Jan

Nip/Tuck: 5.15 Ronnie Chase

By admin

After the way part one of this season ended, with Sean finding out who Colleen really was, most were amazed when they saw Colleen jamming a knife into Sean’s back in the mid-season finale. With his new celebrity status, the likely restraining order Sean had out on Colleen, and the assumption that there must have been some sort of security at the new McNamara/Troy LA office, it seemed unlikely that Colleen would have been able to get within 100 feet of Sean. Not the case.

Again, she made it look easy.

The opening montage was a perfect reminder of where we last left off, showing just how Colleen did it. You have to wonder if that scene would have existed had the season not been broken in half by the writer’s strike. But if anything, it served to remind us of one simple fact - Colleen may have been crazy, but she was smart, too. She had to have been in order to pull off her glitzy Hollywood agent scam for as long as she did.

Fortunately, she got what was coming to her. After that eerie scene where she put lipstick on while using the kitchen knife as her compact mirror, her demise was clear - she was literally looking death in the face. A few minutes later, the knife was in her side as Sean gasped for help.

Fast forward four months. For the most part, it seems like much of the first half of the season is being pushed aside - at least for now. We’re still waiting on some sort of resolution for Eden (what exactly did she whisper in Olivia’s ear in the last episode?), and even though we now know that Julia is quite angry with Sean about the “we’re married” lie, it’s unclear as to what she does and doesn’t remember following her bout with amnesia.

No, the focus was very much on what’s going to happen, rather than what already has occurred. It’s clear that Sean and Christian are falling victim to the one thing their job combats - age. However, who best to fight off their own mortality than two plastic surgeons?

With Christian’s breast cancer diagnosis, I think we can assume that maybe he’ll be a bit nicer (a little?) to his rotating harem of women. But then again, this could just make him far more bitter. While I love the decision to give him a life-threatening ailment, the unveiling was fairly unimaginative and seemed more set on just getting the news out of the way so as to advance the plot quickly. He takes Liz for a mammogram and mentions he has a lump? A little more build-up would have been nice.

As for Sean, his decision to share his talents in a classroom setting is admirable, but Ryan Murphy and Co. were smart to cut it short (it would have gotten old fast) and instead have Sean focus on just one protégé. The addition of Dr. Raj Puresh and his incredibly cocky-yet-innocent attitude to the McNamara/Troy office is sure to provide plenty of laughs.

Overall, a decent premiere. Not the best episode, but that’s only because much of the plot felt forced in an effort to move things along quicker. Unfortunately, that’s the price you pay for using a time-shift storytelling technique. The “four months later” makes sense, but it can be jagged more often than not because the characters have changed so much since we saw them last.