Zach's Nip/Tuck Procedure - "Alexis Stone, Parts I & II"

It’s a special double-dose of your “Nip/Tuck” procedure here at The Top Pop Stop, with a two-part episode that

Suicidal Sean gets the tables turned on him when Julia’s mother Erica Naughton (Vanessa Redgrave, who it turns out didn’t die back in Season Three) asks him to “Tell me what you don’t like about yourself.” But Sean insists he wasn’t trying to kill himself – he was just going for a swim. After Erica rattles off a litany of troubles plaguing Sean (just from this season alone), he admits he’s a little bummed but says he’s changed his mind. Erica, though, won’t authorize his release from the psych ward.

Mario Lopez (if his character has a name, I refuse to learn it) tells Christian he wants to ask Kimber to marry him. Christian says he doesn’t care, but when he fires Mario Lopez we know he’s still peeved. Christian bails Sean out, telling the doctors that Sean has aspirations to swim the English Channel, and he invites his buddy out for drinks, promising to kill Sean if he ever tries to commit suicide again. At the bar, Christian meets Alexis, bartender and patient-of-the-fortnight, confiding all the gritty details about Kimber. Alexis wants to help, so she hops into bed with Christian – he never could say no to that brand of therapy. Oddly enough, Alexis kicks Christian out when they’re all done.

Erica reveals that she wants custody over the kids, but Julia tries to placate her by saying that she recognizes Sean isn’t a good environment for the little ones. Meanwhile Erica visits Matt in prison, telling him that he needs to find a protector in the joint. Matt reveals that he doesn’t want his parents seeing him like this, but Erica tells him to stand up, be a man, and help her get custody. At the office, Liz tries to make nice with Christian, who initially doesn’t want any part of it but who eventually discloses everything about Alexis. But Liz declares she doesn’t want to hear any of that as Sean storms in, miffed about the custody proceedings. Sean continues by insisting that Christian re-hire Mario Lopez; he gives it a shot, but Mario Lopez reveals that he and Kimber are officially engaged.

Christian gets another surprise when Alexis shows up at the office and asks for a sex change operation – she wants to be a man. Alexis drops a bigger bomb – she used to be a man, had the snip-snip surgery to become a woman, and now wants to go back. She/He says that sometimes you don’t decide to change – sometimes it just comes out and surprises you. Christian asks him/her to leave.

Julia says she’s planning on moving to LA, but Erica doesn’t believe the two of them are in touch with reality. She introduces her new foreign beau Renaldo, who’s about half her age; the two have always wanted children, so why not take Sean and Julia’s? Speaking of kids that ought to be taken away from unfit parents, Kimber drops her brood off with Christian for a night off with Mario Lopez, who has agreed to do Alexis’s surgery. Christian suggests he wants Kimber back – again – but she’s not buying it. And Julia visits her mother to try to bribe her with Sean’s surgical skills – “my lost youth for your lost children,” Erica mutters with disdain. Julia shouts that Erica is trying to steal her daughter’s life.

Christian visits Alexis to try to dissuade her from the surgery by explaining the messy and difficult procedure of reversing a sex change. He also states that Mario Lopez isn’t the guy for the job; Alexis agrees. Meanwhile, Sean meets with Renaldo and asks what his angle is; Renaldo insists his motives are pure and that he just wants to be a father and make the kids happy. Sean decks him, and one of Renaldo’s amigos catches it all on tape for further use in court. And Erica reveals that Matt is testifying against his parents; Julia slaps her mother.

Kimber’s been fantasizing about Christian while she’s with Mario Lopez, who promises that they’re “going to be so happy together.” He wants to take Kimber and Jenna out on a picnic, but she’s turned off by the idea and gets upset that he doesn’t know her schedule well enough. She wants space, she says, and Mario Lopez freaks out because he thinks she’s getting cold feet. Back at the recovery suite, Alexis gets all dolled up in a suit to show Christian what a pretty boy she makes, but Christian’s not interested in switching teams – especially when Kimber shows up and asks to get the Mario Lopez tattoo removed from her shoulder.

