering what anyone would want with her poor, penniless father. Out of options, they’re delving into X-Files territory now.

Really, we can’t conclude what’s more out of place the alien abduction plot on Nip Tuck or the murder plot on Friday Night Lights (to give you some impression of how ill-advised the FNL’s decision was). The episode opened up a decent story with Matt being without his kid and his beloved, drug-addicted whore wife by his side. We know from the “future” episode that he turns out to be a doctor, so we’re not all that concerned about him. It’s the journey that matters, or at least in this case, it has to.

Back with a recap review of the phenomenal Extras series finale today or tomorrow, depending on how the rest of the day goes.

Not a whole helluva lot to say about last weeks episode. We couldn’t stand the gimmick or the “New York” cameo or the infighting or anything about it really. Eden’s miraculously early return seemed entirely too premature and quite honestly, if there was anything we enjoyed about the episode it’s been forgotten about over the past week.

Sean biting the proverbial apple (see James, its a fairly common metaphor, no need to beat it to death) was inevitable. A series like this doesn’t devote a significant amount of time to something that doesn’t happen. It isn’t that good. In light of recent events, we can all see where this is heading. She’s going to attempt to blackmail him despite putting on her most innocent and victimized face last week, Sean is going to have a moment of reflection where he questions his judgment and morality, and either by the end of tomorrow’s episode or the end of the season, Sean will have exposed Eden for what she actually is, and all will be right in the Nip Tuck universe.

It’s all moot anyhow, because after the “future episode” last year we all know Sean is practicing medicine twenty years from now, so he won’t go to prison or lose his license or anything damaging. Maybe a few bad headlines, anything else for this series would be unrealistic. We do have to give the creators of this series credit though for the sculpting of Eden’s character. That is one nasty little piece of work. She’s like the female equivalent of Antoine Chigurh.

In case you don’t know who Antoine Chigurh is, he’s the guy strangling the cop above.

The only other four characters that this series devoted any time to, in typical fashion, were involved in something of a love triangle. A triangle with four people you ask? Christian was the puppet master this episode, leaking to Julia that Olivia and Liz were making out. As a side note, I have no idea if he actually witnessed this, or lied about it and it turned out to be true. We were playing with the roommates dog while watching this. So as you can imagine, our interest has all but deteriorated.

The patient this week was actually reasonable, but the series has spent the better part of five seasons with the unreasonable, so he seemed misplaced. But an aging employee feeling the need to sustain his youthful image is entirely understandable, if also depressing. We can’t imagine him agreeing to be apart of a reality series, but in an episode full of plot holes and missteps, we can agree to suspend disbelief for it.

As for the “unique” format of this episode, we give them points for trying but it’s not terribly innovative to mock reality trash television. Reality TV of the VH1 mode s pathetic and superficial and a train wreck unraveling before our eyes, but the problem with a train wreck is after awhile it loses its shock value, you become desensitized and ultimately you wind up drinking yourself in a stupor trying to forget it even took place.

And really, could anyone take Christian seriously with his outrage about how the debut episode turned out? Didn’t he orchestrate its exploitative nature? He seemed genuinely pissed about the product, and I couldn’t tell if he was putting Sean on or being honest. It seemed like the latter, which is absurd.

Speaking of which, can this series develop some new themes and character traits to hammer away at. We get it, Christian’s a narcissist, Sean’s a pussy, Julia’s indecisive and the world is shallow but individuals usually get nothing out of it. I’m assuming the show creators have a rolodex of, like, ten themes that they casually toss into whatever “shocking” subplot they offer up for any given episode.

In short, this series has a few kinks to work out, and its probably not going to happen before this season is cut short due to the writer’s strike. We’re tuning in tonight, but not out of adulation or interest, but out of apathy.

And so this is the deciding episode. Where we once and for all determine whether to keep this wretched series on the recap list or save our efforts for something more deserving. Considering we’re only recapping two other series in season right now (FNL and Survivor), the standards are low to keep this one in the rotation, but coming into this week they still had some recovery work to do. I mean, if you look at most of our Nip Tuck recaps, they’re pretty uninspired (generous), so this is wasting our time as much as it may be yours, because no one wants to listen to someone bitch all the time.

