How Private Practice Steals from everyone
...including Chicago Hope.
# Private Practice makes…well, definitely not perfect: The Grey’s Anatomy spin-off needs an originality transplant-stat!
By Margaret Lyons
Not every spin-off can be Lou Grant-but even Joey was smart enough not to replicate Friends in any real way. Private Practice, not so much. It plays like a wannabe Grey’s Anatomy: Ten Years Later, with Addison taking on the plucky Meredith position. We present to you a minute-by-minute breakdown of the disastrous first episode. Our counter doesn’t include commercial breaks-just programming minutes-and the content spoils every attempted surprise or twist. Let’s go to the videotape:
1:09 Introducing Dr. Cooper Freedman (Paul Adelstein), a pediatrician who’s also a womanizing hobag-hey, he doesn’t even know that woman’s name! Paging Dr. Doug Ross, George Clooney’s ER character, who also pioneered the “I don’t know the name of the woman I’m banging” bit on the 1996 episode “Last Call.”
2:40 The get-pumped dancing montage. We’re not even going to begin enumerating the many, many shows and films that have used this identical technique to show a character getting ready for work. At least Addison’s not dancing to “Walking on Sunshine.”
3:08 To the shock of no one, Addison’s towel is off. Her neighbor and old friend, Dr. Sam Bennett (Taye Diggs), spies her. Inappropriate, alluded-to nudity-how much fresher can it get?
4:50 Dr. Violet Turner (Amy Brenneman), the psychiatrist, says, “progressive decompensation of repressed rage secondary to feelings of abandonment”-aw, she even calls it out herself as “shrink talk” for the feuding Sam and Naomi (Audra McDonald). We’ve been hearing that jargon all summer on State of Mind, and we like Lili Taylor’s version better.
6:42 Violet and Sam keep repeating “focus!” to the rest of the distracted group. If David E. Kelley and Aaron Sorkin had a ragingly obnoxious love child with Amy Sherman-Palladino, this scene is what that kid would write. In first grade.
10:03 A distraught woman wants to harvest her recently deceased boyfriend’s sperm. This exact scenario was the basis of a 1999 Chicago Hope episode called “Upstairs, Downstairs.”
17:04 We officially arrive at Practice mooching off Grey’s: A severely OCD patient compulsively counts stuff-in this case, tiles; on the Grey’s episode from 2006, siren bleeps. Counting makes you feel in control, see.
26:48 At long last, the backbone of any doctor show: meaningful stares over surgical masks. This scene earns bonus points for one doctor cooing-sexily!-“trust me.” Good grief.
27:53 Angry, sad divorced docs Naomi and Sam bicker about Mr. Deadsperm until Sam says, “Could we please not make this about us?” Apparently Sam has never seen an episode of Grey’s. News flash, Sam: Every patient who walks onto this show is a breathing metaphor. Everything will always be “about us.” Well, you.
32:55 Addison gives Dr. Peter Finch (Tim Daly) a sassy high-five and makes him swear he knows she didn’t move to LA for him. She walks away, he mutters the opposite, she snarks, “I heard that.” This joke construct should have died with Full House.
33:58 Bust out your tissues. Violet and Cooper recount how OCD woman’s child died. It’s very, very sad. Practice isn’t good, but come on, we’re not made of stone.
38:29 You might think this is the first sperm-extraction montage we’ve ever seen. But we saw an episode of NBC’s extremely short-lived series Inconceivable in 2005. And that was our first splooge montage.
39:34 Picture it! Sicily! BFFs Addison and Naomi are eating cheesecake. We only wish this scene were ripping off Golden Girls. Instead, it’s back to Grey’s. When Naomi whimpers, “I need you here to be my someone,” all we can think of is Meredith reminding Cristina on the second-season premiere, “I’m your person.”
40:56 Addison delivers a TV staple: the impromptu, rousing monologue with a quirky ending, “I thought I had a big finish…but…I don’t, so…I’m done.” You’ve seen this done better on West Wing. Hell, you’ve seen it done better on Studio 60.
42:13 As our journey draws to an end, Naomi drolly says, “Welcome to Oceanside Wellness Group.” At least she didn’t say, “Welcome to Private Practice, bitch,” à la The OC. Though now that we think about it…we wish she had.
Private Practice goes public Wednesday 26 at 8pm on ABC.
