Nip/Tuck: Dr. Griffin (6.16)

Watching this episode for the second time was an interesting experience. I loved Dr. Griffin the first time I saw it, and believed it was one of the most absorbing and intriguing Nip/Tuck hours in a long while, exploring the psychosis of Sean and Christian and laying bare their long-held bitterness and anger against each other. While I still enjoyed Dr. Griffin the second time around, I couldn't help but notice, once again, that artificial quality that has made parts of season six so jarring. Here, several moments felt pulled straight out of left-field, while shock plot developments were clumsily dropped in with zero build-up. The concept of this story was well-intentioned, but the devil is in the details, and the details weren't that great.

Jennifer Salt's script riffs heavily from In Treatment, setting almost her entire story in a psychiatrist's office and having Sean and Christian and partly Liz and Matt play off each other, the dialogue pushing the story instead of contrived plot developments (for the most part). It's obviously an interesting idea, and I liked seeing the interaction between the cast members. There were also some intriguing asides, such as Liz claiming everybody around Sean and Christian are merely 'elevator music' to them. Some of the dialogue ('I know where the bodies are buried') was also pretty juicy.

But plaguing the script is a sense of Psychology 101. Sean's drawing of him and his family was frustratingly on-the-nose, while Christian's declaration that Sean is an alcoholic didn't have the season-long build-up a development like that probably needed. Liz's pregnancy also felt sudden and illogical. There was some swapping of airdates for this and the upcoming Christian Troy II episode, but even that doesn't explain how messy some of the script feels.

Similarly, the Mark couple subplot was unnecessary, filled with some of the most cloying symbolism seen on this show in an age, and a shock bullet-in-the-face closer that was exactly the type of melodramatic absurdity this episode at first appeared to be avoiding.

I don't mean to crap all over this one, but it felt a lot like an interesting experiment that went slightly awry. What I do praise the show for is actually experimenting at all. Nip/Tuck spent so long resting on familiar plot trappings that it's admirable that they broke format so close to the end. But the script needed a lot of work. B

Credits
Guest stars Molly Price (Dahlia Mark); Brian Howe (Ron Mark); Melonie Diaz (Ramona Perez); Elaine Kagan (Dr. Karen Singer); Daniel Benzali (Dr. Griffin)
Writer Jennifer Salt Director Tim Hunter