To be perfectly honest, however, this most recent episode may have saved series in the short term. That always seems to happen right before we send it it’s figurative walking papers. We enjoyed it on a trash TV level, which is essentially all it has ever been enjoyable on.

Part of the satisfaction came at the end, when Christian set up Eden to be sent to rehab by her utterly clueless (though she probably believes she is “progressive” in some way) mother Olivia. It’s amazing how easily manipulated Olivia and Julia are, there essentially like mice searching for a piece of cheese in a maze, and if you picked it up and put it in front of their faces, they like to believe they “found” it.

We enjoy how Christian is portrayed as Michael to Sean’s Fredo in these situations, and the comeuppance was fantastic and pivotal. Eden was beginning to overrun the series, with her blackmail and such. It was fine when she was doing it somewhat effortlessly. But when it surfaced that she is planting cameras in her mother’s room, it seemed a little too far-fetched. I mean, she’s not a rogue spy, she’s a spoiled high schooler with too much time on her hands. So having her out of the picture, if only momentarily, is welcomed.

This is why the move from Miami to LA seems fruitless…It’s the same exact fucking cast!

The other two subplots took an interesting twist. In fact we’re not sure why they felt the need to end one so abruptly, as they appear to have done with Sean and Kate. There were plenty of quality scenes between these two, we we’re particularly enamored with the “Big Wheel!” incident, as Sean essentially told everyone in the room their “safe word”; but we also enjoyed the subsequent fight over the incident, and the add-in, “Is that why you didn’t talk the whole ride home?” as an explanation to why they didn’t fight until she was cooking. You rarely get those minute details. As far as future , it certainly seemed like a farewell episode for Kate, but assuming Sean stays on “Hearts and Scalpels”, don’t they still have to work together? I don’t know, given the nature of this series, we’ll find out she’s actually a cannibal or something.

But, between the abnormal swingers party and Matt and Kimber’s financial and health troubles, we weren’t sure if we were watching Eyes Wide Shut or Requiem for A Dream. The Matt storyline feels too distant from the rest of the series, we know Sean and Christian have their hands full, like always, but would it really be in character for them to completely leave his (their) dirt poor, desperate son to his own, limited resources? I understand there is still a little animosity after they lost all their money to the “church” of Scientology, but Sean has always been anything but vindictive. In fact, him rehashing Kate taking a shit in the hot tub was probably the most vengeful thing he’s ever done. Surely they would pop in here and there to check up on things, and be able to determine that their son is a meth-addict.

Still, we enjoyed the stab at the pornography world. This series has an uncanny way of refreshing your memory to incidents passed. Like, for instance, the porno Matt and Kimber made, and it being used as a sort of audition tape for Matt to test the waters in gay porn. At least Kimber proved to still have a semblance of a soul when she saved him from that miserable existence. But then she decided to whore herself in front of him for their fix. So, that’s an interesting development. Matt’s narcotic induced dream about a blissful family life isn’t really that hard to attain, but you marry an emotionally imbalanced porn star who slept with both your surrogate and biological fathers, well, you pay the price, pal.

(As a side bar, all we could relate this to in the way they handled it was Dennis and Dee discovering they missed their doctor’s appointments, then contemplating rescheduling, wondering if they will see them on such short notice, then the quick cut to them buying another $100 crack rock).

Not much else going on in this episode: no Anne, no Oliver Platt or Dawn Budge and no stool stealer (we haven’t watched the episode since last week, we might just be subconsciously blocking that subplot altogether). But a worthwhile episode that kept us engaged, despite its absurdity. We’ll watch tonight, and recap it next week. But at the same time we recognize this is due more to a lack of options and apathy than great storytelling and character development.

Maybe back with more after lunch, but probably will hold off until links tomorrow morning.

