"Private Practice": Does Watching Count as Making Myself Sick

Published: October 18, 2007 at 02:23 AM GMT
Last Updated: October 18, 2007 at 02:23 AM GMT

By Sally Cohen-Cutler

Look Addison, you once were a strong and interesting character. At one point in your television career, you had one-liners, legendary dirty looks, and a killer attitude. You also had a backbone. Now, you just look a little pathetic, but mostly bored. And I don't blame you.

This week, on Private Practice, we appeared to only have cases concerned with the social lives of our doctors. This is particularly pointless, given that the whole episode pivots around Addison's party - a much more appropriate place for social interaction. Regardless, nobody RSVPs to her party, because she's apparently working with seventh graders, not doctors. Maybe that's why it's so necessary for Sylvie to tell Pete how she thinks Addison feels, or for Violet to ask Naomi what Cami said, instead of any actual social interactions.

Sylvie, Pete's patient, comes in with her fiancé, Stan, who keeps suffering from unexplained "sleeping fits." When his results come back completely clean, Sylvie decides that the real reason is the stress of marrying her. Pete finally determines the cause of his problems - too much sex causes some kind of push-button sleeping. All it takes is muscle therapy! Oh, Private Practice, you're so cheeky.

All of this, by the way, is peppered with repeated exclamations of how Stan is absolutely the one for Sylvie and how Pete must find the one for himself, to the point where I sincerely thought Sylvie might be his mother for a while. Also, while I understand Sylvia worrying about her role in a lover's sickness, let's be honest - that's the kind of thing you keep to yourself. Because it's illogical. And if you really need to humor yourself in believing that you can blame yourself for an unexplained health problem, you shouldn't be seeing a homeopathic physician, but a therapist - though Violet probably can't be much help.

That's right! It's time to talk about Alan again! Cami, Alan's new wife, has been seeing Naomi, which of course sparks Violet's worry that the happily married couple may be pregnant. What is so silly about this all is that a doctor with such a clear conflict of interest as Naomi - she is part of a communal clinic with Cami's husband's very recent ex-girlfriend - should refer Cami elsewhere. Even beyond the professional foolishness, personally, she should know that the therapist on staff is completely unhinged, and seeing Cami around shouldn't help.

When Violet finally confronts Cami as to why she chose that clinic, it turns out that Cami was, in fact, scoping out the old competition. In the worst foreshadowing ever, Cami implies that she feels threatened by Violet. We've only seen Alan once in the supermarket, where he did little else but be awkward, and I already dread how this will work out.

Moreover, we now get an open admission that Cooper is in love with Violet - as if that hadn't been set up from episode negative one. This makes the whole Alan plot even more irritating, because clearly, Violet has been dwelling on this break up for ages while her best friend pines after her. He says nice things, he's supportive, and he's obviously head over heels. Hell, he even tells his patient, Michael--his 11-year-old patient, with whom Cooper then makes a "love confession" pact, resulting in Michael's getting beaten up by Brian. Because if Cooper had actually listened to a word Michael said, he would have realized just as quickly as I did that the "kid at the skate park" was obviously not just a cool girl. But he was too busy practicing love speeches in the toilet stall.

Of course, the big story of the episode is the misdiagnosed Munchausen's patient, Rebecca. The logical step was to involve Charlotte King, because she is the most annoying character on TV and constantly involved with Oceanside despite running her own hospital staff. And the next thing that made sense was that the Oceanside Wellness staff sat down for 2 minutes and figured out that Rebecca was actually not lying - surprise! Look, before Munchausen's is diagnosed, there must be a long history established and some serious ruling out of any other possibility, especially something as noteworthy as Crohn's Disease. Just because Addison believed in this girl - nevermind. Letting it go, suspending reality. But even so - didn't Rebecca look kinda crazy?!

Rebecca's pregnancy inspires Addison to look at her own chart, and she is infuriated when she realizes that time could have been stretched so that she could have her own "miracle," as she had a few eggs left. So Addison spends the episode snapping at Naomi for not trying, and supposedly protecting her - since when do doctors protect their friends by not telling them the medical truth? But not to worry, this is all resolved at Addison's beach party, in a 2 second conversation.

Private Practice has a full hour every week to make me like the characters. But instead, it just keeps doing all the wrong things over and over again. Addison gets more pathetic weekly, this time breaking down nonsensically to Violet. Meanwhile, Violet could not be more a one-note character, which only seems to have the possibility of getting worse. Naomi is bitter, Cooper is self-defeating, Pete is troubled. Most of all? I'm bored.

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