Product Description

He -- or is it she? -- slices, they stitch. He maims, they heal. Plastic surgeons Sean McNamara and Christian Troy have vowed to make whole the victims of the elusive, mysterious serial slasher called the Carver. But mending the rifts in their own families and careers will require much more than their famed technical skills. Dylan Walsh and Julian McMahon return for a sensational Season 3 filled with eroticism, suspense and medical challenges ranging from a daring facial transplant to a 650-pound woman whose skin has fused with her sofa. There's a new doctor on staff, too: Dr. Quentin Costa, a tango expert and perhaps an expert at dissecting the practice for his own ends. Plus: Julia launches a new career, troubled Matt falls in with skinheads and the Carver turns out to be.... Sorry, our lips are sealed. Watch and find out.

DVD Features:
Deleted Scenes
Documentary
Featurette

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1111 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2006-08-29
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Number of discs: 6
• Formats: Box set, Closed-captioned, Color, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 6
• Dimensions: .70 pounds
• Running time: 723 minutes

Features

• He -- or is it she? -- slices, they stitch. He maims, they heal. Plastic surgeons Sean McNamara and Christian Troy have vowed to make whole the victims of the elusive, mysterious serial slasher called the Carver. But mending the rifts in their own families and careers will require much more than their famed technical skills.Dylan Walsh and Julian McMahon return for a sensational Season 3 filled wi

Amazon.com
Over-the-top yet well-written, Nip/Tuck was one of the most intriguing shows on television… until season three, when it took everything--everything--way too far. What once used to be a show about self-worth and society's perception of beauty as portrayed by plastic-surgery patients has become about the abject humiliation of women and rampant storylines. It alienated many fans, who found its love of excess ludicrous and at times, unforgivable. Maybe it was the storyline about Matt (John Hensley), who discovers the love of his life was actually a transsexual, shaves his head and starts dating a white supremacist (American Dreams' Brittany Snow). Or the disturbing new plastic-surgery cases (obese woman physically stuck to her couch, a 17-year-old petrified fetus). Or even the new surgeon Quentin Costa (Bruno Campos) who sleeps with male patients, romances Julia (Joely Richardson) and turns out to have a little "physical quirk" of his own? But the knife that truly stabbed the show's pace into the ground was the ongoing mystery of the Carver, a rapist/killer in a creepy porcelain mask who disfigures victims. Just when the show starts to jell, another character with their mouth cut Black Dahlia-style turns up and throws the show back into a whodunnit, and not even a well-crafted one at that: By the time they reveal the killer's identity, you just don't care anymore.

Someone also made a mess of the characters, or at least turned them all manic-depressive; the moral flip-flopping between Sean (Dylan Walsh) and Christian (Julian McMahon) is inexplicable at best. One goes wild, the other grows a conscience--and then they switch sides. One is on the brink of divorce, the other gets engaged--and another switch. It's headache-inducing how each of the main characters become nonsensical and not the least bit engaging. Here's hoping Nip/Tuck regains its mojo in season four. --Ellen A. Kim

Customer Reviews

This Season Needed Serious Cosmetic Work
I realize that by saying anything negative, I will alienate fans of the show. TV fans are a notoriously fickle bunch. I defy you--go to any other TV show DVD listing on Amazon. Pick one that you think is terrible and the fan reviews there will be 5 star! I think you can be a fan, but still be objective. There are lots of shows that I have loved for various reasons--but that doesn't always make them good shows. It means that I have overlooked their flaws.

Now let's talk realistically about "NIp/Tuck". I have seen every episode and continue to watch Season 4. FX created a whole roster of "adult" programs designed to provoke the viewers--to "push the envelope". Trust me, I respect that and I watch them all. "Nip/Tuck" started out a bit erratically--the first season, for me, was about 3 1/2 stars. I saw the promise, yet the episodes lacked a certain cohesion and the characters didn't seem fully flushed out yet. Season 2, however, really hit the stride. It became a gloriously over-the-top soap opera that was good, nasty fun! I LOVED it, especially the deliriously campy Famke Janssen storyline. Still didn't make it a "great" TV show, but it made for "great" TV. I'd have given it 5 stars on entertainment value.

Then there's Season 3. People who object to this season often site the "Carver" storyline as being problematic. I couldn't care less, the "Carver" plot was just as valid as any other (killing mobsters and feeding them to alligators from Season 1, anyone?). The problem for me was a lot more serious.

The show began to sell out it's core characters. Now I have never been a big fan of the McNamara clan. Strangely enough, they are the least compelling part of this show. But I accepted the characters-- and as long as they made sense and the writers understood who they were--then I was fine. The problem with Season 3 was that they no longer made sense. The plots and outrageousness came first! The writers made up the situations that "pushed the envelope" and then just plugged the characters into those scenarios however conveniently. So we had characters doing or believing things every week that were not consistent with the "people" that we knew. And if they needed to flip flop back for another storyline, that's what they did. Don't ask me to care about your characters if you don't! (Another FX show, the sometimes brilliant "Rescue Me" went through the same crisis).

I wish "Nip/Tuck" well, it seems to be starting season 4 in good, fun shape. No matter what, Christian will remain one hell of a great TV character. KGHarris, 9/06.

This show can't be missed!
Nip/Tuck took awhile to come back and when it did it didn't disapoint at all. It almost even convinces you that Christian was killed by the carver and it turns out that it's just a dream he tells Sean about. While Matt becomes more of a problem especially after he's told that Ava (Famke Janssen) used to be a man. So he sets out to find her or someone like her. Instead he gets mad and beats up a tranny when he sees that he/she has male parts. Matt later on gets chased down by he/shes that beat him up and pee on him.

