Nip/Tuck: Giselle Blaylock and Legend Chandler (5.22)

Nip/Tuck is usually at its strongest when a central idea runs through several of the various subplots piled in on one another. The season five finale is all about mortality, those hungry for it, those losing it, and those just discovering it. At its heart is Christian's impending death, an event that causes him to focus his life, gain some newfound perspective, and forget about the things that once made his heart tick. He wants to go to Europe, buy expensive suits and eat unhealthy food. He wants to marry somebody for love and compassion, not because they necessarily look pretty on his arm. As always, we understand why Christian is doing this. Liz is a different story, but the finale manages to make the most of a ridiculous storyline. At the same time, we have one last attempt to reverse Christian's terminal prognosis, real-life vampires seek eternal youth, Kimber faces up to her own personal emptiness, and Teddy's agenda is revealed. It's a doozy of a finale, and considering how awful the back-end of this season has been, it's surprisingly entertaining.

Nip/Tuck: Allegra Caldarello (5.21)

The show played Sean's denial really well here, tying in several other subplots to create a well-crafted character-driven storyline. It's interesting that there also seems to be some regret on his part about his own life. The final scene, in which we see that old college video of the three of them, sees a young Sean talking about wanting to "make a difference", something he hasn't arguably done. He's in his mid-forties, still clinging to this partnership, and living a pretty unfulfilled and empty existence. Annoying Teddy claims to be there for him, but that's not really true. This theme of regret and disappointment plays into the final season a whole lot, and we're seeing the first hints at that here.

Nip/Tuck: Budi Sabri (5.20)

One of the biggest problems that plague soap operas is character motivation. Since so many soap operas are driven by the situation rather than the character, characters frequently have their personalities altered to service a storyline, the writers working around the character itself to fit the needs of an absurdist plot they've created. Nip/Tuck fell victim to this a lot, and it's something that has been greatly affecting this season, most notably the Christian and Liz relationship. This episode sees Christian proposing to Liz after his cancer is diagnosed as terminal, a proposal that Liz accepts. Now, I understand why the show would want to explore their long-running love/hate relationship. What I can't understand is Liz's motivation for going through with this. There's a huge difference between loving and supporting somebody through their final days and actually marrying them. It just feels ridiculous.

Nip/Tuck: Manny Skerritt (5.19)

There comes a point where the boundaries of the word 'flawed' are truly stretched. The mantra throughout the years of Nip/Tuck was always that its core ensemble of characters were 'flawed' people. We stuck by their repeated bouts of cheating, murder, abuse and torment because they were all in some way 'flawed'. But how reprehensible can a character's behavior become before their 'flawed' persona slips straight into 'disgusting and ugly' territory? Manny Skerritt saw Christian and Kimber hit new lows, scheming together and injecting baby Jenna's lips with collagen and attempting to justify it via a couple of lines about 'insuring Jenna's financial future', or something similarly bogus. It was just a truly ugly storyline, the series pushing its characters into previously unheard of depths of depravity.

Nip/Tuck: Ricky Wells (5.18)

This episode was all about uncomfortable truths, the idea of people denying their true instincts and others being deluded enough to not realize the obvious 'thing' that's right in front of their eyes. A lot of the episode consisted of Liz being hurt by Christian, a spectacularly predictable route the show went down. Liz ordinarily is a smart woman, but she's become so wrapped up in this doomed quasi-relationship that it's not surprising when Christian immediately begins banging a bunch of women right in front of her. While the story is explored well on a surface level here, we still don't understand what is motivating Liz to act like this, and I'm unsure the writers do either. She loves Christian, sure, but what is driving her to change herself, her sexuality and her morals? It's so strange.

Nip/Tuck: Roxy St. James (5.17)

Considering she is such a strong and versatile actress, it was a disgusting waste of time to hire Portia de Rossi to play such a nothing character. Olivia existed as a plot device, a vacuum to explain the presence of tramp temptress Eden, and to justify the barely-developed decision of making Julia a lesbian for all of five seconds. Olivia's death has little effect as a result; her sudden decision to get plastic surgery contrived, and her actual demise appearing to have few repercussions in the long run. There are a couple of attempts here to imply that Sean may have wanted her to die on his operating table so he could once again get together with Julia, but the Sean/Julia relationship is so exhausted and ridiculous at this point that we can't buy any of this. Roxy St. James did at least semi-resolve the lingering issue of Julia's shooting and Eden's disappearance, but it was an undeniable anti-climax. Sure, we have the Melrose Place-style 'ashes in the face' moment, but don't we all deserve better from this show?

