Grey's Anatomy/Private Practice: Underwhelming crossover

So, like a good sucker, the prospect of a "Grey's Anatomy" / "Private Practice" cross-over actually got me to watch both shows last night. After the jump, some thoughts on how it worked, and whether it might be enough to get me watching "Private Practice" again on a regular basis (hint: no)...

I was talking with my friend Rich about these episodes, and we each felt it was less a cross-over than a two-hour episode of "Grey's," with a sprinkling of obligatory scenes at Oceanside Wellness in the second half in lieu of Meredith and Cristina angsting about how little they know the men in their lives.

And, frankly, I'm fine with that. Whatever problems I have with "Grey's," it's still a vastly more entertaining show than "Private Practice." The setting is more interesting, the stakes higher, the cast and characters better-drawn and with more compelling relationships, etc. Addison is always a much more dynamic, vibrant character when she's walking the halls of Seattle Grace than she is down on the beach, and a pair of episodes like these just reminded me of how much I want the spin-off to end so she can come back for good.

It was also amusing to me that the "Grey's" regulars featured in the second episode were McDreamy, McSteamy, Bailey, Karev and the Chief, since around the time the backdoor pilot for "Private Practice" aired, I wrote a column saying I had grown to hate so many of the original characters that I wished the spin-off would be about Addison going to work at a new hospital and taking that group (minus McDreamy, who was used well here, away from the usual Meredith dramatics) with her. Now, a number of other "Grey's" characters have been rehabilitated since -- Callie, for instance, had a nice moment last night where she reminded Addison that God would know who she was -- and they've added other good people like Kevin McKidd (who finally got some material to play and knocked it out of the park). But I watched a lot of the scenes in the second hour and felt like I would be satisfied with a show featuring only this group of people (and, yes, that includes Taye Diggs and Audra McDonald, I suppose).

As for the "Grey's"-only hour, I see that Melissa George got written out more definitively than Brooke Smith, and I won't especially miss her. And in addition to the Hunt/Yang story finally getting some room to move, I liked the parts of Izzie's game that didn't actually involve Izzie. Cristina blithely saying she had all the symptoms of testicular cancer was one of the funnier throwaway moments the show's had in a while.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Friday catch-up: Life on Mars, ER, Private Practice and Terminator

It's Friday, which means it's time for another ever-popular grab-bag post, with spoilers on, in order, "Life on Mars," "ER," "Private Practice" and "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," all coming right up...

Hell of a night for homages to "The Wire." First, Dwight on "The Office" talks about juking the stats, and then "Life on Mars" features three different "Wire" alums -- Chad Coleman (Cutty), Chris Bauer (Frank Sobotka) and Clarke Peters (Cool Lester Smooth) -- in guest roles. Now, Peters was already in the show's premiere episode, and you see a lot of "Wire" actors turn up on shows shot in New York because they're East Coast-based, but I'm thinking the producers are fans to put three in one episode.

Unfortunately, the guest cast (which also featured Edi Gathegi, aka Big Love from "House," as a younger version of Peters' character, plus Whoopi Goldberg) was more interesting than the episode itself. My interest in the remake is fading even more rapidly than my interest in the original. They've already softened Gene Hunt far too much (and, yes, I say that about an episode where he was prepared to execute a murder suspect without trial or any real evidence), the cases don't interest me, and I don't think I'm going to really care about the clues about where/when Sam really is until we get to an actual finale. (Based on the ratings, that should be sometime this season.) The "Ice Ice Baby" gag was amusing in the same way that sort of joke usually works in any time travel story (see also Marty McFly inventing both the skateboard and rock music), but overall, the show's pretty flat.

(Also, I was waiting for the inevitable moment where Gathegi's character raised an eyebrow at Sam telling a story about a black NYPD detective he met when he was 17 years old, which would have been the 1950s. Was the NYPD progressive enough to have black detectives back then?)

I actually watched a screener of next week's "ER" with the resurrection of Mark Greene earlier yesterday, so it felt a little like watching "Memento" to then see this episode, which sets up stuff the characters will be talking about next week, like Gates and Sam moving in together, or Gates' homeless veteran patient.

Even had I watched them in the proper order, I suspect I would have found this one to be a pretty blah episode, even by later-period standards. I'm not sure exactly what they're doing with the new interns; isn't Shiri Appleby dating (or maybe even married to) the young surgeon, and, if so, why is she drooling all over Gates? (I mean, Stamos is handsome, but he's also got 15 years on her.) Also, casting Carl Weather as the father of a boxer is one of those ideas that probably sounded great on paper but inadvertently turned that entire story into a big meta joke. (The only way it would have been weirder was if they had mixed in some "Arrested Development" cheapskate jokes about Weathers.)

