Fans of “Extreme Makeover,” the sorts saving their pennies for a little life-changing liposuction or a fast facelift, should pause on their way to the operating table to check out the new FX series “Nip/Tuck.”
   From ass implants — who knew there was such a thing? — to serious facial reconstruction to lipo gone horribly awry, the plastic surgery is presented in such graphic detail that it should make all prospective patients lose interest (if not their lunch).
   Despite all the stomach-turning slicing, the show, about two lifelong friends and their plastic surgery practice, is as visually sleek and gorgeous as a post-op supermodel.
   Like “Six Feet Under,” this show’s closest cousin, it hovers expertly between comedy and drama, making us care for the characters while exaggerating their dysfunction to comic effect.
   But be warned: Aside from the graphic surgery scenes, the 90-minute premiere — which aired Tuesday night at 10 and repeats tomorrow night at 11:30 p.m. and Sunday at 10 — contains copious obscenity, bare bottoms galore, rampant drug use, and even an instance of gerbil-cide.
   Some of this feels like attention-getting shock tactics, but “Nip/Tuck” succeeds on the strength of its writing and acting. It’s the most promising new show of the year so far.
   Faced with the reality of their business — that they spend their lives operating on beautiful people desperate to look more beautiful, or on miserable people convinced plastic surgery will alleviate their misery — the two main characters have followed diverging paths.
   Smooth, sleazy Christian Troy (played by Julian McMahon, who at times eerily resembles a more attractive Kevin Spacey) no longer allows himself the luxury of a conscience. He accepts a suitcase of cash of dubious origin (as suitcases of cash tend to be) to remake the face of a presumed Colombian drug lord. He preys on vulnerability, seducing a model, then telling her she’s merely an 8 — but that he can make her a 10. “When you stop striving for perfection,” he says, “you might as well be dead.”
   Meanwhile, his partner, Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh), is crumbling under the weight of his guilt. Like the lawyers on “The Practice” in its early years, he’s filled with self-loathing, struggling to come to terms with the morality of the choices his profession forces him to make. He once wanted to help people, but all they do now, he complains, is “let people externalize the hate they feel about themselves.”
   He longs to quit his practice and start over again. But he’s got a family to support—a family that’s rapidly falling apart, though he’s too self-involved to notice.
   His wife, Julia (Joely Richardson), deferred her dreams to raise their kids and is increasingly bitter. The romance has gone out of their marriage, to say the least; when she asks her husband whether she should get breast implants, he responds, “For your age, gravitationally, they’re exactly where they should be.”
   Adding to the tension: Years ago, Christian briefly dated Julia, and the attraction lingers. When Christian offers a second opinion on the breast implant question, their mutual lust charges the moment with more genuine eroticism than any of the show’s actual sex scenes.
   Sean is also struggling to relate to his teenage son Matt, who wants a circumcision and talks to Christian about it. (“He’s cooler than you,” he tells his father.)
   The uniformly excellent acting brings depth to the roles. As awful a human being as Christian is, it’s hard not to be charmed by him. And Sean is infuriatingly oblivious to the suffering of his wife, but earns our sympathy nonetheless.
   “Nip/Tuck” was created by Ryan Murphy, a former journalist who also created the WB’s short-lived, intermittently amusing high school dramedy “Popular.”
   With “Nip/Tuck,” he should add to FX’s growing reputation as a mini-HBO, willing to take on risky, high-quality programming. 
   This one’s a definite cut above.

July 24, 2003© 2003 Media Life

-Dan Jewel is a senior editor at Biography Magazine in New York and a frequent contributor to Media Life.

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