Constructing a dramatic series around plastic surgery -- ripe as that backdrop is for sex, nudity and beautiful people awash in opulence -- is such a no-brainer for TV it's a wonder pay cable or Aaron Spelling didn't get there first.
Which is why "Nip/Tuck" -- a provocative but at times off-putting new show -- doesn't do itself a favor by pressing considerably further, tacking on the more obvious trappings of violence, torture and a marriage so troubled it could qualify for "Jerry Springer."
Premiering tonight on basic cable's FX -- which has garnered attention with the HBO-like (and more often HBO-lite) series "The Shield" and "Lucky" -- "Nip/Tuck" is both troubling and welcome. On the downside, some situations come across as over the top, and the sex scenes have a certain beer commercial slickness to them.
Yet the show balances that by providing a complex, nuanced look at the corroded values and even psychology that can make people so hungry to change their appearance.
Through graphic scenes of the surgery itself, moreover, series creator Ryan Murphy clearly intends to depict liposuction or breast-enhancement procedures as anything but appetizing, a point likely to be lost on those too squeamish to hang around much past the opening credits.
So "Nip/Tuck" both wallows in (and seeks to cash in on) these shallow and twisted lives, while portraying them with warts and then some. That's a departure from ABC's reality-based "Extreme Makeover" or Howard Stern's radio and TV shows, which treat the idea of going under the scalpel as being on a par with ordering a burger and fries.
At the show's core are two surgeons, Sean (Dylan Walsh) and Christian (Julian McMahon), who share a practice in sun-worshipping Miami. Married with kids, Sean is hard-working but frustrated and distant from his wife, Julia (Joely Richardson), who resents him both for sacrifices she made and the emotional deep freeze that has set in. No wonder their teenage son (John Hensley) harbors disdain for them and desperately wants his own minor, if highly personal, surgical procedure.
Christian, meanwhile, is a classic lady's man who even parlays his sexual conquests into new business development -- at one point marking up a beautiful woman with a lipstick, as if she were a pot roast, to highlight her shortcomings.
Yet his loose ethical standards, which include operating on a drug dealer seeking to flee the country, put him at peril, and his unresolved feelings for Julia could jeopardize his partnership with Sean.
