Extreme makeover nearly enough for new season of ‘Nip/Tuck’

The new season of "Nip/Tuck" throws so many TV clichés at viewers, you're almost surprised that Christian (Julian McMahon) doesn't use too much laundry detergent and flood the house with bubbles or that Sean (Dylan Walsh) doesn't get himself trapped in a meat locker, a bank vault or a spooky, abandoned Old West jail.

Everything about the new episodes (10 p.m. Tuesdays, FX) reeks of desperation. The new surroundings. The in-jokey show-within-the-show. And the tidal wave of recognizable guest stars -- Lauren Hutton, Bradley Cooper, Paula Marshall, Oliver Platt, Daphne Zuniga, Tia Carerre, Jennifer Coolidge and Craig Bierko, and that's just in Tuesday's season premiere -- that would capsize "The Love Boat."

But somehow -- be it skill, dumb luck, or the fact that it's not as off-the-rails unwatchable as it was last season -- the whole thing works.

At the end of season four, Sean and Christian decided they needed a change -- and, presumably, new women to bed. So the plastic surgeons loaded up their truck and moved to Beverly.

It would have made a satisfying series finale, and I actually groaned when the drama was renewed. But 15 minutes into a screener of the new season's episodes, I was already on the phone excitedly telling people that "Nip/Tuck" was back. Talk about your extreme makeovers.

Tuesday's premiere opens with a walkthrough of the duo's swank new Rodeo Drive offices, scored to the old Vegas sounds of "The Best Is Yet to Come." Past the waiting room that feels like an ultralounge, amid the pricey objets d'art and seemingly choreographed tropical fish, each new scalpel sparkles, and every new piece of medical machinery shines. It's as if Joan Rivers designed a suite in the Palms' Fantasy Tower.

But things aren't as rosy as they seem. Sean and Christian have sunk all their money into the new digs, and business is so slow, they've installed a basketball hoop in the operating room to pass the time. "It's been two months without even a Botox shot," Sean complains. When the repo man comes for the fish, the two finally take action.

A botched evening of trolling for clients in nightclubs leads them to PR mastermind Fiona McNeil (Hutton), who sets the boys up as technical advisers on an over-the-top medical drama.

"Hearts 'n Scalpels" stars Aidan Stone (Cooper) as a very Christian-esque bed-hopping plastic surgeon. "Car accident? I'll be there in 10," he says during an emergency phone call that's interrupted his foreplay. After hanging up and turning his attention back to his date, he slyly adds, "Ten orgasms."

He's the kind of surgeon who, without irony, screams things like "Not on my watch. I'm not losing another one. I am not losing another one!" And who, during a tourniquet shortage, rips off his scrubs -- top and bottoms -- to stanch a patient's bleeding.

With that kind of writing, you can see why "Scalpels" creator Freddy Prune (Platt) feels like he's in over his head after just five weeks. "I have no case" for episode six, he confides in Sean and Christian. "And I can't keep ripping off episodes of 'Chicago Hope.' They'll start suing me."

Once they tell Freddy about one of the outlandish procedures they performed, way back in season two -- one that I'm not about to repeat; some of you may be eating -- it becomes a "Scalpels" story line, and Sean and Christian are given producer credits and the occasional line on the series.

The "Scalpels" moments make for more genuine fun than the series has seen since the first season. And if you only know Cooper from his work on "Alias," prepare to be enthralled.

The only problem is, Cooper and his show-within-the-show co-horts are too good. Whenever "Nip/Tuck" gets back to its roots -- Sean, Christian, their relationships and their patients -- things tend to drag. Maybe it's because the good doctors already have encountered every bizarre twist imaginable and performed every sex act known to Larry Flynt.

So far, the season feels like one enormous backdoor pilot -- the way ABC's "Private Practice" was spun off from "Grey's Anatomy" -- and I hope that's the case.

There was talk last year of spinning off Rosie O'Donnell's Dawn Budge character, who's back again this year, so the idea isn't unprecedented. With Cooper, Platt and Marshall (as an actress playing another member of the medical team), a "Scalpels" series would have one of the best casts on TV.

Besides, when the sight of Christian having a threeway with two Marilyn Monroe impersonators is less shocking than oddly comforting, maybe it's time to move on.

Christopher Lawrence's Life on the Couch column appears on Mondays. E-mail him at clawrence@reviewjournal.com.