Tag: nip / tuck

Dear Doctor Friends, Please Stop

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Whew. It’s been a hot second since I’ve had a good rant. Did you miss me? And this one has been brewing for a while.

I have a lot of friends in the medical field. Nurses, doctors-to-be, researchers, pharmacists…I’m often the odd one out at parties and large groups of friends. As you all know, I’m also tv fiend. Medical shows aren’t my go-to’s, but I enjoy watching them: Grey’s, The Resident, House, Private Practice, just to name a few. The medical field is also a popular profession for main characters in movies—and why not? They save lives. They’re rich. They’re typically unnaturally good-looking. AKA The Perfect Leads.

So, it will inevitably happen that I’ll be enjoying a beautiful declaration of love from Ashton Kutcher outside of a hospital (No Strings Attached), when the moment is ruined by my friend saying, “That’s such a parking violation. You can’t do that at a hospital. Last week at work….” STOP. You’ve ruined the moment for me.

On Grey’s this season, April had hypothermia and was without a heartbeat for 5+ hours and yet, still woke up fine and without brain damage. Just because I didn’t go to medical school, doesn’t mean that I can’t differentiate between what’s possible and what’s not. I didn’t need the 45-minute diatribe against Shonda Rhimes and the Grey’s writing staff.  What matters is that April DIDN’T die and I’m upset they missed this opportunity to axe her character.

I know that hospital personnel do not frequently bed each other in the on-call room. If a doctor comes to work drunk, they obviously aren’t given a banana bag and told to wait around until their blood work is clean. If a nurse walked in on a doctor screwing a patient, they wouldn’t jump in and make it a threesome. (Ok, SOME might. But let’s be real.) That’s an HR issue. That’s highly unethical. I’m not stupid.

In conclusion, to my “Smart Friends”: Let me have this. From what I can tell from your work stories, your average work day has the potential to be just as boring as mine. I want to watch a show that makes me suspend my disbelief just a little. I want weird medical cases. I want unnecessary drama. I want to watch desperate doctors cut l-vad wires to move their boyfriend up the transplant list.

I love you all—but please shut up. Let me spend an hour gazing at Matt Czuchry in peace.

Five Artfully Awesome Opening Credits

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As I continued my summer’s journey of television mania, (this week: Eureka) it just reinforced my love for clever and artsy main title sequences. I truly miss belting out “CALIFORNIAAAAA” every week with Phantom Planet. I understand that by just using titlecards it can save a precious minute of airtime, but I overly enjoy having a catchy theme to sing or hum along with before all of the laughter and drama starts.

Now, I have many favorite main title sequences, they range from themes you have to jam out with to the boldly graphic. But these are my favorite main title sequences, visual aesthetics and general design being the main factor. Like always, click through the banners for video.

Nip / Tuck, “A Perfect Lie”- The Engine Room

Yes, it’s creepy and the scissor noise in the background is mildly disturbing, but I’ve always appreciated how well the song fits the series. It’s pretty minimal but catches the nature of Nip / Tuck in 45ish seconds. For some reason, my favorite part of the credits is the finger twitch at :09, although I also enjoy watching the lips blow up like collagen balloons at the end.

Six Feet Under, Original Theme

I’ve come to the conclusion that cable shows just automatically have better opening credits. And I think it’s time for the primetime networks to step it up. Six Feet Under’s opening sequence automatically sets up the premise of the show and its tune is delightfully catchy for a song about a funeral home family.

Dexter, Original Theme

Okay. Yeah this one bugged me at first. It’s hella long and the opening shot of the mosquito sinking into Dexter’s arm isn’t particularly my favorite visual. But after a while it definitely grows on you. And the last shot of Dexter’s innocent smile after all these violent shots of a typical morning routine made me laugh out loud the first time I saw it.

Skins, Original Theme

The series 1 Skins opening is my personal favorite. You can’t help but feel ridiculously giddy whenever it plays. The theme is upbeat and just puts an automatic smile on your face. I also appreciate that each season and generation gets a new mix…even though I feel like they’ve all paled in comparison to the original.

Chuck, “Short Skirt”-Cake

You gotta love Cake. And the opening sequence was surprisingly creative and artsy, no complaints here.

