Nip/Tuck’s Wicked Promos, Wingless Angel

This admission may cut some cable-network marketers to the quick, but I usually flee my living room when promos for coming TV shows hit the air. I head to the kitchen for a Zero Sprite; go to the bedroom to take out my clothes for the next work day; or make my way to the bathroom to wash my face – anything rather than be assaulted by the same endlessly repeated promo spots.

But a funny thing happened weeks ago when FX began airing its first promo for the new season of Nip/Tuck: I stayed glued to my seat to watch the spot whenever it would it air, which was a lot.

In the promo, the camera shows us a view of L.A. from behind the famous “Hollywood” sign, and features a cover of the song that Chris Isaak made famous, Wicked Game. I could not get that haunting version of the song, performed by a woman lead singer, out of my head.

As it turns out, that promo was just the first of a series of 10 progressive spots that FX is running to herald the return of its hit Nip/Tuck for a new season, debuting Oct. 30. The next promos for the show – which delights in pushing boundaries and unnerving viewers — continued with the Wicked Game accompaniment. But they became a little creepy and somewhat unnerving, as they introduced an angel with two suture marks on her back, with her amputated wings beside her.

The promos are all meant to spotlight the shift of the locale of Nip/Tuck from Miami to Los Angeles, as randy plastic surgeons Christian Troy and Sean McNamara try to start their lives with a fresh slate in a new state. 

I was so intrigued with the marketing campaign that I contacted FX, which put me in touch with Stephanie Gibbons, the network’s EVP of marketing. My first question was about the rendition of Wicked Game. The cover of the song is by an alternative-rock  group called Giant Drag, according to Gibbons. The lead singer for the California group is Annie Hardy.

“I just heard that song and I loved the timbre of her voice, I loved the attitude of it,” Gibbons said. “It’s almost sexual at the same time its blasé and apathetic. It has a very L.A. kind of feeling to it. I liked what it was saying. It felt very L.A. to me, seductive, but in a sort of apathetic way.”

As for the Nip/Tuck marketing campaign, Gibbons said, “It’s playing to some of the themes of this idea of the city of lost angels … Both of them [Troy and McNamara] have decided they’re going to build new lives, ‘It did not have work out in Miami for us, so we’re going to make a new life,’ sort of rising from the ashes.”

But in the new Nip/Tuck season, Troy and McNamara soon find out it is not going to be so easy to conquer the city of plastic surgeons – and fallen angels.

And what of the angels theme, and severed wings, in the promo spots?

“Los Angeles is nothing if not a city of dreams, broken dreams, if you will,” Gibbons said. “We thought of it as city of lost angels, to a certain extent.  To make it here you have to have a few scars. You have to lose you wings. To walk down the road, you have to get your feet dirty…But in a certain sense, when you take off those wings you’re free. You pursue that dream. You make it happen.”

As an aside, Giant Drag cited the use of its version of Wicked Game in the Nip/Tuck spots on its Web site, giantdrag.com. But then, the group expressed, perhaps tongue in cheek, a little bitterness. “i am sooo rich now! oh wait, i didn’t write that song and didn’t make one cent. dammit! i will never record a cover song ever again!” Giant Drag lamented.