"Private Practice": I Can't Believe It

Published: October 4, 2007 at 02:05 AM GMT
Last Updated: October 16, 2007 at 02:05 AM GMT

By Sally Cohen-Cutler

Part of the appeal of television is suspension of disbelief. Basically, watching a TV show should give you the option to pretend like that couple could work, or that someone could live after ridiculous internal injuries, or maybe, just maybe, you could be a doctor too. The only problem inherent in suspending this disbelief is when a show gets so ridiculous that it no longer is an imaginative exercise, but is instead just dumb. Nobody likes to be taken for an idiot. So, Private Practice, what are you doing?

Firstly, what sane man lets a stripper into his house if he doesn't know who sent her, or why she's there? That's how we open the episode - Sam leaves his shades open, while his friends actually peer into the perfect view of his home from next door, where, but of course, Naomi is coming over to have dinner with Addison. That short explanation is, in fact, as convoluted as it sounds, and as ridiculously irritating.

The rest of the last night's Private Practice goes right along with this ludicrous kind of "drama." The patients have completely unbelievable situations with easy answers that the doctors of Ocean Wellness seem to avoid at all costs. Their reactions, instead, lean toward unethical, highly emotional evaluations of the problem, where they get personally involved and generally make everything more difficult.

Two families with switched babies do not want to take back their own child and give up the one they took home. However, according to Naomi, it's California law that they must switch so that they each have their own biological child. Last time I checked, California has adoption laws as well. So, I won't play at emotional fortitude; I cried when the babies switched. But I will say that after I dried my tears, my initial frustration with the story line was renewed - why did they have to trade babies? And moreover, since when are doctors experts on baby trading laws?

Meanwhile, Sam is making house calls to Dave Walker, a father with a drinking problem, whose own mother, Gloria, is lacing his food with herbal Antabuse. Every time he drinks, Dave gets violently ill, with no apparent cause. This all seems to be a mystery until Dave's son, Stevie gets the same illness. Sam's solution is to confront Gloria, and hear her out. Seriously. Instead of informing the man of his technical poisoning, Sam keeps the secret, and tells both Dave and Stevie that there is an alcohol allergy that runs in the family. I don't even think the word unethical covers it.

As all this drama unfolds, Dr. Charlotte King, chief of staff at a neighboring hospital, inexplicably spends half of her time at the Ocean Wellness, fighting with all the doctors there as though they were her biggest problem. After a show like Grey's Anatomy, we know that the chief of surgery doesn't even have a minute for his wife, so believing that the chief of staff of an entire hospital has time to smirk around the clinic is pretty silly. Plus, Charlotte, is a really, flat-out unlikable awful character. I don't want to see her anymore than I want to watch Violet deal with her bike issues.

That's right, I said bike issues. Because instead of just being normal, neurotic human beings, these doctors are absolutely non-functional. Violet's ex-boyfriend, the one who has turned her into a puddle of emotional insecurity, seems like an impossibly fictional character of a boring, manipulative loser. The bike she bought him a year ago arrives, and faced with the decision of what to do with it, she once again breaks down, and decides to destroy the $6,000 custom bicycle. Destroy, as in, break it apart and throw it away.

But, lest we forget, Violet is not the only one making unreasonable and foolish choices. Cooper's stripper present didn't go over so well for Sam, clearly, as Naomi angrily pouts around the office all day, and all the girls call him a cad. But for some reason, it also didn't go over well for Pete. Because Addison is mad at him - on Naomi's behalf, of course. And though Addison looked great for the entire episode, that's all she did. She had no feelings of her own, she had no story line of her own, she had no guts to stick up for herself, only for Naomi. Given that I don't really care about Naomi, I don't really care about Addison either.

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