Well, no one ever said Nip Tuck was about subtlety, and this episode just wanted to make their intentions clear. Hence, the topical in your face title, the overtly sexual Eden and the nun wanting the breast reduction all being packed into one episode.

Remember this is episode two in the three part litmus test for this series, and right now we’re leaning towards axing it. As of now, if we do end up keeping recaps around, the reason will be two-fold: the strike is keeping everything else off the air, and/or the episode next week is somewhat mind-blowing.

The pacing is probably my biggest issue with the series. In a two episode span, Christian has gone from the onset stages of a mid-life crisis, to falling in love with his best friend’s ex-wife, to whoring, to embracing religion. Shit doesn’t need to be happening all the time. At this rate, Christian will have fought in a war, cured cancer and learned to fly before the season is out.

And the turning point from his whoring to his epiphany was remarkably predictable. You mean to tell me that the lecture from the nun was going to coincide with the woman who likes to be fucked back to life subplot? Well I’ll be. Both actions seem fairly harmless and completely unrelated.

This guy is looking commonplace in the mainstream compared to this season’s nonsense.

Sean’s moral crises seem real and much more palpable. The young temptress Eden would be somewhat impossible to deal with, and his solution to marry the hysterical actress (Nip Tuck is really hammering home the point that there are no sane women in SoCal this season) as means to avoid temptation seems like something he would irrationally do. But the plot holes and leaps of logic are just absurd.

For instance, if Eden is regularly sending him provocative text messages, that would serve as more proof than is necessary to condemn her to at least Julia, and they could save their daughter from Eden’s evil clutches. And honestly, how can I still respect Julia or take Olivia seriously if they aren’t taking into consideration the incredibly coincidental timing of Anne’s transformation and self-loathing. The constant speeches from Olivia about the virtue and sincerity of her daughter are impossible to listen to. Just look at Eden’s shrill demeanor in everything she does, that would obviously precede any maternal sensibilities Olivia may have. It would be tolerable if the series presented Olivia’s arguments as blind and unbearable instead of justified or reasonable. But that is what they are doing right now, and it’s almost beyond redemption.

As for Rosie O’Donnell’s return, well, it’s preferable to the role she was rumored to take as the cliched title IX faring high school soccer coach, but it wasn’t what she was last season (I think her episodes are the reason we’re still watching this series). Her hang-gliding accident was shot with all the realism of the Mad Men dog attack on the neighbor’s pigeon. And she just wasn’t as acid-tongued as she was in season four. Not sure if it was intentional, or if I’ve evolved or devolved in the past nine months, but either way, the character just wasn’t as enjoyable. Oliver Platt seemed to replace her as the quirky deliverer of punch lines.

All in all, not their best work. I’m not touching the fake rogue doctor subplot, because it is too absurd for comment. But I will say that it was introduced well. More as a peripheral issue than a predominating one (which it surely will become). For better or worse, it’s about a 1/5 shot that we actually keep this series around.

Tonight: Someone is engaging in more masochistic sex, leading to more re-constructive surgery hijinks. Kimber is back and is still a crack head, no word as to whether or not she’s still a scientologist, I’m guessing no. We preferred it when she was a porn star, as opposed to a manipulative, crack-addled mother.

We are extraordinarily busy this week trying to preempt everything for a trip to North Carolina for Thanksgiving, so we didn’t have time to rewatch this episode, nor did we have time this morning to get the post out before noon. So, we apologize, again, for our disregard.

This episode was highly forgettable. Remember when I said all we need to just have a transplanted carbon copy season of this series was to have Matt make a reappearance? Well, he did. And he’s smoking crack. But not only is he smoking crack, he’s guilt-tripping and manipulating Sean and Christian into giving him money to feed his habit that they don’t know about. It’s good to see Scientology has steered him and Kimber (whom Sean and Christian think left him and gave all his money to the church, but in actuality she’s strung out on her kitchen floor) on the road to salvation.

