Let's pretend we're standing at the water cooler: Did you watch "Nip/Tuck" last night? Dios mio!
There was Sean, laying in bed, gun in hand, waiting for his second round with the Carver, the Miami serial rapist who preys on the beautiful because "beauty is a curse on the world." But in the season finale's last moment, the masked Carver broke into Christian's bachelor pad instead. And that's how it ended! With Christian, the show's center of masculinity, the sexiest man to wear scrubs on television since George Clooney, paralyzed in his bed, a tear streaming down his face, as The Carver plunged a big knife into him.
Que que?
Endings and beginnings
"You live by the knife, you die by the knife," Ryan Murphy deadpanned in his office on the afternoon in August he distributed the finale script to the cast. "I just killed a lead. It had to happen. It's the truth of the story."
The show's creator-writer was in high spirits because of the ratings drawn by the previous night's episode, guest starring real-life conjoined twins Rose and Raven Rosenberg. The season-ending episode, he said, he wrote to feel like a series finale for him -- in case he did not return to the show for its third season.
"What [else] could I possibly come up with?" the 39-year-old former journalist said.
But after production ended a few weeks later, Murphy was less final about his finale. "I don't know if Christian's dead or not dead. I love Julian [McMahon]. I would never want to hurt him. I really have no idea what I'm going to do."
Murphy's contract with FX has not been renewed, but not because the powers-that-be do not want him. "We absolutely intend to have Ryan back and will negotiate fully to make that happen," said Peter Liguori, FX's president and chief executive.
It might be easy to presume that Murphy is just holding out for big bucks. His is, after all, the No. 1 original basic cable show among 18- to 49-year-olds, labeled by TV Guide the "coolest show on television" this season. But whether or how Murphy remains attached to "Nip/Tuck" is more about the shot he's been given to direct his first feature film in February, "Running With Scissors," which he adapted from the bestselling book by Augusten Burroughs. Brad Pitt will produce, and it tentatively stars Julianne Moore, Gwyneth Paltrow and Brian Cox.
And so the season ends with two cliffhangers: Will Christian survive the Carver's sharp blade? Will Murphy return to tell the story?
A path full of twists
And now back to the water cooler ...
As if Christian dying -- or at least being grievously injured -- weren't enough, it turns out that Ava Moore, the life coach coquette, used to be a man! Her 17-year-old son, Adrian, with whom she had an incestuous relationship, is dead! Joan Rivers, playing herself, refers to her legendary nip-tucked face as a "lie." Even Alec Baldwin makes an appearance as the he-she's ex-husband, a retired plastic surgeon who now cultivates orchids.
And that's only one episode -- how did we get here?
If you're not part of the "Nip/Tuck" cult, which averaged 3.7 million viewers on FX each Tuesday night, bear with us.
When the second season opened in June, Miami plastic surgeons and best friends Sean McNamara and Christian Troy (Dylan Walsh and McMahon) were at the top of their game, after sending a cocaine dealer who was blackmailing them to prison by altering his face to look like an FBI most-wanted suspect. As the doctors both turned 40, Sean and Christian fretted about the lines on their foreheads and sagging buttocks, but they celebrated with the loves of their lives. Sean with a surprise party at home; Christian with the baby boy he had thought was his.
Sixteen episodes later, there were more than a few wrinkles because, as Murphy says, this drama is never about happiness. Sean, who took to operating pro bono on the Carver's rape victims' slashed faces, was stabbed and threatened with worse by the masked rapist if the surgeon continued to destroy his handiwork. Julia McNamara, played by Joely Richardson, revealed she had slept with Christian in college, making him the biological father of Matt, her 17-year-old son. Sean kicked Julia out and tried to sever his partnership with Christian, but the conjoined-twins case and an ensuing three-way with Christian and a hooker helped him see the light.
Unable to be intimate with adults, Christian fell in love with Wilber, the baby of sex addict Gina Russo (Jessalyn Gilsig), one of Christian's conquests. Christian agreed to adopt Wilber and help raise him, but they both lost him to Wilber's biological father. Christian gave fatherhood a second chance by helping Liz, the sharp-tongued lesbian anesthesiologist, become pregnant. But she aborted the fetus when she learned the baby would have Down syndrome. Then Gina, whom Christian likens to the herpes virus, broke the news that she was HIV-positive.
