On DVD Nip/Tuck-- power cycling -- no Spoilers.

I had seen the first season a few years ago. Daring, impressive, basically a triangle relationship with a lot of lies built into it. And two plastic surgeons get entangled with a Columbian drug smuggler and end up feeding an unwanted corpse to alligators in the Everglades. By hanging fresh hams on it. Now THAT is pretty much cutting - edge....

Well, have been ill all week, and decided to do what John Amato of Crooks and Liars calls 'power cycling'. Looking at full seasons of a show on dvd. Only I watched seasons two, three and four in close succession and got rectangular eyes.

Remember the old-style roller-coasters? Those little cars going up a looooonnnnnng incline before the 'fun' begins? (And I am terrified of heights, btw.) Well, that is what the second season was like, suspense building, and ends with one hell of a shocker. One of the surgeons gets his throat slashed.

The surgeries got more and more radical, and I had to go out to the kitchen and get a glass of water and just listen. Yup.

Seasons three and four were the rest of the ride, hey. The twists and turns in the plot were so amazing, I was nearly speechless. And kinda clueless. 'You can't DO that on televsion! can you?' kept running through my mind. And just when you thought you KNEW what was going on, they would throw in a red herring and put you off the track, and the 'reality' was totally something else... I love stuff like that.

After they had the wonderful Vanessa Redgrave in seasons two and three, and Jill Clayburgh doing an absolutely hilarious turn, all cast against type, in the fourth season they had people banging the producers' door down, wanting a role.

Brooke Shields as a psychopathic psychiatrist. I didn't even recognise her, hey. Kathleen Turner as a sex phone operator. Ditto. Larry Hagman as not so evil magnate. Alanis Morisette as lesbian. Even Catherine Deneuve, whom Peter worships. She was amazing, as always... Rosie O'Donnell as a trailer-trash potty mouthed red-neck who wins Powerball. Fantastic, as usual...

But casting Jacqueline Bisset as the 'heavy'? That was brilliant, and she really gave me the creeps. In the extras she said she was pretty shocked by the initial concept, but it intrigued her because she always plays 'pathetic characters'. The cast never know where their characters are going from one episode to the next, when they get their scripts, so she didn't know how eeeevil she was going to become.

And boy howdy, she was evil.

The fourth season pretty much wraps up all you can say about Miami. If there is going to be a fifth season, it will be in Hell-A with totally new characters.

That was so worth doing. And one hell of a ride. The last episode in season four? Was about a drug queen, organ stealer from Columbia who was tortured, and had her breasts removed, and is one big bleeding open scar.

And I learned in the extras that absolutely nothing shown on that show for surgeries is made-up. All that really happens.

And when I recently posted about meeting an Austrian member of the French Foreign Legion? He TOLD me that the worst thing he had seen in his life was seeing a woman in Chad who got her breasts cut off so that she would not be able to nurse her baby. And I thought, 'what bull, how could she LIVE, hey.' Seemingly, it is possible. And he was right.

It wasn't exactly the right choice for choosing a series the way I feel, but it was one Hell of a roller-coaster ride. And love that series.

Higly reccommended.