Nip/Tuck: Gene Shelly (5.16)

Liz's sexuality has always defined her. Okay, maybe that's a little unfair, but she had always been depicted as an outspoken lesbian with strong feminist values and a firm hold on her own sexuality. Never had the mere thought of being in a heterosexual relationship crossed her mind, as evidenced by her complete inability to be in a relationship with the pre-op transsexual Sofia Lopez in season one. Liz's sexual encounter with Christian was an unusual moment, not just because of the obvious fact that she's gay. It was a scene lacking in any kind of intimacy, Christian using Liz as a depository for his sex drive, Liz lying there unsure of what the hell she was doing or what she was experiencing. While the scene is the latest in a long run of mildly absurd plot twists, the idea of Liz and Christian sleeping together holds a lot of potential, with both characters thrown into an unexpected situation and forced to deal with the consequences. But, as this is Nip/Tuck season five, a far cry from the intriguing heights of the first two seasons, the story immediately turns into sensationalist junk.

Nip/Tuck: Ronnie Chase (5.15)

It always felt like the writers of Nip/Tuck had repetitive strain injury. There would be runs of episodes full of cartoon craziness, strained exploration of taboo subjects, and awful things happening to the show's increasingly victimized cast of characters. Then, out of nowhere, almost as if the writers had realized what they had done, they'd drastically pull back and put the main cast center stage once again, granting them character-driven stories that weren't obscene in their ridiculousness. Then, of course, they'd quickly grow bored of that and introduce a whole bunch of batshit contrivance to grab some attention from passing viewers. Ronnie Chase begins with an elaborate fifteen-minute exercise in carnage, before exploring human drama for once.

Nip/Tuck: Candy Richards (5.14)

Ryan Murphy spoke before season five premiered that the year's stories would be driven by the idea that Hollywood corrupts those who occupy it. In that regard, the season has been successful in some areas. Sean and Christian both got carried away with the fame and lifestyles of the Hollywood elite, embarking on a series of awful misadventures with teen tyrants, male prostitution and the relentless pursuit of attention. But for so much of the season, this idea was abandoned and replaced by an array of cheap dramatic tricks, salacious plot twists and embarrassing attempts at provocation. In one way, Nip/Tuck itself had been corrupted by its pursuit of notoriety, taking that once complimentary label of a 'boundary-pushing soap opera' and using it as an excuse to depict whatever nutty carnage they could think of.

Nip/Tuck: August Walden (5.13)

There was a beautiful moment this episode, with Julia finally acknowledging the fact that she has once again completely screwed up her own life. She had a new romantic opportunity with Olivia, but blew it by once again jumping into the sack with Christian. Now, months down the line, Christian is once again banging random women on the dining room table. What I loved about this scene was Joely's ability to convey complete disappointment and abject resignation to the fact that Christian is incapable of change. She had a fantasy of the two of them together, and regardless of her recent sickness, he would have still screwed her over. She's a fuck-up, but at least she knows it.

Nip/Tuck: Lulu Grandiron (5.12)

I mentioned it two episodes ago, but this show had a huge problem with keeping some of its less useful cast members around long after they'd served their original purpose. Kimber, as strong a character as she is (or was), spent season five in a major rut, appearing infrequently and in a series of barrel-scraping storylines. Here, she is inexplicably revealed to have hooked up with slut maiden Eden, that sex tape with Aidan supposedly encouraging Ram to pick her up as a porn star. It's pretty darn ridiculous. Kimber at this point solely exists as both a titillation machine, demonstrated by that lesbian porn clip glimpsed during Eden's consultation, and a vacuum of bitchy snipes at Christian. It's disappointing that a character that was at one point so dynamic and intriguing has been reduced to stories of narrative laziness.

Nip/Tuck: Kyle Ainge (5.11)

As this season progresses, it feels like the showrunners are veering further and further away from what they had initially created at the start of the year. Stories that everybody had assumed would be center stage (Eden and Olivia, the Sean/Christian rivalry) have fell away, while even the main cast seem to be increasingly absent. Matt and Kimber haven't appeared in weeks, Julia's forever bed-ridden and Liz has around three lines per episode. Nowadays we're presented episode upon episode consumed with disturbed women and increasingly more absurd storylines. Kyle Ainge, full of cannibalism, child abuse and build-a-bear murders, was a trainwreck.

