Nip/Tuck"Carly Summers"
Original Air Date: October 30, 2007
Tom R - TwoCents Staff Writer
Music:
The Best is Yet to Come
(Unknown Track)
Love Hurts
New Kid in Town
We start with (literally) lights up on McNamara / Troy Los Angeles, with multiple shots of the new, brighter facility. Although it’s been two months without a patient, the operating room is a makeshift basketball court, and the fish are about to be repossessed.
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Nip/Tuck
ReplyDelete"Carly Summers"
Original Air Date: October 30, 2007
Tom R - TwoCents Staff Writer
Music:
The Best is Yet to Come
(Unknown Track)
Love Hurts
New Kid in Town
We start with (literally) lights up on McNamara / Troy Los Angeles, with multiple shots of the new, brighter facility. Although it’s been two months without a patient, the operating room is a makeshift basketball court, and the fish are about to be repossessed.
Liz is on staff, and as usual, provides the voice of reason as she urges the boys to get off their asses and start bringing clients in the door. Montage of Sean and Christian preparing to hit the clubs, which is where the unknown track fits in (latin-flavored hip hop). Cruising the bars, the two have no luck, since most of the women have had multiple surgeries already. They do, however, meet Fiona McNeil (Lauren Hutton), a PR shark who gets them to retain her for a monthly fee that puts them further into the red.
Fiona sets them up as potential advisors to a medical show called Hearts ‘n Scalpels, run by the effeminate, frantic Freddy Prune (Oliver Platt, last seen channeling George Steinbrenner in The Bronx is Burning). As they suggest past cases for potential storylines, Freddy is hooked, which allows Christian to leverage credits and screen time. Sean argues with the star (Bradley Cooper) who is addicted to the show’s theatrics and can’t see any benefit to realism. But by the time the shoot wraps, it’s Sean’s one reassuring line that catches the public’s attention and puts the practice on the map.
Julia, Matt and Kimber are not present, although we hear Matt’s voice as Sean reads his letter about the new baby, Jenna. Turns out the name comes not from any of the six hundred Jennas in the adult industry, but (implied) Jenna Fischer of The Office.
(Matt only says “a sitcom star”, but how many others are there?)
Carly Summers (Daphne “Stop Calling Me Princess Vespa” Zuniga) is a fortyish actress that Fiona brings to the practice. When she balks at surgery, Christian opts for his usual tactic…Tell her she doesn’t need surgery, sleep with her, then convince her. He takes her lipstick (for the newbies, this is a trick he’s used since episode one), but instead of drawing the necessary work on her body, he uses a life-size poster from a past movie. The twist works incredibly well. It’s the Hollywood ideal, the stressing of the projected image over the human being.
In the meantime, Sean and Christian patch the wounds of Bob Easton (Craig Bierko), a Hollywood exec who regularly visits a dominatrix named Mistress DarkPain (Tia Carrere, light years from “Wayne’s World”). After covering the wounds from bites and fish hooks, Sean is called in when Easton arranges a session in the recovery ward. Easton sees the sessions as a way to release, to abandon control. His addiction to this lifestyle parallels his addiction to the Hollywood game. Both self-destructive, but almost irresistible.
The name Mistress DarkPain seems contrived at first, almost too obscure to be real, but the more I think about it, the more it works. It makes her almost a mythic figure, a shadow over the landscape, particularly when she gives her card to Sean, as he and Christian are both drawn into this new life with potential dangers and temptations. Hollywood. Beauty with a bite.
Quotable:
“Is that a doctor or a Chia pet?”
Freddy Prune, noticing Christian’s hair plugs reading on camera.
Nip/Tuck is created for mature audiences.
The show airs Tuesday nights at 10 PM on the F/X Network.
Repeats air immediately, Friday at 11 PM and Sunday at 10 PM.