RECAP: Nip / Tuck, Hiro Yoshimura

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Six successful seasons and 100 episodes later, television’s most controversial and racy medical program Nip / Tuck aired its final episode tonight. I have never been so disappointed in a series finale. Ever. The best thing about Nip / Tuck was that you never knew what was going to happen next (or who was going to hook up with who). To give Nip / Tuck a conventional, boring send-off is a slap-in-the-face for the devoted fans who stuck around for seven years and really, an insult to the show.

What kind of screwed up logic was the whole Matt-Ava-Jenna ending?  “I know you don’t love me but my daughter is perfect and you want perfection. So you can have my daughter and I’ll just stick around for the fun of it.” Ava’s story line and departure made some of the best episodes on Nip / Tuck and I almost feel like there was no point in bringing her back for these final episodes. Famke, you should stick to X-Men, at least you have sweet telepathic powers there.

I have to say I got really excited when Art Garfunkel’s “All I Know” started playing. Remember back in season two, that song was playing and then Carver showed up in Christian’s apartment? (Tangent, but the Carver was probably the best story line on Nip / Tuck) I was so sure that the Carver was going to emerge from the shadows and murder them all. That would have been a better ending actually. I also wanted to see Escobar again. That messed-up creep sure made for good entertainment. What was with the boring surgical case as well? I do understand that Hiro Yoshimura was a way to show plastic surgery becoming unnecessary and its just better to age, but I wanted to see one last kick ass surgery before McNamara/Troy closed its doors for good. And all I get is a seventy-year-old man who gets heart attacks while engaging in six-somes?! Lame sauce.

So in the end: Sean is still a good-doer, Christian is still a man whore, Matt is still an idiot, Liz is still partner-less, Kimber is still dead, and Julia is still running away from her problems. Congratulations, you’ve made no personal progress. It must feel great.

I hope this means that Ryan Murphy is going to devote all of the geniusness he didn’t apply to the Nip / Tuck finale to new Glee episodes. If not, I’m not going to be a happy camper. Where’s the Carver when you need him?

photo credit: FX Network

RECAPS: TV Wrap-Up

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Ah, the early spring hiatuses have begun. Has anyone else noticed that there is nothing on television anymore?!

One Tree Hill: I found this episode very boring. I know the death of Mama James should have had more an effect of me…but it didn’t. I feel like the whole “my parent has cancer – child wants them to fight but it’s a losing battle – parent dies” story line has been WAY overused. It was still touching and very well acted, but I guess I wanted a more original story line for Mama James. I am praying to every higher power that One Tree Hill gets picked up for an eighth and final season so the writers can wrap up the show properly. The show is going to crap as of late.

Lost: On the flip side, Lost just keeps getting better and better. This final season is turning out to be amazing. I am so glad that we are finally learning the answers to some of the fundamental questions on the show. Jack is a father in the flash-sideways story line…never saw that coming. In the final moments of the episode, Hurley and Jack arrive at the humongous lighthouse on the island (a light house they have conveniently never found during their 108 days on the island). Hurley tells Jack that Jacob has instructed him to turn the wheel to bearing 108 to help direct someone to the island. 108 has a name next to it on the wheel, Wallace. Okay, Damon/Carlton & Co., who the hell is Wallace?! I sincerely hope it’s not a random character being added to the show in the final episodes. It is becoming glaringly obvious that the passengers on flight 815 were indeed called to the island.

Nip / Tuck: Nip / Tuck’s last episode ever will be aired next Wednesday. So sad. I always look forward to tuning in to the tumultuous lives of those at McNamara/Troy. I recently read in an article here about the finale, saying that the “final hour of Nip / Tuck was unlike anything we ever expected.” This disappoints me slightly. The best thing about the show was the shock factor. I’m still looking forward to the series finale nonetheless AND to see what happens with Matt and Ava. Poor kid can’t seem to catch a break.

Valentine’s Day: I finally saw Valentine’s Day last night and it yet again asserted to me how amazing ensemble cast movies can be. Sure, some story lines took slight precedence over the others, Ashton Kutcher’s character for example, but the sharing of screen time was equally dolled out between the large cast. I personally loved the “best friends to something more” story line of Kutcher and Jennifer Garner. They were really believable as best friends. The whole Eric Dane – Bradley Cooper story line came out of left field for me. Truly a shocker there. I am not used to seeing Dane without scrubs and Cooper without Zach Galifianakis. Anyways, lovely movie.

REVIEW: Nip / Tuck

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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)