Nip/Tuck: Best Gay Friends, Gay Porn, and more!

I'll say one thing for FX's hit drama Nip/Tuck, it's never, ever boring. This show has more going on in one episode than some show's cover in an entire season. Actually, I'll say something else for Nip/Tuck, for better or worse, gay and bisexual people are part of this world. One of the standards by which this site judges programming is by how gay and bi inclusive it actually is.

Some shows, say Men in Trees or Grey's Anatomy, might have one nominal gay character that shows up once in a while. Or they very occasionally do a gay subplot, but for the most part us gay folks aren't really part of the landscape. For better or worse, that definitely isn't the case on Nip/Tuck as last night's episode clearly points out.

It featured out actor/singer/queer guy Jai Rodriguez as Chaz Darling, Best Gay Friend of the show's new teenage villainness Eden Lord. She's the daughter of Olivia Lord (out acrtress Portia DeRossi) who is currently lovers with Julia McNamara (Joely Richardson).

The episode starts with Chaz dropping by McNamara/Troy because he's got a little something he wants fixed.

Turns out going to the White Party with a nipple that large is just a big ol' no-no. This scene gives us our first inkling of what a bad egg that Chaz is going to turn out to be. In fact, he later goes on to tell Eden, already too skinny, that she needs liposuction because a negative size two is the new size zero. It's not exactly a positive portrayal of gay men as Chaz is utterly obsessed with looks and body image. Thanks to Eden's help, he forces Troy to perform surgery to repair this horrible flaw with his chest. Here I was thinking a really big nipple ring would distract from it and be a whole lot cheaper.

The show features a secondary storyline about Matt McNamara's (John Hensley) meth addiction forcing him to turn to gay porn as a way to support his family. It's initially his wife that they're trying to line a gig up for, but when Ram Peters (John Schneider) gets a look at how haggard she looks it's Matt that he offers the job to. Turns out he has a website called "First Time Fairies" and Matt has just the right twink look Ram wants for the site.

So Matt shows up, gets, um, prepared, and arrives to film his scene for $5000. Then he meets his "co-star" and wonders just what he's gotten himself into.

Just then his junkie wife arrives to drag him away telling him that their Scientology-like church is willing to help them get clean. (BTW, I found interesting seeing Born-again Dukes of Hazzard star John Schneider playing this role. And is it just me, or has Mr. Schneider had a little work done himself?)

Now Nip/Tuck is certainly not everyone's cup-of-tea and the show's out creator/writer Ryan Murphy certainly has share of detractors in the gay community. Bruno Campos' bisexual serial killer in Season 3 certainly didn't make too many in the gay community happy and I, too, am tired of that stereotype. And none of the above storyline's in last night's episode are what I would call gay-friendly.

But I think that's beside the point. I judge Nip/Tuck not on how it treats its gay characters in terms of all gay representation on television, but in the context of the show's world. And in that respect, it treats it's gay characters pretty much the same as its straight ones -- that is to say terribly. Everyone on this show is screwed up, depraved, addicted to something, weak, pathetic, and, well, you get the picture.

Frankly, I give Murphy credit for so frequently including gay content in the show, from gay storylines and issues and characters to casting all sorts of out actors like Rodriguez, Rosie O'Donnell, Portia DeRossi, and Richard Chamberlain on the show. If other dramas were half as gay inclusive we wouldn't keep writing articles about the decline in the number of gay characters on television.

Is the show perfect? No. Is it for everybody? Definitely not. Does it sometimes cross the line of good taste? Oh, yeah. Am I glad it exists? You bet!