Nip/Tuck, Best Show on Television: 3.29

LOST is pretty awesome. And JJ is still brilliant. But. . .

Series creator Ryan Murphy deserves even more praise than he's getting for Nip/Tuck, a show whose third season has just begun on cabler F/X. The series, which I'm sure you've heard of by now, features Julian McMahon and Dylan Walsh as Christian Troy and Sean McNamara, Miami plastic surgeons. I recommend buying the DVDs immediately-- you can probably find Season 1 of Nip/Tuck and Season 2 of Nip/Tuck in my GoogleAds. That's Nip/Tuck, available on DVD. Love it.
Nice promo, guys.
And thanks, Dark Horizons.
Real quick-- While I was writing this post, I was checking to see if Lost was on at 8 or 9, Pat Sajak announced that Vanna White is getting a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. Pat Sajak is such as ass, he asked if there was a date for it, and then he asked if it was a joke phone call or if she was sure it was happening. If Vanna does get a star, I will support her by temporarily offering my Ryan Seacrest prize, which has never been claimed, to pooping on Pat Sajak's star. I'm sure that smug bastard's already got his. Anyway, on to the main reason why I enjoy Murphy's show so much.

Right from the start, Murphy's show was highly 'adult'. It dealt with serious themes-- the lure of sex, the destructive power of beauty, alienation within your own skin--in a serious, [dare I say it?] 'enlightened' manner. So Nip/Tuck is a deadly serious show.

Yet, it has the shiny sheen of Miami plastic surgery and soap opera to give it that popular appeal. For God's sake, in last week's episode, Dr. Troy operated on a famous gorilla's scars [in the hopes she'd breed and pass on her amazing language skills] and Dr. McNamara . Meanwhile, their son [yeah, 'their'-- it's complicated] Matt, played by John Hensley, finds out that the older woman he dated [Famke Janssen as Ava] was a post-operative transsexual on whom his fathers performed the final surgery that completed Ava's transformation from boy to woman that had begun sixteen years earlier with Alec Baldwin. Oh yeah, and he found the dead body of Ava's gay son, who hit on Matt constantly and went to his high school. Plus, Vanessa Redgrave and Joely Richardson smoke pot together-- and Vanessa smokes like a pro! I mean seriously, in soap opera terms, the OC simply pales in comparison. Marissa throws a chair in a pool because she, um, made out with a hot chick and her's mom a serious biyotch. What? Everything pales in comparison, really, even network tv's darlings.

Because while American tv has grown remarkably better in the past few years, there are still no shows that are truly edgy in terms of subject matter, presentation, and characters. The aforementioned episode not only kept me riveted [though Matt making out with the transgendered dude was uncomfortable to the point of cringing] but actually opened my mind. After the episode, I thought about the struggles of the transgendered, of the class tensions between Miami's plastic surgeons and its gangbangers, about a myriad of issues. Lost and Desperate Housewives will keep you entertained, but Nip/Tuck will challenge you.

And that's why Nip/Tuck is the best show on television-- it goes where other shows fear to tread. And the real key is that it not only goes there, but it does in realistic, heartfelt, non-exploitative, character-driven ways. Congrats, Nip/Tuck, and keep it up. . . I'll be watching.

You can catch new episodes of Nip/Tuck on Tuesdays at 10:00 on F/X.