Nip/Tuck/Thoughts: The L Word

I’m guessing Portia de Rossi was too busy to be a regular during the second half of this season.

That’s the only explanation as to why Olivia Lord (pictured, left) would make her season debut last night, act COMPLETELY and distractingly out of character and die off screen.

It’s a shame because I liked the Olivia character and I think Portia de Rossi’s pretty great, so to not have her around will hurt the show a little. However, to bring her back for one episode, have her act like a complete idiot and kill her off hurt the show a lot.

The bottom line is I just didn’t enjoy last night’s episode as much as I should have. It looked great on paper: in addition to de Rossi, the episode also featured a special guest appearance by AnnaLynne McCord as the borderline demonic Eden and Jennifer Coolidge reprising her role as delusional actress Candy Richards.

Coolidge’s antics were particularly disappointing. I just didn’t find the whole “Hot Coco” thing as funny as I should have (or as funny as Dylan Walsh and Julian McMahon found them in the opening scene – they were SO laughing out of character), especially since I think Coolidge is fantastic. I will say that I found “Yo Stink” to be almost as catchy as Nurse Linda did.

I’m also not finding Sean nearly as interesting now that he’s out of his wheelchair. He basically spent the entire episode pining after Julia, which is basically what he’s been doing for five seasons. Still upset over Sean lying to her about being married, Julia announced that she was moving to New York with Olivia. I’ll give Sean credit for manning up and actually expressing how he felt (the way he forcibly kissed Julia was almost hot) instead of meekly standing by.

Before that, he had to perform a series of cosmetic surgeries on Olivia, who had suddenly become incredibly insecure. She also seemed to forget that, as a holistic doctor, she’d all but sworn off Sean and Christian’s work. I know the other character’s addressed this, but the writers never had Olivia explain why she’d reversed her position. Of course, the most maddening thing about all this was the fact that Olivia looked exactly the same as she did before. (The makeup department couldn’t at least make her look slightly haggard to partly justify the surgery?) In fact, my girlfriend Erica pointed out that every procedure Olivia was requesting would be better served if it were performed on Julia. Zing!

Predictably, Sean started fantasizing about killing Olivia on the operating table and she went into cardiac arrest shortly thereafter. It’s worth mentioning again that the show features some of the very best makeup effects because Olivia talking to Sean with the top half of her face peeled off was gross. Eventually, Olivia died and Sean actually started believing that he had something to do with her death before he was let off the hook by the fact that Olivia was taking anti-depressants. Again, not buying it. Olivia’s a doctor. She wouldn’t be stupid enough to take anesthesia if she was taking medicine that could cause an adverse reaction.

Fortunately, this facilitated the (brief) return of Eden, who rolled into town from “90210”, I mean Europe She came by to collect her mother’s ashes and throw them in Sean and Julia’s face (yikes!) She was also able to convince Julia that the reason her mother was depressed was that Olivia was the one who drunkenly shot Julia. Olivia’s behavior in this episode was so bizarre, I actually would’ve believed Eden’s story if I didn’t know any better.

It's a good thing we had Christian and Liz to rescue this episode.

I liked watching Christian attend a breast cancer support group (and network). I’m pretty sure he could’ve found a group that wasn’t mostly comprised of middle-aged women if he wanted to, but I understand the comedic reason for putting him there. Besides, he got to meet and hook up with Roxy St. James, who turned out to be insane.

Roxy’s family had a history of breast cancer and she was convinced she was going to get the disease, so she asked Christian to cut off her breast. Christian couldn’t go through with it, so Roxy decided to make her point by showing up at McNamara/Troy and sawing off her own breast. After I picked up all the vomit from my apartment floor I resumed watching the episode (Kudos to the show for keeping it’s streak alive for having at least one “Holy shit!” moment in each episode – the last episode was Sean in a diaper, of course.)

Meanwhile, Liz was having her own crisis. She was freaking out over the fact that she might be straight after admitting to Christian that she DID have an orgasm. This activated Christian’s prick switch leading to some classic lines describing his “cock’s magical power” and saying “what can I say? I’m the shit!”

I also loved Liz bringing her date Evan (who had some groovy theme music) to rub him in Christian’s face and make him visibly jealous. In the end, Liz realized that the orgasm was specific to Christian and admitted that she loved him, not men. For his part, Christian used the “l” word himself in regards to Liz. He was absolutely right in his speech. Liz gets him and she still loves him. What’s not to like about that?

In the final shot, Liz agreed to stay over for Wilbur’s (and Christian’s) sake and we were lead to believe those two were going to do the deed again. Of course, there’s a zero percent chance Christian and Liz will work as a couple, but I’m going to enjoy watching them try.

So what’d you think of this episode? Is Nurse Linda singing along to “Yo Stink” the best Nurse Linda moment? Will Eden really get away with blaming her mother for shooting Julia? Finally, who’s hotter? Julia or Liz? (The answer’s Liz, right?)