TVSquad

Holy moly, back on track. I'm starting to appreciate last week's mediocre episode a little more now, because it made last night's installment so much better. This was the first ever Nip/Tuck Christmas episode (the previous two seasons started early in the summer and wrapped before December rolled around), and celebrating the holidays with everyone's favorite dysfunctional plastic surgery team didn't disappoint. As usual, it gave you numerous reasons to feel like you needed a shower after watching it.

Our title character last night was Joy Kringle, the wife of a mall Santa Claus. They're promoting a healthy lifestyle, but Mrs. Kringle was having some trouble dropping the pounds, so she's getting lipo. During the surgery, Sean and Christian find a lump in her stomach... not that kind of lump. It's a lithopedian, or more properly, a fetus which died in the womb and hardened through the process of calcification. A stone child. Mrs. Kringle never knew that her affair with one of her husband's helpers (she was sleeping with an elf) resulted in a pregnancy. Once Santa found out about the infidelities, he left her for some super-model who worked at Cinnabon. Gotta love that, Santa just wanted some tail.

Matt hasn't stopped being an idiot. Ariel is still his girlfriend, and he agrees to help her steal the nativity scene from their school front lawn. Why steal it? Because it's a black nativity scene set up by the African American Student Club. And what do good little racists do with black nativity scenes set up by the African American Student Club? Paint it white, silly. Two coats, preferably, because Ariel wants to make sure that you can never tell they were ever black. During the painting session, Ariel confides in Matt. While researching her family tree, Ariel found out that her mother's great great grandmother was black. She's convinced that she's going to turn black any second so she has Matt steal some industrial strength bleaching cream from his mom's spa. Ariel puts it on against Matt's wishes and she almost melts her face off. Christian takes care of her (the burns aren't too serious) and Ariel's father shows up. Matt tells him about the family tree, but Ariel blames it all on Matt. Fun times.

On the Sean/Julia front things gets crazy. It's the holidays and Julia is working too hard. She almost faints, so Sean checks her out - gives her a flu shot and runs some blood work. When it comes back, Sean finds out that she has a bun in the oven. Just what we need, Quentin Jr. running around. But wait, two weeks ago in the hot tub, Julia asked Q why they hadn't gone crotch spelunking yet. And Quentin confirmed this when he picked up his buy-out check from Christian. Julia only slept with one other man that we know of: Sean. Christian tells Sean what Q said. So Julia knows and Sean knows, but Julia doesn't know that Sean knows. Got that? But Sean being the kind chap that he is, he brings Julia to ye olde abortion clinic. She comes clean with him, but he already knew... and she doesn't go through with it. So they leave together, holding hands. Actually, a really nice, feel good moment for those two.

Matt spends Christmas Eve with Christian. Two single guys, watching football, and eating Chinese. It was a good moment for them as well, bonding and such. Christian admits he's still thinking about Kimber. If only he knew where she really was. The episode ends back at the nativity scene. All the figures are white, but it starts to rain, and the paint runs. Soon they're all black again. You can't hide who you really are. Good way to leave it since next week's double episode season finale will finally unveil The Carver. Check out the new MySpace videos if you haven't yet, freaky stuff. Seven days... and the mask comes off.