Nip/Tuck | Cable girl (original) (raw)

As the plaudits for Glee roll in (see p25), we are in danger of forgetting the earlier joys showered upon us by creator Ryan Murphy's previous master- work. A work of great beauty, precision and clattering, unending madness. I speak, of course, of Nip/Tuck.

It is the tale (currently on FX) of two Miami plastic surgeons. Sean is a strait-laced family man who has been best friends with Christian since college. Christian is a vagina-seeking missile who is best friends with no one but his membrum virile. His heart, however, belongs to Sean's wife, Julia (played by Joely Richardson, for whose strenuous American accent surgery has apparently been able to do nothing).

Never mind. The boys have plenty to keep them busy. There's Sean's son with his botched self-circumcision, for starters. The frat boys with their faces glued to another frat boy's bum. A puppet-master who wants to look like his puppet. Christian himself, after he breaks his nose when an inamorata sneezes during oral sex – a work-related injury of sorts. And of course, his girlfriend, the supremely limber Kimber, who decides (after Christian trades her for a friend's Lamborghini) that life as a porn actress would be less emotionally wearing, becomes a star with her own line of sex dolls (but must ask the boys' aid in remodelling its unsatisfactory hoo-ha). Later, they will be asked to do likewise for a woman whose husband has become obsessed with his doll.

Like I say: clattering madness. Or at least it was when it began in 2003. Back then, the stories were hilarious and the surgical scenes gruesomely terrifying. Now, the most terrifying thing is the extent to which these stories have come true. Genital rejuvenation – a mere six years ago a storyline pulled from the furthest fringes of lunacy – is a virtual commonplace. Obese woman with skin melded to sofa? I think I've seen about eight documentaries on the subject. Face transplants? Done, and done.

Not madness, then, but prescience. How utterly crazy is that?