Jump / Shark?

Over the weekend I watched Season 4 of Nip / Tuck.

The entire season.

I’m not going to say that I was disappointed by the soapy exploits of Miami’s most drama prone plastic surgeons, but I realize I may have reached the limit of my ability to roll my eyes with each new peak of silliness. If you’re not familiar with the series, let me bring you up to speed – but be warned, I am spilling four years worth of cliffhangers and plot threads.

The McNamara / Troy plastic surgery clinic is lead by long time friends Sean McNamara, a family man, and Christian Troy, a womanizing playboy, who despite their surface differences are both hopelessly bad maintaining healthy relationships with the women in their life. Sean and his wife Julia alternate between happiness and despair as being true and truthful with each other hardly ever happens for both at the same time. Christian, while not banging everything within arm’s reach seems to keep coming back to Kimber, a blonde bombshell model. Sean and Julia have two children, Matt and Annie, who suffer along for the ride. In addition, there are numerous recurring characters who add fuel to the fire.

Season One highlights
The main storyline involves a mobster named Escobar who blackmails the doctors into doing his dirty work after they take his money to reconstruct a criminal’s face. When Escobar kills the criminal and forces Sean and Christian to dump the body in the swamp, he holds their secret in check, using them to remove drug filled implants from mules, and eventually to help him leave the country with a new face. Cleverly, they alter Escobar to match one of the FBI’s most wanted and he is captured and sent to prison.

Christian plays doctor with many ladies, both in his official capacity (with the staff psychologist and several patients) and outside the office. After things fizzle with Kimber, a fling with sexoholic Gina with leads to her pregnancy, and after he reluctantly assumes responsibility the revelation comes out that the child is another man’s. Sean can’t keep his dick in his pants either as his strained marriage leads him to have an affair with a patient who soon dies from cancer. And Matt is involved in the accidental hit-and-run of a fellow student, and hides his involvement.

Season Two highlights
The turmoil surrounding Matt takes center stage as it is discovered that he was the result of a premarital affair between Julia and Christian. After managing the fiasco around his involvement with the injured student, Matt gets an adult life coach, Ava, who takes him as a lover. As his parents try to break them up, they discover she was once a man, but scramble to hide it from him.

While Christian and Gina try to raise their child, her contraction of HIV and the birth father eventually lead to the boy being taken away. Christian has a relationship with a blind woman while Sean ends up with Kimber as he and his wife separate. And the first victims of the disfiguring Carver start coming to McNamara / Troy.

Season Three highlights
The Carver is the driving force, as both Sean and Christian are attacked while trying to undo the damage on his series of victims. Another doctor, Quentin, is brought in as Sean’s divorce looms and he plans to leave the practice. Christian, who temporarily becomes a suspect in the Carver case also nails the kinky lead investigator Kit, but ends up looking to a serious relationship with Kimber, who becomes a Carver victim. Quentin is revealed to be the Carver, but his death is faked and he leaves the country with Kit, who turns out to be his sister.

Julia, meanwhile starts a day spa business with Gina of all people. In a chance encounter with Sean, she gets pregnant, and when they decide to keep the baby they reconcile. Matt learns Ava’s secret and thinks he is attracted to trans-sexuals, leading him to assault one. He ends up dating neo-Nazi Ariel, who turns him against his family, but Matt breaks free, literally, of Ariel’s father who tortures him after Matt defends a tranny.

And these were just the major story arcs.

There’s also plots involving a surgery addicted patient, their lesbian anesthesiologist who wants Christian to be a sperm donor, a jealous and delusional surgeon competitor, Kimber’s rise as a porn director, and Julia’s struggle to be free of her overbearing mother. And every episode a new patient comes to McNamara / Troy for work, which conveniently is completed by episode’s end, along with their plotline, even if the psychic and social scars still require work.

Season Four starts with the tenacious duo celebrating their 5,000th surgery together, but the joy is short lived. Julia’s pregnancy is not without complications – their boy is going to be born with deformed, fused hands, setting up one of the two main story arcs. Sean reveals he had a hairlip growing up and is very much for the surgery, while Julia, after conversing with a dwarf night nurse, Marlowe, has difficulties with putting the child through the procedures. In the turmoil, Sean sleeps with another candidate for the night nurse position, Monica, who refuses to stay away but is conveniently dispatched by a bus. Really.

As the strain builds, Julia begins an affair with Marlowe. Yes, the dwarf night nurse. Sean discovers the affair and it seems that the marriage is over. Rather than leave with Annie and newborn Conor, Julia decides to call off the relationship and goes to New York to be with her mother. His relationship with Matt fares no better, as Matt runs into Kimber, who is now a Scientologist. He becomes one too, and soon after is involved romantically, leading to pregnancy and a quick marriage. Despondent and feeling like there’s nothing left, Sean again plans to leave the practice…

…which is part of the other main story. Burt Landau, an elderly patient, and his young wife, Michelle make an offer to purchase the majority stake in the practice, making Christian and Sean more employee than owner. Eventually, Christian manages to bed new boss Michelle, but she has a sordid past and secret to keep. He finds out she was once a call girl for the devious James, but does not know that James is part of an organ stealing cabal and that Michelle helps with the surgeries.

Things seem to look up for Christian as Burt passes away and he and Michelle look to buy Sean out and change the practice into Troy / Landau. His surrogate child even comes back into the picture as the birth father dies suddenly. But visions of a happy family are further shaken when Escobar pressures the doctors into repairing his burns damage from a prison attack. James’ suicide reveals that Escobar was and still controlled the organ trafficking ring, and as he escapes custody he has one final task for the surgeons – to reconstruct his wife’s breasts after she was attacked by rivals. Recovered, she kills her husband and takes over his operation.

The season ends with Sean taking a job in Los Angeles, and he is surprised when Christian shows up to tell him his relationship did not work with Michelle, and that he sold his part of the practice to her. The two decide to start a practice in LA, setting up the basis for the upcoming season.

Now, if it seemed ridiculous reading all that, well…it is pretty damn silly. This season really made some crazy stretches and some huge changes, and the fifth season will have to not only have to build on them, but be careful not to make things absolutely absurd. Not that they’re far from it anyhow, but it’s so campy and overblown that the dysfunction and narcissism can’t possibly be questioned as they get into extremes. Julia and Sean, even with their best intentions, are some of the worst television parents ever. Christian, who ends up being surprisingly more righteous in his decisions than his partner, would have realistically been patient zero for some new strain of STD. And Matt would have sucked on the business end of a 12 gauge with all the insanity he’s been through. But that’s the joy of a trashy soap opera…pretty people getting into bad situations and sexing up the entire cast, but somehow making it through in the end. As serials move from season to season, they have to outdo themselves, but it’s a dangerous precedent, and Nip / Tuck is straining perilously near that point.

Season Five begins this fall…