Part Two begins with Matt starring in his own personal episode of “Oz,” when Christian visits and meets Matt’s new cellmate Kessler. Kessler promises that Matt is safe but asks Christian to give Matt breast implants so he can be a real pretty girl. “There’s a precedent for this,” the creepy prisoner declares as this show out-creeps itself. This is all Erica’s doing, we know; if she hadn’t put those crazy ideas into Matt’s head... well, he probably would have gotten into a whole new world of trouble by himself.

Suing for joint custody, Sean and Julia subject themselves to some brutal training-by-lawyer, who grills them to prep them for the court date. But if you ask this reviewer, these two don’t stand a chance, despite the emergency Botox Sean gives Julia to look youthful against Old-Timer Erica. Meanwhile, Christian sells his boat to some Saudis (WTEfron?) in order to come up with a “donation to prison reform” to help Matt out of his sticky situation.

Erica bribes Annie with new clothes and what looks like a new cover-up wig just as Sean and Julia visit and announce their plans to rent a house. Erica doesn’t like it, though, claiming it’s a fairy tale that hasn’t worked before. Upstairs, Renaldo photographs Annie in her new clothes, something that is more than a little creepy. At the jail, Matt gets transferred to a new cell, but Kessler’s still on hand to rough him up some.

Alexis – now Alex – visits Christian again and gripes that (s)he isn’t being taken seriously by people, who recognize she’s post-op but don’t know that she’s post-post-op. Alex wants her breast implants back so she can seduce straight men again (I’d be fibbing if I didn’t see this reversal of fortune coming). Christian starts thinking metaphorically about Matt’s situation, so he visits Matt, who’s been brutalized like nobody’s business in prison. Matt says the only way to help him is by giving him the operation, but Christian doesn’t want to believe it.

While Sean and Julia house-shop, we start to get the feeling that maybe these two might be on the way to a reunion, especially because no one else can stand to be with either one of them. Once they start making out and canoodling, there’s little question. Sean tells Julia they need to play dirty – “just like Erica” – if they want to keep their kids. Sean says he wants to plant cocaine on Renaldo and get him locked up for ten years, but Julia flips her lid and flushes the stuff. Meanwhile, Erica gets passports in the mail for Annie and Conor, but she discovers that Renaldo is hiding something – Annie’s underwear. Told you he was creeptastic. So the circle repeats itself; Annie’s doing the same thing to Erica that Julia did – stealing her youth.

Erica reveals that she’s dropped the custody proceedings and left Renaldo, and Sean and Julia realize that there was something absolutely indecent about Renaldo. In the surgical suite, Alexis tells Christian that implants are nothing but silicone bags that can be put in and taken out at will. Christian daydreams about performing the surgery on Matt but ultimately backs out, slipping Matt something at the prison – a bottle of pills that’ll interfere with Kessler’s libido.

Julia and Erica bond over growing old and not looking like the same person you know you are on the inside – Theme Alert! – but Julia kicks Erica out of the country and tells her that “you’re dead to me.” In prison, Kessler brings Matt a brassiere, but the pills are already starting to take effect. Unfortunately Kessler finds the pills and menaces Matt, but Matt strangles Kessler with the brassiere. When Erica goes to the airport, the security team finds the bag of cocaine in her purse. Turns out Julia didn’t flush it after all! That steely-eyed look on Erica’s face tells us that maybe we haven’t seen the last of her. (Then again, this is “Nip/Tuck,” the show that let The Carver escape to Spain after a season of serial rape and murder, so abandoned plotlines aren’t exactly new.)

Verdict? In two halves, this episode was one of the strangest ones Nip/Tuck’s done in a while – and I mean that in a good way. Part I was quirky and a little whimsical, but Part II was perhaps the darkest episode of 88 so far (there are going to be a total of 100). Having said that, I was glued to this two-parter, glad that I had waited to watch the episodes back-to-back. I miss Rose McGowan’s Teddy, but I’m fascinated by where they’re going with this “Matt in prison” plotline. It was also great to see Vanessa Redgrave step in as Mommie Dearest again; I think a lot of people forget that she’s one of the show’s best antagonists (though last year’s Colleen Rose will always have my heart). Let the saga of deranged nutcases continue, because I’ll be there.