United States of Tara recently started its second season on Showtime. Toni Collette plays the title character, who is the mother and wife of a seemingly typical suburban family. Except that she suffers from Dissociative Identity Disorder. Tara is sometimes teenager T, perfect housewife Alice, redneck trucker guy Buck, therapist Shoshanna, and a weird subhuman creature that likes to pee on people. In Collette’s hands, this surprisingly all works—I have never had a moment watching the show where I did not believe in Tara’s transformations.

The supporting cast is also excellent. John Corbett plays Tara’s husband. He’s one of those actors who I always like to watch. Ever since Northern Exposure, he’s made everything he’s in better—see My Big Fat Greek Wedding and Sex and the City for examples. Rosemarie Dewitt steals all her scenes as Tara’s long-suffering sister. Keir Gilchrist and Brie Larson are the teenagers in the household who each are perpetually on the edge of their own meltdowns. (And I also enjoy occasional walk-on Patton Oswalt as Corbett’s buddy and Dewitt’s once and future love.) 

Season one focused on Tara’s multiple personalities and their effect on the family. Everyone seemed resigned to having four or five mommies, depending on how you count, but they handled it with good humor and fun. There was a bit of a mystery as to whether a pivotal event in Tara’s past had led to her disorder, but really it was an extended character study of a family dealing with the disease. Sure, there was the requisite bad language, sex, drug use and black humor—this is pay cable after all—but the overall tone was a sympathetic portrait of people I grew to like.

And right there is the problem with Taraand all the other wildly dysfunctional families on cable TV these days. Each of these shows sets up doomed character, convinces viewers to like him or her, then starts the inevitable march toward that character’s destruction. I know that some level of discomfort is intentional on these shows, but I find that there is a general sense of dread about the future in their storylines. (Of course, the other common factor is great, innovative writing, which is what keeps me watching.)

I get that dysfunction is conflict and conflict sustains shows, but it can be exhausting for the viewer. Two other prime examples are Big Love and Weeds, both of which I watch and enjoy. Like Tara, these can both be described with the same simple mad-lib of a pitch:

(Name of character) is a typical suburban (mother/father) … and a (socially unacceptable profession/lifestyle/disorder).

For Big Love, fill in Bill Hedrikson and polygamist. For Weeds, Nancy Botwin and drug dealer. (Those of you who are playing at home, try this out for other favorite shows such as Breaking Bad, Nip/Tuck, Dexter, Mad Men and so on.)

All these shows start from debilitating dysfunction and there’s nowhere to go but down. Nancy will get caught eventually by some law enforcement agency unless the various Mexican drug lords she hangs with kill her first. Bill will be exposed and shunned by an unforgiving public unless the polygamist cult leaders he’s pissed off kill him first. Tara will go back down the rabbit hole and nobody really knows who will come back out. And in each case there is a whole cast of supporting family members that are going to go down hard with them.

(For the record, the main reason that I haven’t picked up well-regarded shows like Dexter and Breaking Bad is that my quota is filled for getting invested in characters I know are going down in flames.)

These shows are perfect for cable where the seasons are shorter, typically 13 episodes rather than 22. So, even though the viewer has been watching for two seasons, the writers have only had to come up with the same number of plots and twists as a single network season. For shows like Weeds and Tara that are only half-hours, four seasons equals the time commitment of a single network year. This is crucial for sustaining these premises which would flame out if so many episodes had to be produced that quickly. You can really only take these shows in small highly combustible bursts.

This is all The Sopranos fault. It is the original dysfunctional cable family that all the others are modeled after. (The key mad-lib terms for those who don’t already know—Tony Soprano and mob boss.)

Maybe that’s why the end of The Sopranos was actually brilliant. The cut to black at the close of the final episode was seen by many as a cop-out. However, maybe it was just an admission that in the real world these extreme characters would either meet tragic or unredeemable ends, and the audience does not really want to see that. That leaves the ambiguous series end as the only believable way to let the character live on as the dysfunctional companion the audience has grown to love.