Matt at Throwing Things recently argued that "Private Practice" has been this year's most improved show so far. I can see that, in that it's gone from teeth-grindingly awful to mediocrity, which is probably a bigger leap than the good-to-wonderful one "Chuck" has taken, but the show is still, at best, something I have on while doing three other things. Glad as I am to see Addison behaving like Addison again, and to see more of a focus on the cases and the ethical problems contained therein, I still don't feel attached to any of the other characters. And even when a case involves life or death, as it did this week with the terminally ill teen who desperately wanted a baby, the setting somehow makes the stakes feel much lower. I can't explain exactly why, but put that exact same storyline into a hospital show and it would have felt a lot more powerful, I think.

Finally, it's a shame nobody's watching "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles" -- and that even fewer will be watching once the show moves to Fridays -- because they're really on a roll of late. Other than the subplot with Derek and his time-traveling girlfriend, where I constantly feel like they're leaving all the exposition on the cutting room floor (how does she know Derek's fence, for instance?), every storyline was clicking this week. Stupid as it is for John to not tell his mom about Cromartie visiting the house, or about Cameron going walkabout a few episodes back, his desire to have something resembling a normal life -- with a normal girlfriend who did a much better job dealing with Cromartie than any other person to date -- is understandable and a good idea for the show to explore. (When John was whining to Sarah about her not protecting him from killing Sarkisian, she really should have told him that he needs to get ready to kill a whole lot of people and things.) And Ellison's ongoing crisis of faith in the wake of learning that SkyNet is real has been very well-done. I'm still not sure exactly how much, if anything, he suspects about Shirley Manson, and I'm taking a wait-and-see approach on this apparent SkyNet civil war plotline they've been setting up, but this season has been really engaging so far.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Hey, remember these? Private Practice & Dirty Sexy Money return

While I've been all geeked up about the return of re-freshman series "Chuck" and "Pushing Daisies" (and, to a lesser extent, "Life"), it's been hard for me to work up much enthusiasm (or time) to write about the returns of "Private Practice" and "Dirty Sexy Money," which are also back tonight.

While I think the "Private Practice" season premiere makes a couple of good course corrections (more focus on medicine, slightly less on relationship angst), I still don't care about anybody on the show but Kate Walsh. And while I think Lucy Liu is an interesting addition to the already overcrowded "Dirty Sexy Money" ensemble, none of the characters have ever popped for me enough to get over my ambivalence about primetime soaps.

Still, they're both back on tonight, so feel free to use this post to talk about their season premieres. Not sure how long either one will remain in the viewing and blogging rotation, but at least we'll have October 1. Click here to read the full post

Legless, sleepless, powerless

Kind of an odd day for me, so all of last night’s viewing gets the round-up treatment. Brief spoilers for, in order, “Pushing Daisies,” “Private Practice” and “Life” coming up just as soon as I ask my doctor whether I can get a gorilla arm transplant...

As with “Reaper,” a Halloween episode is kind of a gimme for “Pushing Daisies.” They’ve done better episodes -- usually the ones with more of Emerson snarking on everybody else -- but the show has yet to put out a bad hour. Five episodes is a small sample size, but almost every new show stumbles in some noticeable way by this point, and “Pushing Daisies” hasn’t yet.

A nice showcase for Kristen Chenoweth, whose flair for comic bitchiness wasn’t really on display in her previous TV roles, and Lee Pace got to carry more of an emotional load than usual as we dealt with the reason why Ned, like Ray Wise as the Devil, hates Halloween. (One minor complaint about that storyline: in the pilot, Chuck’s dad lived across the street from Ned, while her aunts lived elsewhere, which is why they said goodbye at their parents’ funerals.) Interesting that they had The Narrator speaking in verse this week; I find in general that he works best in the flashbacks and for exposition and get annoyed when they use him to underline the emotions that are clearly on the actors’ faces.

I haven’t written about “Private Practice” lately, even though I’ve seen every episode. It’s definitely improved in a number of ways, notably in how the characters are beginning to act their age instead of squeaky-voiced teens. But I still find it to be completely inconsequential viewing. When “Grey’s Anatomy” is working – as, I have to admit, it was for most of last week’s unblogged-about episode -- the hospital setting lends an urgency to all the relationship angst going on around the cases. Here, despite attempts to create crisis storylines like the abused girl here or the blue girls a few weeks ago, everything feels too laid-back. The stakes aren’t high enough for me to get invested in whether Addison and Pete are a good match or whether Cooper will ever get the stones to ask out Violet. I know Shonda wanted to differentiate the spin-off from the original by changing the workplace setting as much as possible while still staying in medicine, but it feels like a waste of everybody’s talents, both off-camera and on. (What the hell is a world-class neo-natal surgeon doing at this place?)