Nip/Tuck: Magda and Jeff (5.10)

Okay. Let me get this straight. She just got fucked off a building. If that isn't the nuttiest thing Nip/Tuck has ever done up till now, I don't know what is. I remember thinking that it was actually kind of refreshing that the show actually killed a major character. So much of the cast just linger around for years stuck in repeated plotlines that it really took some guts to cut Gina like that. I guess the writers really were sick of her, which is unsurprising. Gina, as a character, was stuck in the same exact storyline throughout her duration on the show. She's a deeply disturbed sociopath who appears on the scene with her trademark catchphrase, feigns normality, before exploding off the deep end around act three. It got old fast, but I guess that was her as a person.

Nip/Tuck: Rachel Ben Natan (5.9)

Yikes, this one was a mess. Probably the most frenetic episode in the history of the series, pulling at a dozen plot strands with little cohesion and stumbling around to try and find some kind of meaning in each one. It's like a bad spoof, with a pinch of lesbian bikers and gay pride gags, a dash of commentary on the Middle-East, and a smidgen of brawling dudes in love with the same lady. Ugh. Throw in a bunch of tired guest characters and you have the worst episode in a long, long time.

Nip/Tuck: Duke Collins (5.8)

I'm so over Julia and Christian. It's not surprising that they're overcome with lust once again (Julia just flies between him and Sean every season, anyway), but the sordid details of this particular storyline are ridiculously frustrating. In one corner, we have Christian blindly believing that this time is for real and that they're meant to be together, despite all the past evidence showing that this sexually dysfunctional threesome are destined to orbit around each other until the end of time. Then we have Julia, happy to lie to her frustrated girlfriend, and cheat on her with a dude. Julia with anybody is never totally convincing anymore, but I wish the show would at least try and not write everybody involved so horribly.

Nip/Tuck: Dr. Joshua Lee (5.7)

Unlike so many other episodes which seem to at least attempt to parallel the personal lives of the doctors and their significant others to the patients they're treating, Dr. Joshua Lee has absolutely no thematic link between the various stories on offer. Here we have Nip/Tuck at its structural worst, with so many random elements thrown in that it becomes a chaotic mess of an hour spinning into a variety of directions. Miraculously, that doesn't dent the quality of a couple of those subplots, some of which are the strongest in a while.

Nip/Tuck: Damien Sands (5.6)

It's important to note that Damien Sands does a great job at replicating an awful reality show. There's the obtrusive music that bashes you over the head with emotions ("This scene is wacky! This scene is sad!"), the shallow characterization (Horndog; Uptight Puritan; Experimental Lesbian) and the glorification of vacuous morons with an amazing lack of talent (the entire New York cameo, a guest appearance rendered entirely "who?"-worthy three years after airdate), as well as the obnoxious sound effects, ugly editing and poor attempts at a contrived 'story'. However, all of that doesn't make for a strong episode.

Nip/Tuck: Chaz Darling (5.5)

Matt and Kimber's descent into meth-ravaged junkiedom was played pretty well here. Both characters are easily manipulated, and both have exhibited major dependency issues in the past. So it's unsurprising they've gotten addicted to drugs. Kelly Carlson had a great monologue this episode in which she poured her heart out to her old porn boss, telling him how she's spent her entire life seeking some kind of meaning, and how she's always ended up falling into bad situations. Christian, cocaine, The Carver, Scientology, now meth. Like Christian this season, she's also prostituting herself, but for very different reasons. While Christian does it for validation, she's doing it for drug money. It's pretty depressing.

Nip/Tuck: Dawn Budge II (5.4)

In its later years, Nip/Tuck had a huge problem with three 's' words: Sex, shock and sensationalism. In the show's pervasive craving for headline-grabbing madness and boundary-pushing wackiness, it lost its soul. Rarely do we get a story that is both as sensationalist as it is sad, but that arrived in the form of Christian's encounter with his latest client. Gwen was a woman who engaged in life-threatening sex play, to subconsciously try and bring back her deceased mother and sister. It was a haunting and tragic story, with the insanity of the minor details being eclipsed by how sad this woman actually is.

Nip/Tuck: Everett Poe (5.3)

Eden is an oversexed porno monster, a character so ridiculously implausible that she fails to even work as comic relief. She's so much a walking porno character that she makes the equally porny Kit McGraw look like a Merchant Ivory creation. In her ten minutes on screen this episode, she references blow jobs, anal sex and a black man's ding-dong, calls Sean 'daddy', discusses her hymen and masturbates in public. She's also fine with belittling a pre-teen about her weight. AnnaLynne McCord looks like a porn star and acts like one too, Eden Lord being one of the most absurd things to happen to the series in a long, long time.