There should be something clever and ironic to say when a TV show about plastic surgery totally remakes itself to seem younger and livelier, but everything I think of just sounds lame.

So I'll just say this: FX's "Nip/Tuck," which returns for a new season tomorrow, has made itself fresh and alive and funny in a very, very smart way.

"Nip/Tuck" was the often-twisted, dark and challenging series about two Miami plastic surgeons and their variously complicated and flawed emotional lives. For four seasons, it had been an essay on the notions that things usually aren't what they appear to be and that people are, you know, nuts.

It was also a cinematic and surprising take on plastic surgeons Sean McNamara (Dylan Walsh) and Christian Troy (Julian McMahon) and the equally messed-up people around them, but it seemed to run out of steam last season. Then the guys moved to Los Angeles.

All of that quality remains, but this season, there's a different vibe. It starts two months after Sean and Christian have opened a clinic on Rodeo Drive, assuming they'd own L.A. the way they owned Miami. But so far, zero business, and they realize they're unknown fish in a much bigger pool, or as Liz (Roma Maffia), their anesthesiologist tells them, "You're chum being devoured by all the Rodeo Drive great whites."

So, they do what anyone chasing the Hollywood dream would do, they get a publicist — Fiona (Lauren Hutton) — and she gets them on a cheesy TV show about plastic surgery called "Hearts 'N Scalpels."

Christian, usually the opportunist of the crew, has doubts. "Are you saying," he asks Fiona, "being on a TV show would give us credibility?"

The whole tone goes like that. Not that there aren't some serious dark streaks still running through "Nip/Tuck," but suddenly, it's slightly mocking of, actually, itself, and all of Hollywood.

There's Fiona's client, Carly (Daphne Zuniga), a 40-year-old actress who's up for the role of a lifetime: single mother, coal miner, with an autistic child. There's the over-his-head show producer (Oliver Platt); the airhead star (Bradley Cooper); the serious actress (Paula Marshall), and the studio exec with a dangerous fetish (Craig Bierko). And Hawai'i's Tia Carrere appears as Mistress Dark Pain — do I need to explain she's a dominatrix?

That's just the first episode, and it only gets better and richer. "Nip/Tuck," as ever, has a parade of great guest stars to go with its talented cast, and it still rips at convention and pokes at ideas about ego, success, marriage, appearance, and, of course, sex. But now, it's sunnier, more lively and, since this is about plastic surgery, almost perky.

There's a point where Fiona tells Christian, "Refresh Carly's face so we can refresh her career." That could have been FX execs talking to executive producer Ryan Murphy, because he's given "Nip/Tuck" a whole new look and life.