Season 4 of Nip/Tuck is the season of guest-stars galore. You name it, they are here. It's an impressive list of who's who: Larry Hagman, Sanaa Lathan, Bree Walker, Kathleen Turner, Brook Shields, Amanda Pays show up in the first episode alone. But there is more along the way with the likes of Jacqueline Bisset, Mario Lopez, Peter Dinklage, Dean Norris, Melissa Gilbert, Rosie O'Donnell, Burt Bacharach, Alanis Morissette, Robyn Lively, Danny Strong and Ronn Lucas. With a star-studded cast, it does offer up a few great episodes. Two in particular pretty much steal the show. Of coruse I'm referring to Dinklage story arc as the nurse for Conner. It's a great role and really have him a chance to flex his acting muscle. The other one of note is Rosie. For starters, I'm not much of a fan of hers. She annoys me most of the time. But her role here as a newly-minted Millionaire was beyond fantastic. She was hilarious. Her sex scene with Troy is priceless and hilarious for all the right reasons.

Okay, that's the good stuff. Now for the "bad". As much as I like seeing stars pop up. I think it was just way too much. It was like everyone in Hollywood was trying to get onto the show because it was the hottest, water-cooler show on the air at the time. With the amount of celebs rolling in this season, it kind of took away from the core cast at times, especially with the Michelle / James story arc. Season 4 is a fun season, but by comparison to the first three season, there is a very noticeable dip here. For starters, the whole Kidney Harvesting arc was a step down from the previous seasons Carver story. The other thing I didn't care for was the Matt / Kimber arc. It was weak from the start and never got off the ground and it was hardly ever given the chance to go anywhere. Why? Too much focus on the cameos. which ate up their screen time.

With that out of the way. Time to address some of my favorite episodes and as you can guess, they all involved returning secondary characters like Mrs. Grubman, Gina, Megan, Bobolit, Natasha and Escobar. Grubman's farewell episode was just f*cking awesome. Having her sing with Burt in the operating room was....priceless and one of the true standout moments in the entire series for me. Always great to see Escobar pop back up and he comes back in a big way. He has a few episodes that culminate in the Season Finale. Just sucks that had to kill him off. But it does set up for a fantastic call-back moment when Sean, Christian and now Liz have to dispose of his body, along with a sh*tload of hams.

Speaking of the Season Finale. I kinda dig that Ryan Murphy was channeling his inner Paul Thomas Anderson with the whole sing-along scene. It was ripped right from Magnolia and it's a great way to tap into all the character's feelings at once and keep it interesting while doing it. Still an enjoyable season, even though it obviously was uneven. Worth a Rent.

Maybe my fave moment of this season:


That made me laugh so hard.  Made the whole future episode worth it (and I was wondering how the heck it was going to affect the regular series, I'm glad they mentioned in the next season it was a dream.  And that Christian looks like Ricardo Montalban).

I didn't see Dinklage's name in the credits, so it was a HUGE surprise when he showed up.

Matt and Kimber together did seem weird, I agree, but boy I never would have imagined that their relationship would keep going and screw up the rest of their lives.  If only Kimber had at least kissed the mom, then she could have had an affair with EVERYONE in that family (we're not counting the daughter, she's barely on the show anyway).  I mean, I can totally see Kimber falling for scientology, and Matt is a hapless enough idiot to fall into it, but I would have thought for sure that there would have been repercussions for them leaving.  The practice should have REALLY suffered for trying to get Matt out of it, you know?

Oh man, I loved that sing-along at the end as well.  I don't know why I fixated on Christian singing.  That was strange.

Man, this show is a total twist the knife show, did I mention that?  It's not enough that their new boss was a prostitute, she's also an organ thief!  Etc etc.  Everything's as nuts as it could possibly be, and somehow it works.  How did they do that?  I gotta figure that out since that's where my mind goes.