Thus it ends – not with a bang, but with a whimper.

For a show as critically lauded as FX’s Nip/Tuck (Wednesdays, 10:00 p.m. ET), reaching the end of a seven-year run should be a triumphant moment, a momentous conclusion to an ongoing storyline which neatly ties up all loose ends, and which leaves the audience with a feeling of satisfaction. But in this – as in so much else – the March 3^rd series finale of Nip/Tuck was a pathetic failure…making it eminently deserving of the title of Worst Cable TV Show of the Week.  

Honestly, to expect anything else would have been naïve. FX’s companion show The Shield, while it contained extreme violence and profanity, also featured compelling (if often dark and disturbing) storytelling…and at that show’s conclusion, its corrupt protagonist got at least a degree of comeuppance.

Not so Nip/Tuck. While series creator Ryan Murphy occasionally had pretentions to serious drama, the program was much more a freak show, crassly promoting themes like incest, bestiality, necrophilia, and similar perversions as entertainment. (A detailed listing of the depraved scenarios featured on Nip/Tuck can be found here.) The soap opera surrounding sex-crazed Christian, whiny Sean, neurotic Julia, hopelessly fouled-up teen Matt, and all the rest, really was never anything more than an excuse, the merest pole on which to drape the show’s circus tent, while a menagerie of deviants and psychotics performed within.

Little wonder, then, that the end was unsatisfying. In recent weeks, viewers saw how Christian’s longtime porn star/lover/wife Kimber finally lost hope of having a normal relationship with the satyr-like surgeon and committed suicide; lesbian Liz impregnated herself with Sean’s sperm, planning to have a baby from whose life she would exclude both Sean and Christian; Julia remarried and moved to England with Sean’s children; and Matt, ever the loser, finally found a ray of sunshine in his engagement to the decent Ramona – only to ditch it all and run off with his former lover, the manipulative transsexual Ava.

As a result, the show’s final weeks have been devoted to the warped friendship of Sean and Christian. But this was a wasted effort: the characters never exhibited any progress or genuine change, merely hopping from one bed to another, one distorted circumstance to the next. Indeed, Nip/Tuck has always been devoid of character development, with the protagonists serving merely as an excuse for the Depravity of the Week.

In an article in the Los Angeles Times, Ryan Murphy claimed that the low-key mood of the final episode was a deliberate choice on his part. Such a claim, while understandable when speaking to the press, is farcical. Nip/Tuck consistently lost advertisers (and thus, revenue) for the FX network throughout its run. Over the seasons, as the program’s focus on depravity became known to sponsors (in large part, through the PTC’s efforts), advertisers fled Nip/Tuck in droves, with only a few liquor companies and Hollywood studios as major sponsors at the end. And viewers and critics alike – even those who enjoyed the earlier seasons -- have strongly opined that the sick show had long overstayed its welcome. Just as those addicted to drugs or pornography require ever greater dosages or ever-more extreme content to reach the same “high,” only to one day find that there is no longer any dosage or content extreme enough to provide a thrill, so too did Nip/Tuck discover that, after years of twisted perversity and sordid storylines, by the time the last episode arrived there was no climactic moment left to reach, no plot twist left that could satisfy. Little wonder that the episode accomplished nothing, served as no landmark; in its finale, Nip/Tuck did not conclude, so much as sputter to an ignominious halt. 

In the final episode, Matt convinces Ava that he, she and his daughter Jenna will make a happy couple, despite the fact that Ava doesn’t love him, and they fly off together. Christian informs Sean that he is dissolving their business partnership, because Sean is miserable with Christian’s mindlessly hedonistic lifestyle, and wants to help people. Sean and Christian say their goodbyes at the airport; Sean flies off to Bucharest, and Christian heads to the nearest bar to pick up and a woman. Ho-hum.

The legacy of Nip/Tuck will be a mixed one. Far too graphic and explicit to be shown at earlier hours on broadcast TV, Nip/Tuck may be rerun on other cable outlets or on broadcast TV in the wee hours, and will fade quickly from consciousness. Yet the twisted sensibility the show’s success brought to TV will live on, in the form of ever-more extreme content on other cable programs and broadcast TV…and in Nip/Tuck creator Ryan Murphy’s latest show, the teen-targeted Glee.

In creating Glee, Murphy hypocritically lamented that “everything in the world’s so dark right now.” Gee – do you suppose Nip/Tuck’s obsessive focus on warped personalities and ever-greater levels of graphic content just might have had something to do with that? Murphy also declared that he was “interested in expressing something other than depravity,” vowing to do so with Glee. Yet, given that thus far Glee has featured simulated oral sex, teen pregnancy, frequent references to fellatio, premature ejaculation, and the absolute inevitability of teenage sex, one wonders whether, after seven years with Nip/Tuck, Murphy even knows what depravity is anymore.

Thus, in a way, Nip/Tuck will live on – and will continue to influence, not a few hard-core fans of extreme cable content, but millions upon millions of school-age children.

But at least Nip/Tuck itself is, at long last, over; and in celebration of that fact, the Parents Television Council is pleased and proud, one last time, to declare Nip/Tuck the Worst Cable TV Show of the Week.

For more information about the PTC’s Cable Choice campaign, click here.