I watched Nip/Tuck today. The show started out with a big advertising blitz and some mediocre reviews, but AFAICT nobody stuck with it. Well, I watched all 13 episodes and I’m blown away. I updated my TV reviews page with, among other things, my rave review:
Just as the two plastic surgeons at its center pull away skin to reveal the guts inside, Nip/Tuck goes behind the facade of the perfect TV family to reveal the horror within: the wife doesn’t feel anything, the husband wants an affair, the son’s a criminal, his girlfriend’s a lesbian — even the villain has a good side. Nobody is simple (except, perhaps, the 8-year-old daughter we rarely see).
Through these characters, the show tackles topics like faith, rape, drugs, suicide, ethics, and sexual identity with such honesty and care that it’s hard to believe they got away with it on TV. Lesbians, transgenders, and threesomes are treated as nothing out of the ordinary. Predictably, conservatives have decried the show for its immorality, but if anything the opposite is true: every sin, from rape to closed-mindedness, gets punished, whether through its external consequences or internal guilt. Everybody wants to do what’s right.
And the show is beautiful to boot. The opening sequence, with twitchy mannequins and a highly appropriate song, is one of the best I’ve seen. And once an episode they do a surgical ballet, literally spilling their clients’s guts in time to rock music. Without a doubt, this is the best drama on TV. 60m, one summer season and counting. (BitTorrent, FX, DVD coming soon)
The creator, Ryan Murphy, apparently had one other series: Popular, which looks sort of like a high school version of Nip/Tuck. Anyone watch it? Was it good? (Seems like it — strong cast, several awards, good topic.) How can I get a copy?