Also Christian hires a new partner named Quentin while Christian thinks about his future as a plastic surgeon. Neither of them like him much and it doesn't help things when he trys to get with both of them on seperate occasions. Also of course it doesn't make Sean feel any better for him when he starts showing an interest in Julia.

Julia opens up a beauty spa and doesn't get the support from her mother that she wishes she'd get. Which leads to an excellent episode where Julia thinks her mom might've been on a plane that crashed. That's probably the most gripping episode next to the season finale. Things also get serious between Christian and Kimber and the season offers a lot of brilliant moments between the two.

The show can have it's gross-out moments since they are plastic surgeons but if you get into the story and the characters, the show is hard to resist. The season finale is just brilliant and has two edge of your seat moments actually occuring at the same time, now that's good tv! It also manages to make you feel for Matt after making him easy to dislike earlier in the season. He gets stuck in a very bad situation with a girl's father who has to be the most hateful guy on the planet. While Christian and Sean also are in a life threatening situation after it's reveiled who the carver is. This is just a brilliant season that deserves as many nominations as possible.

It is hard to believe how bad things get in the Third Season of "Nip/Tuck"
"Nip/Tuck" is a seriously f****d up television show. I thought "Six Feet Under" was pushing the limits and "Oz" always liked to pour it on, but even if you put those two shows together they are not as f****d up as "Nip/Tuck." There is no other word for it, especially since the producers of this show revel in the fact. I mean, we thought the Carver was pretty bad ("Momma Boone"), and that whole story gets worse ("Rhea Reynolds) and then finds two levels beyond that ("Cherry Peck," "Quentin Costa"). Mercifully that whole subplot comes to an end, although in a whole bunch of ways that we never would have expected. But given some of the other people we meet in Season 3, the Carver ends up being one of the saner people in South Florida. There is "Momma Boone," the obese woman who has to be surgically separated from the couch she has been sitting on for three years. What about the mortuary employee who created a woman, "Frankenlaura," from the body parts of other women? Or "Ben White," who suffers from Body Integrity Identity Disorder and wants his perfectly healthy leg amputated?

I have only recently gotten up to speed with "Nip/Tuck," because I was not especially interested in watching a television show dealing with plastic surgery. Not because I am opposed to the ludicrous extremes to which (primarily) women go in this country to attain an idealized notion of beauty, but because I do not like to watch surgery being performed. Specifically I do not like the cutting part. In high school they showed us a film in health class to dissuade us from smoking. It was not when they took out the cancerous lung that bothered me, but when they took the scalpel, made the initial incision, and then cracked the guy's chest with a rib spreader. "Nip/Tuck" likes to show as much as they can get away with, and even if it is fake, it takes a while to get used to. But apparently I am completely desensitized because there are dozens of victims of an airplane crash ("Sal Perri"), a face transplant ("Hannah Tedesco"), and a seventeen-year-old fetus (I will let you be surprised as to what episode has that surprising turn of events).

If you think the plotlines are f****d up, then you should see the characters. It used to be that I was pretty sure Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) was at the top of that list, but he might be the sanest of the principals given everything that happens in the third season, even though he tries to get married and finally meets his birth mother. Of course, it is hard for Christian to take comfort in his life when dating the likes of Kit McGraw (Rhona Mitra) and Abby Mays (Rebecca Metz), makes Kimber (Kelly Carlson) look good. Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) has a relatively easy year once he gets past Nicole Morretti (Anne Heche) and the fact that his new partner, Quentin Costa (Bruno Campos) is dating Julia (Joely Richardson). But then Julia's entire year is pretty much a case of it being the best of times and the worst of times. She opens up a successful business ("Joan Rivers") and her marriage ends, but certainly the year is exemplified by what happens to her when she learns the plane her mother (Vanessa Redgrave) is on crashed on takeoff ("Sal Perri"). Talk about having your best moment and your worst moment in the same episode.

Even though he is not in all of the episodes, Matt McNamara (John Henlsey), wins the award for having the worst year. His world is rocked when he visits Ava's house, finds Adrian's body, and then learns the truth about Ava from Sean ("Kiki"). If you thought Matt's relationship with Cherry Peck (William Belli) took him to the dark side, wait until he becomes involved with Ariel Alderman (Brittany Snow) and her father (Brian Kerwin). Then I remembered that he has Julia, Sean and Christian for parents, not to mention Ava as a therapist, and there is really no reason for us to think life will be much better for poor Matty. I can also justify my choice because when we get to the big finale in the season with the Carver plotline it is juxtaposed with the final act of the strange and twisted little journey Matt took during this season.

The obvious question at this point would be why do I watch "Nip/Tuck"? A large part of it is because it is so over the top. You would think that at some point they would run out of ways to keep piling things on, but that certainly did not happen in the third season. But beyond that what I find compelling is how despite wallowing in circles of Hell worthy of Dante (or at least David Lynch), these characters keep managing to find their humanity. When Shawn looks at Momma Boone and holds her hand as if she were not the side show freak that others consider her to be and when Christian can allow himself to actually feel something, their characters stop being cruel jokes. The revelation of the Carver's identity and the end game of that whole bloody affair are what dominate the final episodes, but for me it was Matt finding his way back from the dark side, even when the mouth of Hell opens up around him, that was the dramatic highpoint of "Nip/Tuck: The Complete Third Season." I want to think that it is all down hill from here and that there is no way the show can top how f****d up everything was this past season, but I think there is ample reason to be more afraid of the producers of "Nip/Tuck" that either a scalpel or the Carver.