It's been almost a year since the last episode of season five aired, leaving us on a cliffhanger when Sean was stabbed at the hands of Colleen Rose. The second part of the season picks up five minutes before the last half ended before eventually jettisoning us four months into the future where Sean is in a wheelchair following the stabbing and Christian has just been diagnosed with stage two breast cancer.
By the end of the episode both doctors examine their new scars, a metaphor for the toll time has taken on their body and it is clear by the end of it that both Sean and Christian will be facing their own mortality this season. This is only made worse by annoying new character Raj, a seventeen year old child prodigy who Sean brings into McNamara/Troy. No doubt the inclusion of Raj will only serve to annoy both doctors as the season grows on. In many ways this is the natural progression of the show, which has essentially been about Sean and Christian's mid-life crises from the get-go.
The cast's chemistry in "Ronnie Chase" is the best it has been in this show for a while. Christian and Sean are once again getting on, no longer squabbling over fame or who gets to screw Julia each week. Liz and Christian are also getting along on top of this. Their grudging friendship is often portrayed by the writers as being all out hatred and it was nice seeing them return to the dynamic they shared in the first three seasons.
This episode also dispatched Colleen Rose when Sean killed her. Typical of the first half of season five, Colleen veered from lonely fanatic to cold-blooded killer as the plot called for it, with scarcely any clear cut characterization. This episode also did away with Matt's incest storyline and while it had little resolution to it I'm not shedding any tears as these kinda plots are a dime a dozen for Matt. Next on the hit list in "Ronnie Chase" was the season four episode "Connor McNamara, 2026", which was explained away as being a dream and not how the future of Nip/Tuck will look. While contradicting creator Ryan Murphy's claims that the 2026 episode was canonical, the revelation that it was a dream fed into this episode's theme rather nicely as Sean explained that the dream had given him hope for the future. You decide, though: cheap retcon or justified doing away of a lackluster episode?
All in all, once the loose ends from last year were tied up, this is a solid episode not dissimilar to what we were used to in the first two seasons. If the show keeps this up we could be in for a good year of Nip/Tuck. Of course, the show's previous track record suggests it's only a matter of time until characters are shitting in hot tubs and being poisoned with fruitcake.
By the end of the episode both doctors examine their new scars, a metaphor for the toll time has taken on their body and it is clear by the end of it that both Sean and Christian will be facing their own mortality this season. This is only made worse by annoying new character Raj, a seventeen year old child prodigy who Sean brings into McNamara/Troy. No doubt the inclusion of Raj will only serve to annoy both doctors as the season grows on. In many ways this is the natural progression of the show, which has essentially been about Sean and Christian's mid-life crises from the get-go.
The cast's chemistry in "Ronnie Chase" is the best it has been in this show for a while. Christian and Sean are once again getting on, no longer squabbling over fame or who gets to screw Julia each week. Liz and Christian are also getting along on top of this. Their grudging friendship is often portrayed by the writers as being all out hatred and it was nice seeing them return to the dynamic they shared in the first three seasons.
This episode also dispatched Colleen Rose when Sean killed her. Typical of the first half of season five, Colleen veered from lonely fanatic to cold-blooded killer as the plot called for it, with scarcely any clear cut characterization. This episode also did away with Matt's incest storyline and while it had little resolution to it I'm not shedding any tears as these kinda plots are a dime a dozen for Matt. Next on the hit list in "Ronnie Chase" was the season four episode "Connor McNamara, 2026", which was explained away as being a dream and not how the future of Nip/Tuck will look. While contradicting creator Ryan Murphy's claims that the 2026 episode was canonical, the revelation that it was a dream fed into this episode's theme rather nicely as Sean explained that the dream had given him hope for the future. You decide, though: cheap retcon or justified doing away of a lackluster episode?
All in all, once the loose ends from last year were tied up, this is a solid episode not dissimilar to what we were used to in the first two seasons. If the show keeps this up we could be in for a good year of Nip/Tuck. Of course, the show's previous track record suggests it's only a matter of time until characters are shitting in hot tubs and being poisoned with fruitcake.
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