Kat with a K

What I Want This Season: Private Practice

This is one in a series of posts about what I'd like to happen this upcoming season on various returning shows. You can assume that there will be spoilers through last season, but I won't include any spoilers I might or might not have read about the upcoming season. These posts are just about what I WANT.

. . . I don't even know. This show is such a mess at this point. THEY KILLED DELL. I don't know how they can make it better. Okay. Let's see.

Addison (and Sam): I really do like Addison and her WASPiness, so I'd like to see more of that side of her. This thing with Sam has had such a build-up. I hope there's some decent payoff.

Violet (and Pete and Lucas): Violet was pretty awful last season. I'd like to see her redeem herself somewhat and make a go of things with her family.

Betsey: Poor little orphan! I'd sort of like to see Addison adopt her, but I'm afraid Naomi will.

Naomi: Get over yourself and fix your relationship with your daughter, Naomi!

Maya: I'd like to see more of how she does with the baby and her new life.

Charlotte and Cooper: I love them together, so I hope they get married already and make it work.

Sheldon, Fife, Amelia: Apparently I have no strong feelings about them, although I am looking forward to Amelia's crossover(s) with her brother, also known as McDreamy of Grey's Anatomy.

Why I still watch Grey's Anatomy

(There are some spoilers for recent episodes Grey's Anatomy and Private Practice below. You have been warned.)

Practically everyone I know who used to watch Grey's Anatomy gave up on it, maybe when people started talking to dead people or Addison left and got her own show or George died or Derek and Meredith got married on a post-it. And yes, I will readily admit that the plots are often completely ridiculous. But I'm still watching, and I'm watching Private Practice too, and I will probably watch Shonda Rhimes' new show (also about doctors). And it's not just because these shows are full of pretty, pretty men, although they are, and that certainly doesn't hurt. But the actual reason I watch is because, however silly the plots may be, the actual characters are more real than practically anyone else on TV. As a friend put it a few years ago when she was convincing me to start watching the show, and I'm paraphrasing here, the characters are all messed up, but they deal, and get on with their lives, and it's presented as though it's okay that they're messed up, because we're all messed up.

More specifically, I was thrilled with this piece of dialog from last week's episode, because I feel like I've been waiting for years for someone to say this:

"I said that I love you and it's out there and I know that I can't unring the bell but I'm unringing the bell. I take it back. . . . I miss my friend Owen more than anything. I miss my friend. The rest I can deal with, I can deal with it . . . I'm gonna be fine. You and I are going to be friends. . . ."
"You can't unring the bell."
"I know. But I'm going to try like hell."

The same night, on Private Practice (the Grey's spinoff), Addison said something I had said almost word for word to someone earlier in the day: "I don't want to be that girl who only comes to you for whining." The longer this show goes on, the more I identify with Addison. I don't know. Maybe it's just that she's from Connecticut. But something about the way she thinks just seems real, in the midst of her highly ridiculous and unrealistic life. And this line from one of the first season episodes remains one of my favorite lines in all of TV: "I'm not a prude. It's just . . . I'm from Connecticut." (Before anyone gets the wrong idea, I should mention that, unlike Addison, I have never cheated on anyone, and my parents are orders of magnitude better than hers.)

Meredith's voiceover at the end of the episode perfectly encapsulated what I think is the actual theme of the show, and my reasons for watching it:

"We have to constantly come up with new ways to fix ourselves. . . . So we change. We adapt. . . . We create new versions of ourselves. . . . We just need to be sure that this one is an improvement over the last."

What the world needs now...

... is CLEARLY another Shonda Rhimes show. And it's about doctors! Shocking! (I mock, but I will probably watch.) This one is about doctors at a clinic in some sort of exotic location. This could go reasonably well or very, very badly - remember that 7th-Heaven-in-Africa monstrosity a few years ago? Yeah. I just hope that Pete's annoying ex from Private Practice isn't involved. Wait, was she even a doctor? Or was she a photographer or something? Am I confusing her with Luke's annoying ex from Gilmore Girls? So many questions!

Television Without Pity predicts exactly what will happen. They're probably right. And I'll probably get sucked in anyway. One plus: I've spent less time in clinics in exotic locations than I have in hospitals and doctors' offices in the U.S., so I just won't know how unrealistic it is. (Well, no. It will probably be pretty obvious just how unrealistic it is. Never mind.)

Random TV musing of the morning

You know, I really want to know how they manage to do their laundry on Grey's Anatomy. I'm now sharing a washer/dryer with my roommate and having a very hard time actually getting anything done. (Yes, I got really spoiled having one all to myself.) And I don't think either of us are being unreasonable about it - it just seems that odds are, whenever I bring a load downstairs, he has just put one in, or vice versa. So how do all three or four or however many people at Meredith's house do it? Especially with their crazy schedules? And all the icky bodily fluid stuff they get all over their clothes?