Maybe it’s just me, but I feel like we’re on the verge of something in our culture. Or, at least, our pop culture. Things are ending, clearing themselves out, making way for new things. Maybe it has something to do with this being “The Year We Make Contact,” I don’t know, but I’m really starting to feel this faint fin de siècle vapor hanging overhead as the old shocks give up the ghost and fade away. Speaking of which…
Last night was the end of Nip/Tuck.
This amazed me, that it was finally ending, and the ending was an understated one. It coasted I think on the characters’ long journey to here and now, was light on the crazy trashy drama, but ultimately didn’t touch me nearly as much as the ending of The Shield, the FX network’s other big show (since I’ve only seen maybe an episode and a half of Damages) that I used to watch.
Why? Partly because Nip/Tuck probably felt like it ended a year or two ago.
The last real episode I saw before last night’s was the one where Christian and Liz come back from their honeymoon, Christian no longer has breast cancer, and cuts Liz loose. Sean is suddenly dating Rose McGowan out of nowhere. Julia was still fucking around, Kimber was still doing whatever, and Matt… Jesus. Fucking Matt had dropped out of medical school to become a mime and start robbing people. And I thought, “You know what? Fuck this.”
This show used to soar in it’s depths of ethereal trashiness and that lurid hard on of the glamorous nasty just felt forced and medicated. The high was probably the Carver storyline.
But I do have some love for the Sanaa Lathan season (just as I have massive love for Sanaa Lathan). Or any of the other seasons with the countless other over the top dirty sexy fun storylines that we’ve accepted.
And the Famke Janssen season as well.
…who returned last night for the swan song. And maybe it’s a make up thing or just how Janssen has aged, but this time I really felt her character in that she looked quite, uh, tranny-like (?) to me. But she was still fantastic in her role, waxing poetic about not being a monster, but being a victim of society that craves adoration. And then there’s the pathetic Matt whom can only offer adoration to someone and nothing else.
And perhaps it should have. I think trash can always be sustained, but you can’t just keep hooking it up to an IV of dayglo filth and call it a fountain of youth, like this show. You need substance. Or, in the case of the continuing narrative of Nip/Tuck, you desperately need substance and something tangible or more to say about the evils of our society that’s so very much obsessed with looks. And when you shine a light on all of our dark places, there needs to be something there to see.
And Nip/Tuck hasn’t had that for a while. And then… it didn’t.
It’s a show that’s changed so many times, putting itself through facelift after facelift, giving you a dazzling and rapid succession of new status quos to swallow harshly. And what it really needed was some mental surgery. Beauty fades, age gracefully, and know when it’s time to go.
But perhaps there was something in there, not just about the facades we worship, or the exploitation of youth (or a depiction of one of the most continuously fucked up family dynamics on TV ever), but something crueler and more interesting: a study of severely flawed masculinity.
Could you call the ongoing saga of Doctors Christian Troy and Sean McNamara anything else? All the women that have passed through their lives, that they’ve traded like briefly interesting toys and mirrors, it’s all come back to them and how devastatingly uncomfortable they were in their own skin.
Was Nip/Tuck the end result of a truly American journey that was started in Mad Men?
Whatever. This is half a post. I just have nothing to say. It’s like this show turned upon itself, much like Christian did to Sean, and said, “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself.” And the answer?
Everything.
