Better, Stronger, More Attractive

Some days I wish I could turn on the TV and find a new show that expressed something about my life — you know, ordinary, unbeautiful, constricted, urban life. For instance, the tenement in which I live is so cramped that sometimes, when I'm brushing my teeth, I can hear my neighbor brushing his. I can hear him shaving. There are days when I swear I can hear him cleaning his ears with a Q-tip. It's the sort of thing that makes people move to the suburbs. Of course many New Yorkers live like this.

But that's not the way it is on television. If my life were a TV show, then that new Bionic Woman, Michelle Ryan, would be my neighbor, her teeth would be much too bionic to need brushing, and our apartments would be the size of palaces. Nor would I be some ordinary hack. I'd be time-traveling all over the place like the newspaper man in NBC's "Journeyman" or having government secrets downloaded into my skull like the hero of NBC's "Chuck," or, better yet, I'd be a vampire like the private eye on "Moonlight," and then I could really show Ms. Bionic Woman what's what.

Beauty and fantasy — that's what the new fall season is about. Can you imagine wanting to watch Bionic Woman leap across rooftops if she weighed 250 pounds? Yet there's no reason why, according to the logic of the show, an overweight bionic woman couldn't. If you're bionic, you're bionic. You've left biology behind: end of story. That's was why it was particularly absurd, in last week's episode, to see Ms. Ryan performing a series of one-arm pull-ups, under the watchful eye of her sleek Asian trainer (Will Yun Lee), with her bionic arm! If it's bionic, why on earth would she need to exercise it? It's already strong enough to heave a sumo wrestler across the street.

Not that it really matters, because the "story" — in last week's episode it was some tripe about sinister white paramilitary terrorists gassing people in Smalltown America — is just an extended excuse for a series of thrill-encased beauty-fixes, from Ms. Ryan and Mr. Lee to the rogue bionic woman (Katee Sackhoff) who's supposed to be dead but isn't, and is arguably a lot sexier than the bionic woman who gets top billing. (No wonder they're always fighting.) We watch because they're beautiful. There's nothing new about this; it was the same in Balzac's time, only then the medium was the novel.

Immediately following "Bionic Woman" on NBC Wednesday nights is the network's new detective drama, "Life," in which the slightly odd-looking hero, Charlie Crews (Damian Lewis) — not really handsome, so an exception to the rule — is partnered with an actress named Sarah Shahi, who was a Dallas Cowboy cheerleader before arriving in Hollywood. Not just any cheerleader: She made the cover of the Cowboys' cheerleader calendar before being discovered by a fellow by the name of Robert Altman.

Ms. Shahi's character doesn't have super powers or anything, but the show's writers have provided her with a definite sexual edge in that she picks up men in bars, sleeps with them, and then takes off without even bothering to learn their names. Too much of "Life" is the usual police procedural stuff, though the gender-switch wrapping it comes in — Mr. Lewis's quirky Zen Buddhist detective tends to go by "feminine" intuition, whereas Ms. Shahi is no nonsense and by the book — is fun. In fact, there are a lot of good things about the show, but I have to admit that if Ms. Shahi looked like an overworked cleaning woman I'd be less interested.

The television series most openly concerned with physical perfection is FX's plastic surgery soap opera for weirdos, "Nip/Tuck," which returns on October 30 for its fifth season. In the opening episode, there's a scene in which Dr. Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) explains to a 40-something actress, Carly Summers (Daphne Zuniga), who's pining for a 35-year-old's part, how he can make her look at least six years younger than she is.

It's a brutal scene, because Carly, despite the urgings of her agent, has so far resisted plastic surgery. She doesn't think she needs it. In the interest of "scoring" a famous actress as a patient, Christian plays along with this idea. He even seduces her, validating her self-image by pretending to find her as stunning as she thinks she is. But then comes the moment of truth. They're standing, post-coitus, in Carly's bedroom, looking at a giant framed picture of her that was taken by a famous photographer when Carly was in her early 20s. All she is wearing in the photo is a lacy black bra and underwear.

If the photo were taken now, Carly asks, would she look pretty much the same? Christian gallantly agrees that she would. Unfortunately, Carly can't quite leave it at that. If Christian were to do just a little bit of "work" on her, what would he do?

"Do you have any lipstick?" he asks.

"Sure," she replies, looking surprised but also pleased. (Perhaps he's just going to give her some makeup ideas!)

"Starting at the bottom," says Christian when she hands him the lipstick. He's no longer looking at her: He's looking at the photograph as though it were a blackboard and the lipstick chalk. His voice turns cold and professional. "The muscles in your calves and thighs soften after the age of 40, so I'd give you calf-implants," he says, marking off the areas on the picture with the lipstick, casually scribbling on her favorite photo. "And some liposuction through here [hips, thighs] and of course through here [abdomen]." Then there's the question of her breasts: They'd need a bit of raising. But the trickiest part would be her face, which would require a "feather-lift" — a surgical procedure on her forehead, cheeks, and chin that would magically air-brush away the years.

By the time Christian is finished, the photograph looks like it's been vandalized, and Carly feels humiliated, disgraced. She understands what her agent was trying to tell her: She's grown old, too old for Hollywood. The message is: Take care of the problem or forget your career. There are a lot of beauty junkies out there, they're fussy, and they demand their nightly dose.

bbernhard@nysun.com