# Private Practice makes…well, definitely not perfect: The Grey’s Anatomy spin-off needs an originality transplant-stat!
By Margaret Lyons
Not every spin-off can be Lou Grant-but even Joey was smart enough not to replicate Friends in any real way. Private Practice, not so much. It plays like a wannabe Grey’s Anatomy: Ten Years Later, with Addison taking on the plucky Meredith position. We present to you a minute-by-minute breakdown of the disastrous first episode. Our counter doesn’t include commercial breaks-just programming minutes-and the content spoils every attempted surprise or twist. Let’s go to the videotape:
1:09 Introducing Dr. Cooper Freedman (Paul Adelstein), a pediatrician who’s also a womanizing hobag-hey, he doesn’t even know that woman’s name! Paging Dr. Doug Ross, George Clooney’s ER character, who also pioneered the “I don’t know the name of the woman I’m banging” bit on the 1996 episode “Last Call.”
2:40 The get-pumped dancing montage. We’re not even going to begin enumerating the many, many shows and films that have used this identical technique to show a character getting ready for work. At least Addison’s not dancing to “Walking on Sunshine.”
3:08 To the shock of no one, Addison’s towel is off. Her neighbor and old friend, Dr. Sam Bennett (Taye Diggs), spies her. Inappropriate, alluded-to nudity-how much fresher can it get?
4:50 Dr. Violet Turner (Amy Brenneman), the psychiatrist, says, “progressive decompensation of repressed rage secondary to feelings of abandonment”-aw, she even calls it out herself as “shrink talk” for the feuding Sam and Naomi (Audra McDonald). We’ve been hearing that jargon all summer on State of Mind, and we like Lili Taylor’s version better.
6:42 Violet and Sam keep repeating “focus!” to the rest of the distracted group. If David E. Kelley and Aaron Sorkin had a ragingly obnoxious love child with Amy Sherman-Palladino, this scene is what that kid would write. In first grade.
10:03 A distraught woman wants to harvest her recently deceased boyfriend’s sperm. This exact scenario was the basis of a 1999 Chicago Hope episode called “Upstairs, Downstairs.”
17:04 We officially arrive at Practice mooching off Grey’s: A severely OCD patient compulsively counts stuff-in this case, tiles; on the Grey’s episode from 2006, siren bleeps. Counting makes you feel in control, see.
26:48 At long last, the backbone of any doctor show: meaningful stares over surgical masks. This scene earns bonus points for one doctor cooing-sexily!-“trust me.” Good grief.
27:53 Angry, sad divorced docs Naomi and Sam bicker about Mr. Deadsperm until Sam says, “Could we please not make this about us?” Apparently Sam has never seen an episode of Grey’s. News flash, Sam: Every patient who walks onto this show is a breathing metaphor. Everything will always be “about us.” Well, you.
32:55 Addison gives Dr. Peter Finch (Tim Daly) a sassy high-five and makes him swear he knows she didn’t move to LA for him. She walks away, he mutters the opposite, she snarks, “I heard that.” This joke construct should have died with Full House.
33:58 Bust out your tissues. Violet and Cooper recount how OCD woman’s child died. It’s very, very sad. Practice isn’t good, but come on, we’re not made of stone.
38:29 You might think this is the first sperm-extraction montage we’ve ever seen. But we saw an episode of NBC’s extremely short-lived series Inconceivable in 2005. And that was our first splooge montage.
39:34 Picture it! Sicily! BFFs Addison and Naomi are eating cheesecake. We only wish this scene were ripping off Golden Girls. Instead, it’s back to Grey’s. When Naomi whimpers, “I need you here to be my someone,” all we can think of is Meredith reminding Cristina on the second-season premiere, “I’m your person.”
40:56 Addison delivers a TV staple: the impromptu, rousing monologue with a quirky ending, “I thought I had a big finish…but…I don’t, so…I’m done.” You’ve seen this done better on West Wing. Hell, you’ve seen it done better on Studio 60.
42:13 As our journey draws to an end, Naomi drolly says, “Welcome to Oceanside Wellness Group.” At least she didn’t say, “Welcome to Private Practice, bitch,” à la The OC. Though now that we think about it…we wish she had.
Private Practice goes public Wednesday 26 at 8pm on ABC.