Hmmm... it cooled off a little, but there is a hint of thunderstorm in the air....

Still feeling 'punk', so I drank a lot of tea, and didn't eat, no hunger, and began the day by throwing up. And thought, 'Ok, you're grounded for today'....

Sooo... I was rummaging around in my dvd's, and realised I hadn't watched all of the fifth season of NIP/TUCK. I didn't care for the first episodes, and had a lot of stress at the time. Peter sick, Werner camping out on my floor.... was too distracted.

The beginning seened long-winded, just recycling the themes at the time, so I thought, OK.... at some point one should stop... The first four were stellar. John Amato of Crooks and Liars coined the word power cycling dvd's, and have talked about it before. If you are under the weather, nothing takes your mind off things like getting a season of a show out, and just watching them, one episode after the other. And I know I've said this before.

But today I was thinking, 'boy was he ever right!' No ads or nonsense, so the story lines become very tight, and become much more suspenseful, and it is a great distraction... like one very long movie that can make you laugh cry, cringe and keep wondering what the hell will happen next.

I watched the first four or five episodes last night, and the rest for most of the day today. The rest of the fourteen episodes at about 45 minutes each. And I think it was about the fifth, and this movie 'agent' shows up and begins to represent one of the surgeons. And I didn't recognise the makeover, but there was something in the voice... and went into shock. 'Of course! it's Sharon Gless!' Of former Cagney and Lacy fame, although she's done lots of stuff since, including the radical Mom on Queer as Folk.

I couldn't believe it. Her stylists made her nearly unrecognisable, and I could swear she was channeling Lucienne Goldberg. (For those who don't know, she played a heinous role in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal.) But believe me, she had it DOWN to the letter. I don't know if it was planned that way, but it was fantastic.... because...

Turns out the character isn't an agent, but a psycho. That is when it got REALLY good. She stalks Sean, one of the doctors. And he gets approched by another agent, and in one of the most weird murder scenes I have EVER seen, she gets him in her clutches and kills him. And it wasn't the what, but the how. There all always references to how she makes teddy bears as a hobby. And she gets the agent to her place, knocks him out with a bottle, he wakes up duct-taped to a chair, she wheels out this wierd machine, runs a vacuum sized hose into his mouth, and 'stuffs' him with sawdust. Till he dies. Then she studies him, sticks big buttons in his eyes, and puts his mobile phone into his ear. The machine was for making her teddy bears, you see.

All the while being 'dispassionate'. And sociopathic at the same time. She disappears for a bit, and at the end, she stabs Sean in his operating room with a very large kitchen knife, and he is hemmoraging on the floor, after just having operated on his daughter. Ok, well that was complicated as well...

Sean's ex-wife gets shot by the conniving daugher of her lesbian mother, so she wakes up with amnesia, of course. This after the daughter had been poisoning her with mercury for months. And sleeping with her ex-husband.

His partner Christian finds out he sired a daughter, who it turns to fall in love with his biological son, and he 'kills' his nemesis giving her one last sexual go-round on a balcony balustrade, does it too hard and she falls to her death from what seems to be the fifteenth floor, and dies. (There is a LOT of sex in that series...)

I know, it all sounds confusing. This is so pushing the envelope on all conceptions, it makes for fascinating watching. And it is ANYTHING but soap opera.

Still.... the fifth season seemed.... 'choppy' at first. The first four had driving narrative, and it really seems the writers weren't really so sure where to go with all the narrative strands at first. But when they pulled it together, they got the drive back.

Although I hate the cliff-hanger endings.

Sigh, just another Sunday here. The Tony awards are being streamed live on the CBS internet website. Might watch if I get up again at midnight. Will see...