Held to together by gimmicks and shock tactics

I started watching Nip Tuck when I was about 15 and back then it was the best thing since sliced bread. Womanizing plastic surgeons, Columbian gangsters and transexuals engaging in incest are always going to make a teenager's jaw drop. I stopped watching it after about a year or so after the guy who downloaded me the episodes left our school and for quite some time the surgically enhanced world of Miami was but a distant memory....

Then a few years later, thanks to the amazing power of side reel I decided to start again where I left off. And I must say the series was still pretty sharp.... for a couple of episodes. I soon noticed Nip Tuck's biggest strength and at the same time, its biggest weakness. Every episode a new character is introduced for plastic surgery and in that very same episode we usually see the back of them for good. They always have some kind of a back story and they usually have some kind of idiosyncrasy about them. The point is that despite there being an underlying plot every episode tries to build up tension with a new character every single time. This might keep someone with the attention span of a gnat with A.D.D happy for a bit but when you're hit with too many things at once, their gravitas is seriously compromised. However at the same time the myriad of characters and other gimmicks that hit you, are always keep you on your toes especially when they do their "alternative" episodes. This is something that Nip Tuck excels at. Every know and again, instead of having the standard depiction of the antics of Miami's elite they throw the viewer a curveball. Everything from alternate realities, to future projections to views through the eye of a reality T.V show give this series a nice bit of quirkiness and along with the interesting production design and (in places) reasonable acting, this show is saved from being your typical lowest common denominator.