The big story of this episode had to do with Escobar wanting Sean and Christian to work on his wife, who had her nipples and the tops of her breasts cleaved off, leaving nothing but bloody circles. Refusing to help with the surgery, Escobar turned to Michelle to fix her since he was still technically her boss in the black market organ trade. While all this is going on, Sean is busy selling his shares of the company to Christian and setting forth to depart to Hollywood.
Before we get to the bad, let us cover the one, single good thing about this episode: the scene between Sean and Matt. Matt has been a screwed up kid since the first episode, having to deal with hitting someone with a car, dating a woman who ended up being a man, getting involved with a modern Nazi, and much more. Surprisingly, Matt found himself in a fairly rounded state this season by embracing Scientology. He also heavily fell in love with Kimber, which is where the great scene came in. After selling off the house, Sean goes to see Matt to give him half the money so he can start a nest egg for his family. After getting the money, Matt breaks down to his father, saying that he knows he is being used and that Kimber still loves Christian, but he can't leave her (both parental responsibilities in his mind and because he generally does love her). It was an expertly acted character scene filled with emotions and understanding. The scene was also a glimpse back as why the show was so great the first two seasons - it was filled with these moments.
Now for the bad, in no particular order…
The Escobar story was completely overcooked, and when Liz pulled out a gun so that she could kill him for shooting her in the leg in the first season, and then ultimately being behind her losing a kidney, it came as absolutely no shock (especially since it was telegraphed in the following scene with Escobar's wife mentioning it to Liz while she checked up on her). It was also no surprise, as it was totally choreographed that sweet Liz wouldn't kill Escobar, but rather his wife would after asking for the gun. So then it comes time to remove the body, and you are left wondering, "How so?" Or, if you are a long-time fan, knowing that he would be eaten by gators as well. Cute callback? Yes, but it was so obvious there was more eye rolling than anything else while watching the scene.
What was up with the overly long and needlessly added music video featuring all the main characters living their new lives while mouthing the words to the song played in the background? It was nice to see Matt and Kimber turn to each other during one of theirs, leaving the viewer thinking maybe they can make it work, but otherwise it was a wasted couple of minutes where Ryan Murphy was attempting to be cool and stylish (something his show used to be), but it ended up more as a joke than anything reflective and profound.
And now we come to the end of the episode. We know the show is already supposed to be signed for a fifth season, so the end doesn't appear as the show's arc coming full circle, but rather the start of a new beginning for a fifth season, which will apparently take place in Hollywood, as Sean has moved out there, and Christian has relocated there as well after breaking it off with Michelle and selling his share of the company to her. So where does that leave us? It leaves us exactly as we predicted earlier, with the show now becoming the Sean and Christian show rather than Nip/Tuck. With them in Hollywood now, there is no way for them to interact with the other characters as of this moment. Plus, there are so many dangling plot threads, who knows what to make of it all. Liz hasn't moved out there yet; Sean's wife left him; Matt and Kimber are in Miami still; where was baby Wilbur through all this "I'm moving to Hollywood too" business; and why exactly did Christian and Michelle break it off again? In the end, everything happened too quickly, with nothing happening this past season to justify it, and as so it seems like the show has lost all sense of its identity and what made it special.
We'll tune in to see the start of a season five, if only cause we still have hope it will revert back to its first two seasons fighting form, but if this season finale was any indicator, we wouldn't be surprised if it came off looking like the college years of Saved by the Bell - yes, a few elements are the same, but it doesn't have that spark the original did.