Hey, what happened to my blood?

Some TV shows have a nasty habit of creating a medical emergency as an easy way out of a storyline. It's overdone, cheap and slightly insulting to the viewers' attention spans. While on the same fault line, some medical shows use cheap drama as an excuse to show overdone and boring medicine. Only the best shows know how to spin the victim angle to better the series. As you can tell, this is something that bothers me.\nExhibit one: "Entourage." When Johnny Drama wanted calf implants, the show teased. Drama would check out other guys' legs at parties, accusing them of lying about whether they were real or fake, like always, making a fool out of himself. You couldn't help but be happy for Drama when Vince celebrated his success by rewarding his bro with a leg-job. But the story never went anywhere. The writers dropped the calf gimmick like Vince cut off Ari, leaving Drama too ashamed to ever wear a pair of cut-offs. \nOn "Arrested Development" (RIP), however, cut-off wearing Tobias Fünke, the never-nude, endured multiple maladies for comic relief. He was run over by cars, got a concussion after being "blown and poked" in the ear and needed diamond dust vacuumed from his lungs. Tobias was more beat up than a Monday Night Football quarterback. The "AD" writers didn't know how to drop a storyline. They had inside jokes with a loyal audience by using allusions from episodes past. The writers went beyond milking a joke. They pasteurized it, added some cultures and turned it into yogurt. \nThe "AD" writers didn't just use and abuse Tobias. Buster Bluth, his brother-in-law, suffered an unfortunate incident involving a loose seal and the sea. There were some wild splashes, some screams and somebody lost a hand. When Buster became "all right" after losing his left hand to the seal, the writers didn't let the storyline float away. Almost every scene with Buster, post-amputation, subtly pays notice to his hand -- or lack thereof. \nAnother show that chops off their character's digits is "Weeds." After opening a Pandora's box of DEA collusion, explaining innovative ways to use bananas and a kinky Israeli in the mix, "Weeds" had a great few opening episodes. Then the writers cut off Andy's toe. \nObserve exhibit two: "Weeds" writers were bullied into a corner by a bisexual with a strap-on. They dipped into the community chest and brought along a stray dog from the neighborhood. Nipping off storylines like the dog nipped off a toe. With one swift move, the mongrel manages to solve all of Andy's problems. Losing a toe got Andy out of military service, fixed his love-life and put him back in the victim seat. \nIf series writers can desperately scrounge for surgeries to excuse their poor plot direction, at least medical dramas should give better ways to perform them. As this point into the new season, it is not the case. \nExhibit three: "Nip/Tuck." The McNamara/Troy duet used to be a hotbed of controversial surgeries. The ground-breaking operations normally form cohesive themes to connect what happens in the doctors' hot beds with the operating table. \nOn a show where patients can order a boob-job with a side of botox shots, the people who visit the Miami office exude vanity. Constantly questioning what they don't like about themselves, the doctors cater to quite a self-absorbed clientele. A standard episode uses blood and gore to compliment the innovative procedures. \nDespite the caricatures of the doctors' patients and themselves, the show never failed to offer seemingly impossible, medical miracles. Even prior to the real-life face transplant of last year, one plot-line thread attempted a similar landmark surgery.\nLately, "Nip/Tuck" has fallen into the same patterns as the aforementioned. The medicine has taken a backseat to the soap opera drama, and the surgeries are becoming blander. Instead of trying to one-up what they have already done, the surgeons take the easy way out and sell their practice. \nWhat happened to pulling morbidly obese people out of a sofa molded to their bodies? Where are the druglords who need new facial structures? Why don't Sean and Christian seem interested in revolutionizing plastic surgery? Maybe the Carver immunized the drive for fame and fortune from the career-oriented doctors, but at least he kept the viewers on edge. \nLast week's episode showed the end of a character that was vanity embodied as a recurring patient at McNamara/Troy. Their plastic surgery-addicted Mrs. Grubman, lost everyone close to her while on her quest for the fountain of youth. Her dying wish was to conclude the journey. Offering Christian her corpse as a blank canvas to reach perfection seems like a muse smacking an artist on the head with a masterpiece. This was his chance to create his greatest work with no repercussions or emotional ties. Did we see anything Mrs. Grubman hadn't had worked on before? No, it was just another face-lift, a little lipo and some lift around the top - and we were stuck watching an asexual ghost singing on top of a piano. Even a tummy tuck without anesthesia couldn't be this painful; it would probably be more entertaining. \nIt's too early for mid-season doldrums, but alas, they are here. None of these shows make me hold my breath when they show the patients on the operating table, anymore. Even the college-girl favorite -- "Grey's Anatomy" -- is dulling the scalpel blade. \n"Grey's" has laid out a buffet of outlandish cases for the surgical interns to fight over assisting. Few things can create a deeper repulsion than seeing the decapitated heads of familiar dolls from childhood swimming in the bowels of some twisted guy. That wasn't even the strangest object found inside one of the Seattle Grace patients. One man had an active bomb in his chest. There has even been a human shish kabob roll in on the gurney. Not anymore. \nThe medical story lines in this season of "GA" are muted next to a love triangle or hexagon or octagon. The only medical story to maintain a sense of excitement on the show, so far, is a man lighting his own face on fire. \nThen again, boring surgeries are a sacrifice I'm willing to make if it makes time to put Patrick Dempsey and Chris O'Donnell on screen, at the same time ... naked. I'll just wait until the show's over, then put on Discovery Health for a quick surgery fix.