Boris Kodjoe Guest Stars On Nip/Tuck

Finally got around to watching last week's Nip/Tuck episode "Chaz Darling" which, to my delight, co-starred the excessively pulchritudinous Boris Kodjoe (Soul Food, Love & Basketball, Madea's Family Reunion) as a "successful African American lawyer in Los Angeles" who runs a heterosexual swinger's club where Black men have sex with white suburban housewives while their husbands watch.

It was great to see Boris Kodjoe on television again, he looks as phyne as ever as you can see from the picture above. The storyline was a bit problematic, although the stories about actual swingers' clubs like this have been swirling about the 'net for awhile now. On the show, Sean is freaked out after his girlfriend confides that the thought of Sean watching her getting her brains frakked out by a "Big Black Stud™" like Boris. Sean himself seems oddly titillated by his client's activities (Kodjoe comes in to the plastic surgeon's office with huge scratches down his back reminiscent of the injuries caused after a slave's whipping) although he professes disgust at the entire notion of white couples getting serviced by black men.

In another story line, the also excessively pulchritudinous AnnaLynne McCord attempts to blackmail Christian in providing a free surgery to her BGF (Best Gay Friend) played by former Queer Eye for the Straight Guy Jai Rodriguez, who does a believably fey turn as Eden's stylist.

Nip/Tuck Season 5 Starts Tonight; Writers Strike Looms

Thank god! Heroes has been disappointing, Bionic Woman is laughably bad, Grey's Anatomy

has been underwhelming, but relatively enjoyable. Honestly, the most enjoyable show I have been watching are Damages (whose season is now complete) and ER which is consistently involving after all these days. Now that Survivor: China is going into the merge I may check that out for as many shirtless shots of African American muscle boy James as I can get, but besides that the TV season has been bleak.

That may be why the screenwriters guild has authorized a strike, which may happen very soon after the stroke of midnight on Halloween, Wednesday October 31. This will be the first Hollywood work stoppage since 1988 whivch lasted for 5 months and severelydamaged several televisions shows and resulted in a lot of "schlocky" movies being in theaters.

Stay tuned, because if the writers do strike, our bad television season will only get much much worse. Games shows and reality shows, all the time.

REVIEW: Damages

FX's Damages starring Glenn Close and Rose Byrne (Sunshine, 28 Weeks Later) has been a guilty pleasure during the slow television times this summer when favorites such as Lost, 24, Heroes and Gray's Anatomy were off the air. Thank goodness, Nip/Tuck will be returning next week on Tuesday, and apparently will now be set in Los Angeles for Season 6.

The first season of Damages had its finale on Tuesday October 23rd and was a satisfying conclusion to an extremely well-written and acted television show. Although the legal drama can be a cliched stalwart of the television landscape, Damages manages to avoid the pitfalls of other entries in the genre by 1) generally avoiding the sexual escapades of the main characters 2) eschewing courtroom scenes with adversarial over-written exchanges between well-coiffed, too-pretty attorneys and 3) eliminating single episode stories.

Instead, Damages had a story arc which lasted the entire 13-episode season. It involved a complex corporate malfeasance case worth hundreds of millions of dollars against Arthur Frobisher, played with gusto by Ted Danson. The inimitable Glenn Close, who is probably my favorite actor of all time, plays Patty Hewes, a fearsome defense attorney who is representing Frobisher's employees in a civil action to obtain restitution for his looting of the company's assets and the collapse of their retirement accounts. The main protagonist in the story is not Patty Hewes but Ellen Parsons (played by Rose Byrne) who plays a brand new attorney who gets her dream job working for her legal hero while she and her handsome medical school fiance juggle demanding careers, ambition, complicated family members and their relationship.

Unfortunately, FX has already renewed two really atrocious series in Dirt and The Riches and these decisions may be delaying a decision to renew Damages for a second season although the latter is much more critically acclaimed (although as ratings-challenged) as the othertwo shows. The producers had originally announced they had a commitment from Glenn Close for 5 seasons with the show, so I hope FX executives and give us the opportunity of many more years of Damages.

GRADE: A.