HOLLYWOOD — The new series "Nip/Tuck" is gross, disgusting and vile.
And I like it. A lot.
What's gross, disgusting and vile about "Nip/Tuck" (Tuesday, 11 p.m., FX) are the surgery scenes. This is a show that centers on two plastic surgeons, and the scenes inside the operating room are so realistic they might make you sick.
"When I was doing the pilot, I felt a certain obligation to really show you what somebody goes through," said creator/executive producer/director/writer Ryan Murphy. "I mean, these are violent surgeries. And I wanted to properly convey that."
What he didn't want to do was one of those before-and-after shows (like "Extreme Makeover") that leave out all the pain of the surgery and recovery. "To me, it's the equivalent of doing a cop show without showing a gun being pulled. Doing a show about plastic surgery and not showing the truth of these operations, to me, would be irresponsible."
If you can get past the ick factor, "Nip/Tuck" is really a character drama that recalls "Six Feet Under" or "The Shield" — powerful stuff that's not just gross, it's engrossing.
Dylan Walsh and Julian McMahon star as plastic surgeons Sean McNamara and Christian Troy. Longtime friends and business partners, they're sort of polar opposites — Christian is an ethically challenged ladies man; Sean is a family guy who's hugely conflicted between his lucrative practice and his desire to do charity work — and the fact that his family is falling apart.
"I wanted to do a love story between two guys." Murphy said. "It's a heterosexual love story, but I wanted to do something that follows the course of this friendship."
Sean's wife, Julia (Joely Richardson), is angry and bitter, and she and Christian harbor a secret attraction for each other. Sean and Julia are the parents of two children — 16-year-old Matt (John Hensley), who feels out of place because he's not circumcised (really), and pre-teen daughter Annie (Kelsey Lynn Batelaan), who seems the most normal of the bunch.
And it's certainly not just about the surgeries. The 90-minute pilot, which runs about 66 1/2 minutes (minus commercials), has only "a little under two minutes" devoted to surgery.
"All along, my idea for the show was to do a show that doesn't glamorize plastic surgery. I was very interested in the idea of, wow, people are willing to endure an incredible amount of pain to make their lives change," Murphy said. "But the show that I wanted to do is not a show about plastic surgery. Plastic surgery is the jumping-off point. The show that I wanted to do is about how people transform their lives on every level."
Tuesday's pilot episode is just crammed with action — those gross surgeries (including a liposuction gone horribly wrong), a plot involving a drug dealer/child molester looking for a new face and the drug baron who's searching for him; some fairly explicit sex scenes; and no small degree of violence. Just wait 'til the alligator gets involved. (FX isn't HBO, but this is very much in the vein of "Six Feet Under" and "The Sopranos," so parents should take all of FX's parental warnings seriously.)
While there's a lot of buzz about the surgery scenes, they're really not what the show is about. "There's almost sort of a watching-a-car-crash-driving-by effect, where you're appalled and you can't believe it, and yet you're interested," Murphy said.
"Or it's like a great horror movie," McMahon said.
But what's really intriguing is the character development. These are fascinating, extremely flawed people who ring true. Episode 2 is actually less noisy, but more interesting than Episode 1.
"The second episode, to me, is really the show," Murphy said. "There's an emotional feeling and and intimacy with these characters. . . . All the characters in this show have something in common, in that I think they are alone in a populated world. And I'm very interested in the topic of intimacy and how none of them really have it."
So close your eyes during the gross stuff if you have to.
"If we've done our job right," Murphy said, "I think that you'll be so engrossed in what the characters are going through that you will turn back every week — not to see the surgeries, but the love triangle and (the other personal stories)."
E-MAIL: pierce@desnews.com