After sitting in one place in her own waste for three years, her gangrenous flesh has fused with the synthetic fabric of her couch, making her a grotesque hybrid of consumer and commodity, in contrast to the beautiful hybrids usually resulting from cosmetic surgery. She is the consummate consumer: she spends her days eating and watching her “stories,” recorded on TIVO. Dressed in a thin beige cotton shift that reveals huge lumps of flesh, she looks like an enormous russet potato. The EMTs find her sitting in front of the television with her remote, surrounded by food, furniture, and shelves holding her collection of dog bobble-head dolls. Momma is morbidly obese, so large that the EMTs must break through the wall of her house with a chainsaw to remove her, transporting her to the hospital on a flatbed truck. The season opener features Momma Boone (Kathy Lamkin), one of Sean’s charity cases, rooted figuratively and literally to her couch, no longer able to chase her dream.
(One can almost hear Andrew Marvell reciting in the background, “I hear time’s winged chariot at my heels.”) But it also reveals the folly inherent in that philosophy, linking the American dream of acquisition and consumerism to the quest for beauty. On its surface, the show justifies the pursuit of one’s dreams by noting that life is fleeting. His death and subsequent funeral turn out to be part of a recurring nightmare, introducing the intertwined themes of mutability and immobility that dominate the episode. The third season of nip/tuck begins where the last one left off, with the image of Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) lying in a pool of blood on his bed.
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