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New development are on the horizon for several of the show’s female characters. In the second season, Julia (Joely Richardson) reveals to husband Sean that Christian is the biological father of their son Matt, and this season’s premiere has her contemplating divorce, and entering into a “unique partnership” this season with Liz and resident sex addict Gina (Jessalyn Gilsig); other sources say they will be jointly opening a spa.

But later episodes will reportedly find Julia in an affair with another woman. Although her lover's identity remains a mystery so far, Roma Maffia told AfterEllen.com in a new interview that it won't be Gina. It may in fact be Liz with whom Julia has the affair, since we know Liz will finally be getting a love interest of her own this year, but Maffia won't confirm or deny this.

In addition to all of the sexual shenanigans, the show has no shortage of wince-worthy medical mischief. In season one, when Matt faces locker-room taunts of “anteater,” the boy tries to circumcise himself after his dad initially refuses to perform the surgery. And at one point last season, Christian breaks his nose while having sex then attempts his own rhinoplasty. The chilling (and, thankfully, off-camera) crack of the hammer hitting bone is still the talk of fan sites.

Nip/Tuck is notorious for graphic depictions of medical procedures. In each episode, the doctors cue up the music on the operating room stereo and the ballet begins, with the surgical team working in rhythm to slit, tug, pinch and smooth their unconscious patients’ pliant tissue. Often the patients are seeking the face lifts and lipo you would expect, but last season the doctors also took to providing pro bono reconstructions for victims of the Carver, a serial rapist who disfigures his victims’ faces.

Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy, an out screenwriter/director, has said that he hadn’t planned on the show’s masked villain becoming a recurring character. But because of the huge spike in ratings after the Carver was introduced last year, the villain will continue to terrorize Miami, and engross viewers, in the coming season.

Murphy cites the love triangle between Sean, Christian and Julia--and how those relationships are continually redefined--as the show’s enduring theme. In a recent interview with Entertainment Weekly he also says he has always wanted to present “a love story about two men who are heterosexual.” Referring to the continually challenged relationship between Sean and Christian, he says, “How many more obstacles can our guys endure and still remain friends? Sometimes we write things and say, They're never gonna get over this, we have to split them up. But we find a way of making it work.”

Nip/Tuck is all about delivering the outrageous and unexpected. But Murphy, who is also directing the upcoming movie Running with Scissors (2006), based on the life of gay writer Augusten Burroughs, tells Entertainment Weekly that he never feels “like anything we do on this show spirals out of control… When anybody said that to me about [the story involving Matt’s transgendered lover] being over-the-top, I reminded them how the pilot featured our two guys wrapping the villain in ham and throwing him into the Everglades, where he was eaten by alligators.”

That kind of ante is hard to up. But Nip/Tuck can certainly be counted on to manage just that in the season to come.

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