Back to United States of Tara. The beginning of season two has made it clear that her disorder will continue to slowly tear the family apart. The brief period of recovery that closed out season one has ended. Tara’s personalities are stronger than ever. And this is going to put unbearable strain on all the supporting cast. There is hope, however. At least in this show, there is a possibility of controlling the disorder and having a somewhat normal life. Imagine that. A family-based show with hope for a happy ending.

Kimber is starting to get a little crazy from all the Scientology bullshit and sees Xenu, if you have never heard of Xenu, which I hadn’t when I first saw this, check out this Wikipedia page, it’s actually pretty hilarious: en.wikipedia.org
Video Rating: 4 / 5

For 10 years, 47-year old Jane M. watched enviously as other women got their tummies tucked by the plastic surgeon whose Paramus office she manages.

But last June, she finally got her own done (with a little lipo while they were in there), and ever since, the envy has been flying the other way.

“Oh my God, I wish I was you,” friend after friend she said.

Goodbye shame, hello scalpel. Plastic surgery is morphing into a mainstream beauty tactic. Going under the knife for a tighter face or slimmer stomach is becoming more about good grooming, sort of like waxed eyebrows and manicured nails, and less about gaudy vanity.

“It’s so much more acceptable today – not like years ago, when people were afraid to tell people,” said Jane’s boss, Paramus plastic surgeon John T. Cozzone. “And it’s not just for the wealthy. Everyday normal people are doing it.”

And they are doing it before our very eyes. The prime-time television schedule was bursting with plastic surgery reality shows spotlighting the transformation of average-looking individuals to “beautiful” people. No matter that it may have involved three, four, or 12 surgical procedures. In almost every case, at least portrayed by the sheer joy at their “reveal,” the end justifies the means.

This is all part of the normalization of the cultural phenomenon, said critic Virginia Blum, author of “Flesh Wounds: The Culture of Plastic Surgery.” We are mid-stride in the evolution from the outrageous to ordinary.

“There is a feeling that if you can transform yourself, you can have a different life. That’s really an American story. And then it gets yoked to consumer culture. Buy this and you will feel better. A better body is a better something you buy,” said Blum, who herself had a nose job when she was a teenager.

The new packaged plastic surgery, in which a patient opts for a combination of procedures, “is like buying a car with all the perks. There is nothing left wanting,” she said.

Before the Seventies, people who had cosmetic surgery were considered pathological, Blum said. In the Eighties, celebrities who got it done were “outed” in tabloids and risked humiliation. Remember – just a couple of years ago – the tempest over the eye job Greta Van Susteren got before moving to Fox News Channel?

Soon, Blum argued, we will come to a time when it will be like getting braces, and people will wonder why someone didn’t get plastic surgery to fix their body.

“With Greta Van Susteren it will be like: ‘Why didn’t she have a whole lower body lift? She only had her eye lids done?’ It will move into a place where we criticize people for not having done more,” she said.

Sander Gilman, who has written two books about the history and culture of plastic surgery, traces the growing comfort with plastic surgery to the mid-Nineties, when the Discovery Channel first ran shows depicting patients’ experiences.

This season, there were four prominent plastic surgery shows; two – ABC’s Extreme Makeover” and Fox’s “The Swan” – were reality shows in which candidates were treated to a variety of services, usually including a large number of surgical procedures. The two contestants on “The Swan” then went on to compete for a spot in the show’s own beauty pageant, causing a stir among critics.

MTV’s “I Want a Famous Face” was a documentary series featuring young Americans who wanted to look more like a certain celebrity and often used implants, lifts and a host of other surgical techniques to make their dream come true. FX’s “Nip/Tuck,” a scripted drama, begins its second season June 22. “The Swan II” debuts in November.

