TLC’s ‘The 12 Pops of Christmas’ Brings Pimple Popping to the Holiday Season
Preview
TV is filled with makeover shows that improve people’s lives by helping them lose weight, dress better and fix up their homes. But Dr. Pimple Popper, featuring California dermatologist Sandra Lee, realizes the burden that can be lifted from a person’s shoulders (or back, or face) simply by slicing off an errant skin growth — and how weirdly entertaining the often squishy process can be.
I’m what Lee calls a “popaholic,” and I’m not sorry about my addiction. Disgusting though some may find it, others clearly are with me. The TLC series averaged 2.7 million total viewers when it debuted this past summer and has even spawned a 2019 companion series called Dr. Foot Fixer.
What’s the Pimple Popper appeal? Lee’s passion for her work, for starters. The bubbly doctor revels in extracting the gunk that can accumulate beneath our flesh, whether she’s digging to remove a 3-pound lipoma or squeezing what looks like oatmeal out of a grapefruit-size cyst.
Tonight, ahead of her show’s January return, the doctor, uh, pops up with this new special. “Isn’t it absolutely fascinating what comes out of our skin!” Lee has marveled. Yes, and it’s impossible not to watch.
The 12 Pops of Christmas, Thursday, December 13, 9/8c, TLC
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