Nip/Tuck/Thoughts: Bit Players

Last night's episode of Nip/Tuck was kind of boring. Well, as boring as an episode which prominently featured cannibalism can possibly be.

I guess going to Hannibal Lecter-land was one of the few places the show hadn't explored yet, and it did so last night when a recently-wed couple came in for a consult. The husband first claimed that there were significant chunks of his arm missing due to the car accident he and his wife had been in during their honeymoon. But I (and I suspect, you) knew better, especially when they had mentioned spending 10 days trapped in the snow. We all saw "Alive" in our high school English class (maybe that was just me). The hubby had cut off pieces of his flesh, cooked them with the car's lighter (yum) and fed them to his wife to keep her alive.

I can't remember whether he said he'd eaten some of himself, himself (if not, what did the husband eat). To me, that's slightly grosser than forcing your wife to eat you to keep her alive (a front-runner for the weirdest sentence I've written all year). Anyway, the wife later tried to return the favor leading to her husband getting a serious infection when she forgot to cook her own flesh with a car lighter (duh!) before feeding it to him.

I'm not really sure what the point of this storyline was. I liked Sean telling the couple that if they could survive their ordeal, their marriage could survive anything, and I expected that to somehow mirror his relationship with Julia. However, Julia (and Olivia, and Matt, and Kimber, and Rachel, etc.) were all missing from this episode, so this storyline felt a little hollow.

Of course, the couple weren't Sean's only patients last night, as his obviously-obsessed with him agent Colleen (pictured, with Sean) dropped in for some foot surgery. While she was under, Sean was wood by Creative Artists Agency (or "Caw" as Colleen knows them). Sure, it was slightly funny and amusing (if not a bit predictable of what an agent is supposed to act like) to see the super agents march into McNamara/Troy, but a lot things about this storyline just don't work.

I get that it's supposed to be a satire of how shallow Hollywood is and how they can turn anyone into a star, but the fact that Sean is now headlining a major TV show is still stretching credibility to its limits. Also, how can Colleen be a real and effective agent (she DID do great work for Sean last week) one minute, and then be painted as a complete amateur and loser the next. She didn't even know what CAA was — even I know what CAA is.

The storyline produced one disturbing scene when teddy bear enthusiast Colleen — who presented Sean with a funny bear that said "Tell me what you don't like about yourself — killed CAA's lead agent by, in effect, making him a teddy bear (the way she replaced his eyes was particularly creepy). I don't really get how she can kill a guy who's supposed to be such a big deal (I can see Sean buying the "he's in Darfur" story, but no his colleagues) be killed with no one batting an eye. Maybe it'll come next week. Also, the scene where she kills him would've been a lot more chilling if we gave a damn about either character.

Then there was Christian, still mourning the death of Gina. Well, actually the problem was that he wasn't mourning the death of Gina, and spent the entire episode experiencing a mixture of denial (he refused to tell Wilber that she was dead) and guilt because, you know, he kinda killed her (despite the fact that it's apparent it was an accident). This storyline also confirmed that Wilber IS still in the picture (we're still awaiting confirmation on whether Sean's deformed son Conor still exists).

Although we all love to see Christian have fun, I like when Julian McMahon gets to act, and the sequence when he imagines himself telling Wilber the truth ("Is mommy a skank?") was one of the episode's best. This show is so twisted that I actually was only about 85% sure he was imagining this.

The episode's highlight was definitely Gina's funeral where her former Sex Anonymous cronies showed up to give her the most twisted yet genuine tributes (her blow and rim job skills were apparently remarkable). The scene also had an unexpected emotional moment when the man who gave her AIDS spoke up and mentioned how Gina had forgiven him because it forced her to change the way she lived her life. Thank God she changed the way she lived her life because otherwise she wouldn't be paying hookers to have sex with a man in a relationship while she watches.

There was also a minor subplot in which it was thought that Wilber was acting out at school to his mother's absence by biting his fellow students. As soon as we saw the kindly teacher was under 60 years old and under 200lbs, we knew Christian would sleep with her. Of course, it turned out that she was the one who was biting kids, as she took a chunk out of Christian during sex. He had her fired, but couldn't have her arrested since he capped her teeth and I wondered what the point of all of this was.

So what'd you think of this episode? Were you as underwhelmed as I was? Did you miss any of the regular (or semi-regular) characters? Will we see the freaky deaky teacher again? Finally, how long till Colleen COMPLETELY flips out on Sean? (I've got next week)