The
show is definitely upping the ante,however--sexually
and otherwise--for Liz in the coming season. Maffia’s
character will gain more depth and finally have an on-screen
love interest. At the start of the pilot season Liz announces
that she has left her partner. The past two seasons have mostly
seen her going it alone, although she does share an evening
of makeovers and making out with a transgendered patient (typical
of the show‘s professional ethics) about to have the doctors
perform bottom surgery.
Last
season Liz realizes she won’t have the fairy tale life
she had always envisioned and decides to get pregnant (with
Christian as the father), only to later make the difficult decision
to have an abortion when she finds out the fetus may have Down’s
syndrome.
According
to Nip/Tuck’s official FX website, this season
Liz will enter into a “unique partnership” with
Julia and Gina, which Maffia described to us as a combination
of the professional and personal. Reports elsewhere indicate
that the trio will open a spa together.
Maffia,
who recently hosted the GLAAD Awards, also confirms that her
character will finally find love this season: “Or, if
not love, then something very close to it. And maybe it will
become love.”
In
each episode of Nip/Tuck, the doctors cue
up the music on the operating room stereo and the ballet begins,
with the surgical team working in rhythm to slit, tug, pinch
and smooth their unconscious patients’ pliant tissue.
Often the patients are seeking the nose jobs and lipo you would
expect, but last season the doctors also took to providing pro
bono reconstructions for victims of the Carver, a serial rapist
who disfigures his victims’ faces.
In
interviews, Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy has said that
he hadn’t planned on the show’s masked villain becoming
a recurring character, but because of the huge spike in ratings
after the Carver was introduced he will continue to terrorize
Miami, and engross viewers, in the coming season. Maffia tells
AfterEllen.com that only Murphy knows the Carver’s identity,
and she and her castmates are all terrified that it might be
them. The monster is going to be someone viewers already know,
but we will have to wait until practically the final episode
of the coming season to find out who it is.
Last
season’s cliffhanger left Christian paralyzed in the clutches
of the Carver, and this season’s first episode resumes
that storyline, characteristically going too far. The detective
investigating the Carver cases (Rhona Mitra) seduces Christian
by way of reenacting his assault, and a gratuitous threeway
shortly ensues.
The
season opener, titled “Momma Boone,” also finds
Dr. McNamara summoned to surgically separate an obese woman
from the couch she has literally grown into over the past three
years, so that paramedics can knock out a wall in order to remove
her from the house and get her proper medical care.
According
to FX, in 2004 Nip/Tuck drew more adults in
the 18-49 set than any other basic cable series, and the season
finale that year was seen by 5.2 million viewers, 3.6 million
of them ages 18 to 49. It won the 2005 Golden Globe for Best
Television Series – Drama, won an Emmy for its special
effects/prosthetic makeup, and has been nominated for numerous
other awards.
Murphy,
who is also directing the lesbian-inclusive upcoming movie Running
with Scissors (2006), recently told Entertainment
Weekly that “People don't realize our medical cases
are 100 percent based on fact.”
But
the medical cases, outrageous though they are, are so often
upstaged by the wonky sub-plots that lurk beyond the operating
room. And if the past is any guide, Nip/Tuck is sure
to deliver plenty more scandal and intrigue in the coming season.
Find
the interview with Roma Maffia, polls, links, and more commentary
in our Nip/Tuck section
