In case you've been just got back from a deep space exploration mission and missed it--the season finale of
Nip/Tuck aired last night. In it, the season-and-a-half long mystery of the identity of the Carver was revealed....
Now, I'm warning you--if you've TiVoed or taped the episodes from last night and don't want to know, I suggest you turn back now. I'm going to talk about the episodes and give away who the Carver is....
You have been warned.
OK, I'll admit that I'm a sporadic
Nip/Tuck viewer. It's a show that is generally entertaining when I tune in but it's not appointment TV for me like
Lost, Veronica Mars or
Battlestar Galactica. But with all the hype around the identity of the serial slasher the Carver swirling over the past few weeks, I have to admit the show did demand some attention.
Honestly, the most fascinating part of the "who is the Carver?" circus was the intesne speculation surrounding his or her identity. In the day and age when we can read entire scripts of shows or movies on-line before they ever air or open in theaters, for the show to keep this under wraps up until the big reveal is a major success for F/X. Or maybe it was just that I didn't look hard enough to find the SPOILERS. (Though I do hear some one at F/X accidentally linked photos that revealed the identity of the Carvre yesterday though the pictures were quickly removed.)
So, onto the identities of the Carver. So, as has been speculated for weeks on end, it turns out the Carver is not one but two people working in tandem together. Also of interest is that both culprits attacked each other at some point this season to throw suspicion of themselves. Interesting and a nicely done red herring, though it does raise some question. So, if Kit is Quintin's sister why does she seem so shocked by the big reveal of Quintin to end the first part of the two-part finale last night? Of course, I guess if she shows no reaction, it gives the game away half an hour early.
I will give the finale credit--it did manage to take just about everyone that the on-line community has been speculation is the Carver and make them a suspect. I knew when they came in to arrest Liz in surgery that this was a big red herring but it's nice to see the show address all the red herrings. It kind of reminded me of
Star Trek II, where the rumors got out that Spock would die, so the producers had the entire crew "die" in the first ten minutes and you could then relax, figuring the leaks were wrong, only to be stunned when Spock actually does shuffle off this mortal coil in the final reel. By having every one who could be the Carver either put under the microscope and either acquitted or attacked made a lot of sense in mis-directing us from who the Carver was.
And then comes the big reveal. No huge shock that Quintin was the Carver. But the twist is--he's not working alone. He's got a sister who's working with him and it turns out to be Kit. Apparently, Kit and Quintin's parents were extremely closely related, resulting in some genetic defects for both. (I won't get into them too much here as this is a family blog, despite my cussin' earlier this week.) Now, I have to admit being the viewer that I am, when Kit came in and shot Quintin before Christian could cut off his own hand, I figured something more had to be up. Why? Well, because that happened at least 15 minutes before the end of the show. You can't leave that much time and not have another huge twist coming. So, I figured--maybe she's in on it as well, though the idea didn't occur to me how she and Quintin were connected until the story revealed itself.
And, in the end, Quintin and Kit get away and we assume are ready to continue their crimes.
But there were some unanswered questions. I get sort of why they targeted Sean and Christian, but a bit more of an explanation might have worked. Or maybe it'd have been too trite to try and connect them. But it does seem as if the Carver(s) were unusually fascinated by these two and went to extreme lenghts to torture them. Also, how did Quintin get the mask into the recovery room? Did he leave it there from when he was working for the guys? Did he leave Carver suits around in case he needed to don his secret identity at any time?
Of course, I'm speculating and nitpicking on small details. Which is pretty much par for the coruse around here.
That said, I have to admit the resolution of this mystery worked pretty well. It wasn't quite the shock that F/X made it out to be simply because the prime candidate to be the bad guy turned out to be the bad guy. But in looking at the evidence from on-screen and throughout the season, the solution to the mystery was the only that made sense when you sat back and considered the evidence. And while that may not always be the most suprising and shocking way to go, it can often be the most satisfying.
posted by Michael Hickerson at 12/21/2005 07:38:00 AM |
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