"Nip/Tuck" attempts cutting-edge satire in season 5

(Above: Season 5 preview.)

 

When we last left the good doctors of FX's sexy-squirmy “Nip/Tuck,” they had moved their plastic surgery practice from L.A. to Miami from Miami to L.A. and were waiting for their first customer to walk through those doors.

Right … through those doors!

Those doors. Right there.

(crickets)

OK......

As season five of “Nip/Tuck” begins 10 p.m. ET Tuesday on FX, it's two months later and finally, someone has come through the door. It's the guy who sold McNamara/Troy their wall-sized aquarium. He's here to repossess the fish. If business were bad, that would be an improvement over this.

But Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) is, as usual, undeterred. “We owned Miami,” he whispers to his business partner Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh). “Sooner or later, we're going to make this town our b--- too.”

Which means, of course, that they won't, at least not until they've gone through the obligatory oh-you're-not-from-around-here humiliations right out of the TV writers' playbook. You would think two sophisticates like these would have looked around Beverly Hills before signing their Rodeo Drive lease and realized, hey, there are a lot of cosmetic surgeons here!

It's there, just as “Nip/Tuck” seems ready to stumble down one of the most well-trodden paths in show business -- the (tropical) fish-out-of-water -- that the show's creator, Ryan Murphy, telegraphs why he wanted to move “Nip/Tuck” to Beverly Hills.

It happens with the arrival of Fiona McNeil (Lauren Hutton), a publicist who's seen it all and looks it. (And may I say that Hutton, who's publicly stated her refusal to get plastic surgery, is just as striking in maturity as she was when she was model-perfect.) She sits the boys down for a crash course in making it in La-la land.

“Celebrity is power,” Fiona tells them. When Sean -- whose only claim to fame is that he once almost worked on Joan Rivers -- rolls his eyes, Fiona makes the doctors an offer: Turns out she's repping a TV drama centered on the lives of plastic surgeons, and they're looking to hire a pair of medical consultants.

“Are you saying being on a TV show would give us credibility?” says Sean.

Like he needed to ask.

After four seasons of showing us cosmetic enhancement from every conceivable angle, “Nip/Tuck” is ready to take its scalpel to something else: the entertainment industry. I'm not saying it's going to work, or that “Nip/Tuck's” longtime fans will appreciate the gesture, but tonight's episode introduces us to a show-within-a-show that is simply dreadful, and that alone (to this TV critic) is worth the price of admission.

The show is called “Hearts 'n' Scalpels,” and it looks like kind of a soft-core medical drama. If “Nip/Tuck” had fallen into the wrong hands -- say, a dull-witted producer for Showtime or CBS -- this would be that show.

By casting Oliver Platt as the manicky, over-his-head showrunner of “Hearts 'n' Scalpels,” by forcing the show-within-a-show actresses into pushup bras, and by allowing formulaic dialogue onto his set (“She's crashing! Omigod, get the crash cart!”), Murphy seems to be exacting some personal revenge on network television. (Not FX! No, not FX -- network television.)

And if that isn't meta enough for you, Sean and Christian seal the deal with the producer by offering to share some of their actual medical cases with them. And the first one they come up with is … well, remember the woman from season two who got her, you know, grafted onto her lips?

Yep. And wait till you see what mincemeat they make of it.

As for customers, they start coming through the doors of McNamara-Troy. (By the way, “Nip/Tuck's” new set is so ritzy it makes “House” look like a game show.) For it turns out that being complete unknowns is an advantage when the client is looking for a little discretion. Like the movie studio producer (Craig Bierko) who hires them to remove some dominatrix marks from his chest. (“Every bite,” he says philosophically, “somehow restores the balance.”) Or one of Fiona's clients (Daphne Zuniga) who's facing 40 and the prospect of never working again unless someone works on her.

Starlets aren't the only ones getting a fresh start here. In ways that are only touched on briefly in the first hour, Sean and Christian each have ideas about how they will reinvent themselves inside the Thirty Mile Zone.

Also going under the knife this season are the Church of Scientology, Paula Marshall's clean-scrubbed image, and Dawn Budge, the memorable season-four lottery winner played by Rosie O'Donnell.

Speaking before TV critics this summer, Murphy tipped us to the show-within-a-show part. But he also said Julia, Sean's ex-wife, would be returning -- and brought Joely Richardson to the press conference as proof. Portia de Rossi is also joining the show as a gay acupuncturist, and as a result, we're told Julia is going to be, for once in her life, very happy.

So enjoy the campy Hollywood satire, but Murphy promised that he will be getting back to basics this season. “The heart of the show is the family, and particularly the relationship between Sean, Christian and Julia,” he said.