Plastic surgeons say the programs have swelled their waiting rooms with new patients at a time when plastic surgery was already on the rise. In 2003, doctors performed more than 8.7 million cosmetic surgeries, up 32 percent over 2002.

“Especially this ‘Extreme Makeover’ has increased the volume of people who come into the office,” Cozzone said. “It has had a positive effect.”

Unlike the makeover shows, where the transformation can be dramatic, the vast majority of clients are not looking for wholesale makeovers, said New York plastic surgeon Mauro Romita. Rather they want smaller fixes, for concerns such as a bump in their nose or too many wrinkles, he said.

Still, the American Society of Plastic Surgeons (ASPS) was thrilled with “Extreme Makeover.”

“Out of it came many good lessons,” said Montclair plastic surgeon Allen Rosen, an ASPS spokesman. “They were taking patients with real cosmetic concerns and seeing that at the end of the day, they were feeling good about themselves.”

And it just happened to have altered a lot of people’s minds about plastic surgery, including that of one of the show’s executive producers, Lou Gorfain. Before viewing an episode, he considered plastic surgery “a vanity thing” and the concept of the program “very exploitive.”

“I thought, ‘What has reality TV come to: carving up people for the amusement of millions?” he said.

But when he saw the impact of the surgeries, his impressions shifted.

“These were people whose lives were deeply, deeply affected by their appearances. The changes they made were more than cosmetic. They made a holistic impression,” he said.

MTV’s “I Want a Famous Face” was more disturbing, perhaps because it documented an extreme segment of our society. MTV’s did not pay for the surgeries, it simply followed people who were willing to pay a high price, in both pain and money, for their new look.

Kate Winslet said she wept after watching a show in which a fan underwent extensive surgery to look more like her. In another episode, a blonde wanted the bust of Pamela Anderson so she could be a Playboy Playmate. A third spotlighted two brothers’ efforts to resemble Brad Pitt.

Rosen said a proper surgeon’s job is not to make others look like someone else, but to enhance and “bring into balance” the individual. However, the idea for the show came after following around young plastic surgery patients, most of whom brought in photos of celebrities, said co-creator and producer Marshall Eisen.

“We’re documenting what’s really happening out there. Part of what’s shocking to some people who see this is finding out how prevalent it is out there,” he said. Rosen argues that when patients bring in a photo to his office, which they do frequently, he uses it to help identify what they desire in a feature – sculpted and balanced or chiseled and strong – as opposed to trying to replicate someone else’s nose on another individual’s face.

But Eisen was not surprised to find so many people who wanted to look more like a celebrity. We live in a culture with an established beauty ideal, so it’s a natural outgrowth, he said.

Nely Galan, creator of “The Swan,” loves the idea that plastic surgery will soon be considered as normal to Americans as apple pie, as it is in much of the Latin world.

“To say you have plastic surgery is a status symbol. Beauty is very important to us,” said the Cuban-American, who hails from Teaneck.

American women feel bad about themselves because they can’t measure up to a celebrity beauty that exists largely as a result of the plastic surgery most of the stars are getting done, she said. As Galan sees it, the problem is not that people are getting the work done, but that no one is admitting it.

Perhaps, she said, if the media were more honest with their images of women, people would feel less need to achieve the same level of unattainable perfection.

“I hope that within the next five years, it will be very cool for actresses to admit what they’re gotten done instead of all trying to hide it and make people feel bad and think that they are somehow genetically better,” she said.

Studies three years after cosmetic surgeries show that patients remain satisfied, Gilman said.

“How many people, after three years, are still satisfied with their cars?” he asked.

Blum, however is less certain.

“I’m not anti-plastic surgery. But I think it is not making people as happy as it promises to,” she said.

Less invasive procedures and more outpatient work are making the procedures easier to obtain, another factor contributing to the increasingly blasé attitude toward the surgery.

