Nip/Tuck Joins Us On Rodeo Drive

The famous plastic surgeons from Nip/Tuck will be joining us here on Rodeo Drive.  The television show will premiere this week and their new location will be right here on our shopping street.  We'll be watching closely since in real life we are the only plastic surgery center on the boulevard.  It will be interesting what sort of stories they come up with, they tend to have interesting plotlines involving celebrity plastic surgery and other interesting ideas.  For now we will stick with our usual Mommy Makeover and rhinoplasty procedures, though.

Here is how the media is reporting the move:

Viewers will see for themselves when FX’s “Nip/Tuck” shifts locales for its fifth season, beginning Tuesday at 10 p.m. on FX.

Julian McMahon, who plays randy plastic surgeon Christian Troy, welcomes the change.

“We did four seasons in one city,” he said. “Now we have the injection of energy from a new city. It’s kind of opened up the box a little bit.”

Series making such changes usually do so out of a last-ditch attempt to save a sinking ship. “Nip/Tuck,” however, has consistently been among FX’s top-rated shows.

Moving to Hollywood will make the drama a bit more comedic, McMahon said.

The show will parody itself in a story line in which Dr. Troy and Dr. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) work as consultants on a TV drama set in a hospital - think “Grey’s Anatomy” as done through the eyes of “Nip/Tuck.”

Along the way the two men will find new loves and even crazier patients. Sean’s ex-wife, Julia (Joely Richardson), will pop up - with a girlfriend (Portia de Rossi).

“The show has a completely new look,” said creator Ryan Murphy. “Everything, I think, is shinier and bigger. But we do tackle pretty much the hot-button topics. The show is still as sexy as it’s ever been, maybe more so.”

FX has poured millions into the new sets, located on a soundstage on the Warner Bros. lot. The new digs are expansive, taking up the length of a football field. New offices and apartments retain the show’s signature flair for sleekness and classiness but with less flamboyance.

Look through a window on one of the set’s faux apartments and you’ll see a tarp with a beach scene on it. Stand a few feet back and that same tarp looks eerily realistic.

Tricks with lighting and distance will give the tarp the look of a real beach as seen through a window.

Murphy says this move to Hollywood isn’t just an excuse to get new sets.

“One of the things that we wanted to do by moving this show to L.A. is to explore the theme of L.A., which is people who come to this city to reinvent themselves and go after their dreams,” he said.

When he created the show more than five years ago, Murphy was adamant about it being set in Miami and not Tinseltown, which, at the time, seemed cliched to him.

“Miami has got it all,” Murphy said then. “It’s got the crime, the lifestyle, the skin, the Latin-American influx, everything that I wanted to deal with.

“Really, the only other place to do the show would be Beverly Hills and actresses who need boob jobs. I don’t care about them. I didn’t think anyone would like those people.”

So what changed?

The show needed to be shaken up, Murphy said. The characters had played out Miami. Though the entire cast is returning (the stories will work them all into the California move), he wants “Nip/Tuck” to take advantage of fresh terrain.

In the end, though, McMahon says the change is all about taking another risk and seeing where it leads the stories and its characters.

“Look, man, this is TV,” he said. “After four seasons, you have to be willing to give something else a try.”