Grid Effect

So that Nip Tuck episode last night. Ummm, yeah. What can really be said for it? The episode, “Connor McNamara, 2026″, if you couldn’t tell from the title, is set twenty years in the future and jumps back and forth from the future to the present as a twenty year old Connor airs his grievances to an unseen shrink. It’s sole purpose was to explain Julia’s departure, becuase the actress who plays her, Joely Richardson, will be taking a brief hiatus to attend to her daughter’s surgery.

In the first ten minutes of the episode, while in the present, Julia changes her mind at least six times on decisions that will alter the lives of Connor, Marlo and Sean. Its the most indecisive shit I have ever seen. First she is going to go through with Connor’s surgery, then Marlo changes her mind. Then she decides to stay with Sean, then opts to be seperated. Next thing you know she is eloping with Marlo to Venice but then she decides she needs to be by herself and takes Connor and Anne to New York. Where presumably she has family.

Needless to say, it’s annoying. For one they never demonstrate what is so endearing about her. Ever. In the history of the series, I cannnot determine why Marlo, Christian, Sean and everyone else would be so enamored with this woman. Secondly, she never faces any reprecussions for all of her absent-mindedness. After having Matt with Christian, and leading Sean to believe he was his son for roughly eighteen years, she comes away unscaved from that? How? Shouldn’t there be some penalty for this level of deception? And why would Sean tolerate being railroaded like this? True, he has cheated on her several times, but its almost an afterthought. For all of her waffling, it does seem best fro everyone involved for them to be seperated.

And the scenes in the future, I am not sure if the aging affects were supposed to be comically bad, but if not they could definitely use some work. Apparently in the future, among other things, everyone has slightly gray to white/dark gray hair and wears glasses. Polygamy is legal, but homosexual marriage is not, and major cosmetic surgery is a “blink-of-the-eye” process, as evidenced by Connor’s surgery he is gettting to impress girls at his new school. This is the producers premonition of life innthe year 2026.

Connor, by the way, is reasonably grounded. They make note of him being close with Marlo while he was growing up, so that probably explains it. Anne, however, is a basket case. After she is caught stealing pain killers from the hospital, her and her parents have this huge breakthrough about why she needed them. Its really, really pathetic. Essentially she guilt trips them for being terrible parents all her life and they are forced to reassure her that they always loved her, even if she felt like they never demonstrated it.

Other future notes:

-Marlo and Sean have families that we never see.

-Christian is still making the rounds with women. He is over fifty and currently seeing two women from Dubai that can’t speak English.

-Matt is a surgeon, and he performs the elective surgery on Connor, with Sean and Christian assisting him. No word on whether or not he is still into Scientology or if he is married to Kimber. Probably not, he is too normal when he is thirty-eight.

Present day notes:

-Sean is refusing to leave his home during a hurricane despite a mandatory evacuation. Him and Matt sort of set their differences aside.

-Marlo and Julia agree to end things, which leads to a tearful good-bye from Marlo to Connor. Peter Dinklage is a really great actor.

I am tempted to label this as a comedy, but out of respect for Joely Richardson I won’t be so undermining. Next weeks episode looks much more promising, Sean has a great line directed at Michelle in the previews, “It’s amazing what happens when the whore becomes the pimp.” Zing. And frankly, I wish Joely Richardson’s hiatus was for less tragic reasons, that way I wouldn’t feel so guilty that I am elated her character will be absent for a while. Because frankly, while Richardson is seemingly a decent person, I am spent on Julia McNamara.