Romita has an operating room in his Fifth Avenue office, where he can perform a short-scar face-lift, rhinoplasty, and breast augmentation, among other procedures. The shorter surgeries, which require less anesthesia, are more appealing to people who don’t want to stay in a hospital and don’t want to be out of commission for long.

“Now it’s like talking a gallbladder out,” Romita said. “Safer, faster, healing, and the results are better.”

Traditional plastic surgery costs have held steady for the past five years, but now the outpatient procedures are cutting them significantly. Anesthesia is 20 percent cheaper, and the facility costs are about 60 percent less. Where a hospital face-lift may cost between ,600 and ,000, a similar procedure in Romita’s office might be ,000, he said. The same is true for eyelids and noses.

Still, there are many people like Jane M., the doctor’s office manager, and an Oradell real estate broker interviewed for this story, who are very happy with the outcome of their surgery but remain reluctant to be quoted by full name.

“I’m still absolutely thrilled. It feels good,” said the 52-year-old real estate agent, who got her eyes done and plans to get a face-lift in a few years.

“I don’t think I would say too much to too many people,” she said. “There’s bound to be a story, some horror story, and that’s not what you need to hear.”

Oti kai na peis einai ligo …. Apla 8eos…….. Afierwmeno se ena agori poy uphretei ta ellhnika strata ….

Cosmetic surgery: it is the latest trend in overcoming self-esteem issues that stem from wrinkles, weight gain, skin disorders or breast size. Celebrities are doing it. Your friends are doing it. But should you consider cosmetic surgery?

Before taking the plunge, it is important to consider the reasons for wanting to have cosmetic surgery done. Ask yourself the following questions:

1. Is my condition bad enough that cosmetic surgery may be my only option?

2. How is this problem - that could be fixed by cosmetic surgery - really affecting my social or professional life, if at all?

3. Can I solve this problem on my own through exercise, counseling, medication, or over the counter creams, lotions, etc.? Am I doing this because it’s an easy way to solve a problem?

4. What are the benefits of cosmetic surgery? How will it change the way I feel or think about myself?

5. Are there underlying self-esteem issues that cosmetic surgery will only temporarily cure?

Cosmetic surgery can definitely make you feel better about your appearance, but only if you already have a positive self-image before any cosmetic surgery is done. People who have had cosmetic surgery have experienced greater self-confidence and improved social or sex lives, but there is not any solid evidence that it will improve your mental well-being.

Other Considerations for Cosmetic Surgery

Once you have determined that cosmetic surgery may be the appropriate option for you, it is also important to consider the following:

1. How is your overall health?

2. Do you have realistic expectations about the outcome of the surgery? By changing your appearance, there are no guarantees that it will solve your problems at home or at work.

3. If you are experiencing a very stressful time in your life such as divorce, grieving the loss of a loved one, job loss or mental illness, consider cosmetic surgery once you have overcome these difficult issues.

4. What can you afford to have done? Cosmetic surgery is expensive and typically not covered by insurance. Most of the time there is not a finance option for this type of surgery, so you will need to have the full amount up front before the procedure.

5. Do you have the time? With some procedures, there may be an extensive amount of recovery time (anywhere from one day to one month) that may require you to take time off from work or take you away from your household responsibilities.

6. Consider the risks involved; like any other surgery, there are possible problems that may arise or side effects that you may experience.

* Nausea, dizziness and pain

* Numbness and tingling

* Fluid buildup

* Poor blood circulation

* Infection

* Bleeding

* Uneven or lumpy appearance

7. The outcome may not be what you had hoped or expected. There are instances where cosmetic surgery has gone terribly wrong and the outcome was devastating. These are rare instances, but are still possible.

8. Plastic surgery is not suitable for people who are prone to mood swings or erratic behavior, abuse drugs or alcohol, or are receiving treatment for clinical depression or other mental illness.

9. Get other opinions. Make sure you chose a licensed surgeon who will discuss the pros and cons of your procedure, and will also be honest with you about what to expect after surgery.

