Private Practice: "In Which We Meet Addison, A Nice Girl From Somewhere Else"
I stuck with Grey's Anatomy long after it had become the butt of late-night jokes, a chickfest drowning in emo-scored montages and voiceovers that improbably connect every single character to some treacly moral. The last episode I watched was mid-season three, somewhere around the big sweeps two-parter. And I would have kept tuning in every week, then scrolling through my blog subscriptions and not paying any attention for an hour, if my husband hadn't mercifully cancelled the recording.
But the reason I stayed on the Grey train so long was the few actors in the ensemble that I found compelling. Katherine Heigl, Sandra Oh, and Chandra Wilson were worth watching even when I didn't give a toss about what they were doing.
So it's too bad ABC's spinoff series Private Practice features Kate Walsh instead. Her Grey surgeon, the polysyllabic Dr. Addison Montgomery-Shepherd, has decamped from the drama in Seattle. Unfortunately for her (but fortunately for viewers looking for romantic and professional entanglements like those on, say, Grey's Anatomy), she trades ex-husband McDreamy and ex-lover McSteamy for ex-med school classmate Naomi, her ex-husband and self-help guru Sam, and Don Juan Tim Daly ("McDaly").
It's all happening at a "wellness group" in L.A., a touchy-feely medical co-op where a steady stream of infertile women, precocious tots, and charity cases are likely to show up week to week. But even before we can get to the patient drama, there are almost too many familiar faces to place. Judging Amy plays the shrink, that Secret Service agent from Prison Break plays the clownish pediatrician, Piz is the receptionist who fancies himself a midwife, and Taye Diggs of stage, screen, and expensive personal trainer is the dude with the Kevin Trudeau-esque book deal.