Really, what was the point of moving the series to LA? They could have found a generic head case model girlfriend for Sean, and Julia still could have gone to New York to discover she is a lesbian, only to come back and sleep with Christian to “get it out of her system”. See what I mean? It’s the same exact plot lines, just taking place in a different time zone. All of these characters are tired sans Christian and Matt who seem to have a bit of complexity to them, as opposed to the rest of Sean’s family, who does nothing but bitch, moan and deceive.

Crack will make you do some craaaazzzy things.

In all fairness, they did offer us one new subplot involving Olivia’s (Julia’s girlfriend) daughter: Eden. Oooh, subtle biblical reference. She is clearly a demonic little witch attending catholic school (I don’t have a problem with it or anything, but is it exactly commonplace for openly lesbian couples to send their kids to catholic school?) and now has Annie under her wing. Eden is already seen making discouraging remarks to Annie, has attempted to seduce Sean (which he can’t seem to shake), and yet Julia and Olivia both defend her. It’s writing like this that makes this series indefensible. On what planet does Sean not tell Olivia and Julia about Eden’s misdeeds? And in what stratosphere is someone like Olivia defending her daughter after she went behind her back for elective surgery (I’m not even going to get into details)?

Christian is having a rough go about things. After being used by Julia (again), he decides to turn into a male escort after a case of mistaken identity. I guess it’s this series’ way of saying that Christian has low self-esteem, but he’s had low self-esteem for over four seasons now, and its been rehashed, retold and redistributed a hundred times over. I can’t really remember who this episode is named after, but my best guess is that Everett Poe is Christian’s gigolo alias.

This seems like a decent place to stop. And to be honest, this isn’t exactly scoring high marks in the series’ chance at longevity on this site. It has amazingly become even more repetitive with the move to LA. One down, two to go.

Tonight: Rosie O’Donnell makes her triumphant return as Dawn Budge.

We’ll try to get some links up tomorrow before we head South, but we’re making no promises.

Our apologies for the late post, we’re a little under the weather and haven’t yet gotten out of bed. Here’s a few quick links to occupy a portion of your day.

Here’s a random list of the top fifty television icons of all time. Needless to say we adamantly disagree with it, it has George Clooney and Jennifer Aniston in front of James Gandolfini and Jon Stewart. Number one was appropriate though in Johnny Carson. We’re not really sure what the criteria is here, they explain it, but its all kind of vague. It seems that someone like Jennifer Aniston improves her rank by virtue of her off camera issues. Whatever. We’ve already spent entirely too much time thinking about this.

Portia De Rossi claims she is not playing herself on Nip Tuck, which I suppose people might assume because not only is she a lesbian in real life, she’s playing one on TV! And really, I hope she isn’t playing herself, after her role on Arrested Development, there’s no way she is that stupid.

The Wire is releasing a soundtrack that we’re sure at least a hundred people will buy. Will we be one of them? Not sure. We have a habit of buying everything related to the series, but we already have The Pogues greatest hits, and we’re not certain we need five different versions of the series’ opening theme…who are we kidding? Of course we’re going to purchase it, regardless of how needless it is.

Is Survivor: China’s Courtney anorexic? In short: if she isn’t then she is the skinniest girl we’ve ever seen without an eating disorder. Either way, it’s curious that she would even volunteer to be on the show, or that the producers would invite her.

And finally, this actually aired last night, but as HBO is prone to do, it will be replayed a couple thousand times over the course of the next month: their documentary on the Ohio State-Michigan rivalry is absolutely fantastic. It revolves around the ten year Woody Hayes-Bo Schembechler war. Essentially, if you are unfamiliar with it or have never been to one of the games, this is as close as it gets to evoking that atmosphere. Despite how unpopular it is, we’re avid Ohio State supporters around here, and really we’re hard-pressed to admit that nothing has encompassed the pageantry, tradition and insanity of this rivalry quite like that documentary did last night.

That’s it for today, back tomorrow with Survivor and South Park recaps.

We’ve been trying to assess for awhile now which is less original: all our posts being headed with nothing more than the episode and series names, or Nip Tuck assigning characters names as there episode titles. It’s probably the former, but its a lot closer than you’d think.

This episode, much like 80% of all Nip Tuck episodes, revolved around the semi-fractious relationship between Christian and Sean. Needless to say it has run its course, so we didn’t really feel like watching the episode again as a refresher, so the details are a little less than stellar. Yes, we’re mailing it in, because the fact we still write about this show kind of makes our head spin, and if we feel compelled to write about something so remarkably unimpressive then we’re certainly not going to put forth any effort to it.

Where shattered dreams and tortured souls go to die.

But yes, Christian’s self-loathing is once again being projected onto Sean, partly because Sean is getting the most recognition out of this LA venture, but also because Christian is pushing forty (or is forty, can’t recall) and LA is a harsh, unforgiving mistress as represented by their publicist, who informs him that while in Miami he was unique and started at the proper age, given the scale of his new city and the time at which he is starting in it, he’ll never relive his Miami days. Christian, naturally, takes to this by posing in a soft porn magazine and offering to accompany Sean’s new relationship interest to the People’s Choice Awards.

All of this is paralleled in a really heavy-handed manner, when two Marilyn Monroe impersonators spark up a rivalry over customer privileges in front of Grauman’s theater. They’re both getting implants, and one of them levels with Christian about being relating to being rightfully entitled to something, while a rival callously interferes with your goals by trying to earn a living. Eventually, both Christian and Sean and the two Marilyn’s reconcile by episode’s end. The former over a near death experience for one of them on the operating table and the latter by finding out Sean’s ex-wife is now a lesbian. And we’re none the better for having watched this rehashed storyline yet again.

Not that we ever knew Julia was a lesbian, but when Portia De Rossi appeared in the opening credits and she was nowhere to be seen in the first fifty minutes, when Julia announced she was going to visit from New York, we weren’t terribly surprised when Portia emerged as Julia’s girlfriend. Honestly, we were hoping Patricia Carlson wouldn’t show up this season, which was unavoidable, but the character just grates and adds to the redundancy. I thought part of the reason they moved the series to LA was for a fresh start. As of now they have done nothing more but change the setting, and maybe cut back a bit in production costs. But we’re only two episodes in, an the same conflicts are being rehashed. This isn’t the first time we’ve suggested this, but I think it might be time to pull the plug on this series.

At least for the time being the two have reconciled. Somehow discovering that the woman the two of them have pined over for the past twenty years is now homosexual makes everything between them OK, and Sean was free to date the actresses he courts without interference from Christian: his best friend and colleague. As of now I’m just waiting on Matt to show up and delve into some good old vitriol and then it will officially be season four all over again.

While writing this recap, we’ve decided that three more episodes is a good litmus test, and the series still hasn’t demonstrated any character growth or improvement or even just a semblance of change, then we’ll simply save the series some grief and just bow out before they get a chance to be canceled. Given the previews for tonight’s episode, in which Christian is fondling Julia, we’re fairly pessimistic.

Well, we’re back, if not against our innate instincts. Mainly we’ve returned because of the new location, which strikes us as random, unexplainable, lazy, but necessary. Speaking of strikes, maybe the writers work stoppage will put this series in hiatus sooner than later, or maybe all they’re episodes have been written already. We don’t know, but we’re ready for the highs and the lows of a standard Nip Tuck season. All the absurd themes and settings be damned, we are fully committed and refuse to be deterred. So, with that, the fifth season got underway last Tuesday, and it seemed like it was three hours long.

Also, we did a half-ass scene for scene recap, because there is so much nonsense that happens in everyone of these episodes it’s just easier that way.

State of the art facilities and a poorly written opening, lots of back story and crappy subtext like, “you can’t dominate me, never could, never will”. Christian is about as natural of a basketball player as I imagine Rob Schneider is, seriously they might as well have super-imposed a smurf image on the screen.

Liz is there, no explanation as to why, I suppose because it’s convenient.