* Make sure your surgeon is experienced and certified in the type of procedure you are having done

* Seek recommendations from people you trust, not merely a referral service

The Decision is Made

If you have now decided that the time is right for you to have cosmetic surgery, make sure you have a support network that will help you both physically and emotionally before and after the procedure. It is common that you may experience a bout of depression after surgery, so it’s essential that you have loved ones around who aren’t negative or judgmental about cosmetic surgery.

Don’t worry what you look like immediately after surgery. As with any procedure, you will not see the change right away, as there may be some swelling, bruising or scars that will fade with time. If you are having a procedure done that will dramatically change your appearance, be aware that you may need some time to adjust to the changes of your body, as will those who are close to you.

Sean continues to allow loose with Teddy (client star Katee Sackhoff), having sex in an open house and having excessive on tea built from ayahuasca. Christian’s cancer has spread, and with a bleak prognosis, he seeks out Liz in order to propose to her. Kimber requests a lot more collagen for Jenna’s lips. A man experiencing tree-like growths on his whole body undergoes pro-bono cure at McNamara/Troy.

Sean is reunited with one of his former patients from Miami, Allegra Calderello aka “pussy lips”. Allegra’s dying husband (guest star Richard Portnow) requests surgical treatment on his wife so she can attract handsome suitors right after his death.

Christian appears to hire his replacement at McNamara/Troy and sets his sights on Logan Taper (invitee star Richard Burgi), a classy medical doctor who appears to have a whole lot in typical using the Christian of aged, until his unusual fetish is uncovered.

Liz’s mom Mariela (invitee star Lillian Hurst) is in town in preparation for her daughter’s wedding day, but her attitude and comments only assist in producing Liz feel inadequate. At exactly the same time, Liz discovers that she can’t fit into her mother’s old wedding dress and decides to undergo a breast reduction. Invitee starring Katee Sackhoff.

Christian reveals his ideas to survive his cancer through cryogenic freezing. Sean worries about his relationship with Teddy (guest star Katee Sackhoff), whilst simultaneously preparing himself for Christian’s death.

Kimber’s marriage to Ram (client star John Schneider) falls aside, and she finds her whole outlook on her life changed when she discovers Christian’s upcoming nuptials with Liz as well as the motives behind them. Teddy is revealed to become dwelling a double living.

A girl comes to McNamara/Troy requesting surgery to resolve the bloody wound on her neck, suffered after a vampiric bite from her boyfriend went awry. As Christian prepares to depart on his honeymoon with Liz and Wilbur, his physician calls him with shocking news. Visitor starring AnnaLynne McCord.

Sex. Seduction. Liposuction. Find them all in the fearless Nip/Tuck, the award-winning series that’s the scalpel’s edge of entertainment…and the spark for debate about what cosmetic surgery can or cannot bring to a patient’s life. Get Nip/Tuck Season 4 on SD and Hi-Def, September 4th.
Video Rating: 4 / 5

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billythepuppet.wordpress.com Julia McNamara gets a surprise visit from her glamorous mother, successful child psychology author Dr. Erica Noughton, who has various reasons to want plastic surgery and insists that Sean should operate her; that even worsens his worries about an unsteady hand, and the specialist tells him it’s a fashionable psychosomatic condition without a medical cure. Christian wrestles with his instincts- while resenting Gina Russo emotionally blackmailing him with her halfbreed baby, he is determined to become a good father, but swears to keep his mundane (sex-)life, so he looks for a nanny and hires Linda, the candidate with the sexiest ‘fringe-benefits’, but finds she’s neglecting the child… Meanwhile the doctors operate on Libby Zucker, whose face is so horrible she’ll need at least five major, risky operations and is most uncertain in her ’steady’ relationship with attractive Chad Myers who she knows to have affairs.
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new nip/tuck season 5 promo for a high quality version of this video that you can download check out stage6.divx.com
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