Grace Santiago

Infobox character | name = Grace Santiago


real_name = Grace Santiago
portrayer = Valerie Cruz
species =
gender = Female
first = Mandi/Randi "(episode 1.02)"
last = Montana/Sassy/Justice "(episode 1.11)"
last_cause =
age =
occupation = Psychologist
title =
alias =
family =
spouse =
children =
relatives =
footnotes =

Grace Santiago was a character on the American television series "Nip/Tuck". She was the staff psychologist for McNamara/Troy. She was portrayed by Valerie Cruz.

Character History

Dr. Grace Santiago was first introduced into the show by meeting Sean for advice for two of his potential patients, identical twins who wanted to look different to express their own individuality. She gives Sean her expert advice as a psychologist that their surgery is needed. After a short misunderstanding between Sean and Grace, Sean hires Grace as staff psychologist to help make better judgments on potential patients.

Grace's first patient to work with at McNamara/Troy is a manic depression, who she denies surgery to. Grace claims that the patient is resisting drug therapy and is a bad candidate for surgery. After the doctors deny the surgery, the patient commits suicide resulting from extreme depression. This gives Grace a poor start with the doctors.

Later, after noticing Christian's high sexual activity, she refers him to Sexaholics Anonymous. She claims to speak to him as a professional, and that he needs help. Ironically, later in the same episode she has a sexual encounter with Christian, contradicting her advice to him.

At one point during a consultation with Sean and a potential patient, Grace voices a suspicion that Sean is having an affair with the patient, Megan O'Hara. Though her accusations are true, Sean denies them strongly, and they are never confirmed with Grace. Her accusation causes extreme friction in the McNamara/Troy office between Grace and the doctors.

Towards the end of Grace's stay at McNamara/Troy she helps the doctors decide whether or not to operate on a multiple personality patient. She advises not to operate on the patient. Once again Grace makes a bad diagnosis and there is a bad outcome for the doctors. Afterwards, Sean goes against Grace's advice and gives the operation.

After this, the character of Grace disappeared from the show with very little explanation. There is one brief scene where Christian and Sean discuss firing Grace. No more is heard about her after that.

Departure

Victim of the Chuck Cunningham Syndrome, Grace disappeared with no explanation. Ryan Murphy recently revealed, almost 4 years after her departure, that this decision had been taken by everyone because it felt unreasonable to have a psychiatrist in a plastic surgery clinic. He stated "which kind of psychatrist would recommend any patient a face lift instead of facing the real problem?". Finding no way to give this character any sense, it was decided to let Valerie Cruz go [ [http://niptuckfrance.com/ Nip/Tuck France : Les news ] ] .

References