Private Practice: Worst doctors ever?

Posted by sara October 7th, 2008 at 09:00am In Grey's Anatomy

The other night I watched the season premiere of Private Practice because I couldn’t sleep. And as I cursed the fact that I had to get up in six hours, I thought again of how much potential this show wastes (especially since I watched the premiere of Pushing Daisies just before it, and oh, Lord, that show is spectacular).

No, Shonda, I will not pretend to be chased by a swarm of vampire squirrels! I am not a puppet!

The cast, for one. I haven’t seen this many great actors in one place with so little do since Vanity Fair’s noir Oscar portfolio. Audra McDonald, for starters. The lady has FOUR TONY AWARDS. She’s basically the modern incarnation of Broadway, and not only is she saddled with truly ugly costumes because Shondaland’s costume designer is apparently only used to dressing the Meredith Greys of the word, but the whole series is basically a referendum on this overwhelmed, emotionally incompetent single mother whose superhot husband just abandoned her one day, and now she eats cake all the time. I…ow. Merrin Dungey, wherever you are, well done at getting far, far away from the quicksand.

And the superhot husband? Yeah, that would be wee, adorable Taye Diggs. I love his shiny head. (And there was one shot in the episode with him walking next to Tim Daly and Paul Adelstein, and it was just, “Aww, look at Taye walking with the big guys!” Seriously, Adelstein looked like Andre the Giant.) I love that he is married to Idina Menzel. I love his big, gorgeous smile. What I do not love is the crap this show makes him say. The writers have been trying since the pilot to shove him and Tim Daly, who is otherwise wry and sexy and funny, into McDreamy-shaped boxes, and they just. will not. fit.

And Kate Walsh. She was just about the only person on Grey’s Anatomy back in season 2 or 3, whenever she left, aside from Chandra Wilson, whom I did not want to kill with my bare hands. And then the first thing that happens once she gets out of that toxic soup of narcissism? She turns into Meredith Grey with a better dye job. The premiere gives me a little hope that this year she might be less of a neurotic disaster, wandering about whingeing about her ovaries and stammering at boys like a silly twat.

Speaking of Grey’s Anatomy. I like how the writers of both shows seem to have read a little of their own press during the offseason. First, Cristina finally screamed at Meredith for being a complete and total self-obsessed asshole for, like, four years (and then got impaled for her trouble) AND the hospital lost its fancy five-diamond rating or whatever because someone realized that these doctors are too busy shagging in closets to actually practice medicine. Then over at Oceanside Wellness, we find out that the practice is basically bankrupt because the doctors haven’t been billing enough. Yes, there is no money because they are all too busy hanging out in the kitchen or ogling Dell or having perfectly-scored beachside barbecues to, like, see patients. HA. The meta, it soothes my troubled soul.

The score, let me talk about the score. As much as I want to punch both of these shows (and I do, often; watching is basically just me exercising self-hatred in a noninjurious way), I really wish their music supervisors would come live in my kitchen. Because regardless of how false and manipulated the mood they’re trying to evoke, that mood is always beautifully, precisely evoked. What I’m trying to say is I like Snow Patrol a lot now.

And I do kind of love the anarchic spirit that makes Paul Adelstein this show’s sex symbol. In the premiere, he is the only one getting it on—your cast involves Tim Daly, Taye Diggs, that shirtless fellow from Veronica Mars, and Lorelei’s smirking babydaddy from Gilmore Girls (in a SWAT team vest, no less. Rowr), and the one you have rolling around on his desk with the hot blonde is Paul Adelstein? I have to admire that. Besides, he is a cutie.

Yeah, I get a lot of ass on this show. A lot. Don’t ask me; I didn’t know I was a sex symbol.

I’m not really making a good case for hate, am I? Well, yeah. I am only so strong: I like shows with very pretty people. And Kate Walsh is very pretty. I like shows with limited storytelling complexity as an antidote to things like Battlestar Galactica. And sometimes I like to watch something be inaccurate so I can yell at it.

However, something was bothering me while I was watching. I am not the resident TiFaux Medical Director, but I wondered about this: Addison had to deliver a six-month fetus that the parents conceived (with supergeneticist Naomi’s help) to be a near-perfect genetic match for their leukemia (I think)-stricken seven-year-old son. And the son needed the baby’s cord blood transfused into him immediately or he would die within a week (something about another donor getting pneumonia). So Addison refused to deliver a six-month preemie, and the mother retaliated by breaking her water with a knitting needle (EW). Blah blah preemiecakes, and they give the seven-year-old the cord blood, and everything appears to be peachy. Ish. If morally gross regarding the baby’s future in that family where she was basically created to be harvested.

My question was, can’t they just stick a big needle into the mother’s belly and pull out a little cord blood? Or some placenta? It’s not like the baby needs it ALL. And that would seem safer, as long as you don’t rupture the amniotic sac, than delivering the baby twelve weeks early. I mean, Addison has done neonatal surgery on this show; she can’t just do a little neonatal blood donation? Do we have any readers who are doctors? Please enlighten me. And if anyone else wants to rub Taye Diggs’ shiny head as much as I do, please chime in.