Nip/Tuck – Recap – Episode 3-4

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Episode: “Rhea Reynolds”
Reviewer: Tim Stevens

This week’s episode is chock full of goodness and the best of this season. And that’s even considering that, yet again, the theme of the week was actually spoken by one of the characters onscreen.

That theme, by the by, is that it takes time to heal and you must not rush it. Ugh.

But, as I said, I can overlook such overwrought exposition when the episode is this good.

The ball gets rolling this week when an elderly woman, Ellie Harkness, comes to Sean requesting extensive plastic surgery to look like herself several years ago. It turns out that her husband has Alzheimer’s and can no longer recognize her in “real life.” However, he does recognize her in a photo from some time ago so her logic is that if she looks like that again, surely it will click for him that Ellie is his wife. Sean rejects the case because of her age, the level of work involved, and the possibility that it will not help her husband at all. He stands his ground even after she brings up her guilt at having hurt someone she loved so badly which, of course, inevitably makes Sean think of Matt.

As if Sean was not already in the mindset to regret his striking of his son last week, a restraining order arrives to nail it home for him. He’s not allowed to speak to his son or come within 200 yards of him. At the moment, he has little time to deal with it, however, as he has to perform a reconstructive surgery (to eliminate scars on a self mutilator) and the team finds out that there has been another Carver victim.

Sean initially passes the victim off to another surgeon, feeling that it is the best for Christian and they have “done enough of them already.” Christian, however, who is steal suffering from psychosomatic pain from the rape, asks Sean to reconsider. His theory: by facing his own pain in another, he’ll be able to move beyond the incident.

Heartbroken about the restraining order, Sean finally makes it over to his wife’s house to discuss it and, of course, violate said restraining order. It turns out Julia never knew about the restraining order, but that does not stop Sean from claiming that it is all some attempt to win solo custody of the children. I must interject at this point that the fact that any court could actually attempt to award custody of their scotch swilling, bar attending, transsexual beating son seems almost alien to me. Sure, he’s supposed to be in high school, but when’s the last time anything Matt did felt like the actions of a high school student? Anyway, back to the story.

Christian and Quentin sit down for a consultation with the Carver’s latest victim, Rhea Reynolds. Things, unfortunately, do not quite go according to Christian’s plan. Instead of being shattered by the experience, Reynolds is almost…elated. She refers to it as a “miracle” and claims that it has given her life purpose by encouraging her to join the victims’ rights organization that helped her. Christian cannot swallow that as being real and rather rudely comments as such. Quentin intercedes, claiming that Christian “skipped his bedside manner class in med school” and finishes up the consultation.

Ellie Harkness returns to the firm to convince Sean to come with her to visit her husband at his home. Sean again expresses reluctance but goes ahead with it and finds things are almost exactly as Ellie claimed. Her husband is incredibly uncomfortable around Ellie and states that he has never seen her before. When Sean encourages the husband to eat because his wife is worried about him, the husband asks if Sean knows his wife, shows him that same old photograph and claims that she never comes to visit him. It is all too much for Sean and he agrees to perform the surgeries for Ellie.

Back at the firm, Christian is trying to apologize to Reynolds for his rudeness earlier and explains that he too was a Carver victim. At this point, things get uncomfortable as the woman refuses to discuss the incident with him, (despite having been all about it previously) and asks him about performing other surgeries, not related to the attack, while she is already under. Christian, (metaphorically), bites his tongue and suggests waiting until a later date to discuss doing anything elective.

Social Services arrives on Sean’s doormat just as he and Annie (his daughter…does anyone know where the heck she’s been?) are preparing to go out. The female counselor takes Annie into Sean’s room and proceeds to ask her question and inspect bruises while the male more or less interrogates Sean in his kitchen. When Sean hears Annie crying out in pain, he attempts to kick the duo out of his house, but is told that that is not going to happen.

Meanwhile, Christian takes his concerns to Quentin about Reynolds. He believes that she is faking the incident and is not truly a Carver victim at all. Quentin brushes Christian off, telling him that not everyone has to have the same pain as Christian to be a victim.

Stuck without anything to do, Sean drops in on Ellie just in time to see her bust a few of her stitches being overanxious. Here’s where we get our theme about not rushing the healing process, emotionally or physically. It would be a good scene if not for the sledgehammer of message needing to rain down.

All is forgiven, however, in the moment that follows, which is easily the best scene since the season started. In an intensely claustrophobic three minutes, the surgery team works on Reynolds as she, via narration, “shouts” at them that she is still awake, just paralyzed. In a week where you see the underneath of two people’s faces, this was the most nausea inducing moment. It literally made my skin crawl.

This leads to Reynolds suing the firm for malpractice for not properly putting her under. In an ironic twist, it turns out that while she was not a Carver victim (she did it herself with a butter knife) she is telling the truth about the paralysis.

Ellie, with Sean on her arm, heads over to the home once more. Initially all seems well as the husband perks right up, tells her she is pretty, and seems to acknowledge her name. That all deflates a moment later when he introduces her to his “girlfriend” Trudy. Despite the setback, Ellie stays and watches the movie on TV with her husband and his girlfriend.

Sean arrives home, exhausted, and who should he find there but his son Matt. For the family’s sake, Matt has rescinded the restraining order but tells his dad that the two of them are pretty much done anyway. Sean tries to stop him from going away, saying that they should exchange “pain for pain” (in other words, Matt should get off free punch). While this does let Sean strike a nice Christ like pose, it does not work for Matt. He calls his dad sad and leaves. Another interjection here: I hate that I agree with Matt on this because I think he is a terrible creature. As far as I am concerned, Sean, while not necessarily right, was not all that wrong either, in hitting him last week. However, Sean is a profoundly small and sad man in this moment.

Then we get treated to a patented Nip/Tuck montage that gives several of the characters a halfway solution to what they were hoping to find. Christian fares best as Liz sends him under to test the anesthetic as well as confront a portion of the Carver incident. Sean meanwhile, gets the pain he’s after by cutting himself with an impressive looking kitchen knife (one that looks more than a bit like the Carver’s). Ellie, finally, is able to sit with her husband and watch a movie without him being uncomfortable with her. She, of course, also has to deal with the presence of his girlfriend in this.

And just when it looks like things are a wrap, we arrive at the home of Ms. Reynolds. So does the Carver. Turns out that he does not so much like someone lying about being one of his victims so he gives her exactly what she wanted.