'NIP/TUCK' HAS GUTS - AND PLENTY OF THEM.

Byline: David Kronke Television Critic

`Nip/Tuck'' is one of the best near-great misses in the history of TV drama. Its pilot promises either wonderful, probing drama once the series finds its footing - or abjectly over-the-top melodrama, which is in preponderance in its first two episodes.

Its premise closely recalls ``Six Feet Under'' - two closely allied men engaged in gruesome medical procedures, allowing them and their clients to examine deeply psychological and philosophical issues. As opposed to ``Six Feet Under,'' the clientele is very much alive - the series concerns plastic surgeons in Miami. But for the vain clients of Sean McNamara and Christian Troy, the reasons that bring them to these doctors can be widely disparate and profound.

Certainly, the series' opening sequences are destined to provoke comment. One of the first grisly images viewers are subjected to involves implants getting inserted into buttock cheeks, and we're led to believe one of the team's first clients is a drug dealer (the truth is even more disturbing). Episode two concludes with a ghastly homage to Agnieszka Holland's ``Europa Europa'' (about a Jewish boy in Nazi Germany who joins the Hitler Youth) - if you've seen it, you can guess what happens, and anyway, empathetic men in particular will want to tune out in the last five minutes.

Our protagonists are Sean, an idealist estranged from his wife (Joely Richardson) and son (John Hensley), and Christian (Julian McMahon), an opportunist who has cynically insinuated himself into his colleague's family. As the series opens, we see Christian seduce a model - his athletic sex scene with her is juxtaposed with Sean's clearly depressing sex with his wife.

Christian has obviously chosen his career for crassly opportunistic reasons. He appeals to clients who tell him, ``I don't want to be pretty - I want to look perfect.'' Meanwhile, Sean hopes to revitalize his clientele's lives - he considers his job to be ``externaliz(ing) the hate (patients) have for themselves.'' Which seems to be a lost cause - his wife is just waiting to be seduced by Christian, while his son considers the guy to be far ``cooler'' than he. Sean is the lousy family man (he's alone in his family in his inability to speak Spanish - in Miami), yet he's the accomplished surgeon, while Christian is sloppy to the point of dangerous.

``Nip/Tuck'' comes courtesy of Ryan Murphy, a former entertainment magazine writer whose previous series, ``Popular,'' also explored, celebrated and (mildly) denigrated superficiality.

``Nip/Tuck's'' main problem is that its good-vs.-evil dichotomy is too obviously pronounced. This is best evidenced in the drearily ongoing arguments between Sean and his wife, who dissect their failings in a manner far too on-point.

As Blake Bailey notes in ``A Tragic Honesty,'' his acclaimed biography of novelist Richard Yates, ``People rarely say what they mean, and good dialogue is a matter of catching characters in the very act of giving themselves away.'' Murphy's characters say, deadeningly, precisely what they mean, as underscored by the cast's frequently overwrought performances.

Clearly, the series' main intent is to get a rise out of viewers - witness the climactic scene in which a liposuction procedure results in guts spraying all about the operating room.

This series certainly grabs our attention - there are graphically bloody operation sequences - but to what end? ``Nip/Tuck'' could end up as a memorable series, but it could also go down in TV history, like ``Popular,'' as a flamboyant effort to grab viewers with plentiful pulchritude abjectly victimized.

David Kronke, [phone]

david.kronke(at)dailynews.com

NIP/TUCK - Two and one half stars

What: Miami plastic surgeons behave badly, less badly and more badly.

Where: FX.

When: 10 tonight.

In a nutshell: A potentially influential series works too hard to provoke viewers right out of the gate.