Nip/Tuck: Season 1, Episode 1: Pilot Review

Pilot

Original Airdate: July 22, 2003

Writer: Ryan Murphy

Director: Ryan Murphy

Following the success of The Shield, a show emphasized for being too hot for network TV, FX decided to try to repeat their success and develop a reputation of having controversial, but artistically defendable programming. Nip/Tuck was the perfect addition to solidify this status. With its graphic depiction of plastic surgery procedures, explicit language, sexuality and occasionally violence, Nip/Tuck was fearless from the opening moments of the pilot episode.

It’s great how much characterization appears in the show’s prologue. Sean is clueless about Spanish, which everyone around him knows because of Miami’s Latino community. He can’t see that Perez has ulterior methods behind wanting surgery. The Spanish compels him to have Christian intervene. When Sean does, Christian is doing a butt implant. Liz is disgusted by it, which helps set what her character is for the rest of the series. The implant was put in wrong, and Sean pointing it out showed that he is more talented than his partner is.

Christian knows that Perez is lying about not being able to speak English and that he isn’t telling everything regarding why he wants the surgery. However, even Christian doesn’t know the whole story, but what he hears (that Perez was with the boss’ daughter) appeals to his ladies’ man personality so much that he doesn’t learn the age of the girl. In addition, the $300,000 was an easy way to get him not to ask any more questions.

Now we get to the sex. It’s shocking how raw Christian and Kimber’s romp is. Juxtapose this against Sean with Julia. Christian is having the sex mere mortals dream of whereas Sean and his wife don’t look at each other during sex and think about shopping or firing the gardener.

Both men deal with the plastic surgery concerns of their lovers. Christian ruins Kimber’s fantasy of being the perfect 10 by mentioning flaws most of us wouldn’t care about or notice, even marking her body heavily with lipstick. Kelly Carlson is very pretty, but through Christian’s charm, she’s made to believe she is ugly. Sean treats his wife’s desire for breast implants differently. While Sean is more courteous of Julia’s body, he treats her like one of his patients. Moments like this further reinforce how out of touch Sean is. Later at breakfast, we see that he doesn’t remember asking about a book his son Matt was reading and Matt notices that he doesn’t listen.

Since Matt doesn’t feel recognized, he consults Christian regarding a circumcision. Christian’s relationship with Matt is a close one and eludes to what we learn about them in the future. He has no problem with Matt cutting a few classes and even gives him a doctor’s note. Although Christian is much more permissive and open with his relationship with Matt, he still sets boundaries like the need to include Sean and get his consent.

Sean’s disillusionment continues when he can’t help the mother of a burn victim because she doesn’t have the money for an operation. Then he curses his job, saying he doesn’t want to “poison” his family by conducting vanity surgery on them. Christian doesn’t mind this and reminds Sean that they are close “to setting [themselves] up for life” with their work. Considering Christian also can seduce a large amount of women through his job, we can see why he wouldn’t want to relinquish it.

One of Nip/Tuck’s trademarks is its incredibly gritty and unforgiving surgical scenes. Carving Perez’s face to The Rolling Stones’ “Paint It Black” is gruesome even if parts of it go in fast forward. The blood flows freely and even splatters on Sean’s mask as he drives the chisel into his patient’s nose. I'm not sure whether the blood was meant to be realistic or sensationalistic, but it is compelling either way. Throwing the tools into the sterile bowls or the sterilizing material was a great way to end the scene because it is so blunt.

Sean isn’t even aware of the fact that Christian took Perez’s large offer, which snaps him out of his complacent existence. Christian is not phased as it is $300,000. Later he’ll learn that Perez is a pedophile, which brings up many bad memories of Christian’s childhood. We’ll learn more about it as this season progresses, but it’s good that they hinted at Christian’s demons early in the season.

The biggest thing Sean is unaware of is Matt’s burgeoning sexual relationship with Vanessa. He’s been dealing with peer pressure in school regarding how his penis looks and how she’ll react to it. However, because he believe his dad doesn’t listen, he doesn’t talk about it with him until the consultation. Sean and Matt’s inability to discuss issues drives Matt’s character and his actions in future episodes.

Kimber’s arrival at Troy/McNamara is the deciding factor for Sean to leave. Sean was ignorant of Christian’s methods of picking up clients and as a result, he was being made foolish. His mid-life crisis has been put into action. Boredom has made Sean numb to his life and now he realizes his life isn’t what he wanted it to be. He is jealous of and frustrated about Christian’s lifestyle. Christian does whatever he wants in pursuit of pleasure and often doesn’t think about the consequences or the lives he hurts like Kimber’s. However, we will see several costs for Christian’s playboy life throughout the show’s run and one by the end of this episode.

Christian, Sean and Julia have played a huge part in each others’ lives since they went to college. Christian is especially close, almost like a second husband or dad to the McNamara family. Julia still has feelings for him as we see her during her breast exam. It gets extremely sensual when the diagnosis comes down to a whisper. Nevertheless, looking back on the video of what they were like 16 years before shows that they aren’t as happy now. Julia hasn’t pursued her goal of becoming a doctor and that, added onto the intense fight with Sean about his mid-life crisis, causes her to kill her daughter’s gerbil.

Nip/Tuck’s title becomes vivid when Christian meets with Sean in his “office”. Nip/Tuck refers to a subtle change, whereas Sean is going for “a full lift” by re hauling everything in his life. Christian makes him aware by telling him that Sean isn’t equipped to handle such a dramatic change and that he may lose everything when Christian takes care of the legal implications of dissolving their company, which means draining their funds, something he is adamant about doing despite their friendship. This is clearly in the hopes of convincing Sean to reconsider.

Christian faces what he did when he’s confronted by the victim’s father, drug lord Escobar Gallardo. Robert LaSardo does a terrific job making Escobar a charismatic villain. Thankfully, they decided to have him recurring, if only to reinforce the consequences of Troy/McNamara associating with drug dealers. Christian’s ordeal having botox injected all over his face was bad enough, but the one in his penis certainly made most guys cringe. Nip/Tuck isn’t satisfied enough with submerging Christian in water.

Perez’s final procedure is almost as intense. Seeing Alejandro turn on his brother after learning about his girlfriend’s pregnancy was a chilling moment. Then having his lipo tube come loose and spray everyone with the fat was disgusting. I can’t speak much for mob morality, but apparently killing someone you hid for a while makes up for the hiding. However, it’s likely Escobar killed him after they left the room. We’ll find out that Escobar isn’t finished with them yet, but for the purpose of the pilot, they treat it as a self contained event which was wise.

To finish the episode they buy ham from the store and use it to lure alligators to Perez’s body. This part of cleaning up feels a little sloppy, as Christian had cuts and bruises on his face and they were buying 12 hams and only 12 hams. Nitpicking that isn’t as important as the fact that Sean was listening to Matt when he said that earlier. In shows, whenever useless information like this is dispensed, it will become useful in a key part later.

After this, they learned that they have to screen their patients so to avoid having another incident like this one. Sean’s demand for pro bono work also helps to bring him back to the practice and begin mending after the events of this episode. Ryan Murphy has described this show as a “love story between two heterosexual men…in the end they will always choose each other.” This episode was a good example to show how far that would go. Liz quickly ditched them when faced with the task of disposing of Perez’s body, but they stuck around each other and agreed to fix their practice.

Few shows get to make as good a first impression as Nip/Tuck does. It is fearless in its depiction of sex, violence, language and surgery. However, the show is raised with good characterization, daring writing, great acting and stylish direction. Luckily, the show to date has delivered on the promise made in this episode.

Score: 9/10