“Life,” meanwhile, has grown on me quite a bit. While the things that annoyed me -- the fruit obsession, the Zen koans, Charlie marveling at modern technology -- are all still in place, Damian Lewis has such strong presence that I’ve learned to tune the quirkiness out like so much background noise. The cases still need improvement – which, as I’ve written, is a genre-wide problem at the moment – but I’m enjoying it just enough that I’ll be disappointed when the low ratings or the strike brings about cancellation.

That said, this wasn’t one of their stronger episodes, because the focus was on Reese instead of Charlie. I get that the partner has to become a more well-rounded character so it’s not just the Charlie Crews Genius Hour, but I still don’t buy Sarah Shahi in this part. I think about how often the female partners on “Criminal Intent” have to stand around and goggle at their partner’s brilliance and wish that, say, Shahi and Kathryn Erbe could swap series. Erbe would’ve killed with the AA story.

What did everybody else think? And, out of curiosity, did anybody watch the debut of Joe “Joey Mants” Mantegna on “Criminal Minds”? I watched a screener but found it as stultifying as every other episode of the show I’ve seen. Click here to read the full post

A case of the Wednesdays

Okay, I'm feeling seriously underwhelmed here. I've now gone through almost all of the hellacious amount of new series that are airing on Wednesday nights (I'm about a third of the way through "Dirty Sexy Money"), and outside of the previously-blogged "Pushing Daisies," nothing especially wowed me and yet nothing made me rush to change the channel. Hell, the best thing I watched all day may have been the last 20 minutes of Monday's "Journeyman" that had been sitting on the DVR. So really brief thoughts on what I've seen, and feel free to comment on any of those plus things I missed ("Kid Nation," the Fox comedies, whatever). Spoilers ho for, in order, "Journeyman," "Bionic Woman," "Private Practice," "Life," "Gossip Girl" and "America's Next Top Model"...

"Journeyman": I'm glad that the writers are giving the show a sense of humor as Dan gets accustomed to the complexities of involuntary time travel, and I'm starting to feel a bit invested in the Dan/Katie marriage. But by far the coolest thing in the episode -- really, the coolest thing in all four episodes -- was the tachyon expert calling Dan while he was still in the past. I don't know that the show will be around long enough for Dany to explore his condition the way Henry in "Time Traveler's Wife" did, but that one moment put a big smile on my face.

"Bionic Woman": Meh. M-E-H, meh. Sister angst bores me, the spark of personality they gave Jamie last week was gone at the expense of a contrived thriller plot with iffy fight and stunt choreography (I'm already tired of the one punch/block combo that Michelle Ryan knows), but the Sarah Corvus/Jae stuff remains worth my attention.

"Private Practice": Outside of the continued dishrag-ification of Addison, there's nothing as egregiously bad here as a lot of the messes Shonda has made on "Grey's," but has there been anything remotely as compelling as "Grey's" when it's good? The attempt to turn Hooper and Violet into a slightly older George and Izzie is disappointing (what's so wrong with the occasional rock-solid male/female platonic friendship?), but at least they're doing it early so we won't have to rewrite history later, and at least there's no adultery in the mix.

"Life": I'm always happy to see William Sanderson (beloved as both Larry of Larry, Darryl and Darryl and as E.B. Farnum) working, and I have to admit that Crews and his quirks are growing on me. Not enough to keep me fully alert during all the twists and turns of the murder case, but enough to stick around a while longer.

"Gossip Girl": Several improvements over last week: Chuck and Tiny Archibald were absent and completely unmissed, Dan stops acting like a superior prig, and Blair is back to being queen bitch after last week's softer side. (I particularly liked her improvisation during the jailbreak from the Dawn Ostroff Memorial In-Joke Clinic.) Still makes me feel like a very old man while I watch, though.

"America's Next Top Model": Looks like Heather's getting more comfortable around the other hamsters, based on her very blunt and accurate critiques of each of them, and she also provided some nice comic relief with her klutziness (which may or may not be Asperger's-related) on the ice. Bianca had been growing on me as kind of a Fun Bitch the last few weeks, but her shredding of Lisa after Lisa came back from the bonus photo shoot was more the nasty, please go home soon (not that she will) kind. It's interesting how those two are the only ones to consistently stand out in terms of screen time (in addition to whoever the bottom two is each week); foreshadowing the finale, or just the editors playing up the two most compelling "characters"?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

Dandy cozy funny

Spoilers for, in order, "Pushing Daisies," "Private Practice," "Dirty Sexy Money" and "American's Next Top Model" coming up just as soon as I hold my breath until I turn blue...

Wow. If the "Pushing Daisies" pilot bordered on too twee, I'm not even sure what adjective can capture episode two, which featured Chi McBride knitting himself some gun cozies, