Grid Effect

Finally, a decent Nip Tuck episode. With guest stars requesting unseemly elective operations and some family tension. To be honest, I think Julia’s absence explains why I am partial to last nights episode.

Last night we saw a french woman ask for her husbands ashes to be implanted into her chest. Yikes. Christian and Michelle turn down her request, Sean does it anyway after he heeds some intentionally bad advice from Brooke Shields the nymphomaniac psychiatrist. Later in the episode we come to find out that she was actually the man’s mistress and had stolen them from his wife. Sean gives the wife some decoy ashes and the mistress the real ones, mainly because he is impressed with her literally undying loyalty to the man. And that, is beneficial for all of us; because the wife ends up flushing them. It’s really not hard to understand why he had a mistress as she vindictively flushes what she thought were her deceased husbands remains down a toilet.

Brook Shields as the nymphomaniac psychiatrist was exceptionally devious, she mislead Sean in embellishing her sessions with Christian, telling Sean that Christian came into her office initially to help with repressed homosexual tendencies towards him. Where in reality, he showed up, she put it into his head then he bent her over her desk. When the two of them confront her, she denies any wrong-doing, then when Christian apporaches her, he turns her around and partially pulls down her pants to reveal that the tattoo they removed a while back that read “Property of Marco” has been replaced to now read “Property of Christian Troy”. Which only fuels Christian’s ego, something we rarely see on this show.

While eating dinner, Michelle explains her empathy for Sean since Julia has left. Christian and I, on the other hand, are entirely too distracted by her revealing garb to be overly concerned with whatever it is she is saying. It takes Christian like ten seconds before confessing his love to Sanaa Lathan’s cleavage. He puts a ring in her champagne glass and proposes marriage. When did he get so codependent? She says, “you really don’t know what you’re getting yourself into”, and that they need to find their own place because all the women who have slept there makes Michelle uncomfortable, and its their first order of business. He complies, its lame.

On the business end of things, Sean is having a hard time coping with Michelle and Christian dating, and is only more embittered when he discovers that they are getting married. He has a great line in response to Michelle turning down the ashes-in-boobs procedure, “It’s interesting when the whore becomes the pimp.” This results in a defeaning fifteen second silence. Anyways, by episodes end, because he cannot mask basic decency and good intentions, Sean resolves his issues and embraces Michelle into their family.

Michelle, however, has a completely different host of problems. James The Woman, wants to use the McNamara/Troy facilities to bring her victims in and operate on them. James The Woman’s lone interest in life seems consist of tormenting Michelle. She shows up unexpectedly in her office, they threaten each other and hurl insults before Michelle slaps her across the face. In a series chock full of soap opera moments, this one takes the cake.

Anyhow, James The Woman consults with Christian and shows up with a gawdy looking bruise on her face. Between this and last weeks unfortunate make-up issues, I think its time to start busting some heads with the cosmetology staff they have on set. Anyhow, there is no word as to whether or not she caused to bruise herself or if she was legitimately attcked by the Asian mafia we met a few episodes back. Christian cautiously agrees to operate on her, and she uses her overnight admittance in the hospital to sneak in a model/surgeon to operate on one of their victims. Christian lets Michelle in on this and she is livid. Christian obivously didn’t think it would be so consequential, because he is still under the impression that James The Woman is merely a pimp, not a hired hand in the black market organ trade.

She rushes over to the hospital to see James overseeing some model/surgeon named Tatiana operating on one of their victims. There are several unanswered questions such as, how did diminutive Tatiana move the exceptionally large victim from wherever she drugged him to the surgeons table? And where do they leave him after the surgery? Sean meets her in the operating room the next day none the wiser, inquiring why she is cleaning the equipment.

Other Notes:

-Mario lopez shows up to look at Christians condo, while giving him a tour he hallucinates about all of his former relationships talking him out of marriage (Kimber, Rebecca Gayheart, the big girl who when he was really insecure, pity-screwed with the bag over her head). This persists for every scene Christian is in his apartment, at one point they talk him out of the marriage and he psuedo-throws Michelle out, before welcoming her back the next day. The entire change of heart is unexplained.

-No Marlo, Julia or Matt.

-The scene where Michelle walks into the office late at night to encounter James The Woman and Tatiana is as David Lynch-esque as last weeks episode. When she steps inside the building, the camera pulls away from her while the two perps are listening to “Que Sera, Sera”. When she turns the corner it is dimly lit outside of the table with them dicing this guy up.

-Christian cops to having the dream of the homosexual encounter with Sean. They agree that they love each other, just not in a profoundly erotic way.

All in all, not a terrible episode, which is usually a high point this far into the Nip Tuck experiment. Entirely too much happens, and the writers/producers could learn something from the creators of The Wire in terms of pacing themselves, but I can’t complain.