Financial woes, Sean is –ooh, Tia Carerre cameo according to the credits, she’s making the rounds this TV season, her and people of her ilk are the unintended victim of this writers strike– being fucked with financial obligations to his estranged family that hates him for no reason.

We get one of these annoying, generic montages that make me hate television as Sean and Christian get ready to go out and recruit new clients, they get the brush off since all the women in the town seem attached. “Semen in a whore house” is Christians manner of putting it. They immediately go up to the only homely looking woman in this bar, and immediately introduce themselves as surgeons. We even get a no so veiled Lindsay-Dina Lohan reference. Anyhow, said homely woman is an agent and schools them on the way of the city of angels.

Ooh, how meta. There going to be technical advisers on a show about plastic surgeons to boost they’re reputation and checking account. They apparently think they’re better than the show they’re portraying. And they are, but not in a landslide. Christian has his half black son there, either forgot about that or they’ve sprung it on us unexpectedly. The name of the series they will be working on? “Hearts and Scalpels”.

Gawker media blog reference, Defamer being the obvious guess, and you’d have guessed right. The reference comes from a masochistic actor whose mistress inflicts visible wounds on him. They do it on the spot, bitterly, because apparently they thought there would be no sexual deviants in LA. The showrunner is a bit of a stereotype played by Oliver Platt, and why the hell he even bothers with this, I’m not sure. Apparently the Casanova budget wasn’t quite what it seemed. Anyhow, he’s heavily abused by the male lead on the series, Aidan Starr. And I’m sure its something Christian is going to take advantage of, and Sean will begrudgingly follow along with.

In fact, they hark back to the story where they graphed skin from a woman’s vagina and put it on her lips (which were burned in a fire) but do it behind her husband’s back, since he had some sort of objection to performing oral sex. Platt, upon hearing this story, is finagled into offering them “producer credits and the occasional line”, to which he agrees.

Hey, Carly Summers, the character awarded with the episode title, is a forty year old actress reluctant to get plastic surgery, and the actress playing her is either pushing thirty or had extensive work done. Either way, she’s gorgeous and Christian actually advises against having any work done, they share a look and the agent is perturbed.

Oh, wait, hold on a second, he actually intends to take her out and convince her to get an unlimited amount of plastic surgery. Sean resents how he always gets to partake and the enjoyable parts of the operation under the guise of him, “being the salesman and Sean the talent”. Um, I’m not sure I want a salesman taking a knife to my insides.

Sean gets a call from Liz, apparently the masochist businessman had his mistress (played by Tia Carerre) in for an emergency session. She takes her job incredibly seriously, to say the least.

Christian is post-coitus with Carly and she is self-conscious around him, though somewhat reluctant to admit it. He tears her apart through a photo on the wall, pinpointing the year it was taken by saying, 18 years, they didn’t airbrush back them like they do now”. He draws all over her picture and it’s incredibly uncomfortable to watch. Harsh, man. You can see the pain in her eyes.

On set, Freddy is a wreck and Aidan (along with his costar) is obnoxious without being funny. Christian confronts the actor and Sean backs him with some techniques he learned from Tia Carerre to get Aidan’s attention. This is clearly going to be one of those themes that Nip Tuck hammers home for an entire season.

Now in the consulting session, Carly is agreeing to extensive surgery and they’re all signing confidentiality agreements and it cuts straight to them working on her face lift intertwined with Christian getting microplugs after Aidan pointed out his hair loss around his temples. It might as well be one of a dozen replayed scenes over the course of the past four seasons.

Sean is reading a letter from Matt, whose still with Kimber and seems at peace, at least from the tone in which he narrates the letter. Christian got an infection from the operation, which leads to Sean lamenting the distance from his family, and says, “Maybe we should have went somewhere that values substance over style”, and I suppose it’s partly true. They have a frank discussion about their intentions in LA. Christian is much more into the concept than Sean, as would be expected.

Problems arise on set about FCC issues and how the actress can refer to her operation. This character is grating. Seriously, quit fucking writing her like this. Apparently she stays in character at all times because she acts the same way.

