My ultimate guilty pleasure, Nip / Tuck, returned to FX for its sixth season yesterday, and like always, the shock factor level was through the roof. Explicit surgery? Check. Obscene language? Double check. Controversial content? Well, how else would you categorize a surgery that involves a rejuvenation of certain um…womanly parts? The season opens with plastic surgeons Sean McNamara and Christian Troy in a bind for money as the recession hits the plastic surgery industry. Used to living in fine luxury, McNamara/Troy begin the search for any new kind of procedure that could help their business. Enter Mario Lopez aka Dr. Mike Hamoui. Dr. Hamoui has made his billions by using his washboard abs to reel in the female patients by the dozen, and it is he who brings the idea of a down-there uplift to McNamara/Troy.

I am usually ready for any shots that Nip/Tuck throws my way, because after 6 years, I’ve accepted the fact that truly anything is possible on this show. But for the first time in quite a while, I was really disturbed by a plotline. Matt, Dr. Troy’s biological son (and McNamara’s ” adopted” son…I finger quote adopted because that’s not really the right word, but it’s a long story) comes to the doctors announcing that he has thrown away a large amount of his money to take mime lessons and that he is going to take a vow of silence. Now, I hate clowns, and this is pretty darn close. While dressed in his mime gear, Matt goes to get coffee and after he finds out that he doesn’t have enough money, pulls a gun on the barista. That sounds like the worst and most embarrassing way to die. Gun-shot by a mime.

I’d just like to take this moment to say, that yes, I am ashamed to say how much I like this show. However, there’s enough drama to keep me happy, it stops right before it’s too explicit for me to whip out an “awkward turtle”, and as someone who can watch surgical shows without seeing my dinner in reverse, the surgeries are creative and graphic enough to make me impressed. So, feel free to judge me, but don’t write it off before you watch it, you may be surprised.

Kate

(photo courtesy of the fx network)