All About
Private Practice
Now we know why the first two episodes of Private Practice sucked: Addison wasn't herself.
She wasn't herself because she'd gotten so worked up, leaving rainy Seattle for sunny Santa Monica, that she'd convinced herself she was about to experience magic every day. So in episodes 1 and 2, she was anxious and wrapped up in herself and, I've said it before, dumb. She was so wrapped up in herself that she couldn't take in what was happening to everyone around her, so (and this is where I'm giving Shonda Rimes and crew the benefit of the doubt) we couldn't really get to know everyone around her yet.
But now the real Addison is beginning to emerge. Last night, we saw her be truly empathetic (if a little bit overbearing and inappropriate at the same time). We saw her let her guard down and open up to Pete's way of doing things. (For those keeping score, it's Eastern Medicine: 2; Western Medicine: 0.) And with the real Addison emerging, we got a nicely tailored, thematically interwoven collection of plots about marriage and making choices and finding perfection that had emotional resonance because, finally, we knew something about these characters' lives, particularly their pasts.
And it all washed out in the rain. A nice motif, the rain. Yes, it rains in Southern California. I haven't really experienced that yet, but I'm told it happens. And that reality sinking in helped bring some reality to this budding series.
Reality check No. 1: They have a daughter! Thank you, Shonda Rimes, for leaving no child behind. I was worried that Naomi and Sam had left their daughter on Grey's last season — that she'd been taken out with the trash, like poor Merrin Dungey. But there she was, all dressed up in her Catholic-school uniform. I'm just glad she's alive.
Reality check No. 2: Pete's late wife. Pete stood in the rain at his wife's grave and told her that Violet had said he should do this to heal, but he was skeptical. Now, I would've thought that Buddha Pete would already be on board with this kind of talk-it-out stuff, but why quibble? We acquired so much information: She died in 2001, at 40 years old, while asleep in bed next to him, and their marriage was terrible.
Reality check No. 3: Addison was finding her equilibrium, realizing that life is not perfect, no matter where she lives. Important. And Naomi was a good, supportive, but challenging friend. Also, in a number of scenes — one of which was pretty sexy — Naomi ate a lot of cake. In fact, we saw so much of her sitting down shoveling cake in her face that I thought Audra McDonald must be pregnant and they were covering it with the cake, as if cake were the new laundry basket — great for hiding an expanding waistline! — and they would later say that she's fat, the way they did with Daphne on Frasier. Boy, that was dumb. Alas, Naomi stood up later, and she's thin. Carry on!
Reality check No. 4: Violet in action with that guy from Weeds. I love him! Violet seemed a little more life coach than therapist last night, but those lines are so blurred nowadays, who's to say that that's wrong? Meanwhile, he played a variation on his cuckolded Weeds character. But, hey, he does it well.
And then we met the woman who thought her ''hoo-ha'' was broken — and it turned out it kinda was!
NEXT: The Blue Girl Group
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