![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
On real pain and invisible ones
I'm speechless!
Well not really, but Nip/Tuck last episode was so dark, so tragic. It even made me cry. And I loved it. Joss Whedon trained me to be hurt and to like it...
I know I've only been doing tv reviews lately but I'm going to see Serenity tomorrow and I'm planning to watch Polanski's Oliver Twist on Sunday, so film reviews will come! But for now, Nip/Tuck deserves one!
I'm so sad for Sean, Christian and Matt...They are all hurting so much at the moment. As usual, Christian is the one who moved me the most, especially in his last scene with Liz. I really love the two of them when they are together. They have such a great chemistry.
BTW Liz gave the exposition of the whole arc while Christian and Quentin were performing surgery on a woman who had cut herself: physical pain is easier to deal with than invisible one because you can control it.
I couldn't help thinking of the lyrics I'm now listening to:
Doodles takes Dad's scissors to her skin
And when she does relief comes setting in
While she hides the scars she's making
Underneath her pretty clothes
She sings:
Hay baby can you bleed like me?
C'mon baby can you bleed like me
The old woman's story was quite touching too, and Sean was indeed very kind to her. She was becoming invisible because her Alzheimer-stricken husband didn't recognize her anymore, so she wanted to look like the younger wife he remembered. It made sense, except that of course life can't be that simple. It was a race she had already lost. The ending was so sad. She went through the risk and pain of surgery for nothing. The deterioration of his memory has progressed so he thought she was pretty but he still didn't recall her because he no longer recalled his wife and he introduced her to his new "girl-friend". Once more we got a sad threesome. That case pointed out that wanting to exist through the other's eyes was vain.
There was another invisible woman, Rhea Reynolds, who was supposed to be the new Carver's victim...except that she lied. She reminds me of Marcy in Buffy, the girl who became invisible because nobody noticed her. Rhea cut her face and pretended to be a victim of the Carver because she was craving attention. What a great twist. Because for once it was not a beautiful face but a mutilated one that was the solution of a woman's misery!
As usual it's Christian who found out she lied. Yet he and Quentin did the surgery. That scene was terrific but very hard to watch. Usually I don't have any problem with the surgery scenes despite the bloody flesh and the graphic operations...But that scene was different, because it made you feel the pain she endured. While they were opening her up and checking the inside of the wound we could hear her saying that they had to stop, that she felt everything and couldn't take it anymore and eventually she was just screaming. And we got that great shot of her still face with a tear rolling down...re-enacting Christian's face at the end of season 2! Looks like something went wrong with the anesthesy. Like him she was paralyzed but aware of everything, helpless, bearing the pain of the scalpel and the "saving" doctors turned out to do to her what the Carver usually does!
Despite all the darkness of the episode, there were funny moments like when the aged woman confessed she started writing mysteries novels after menopause, when Rhea let slip that she didn't cut herself with a fruit knife as Christian and Quentin suspected but with a bread knife! Or when Sean told Christian after checking his asshole, that he had nothing but a phantom pain in the ass and Christian saying then "what do you call for a phantom pain? Ghostbusters?". I loved that line.
Speaking of pain in the ass, Matt has been a real one with the restraining order he filled against his father, and we watched Sean going down when the social services came to interview little Annie, manipulating her and interpretating her answers. Sean certainly screwed up but it was unfair. The strongest/real pain is the one done by the ones you love or done to the ones you love.
When Sean begged Matt to hit him so they would be even, I cried for both of them. In the end, because Matt refused to hit him, Sean decided to deal with his emotional pain...physically. He cut his arm. In a way both Christian and Sean somatized their pain, Christian with a phantom one, Sean with self-mutilation. But Christian was brave enough to face it by volunteering to be anesthesized by Liz to test her stuff after what happened with Rhea. Even though he said it was like diving into a very needed oblivion, he must have been scared to put himself in such a helpless situation. That speaks volume on his relationship with Liz and it gives a bit of light of that episode. Sometimes you can trust people you love of not hurting you.
The only reservation I have about the episode is the ending scene with the Carver attacking Rhea to give her the "real pain" she had always wanted. It was unnecessary and it almost destroyed the brilliant twist of her surgery.
The more I think about it, the more I fear they're leading us to a revelation about Quentin being the Carver, which would suck IMO.
no subject
And word. I cried too. We're sentimental, perverted freaks. ;-)
no subject
Yeah we are freaks but at least we can feel!
:- )