Masochist businessman turned down the promotion and recommends they move back to Miami “while they still have their souls intact”, because, you know, Miami is so grounded and all.

I’m just fast forwarding through all the show scenes now, apparently Christian is actually into following it now. Oh, wait, they have cameos but Christian was edited out, and Sean’s line made it past the cutting room floor. Now Christian wants to drop the series, but while at a coffee stand, everyone recognizes him, which immediately brings on requests for business cards and such. He is now looking on at Sean’s surgeries. Aidan thanks Sean in the most narcissistic manner possible for chastising him, calls Christian, Christopher.

This plot is moving so incredibly, fast, and they are already at odds about whether to do the series or not. This is all so bizarre.

Christian sees Carly after her surgery, and she seeks some sort of assurance that she needed the surgery, he does not offer any such assurance.

Tia Carrere offers her services to Sean after seeing him on television. He initially refuses them, but its obvious he’s intrigued, since he has all this undeserved power an whatnot.

Sean phones it into a tabloid that Carly Summers just went under extensive plastic surgery and is sure to name drop, because he’s envious of Sean’s newfound fame. According to the previews his ruse is ineffective.

….Aaand scene. This is really poorly written and unedited, sorry for any and all oversights/grammatical errors/repetitiveness; but I’m about on my way to see American Gangster, and couldn’t really care less about Nip Tuck at the moment.

Back tomorrow with some links.

In lieu of anything decent on television last night, we watched a classic Nicholson-Antonioni film called The Passenger. While it didn’t have even a semblance of a plot, its the first film I’ve ever seen where the text is the subtext, and as a result it was at least a unique cinematic experience. The hollowness and insignificance of Nicholson’s character was something that didn’t dawn on me until the final seven minutes, since I was preoccupied with searching for a plot (because a movie with the same pacing and tone that actually had a opening, body and conclusion would have been just as extraordinary) the fact that it was a character study almost eluded me.

And just as I strolled into work late yet again this morning, it dawned on me that the Nip Tuck season premiere aired last night and we completely forgot. For a series primarily plot driven, hollowness and insignificance were the first thing that came to mind, and that’s never a good thing. We were uncertain if we would continue watching/recapping the Risqué dramatic series, but when realized we forgot about it, the only reason I was even mildly disappointed is for the eleven or so people that might actually have been looking forward to a recap, and for that reason alone, why would we watch it? This site’s goal is to focus on good, if not great television, not television we begrudgingly watch with no enjoyment. So, for that reason alone, we decided to let bygones be bygones.

Until we realized that we do not write recaps for dramas until the day of the subsequent episode, and we do not recap anything else on Tuesdays, we do a weekly links post, and that we could move that post to Wednesdays with little to no consequence (it also seems like something better suited for the middle of the week anyways). So, essentially, for the same reason we watched The Passenger, is also the same reason we’re going to recap Nip Tuck. Clearly the themes of the film didn’t take.

See, who said this series is only about shock value?

For what it’s worth, the series did end relatively strong last year (sans that overly generic shot of the two leads standing up against the Hollywood sign which made us take a 45 minute shower, because it was so dirty), or, at least stronger than Studio 60, which we stopped recapping before the season finale, not knowing but fairly certain it would be canceled anyway (which it was). Yet we can’t really recall how, all we can remember about the fourth season was that gawdy “future” episode. Which, for an animated series, like, say, The Simpsons, works; primarily because the characters do not age, but also because its a comedy, plot and character development are moot.

But for a series that force feeds its audience the “complexity” of its characters as a magnum opus for both the writers and actors, we don’t need to see an end game before the series finale. If we already know that all of them turn out relatively successful and untroubled, minus a small amount of mutual hostility, then what’s the point of continuing to watch? Here’s hoping it actually represents a turning point in the series. An unfortunate season and ill-advised episode have a reactionary effect, in which those involved with the series take a step back, and try not to take it so seriously. Because, you know, it’s about plastic surgery.

Back with Survivor and South Park recaps tomorrow.