Zach's Nip/Tuck Procedure - "Abigail Reynolds"

With Teddy and Matt all with ambiguous fates from last week, you just know this show’s going to get its crazy on this week.

We start right off with a trippy disorienting surgery on Matt intercut with flashback fill-ins from last week explaining how Sean and the kids survived Teddy’s carbon monoxide attempt but not how Sean or Christian can ethically operate on their own son Matt (those of you who are just tuning in may not know that Sean and Christian have equal claims to Matt’s parentage).

Sean gets disturbing news about Teddy’s fate – police found a human heart with her hair sample nearby. Of course, on this show, such certainty means she’s almost certainly not dead (if only for shock value). Sean cries (almost as much as Jack on “Lost”), but he wouldn’t feel so bad if he knew she were trying to kill him – or if he could read the credits and see that Rose McGowan is still listed as a cast member. So he channels his emotions by watching Road Runner cartoons and by getting a visit from Julia, his ex-wife who we haven’t seen in about a season. Within moments they’re back to bickering.

Christian wants Matt to go to prison because it’ll set him straight. He, too, fights with Julia over whether or not Matt is a good kid – and Matt heard the whole conversation.

Patient of the week is Abigail Sullivan, who wants the remnants of her in utero parasitic twin “Moira” removed. Her crazy mother never had the extra bones and tissue removed from her living daughter, and Abigail’s having problems separating her identity from “Moira.”

Sean and Julia are unpacking Teddy’s life, and they realize that he knows almost nothing about his allegedly deceased bride. They have a lot of talk about truth and healing (theme alert!) before agreeing to turn Matt in to the police. But Christian calls – Matt’s booked from the recovery suite, and no one knows where he is. Christian does the surgery on Abigail, stating somewhat overhandedly, “Now all she needs is the courage to be herself.”

Sean finds Matt at home packing and popping his sutures. Sean bandages up Matt and agrees to let him go – touching emotional moment. Sean cries some more. Police arrest a suspect who had Teddy’s head in a box – Sean vomits. This is the single most bizarre way that Nip/Tuck has ever wrapped up a storyline. Sean confronts the murderer, who reveals both that he’s a sociopath and that Teddy told him about her plan to kill Sean; in a flashback, we actually see Teddy get murdered, so maybe she’s dead after all. But of course Sean doesn’t believe the killer’s story

Matt sneaks in to visit his daughter, but Kimber catches him and asks to run away with him. She promises they can be a family again. Meanwhile, Abigail gets a look at her surgery and recounts a dream she had in which her mother accused her of killing her sister. She requests the “remains” of “Moira,” which Sean unethically relinquishes.

Matt agrees to take Kimber with but later gets cold feet about being Bonnie & Clyde; Kimber talks him into letting them stay. But it turns out Christian followed him, and he encourages Matt to turn himself in. Matt pulls a gun, and Christian backs off. Back in LA, the cops have uncovered Teddy’s shady past as a black widow, killing her doctor-husbands and reaping the benefits of their life insurance policies. Sean tells the police to burn the remains.

Abigail returns to the doctors after her stitches rupture during her big concert, but it wasn’t an accident; she took the little hand that belonged to her “sister” and forcibly reinserted it. Sean agrees to fix the stitching but not to fix the psychotic twin fixation. “Why is it that we see what we want to believe but we don’t want to believe what we see?” he asks philosophically. “Because the truth sucks,” Liz delivers matter-of-factly. In a little motel somewhere, Matt stitches himself up but, wracked by pain, reaches for his handgun, but he calls Sean and asks for help. Sean agrees to fix Matt’s stitching, too, but what he doesn’t say is that he told the cops where Matt was. How many convenience stores did Matt rob to merit a full squad on hand to arrest him?

Rather than scatter Teddy’s ashes at sea, Sean dumps the remains in a garbage can. Julia takes the kids out of the house, and Sean walks into the ocean for either a swim or a suicide attempt.

Verdict? What a depressing episode, all about accepting who you are and facing reality. I like my Nip/Tuck fun and quirky, not angsty and gloomy (I’ll go read “Twilight” if I want that). Please be fun again, Nip/Tuck!