Warner Bros. | 2009 | 343 mins. | Not Rated


The second part of the fifth season of the FX series Nip/Tuck consists of just eight episodes. With the exception of the Carver story arc back in season, taken as a whole, season five was one of Nip/Tuck’s best. The first fourteen episodes of the season saw Sean (Dylan Walsh) and Christian (Julian McMahon), trying to deal with the difficulties of moving their practice from Miami to Los Angeles. Feeling like very small fish in a very large pond, the guys land roles on a medical soap opera called Hearts ‘n’ Scalpels. Much to Christian’s surprise, Sean becomes the breakout star, while he seems to freeze in front of the camera.

Bit by the fame bug, Sean gets himself an agent, Colleen Rose (an Emmy worthy turn by Sharon Gless), who turns out to be a deranged stalker with suicidal tendencies. Sean’s ex-wife Julia (Joely Richardson), turned up in Los Angeles with her female lover Olivia Lord (Portia de Rossi), who has a teenage daughter named Eden (AnnaLynne McCord), who ends up having an affair with Sean. Not thrilled about her mother’s relationship with Julia, Eden does various things to try and break them up. When nothing seems to work, she takes drastic action. In the Christmas episode, Eden gets Julia to eat a fruitcake that has been laced with a vial of mercury. Julia becomes increasingly sick, suffering from frequent nosebleeds, fatigue and hair loss. Following Julia’s discovery of the cause of her sickness, Eden claims that she will turn herself over to the police, only to retrieve a handgun and shoot Julia in the head. It is revealed in the final episode of season five, part one that Julia has survived but has lost all memory from before the shooting.

Meanwhile, Sean has problems of his own. It is discovered that Colleen Rose’ claims of being an agent are a sham. When Sean finally learns the truth, and fires her, she shows up at his apartment with her wrists slit. Later, after being rejected again, stabs Sean in the back while he’s performing surgery.

As part two of season five begins, things around the office have changed. Four months later, Sean is alive and well. However, he is wheelchair bound and unable to perform surgeries because of nerve inflammation. In order to make some money, he starts teaching at a prestigious plastic surgery college; while there, he meets a 17-year-old child prodigy named Raj (Adhir Kalyan). Meanwhile, while Liz (Roma Maffia) is being prepped for breast reduction surgery, Christian discovers a lump and suggests she get it checked out. Unfortunately for Christian, it turns out he’s the one who has stage two breast cancer.

While Sean finds himself on the outs with Julia and Matt (Jon Hensley) after they discover he’s been faking his need for a wheelchair, Christian finds himself growing closer to Liz as his chemotherapy treatments leave him stomach sick and feeling weak. Sean discovers that Julia is planning to leave for New York with Olivia. At the same time, Olivia requests a series of procedures to rid her face of signs of aging. The surgery turns fatal; and it could be Sean’s fault, because he hallucinated during the procedure.

Raj (who has been assisting in surgeries at McNamara/Troy) and Sean continue to develop a close relationship, which puts a strain on Sean’s relationship with Matt. But Raj is feeling pressures of his own; trained by his father to be a surgeon since he could hold a rattle, the young man has come to realize that bring a doctor isn’t his dream and takes drastic measures to leave the medical profession.

On the Christian front, the good doctor returns to his womanizing ways after his pectoral reconstruction, causing an irrevocable rift with Liz that has long-term ramifications for the future of McNamara/Troy. However, when it appears that his cancer has returned, Christian finds Liz in Miami and proposes marriage.

While Christian was settling down, Sean was exploring his wild side with the new anesthesiologist, the wild Teddy Rowe (Katee Sackhoff). The two have sex in an open house and get high on tea made from ayahuasca. It is later revealed that revealed that Teddy is living quite a double life, but neither Sean nor Christian knows anything about it.

The eight episodes contained in Nip/Tuck: Season Five, Part Two has the usual amount of strange surgeries: Candy Richards (Jennifer Coolidge) returns, only this time calling herself “Coco” as a tribute to her newly-discovered African-American heritage. She’s releasing her own rap CD; she wants surgery that will give her an authentic black woman’s behind; an eighteen-year-old requests surgery to make him look older after marrying his former elementary school teacher; A yoga instructor requests a penis reduction; a man suffering from tree-like growths on his entire body undergoes extensive surgery; Allegra Calderello aka “pussy lips,” returns in order to undergo an entire body transformation; a vampire requests surgery to repair a wound on her neck.

While the surgeries were intriguing as always, it was Christian’s fight with cancer that made this eight episodes really stand out; he actually showed some real weakness and vulnerability. In the season finale, Christian marries Liz, resolute in the fact that he wants to spend the last six months of his life with her and Wilber. Just as the threesome are set to leave on their honeymoon for Italy, Christian gets a phone call, and Wilber asks Liz if he can call her mom, to which an overjoyed Liz agrees; she is unaware that Christian has just received word of his cancer’s remission.

Who knows what will happen in Nip/Tuck’s sixth and final season, but it would be nice to see Christian and Liz try to work things out and stay married.

As with past seasons of Nip/Tuck, the video presentation is first rate. The episodes are in 1.78:1 Anamorphic. The picture itself is free of any digital artifacts and looks better than it did on standard television. The show sounds great too, with Dolby Digital 5.1 Surround (English). Subtitles are available in English, Chinese, French and Spanish.

The only special feature is:

  • Nip/Tuck: The Science of Beauty Featurette: Medical professionals discuss what makes people seek plastic surgery.



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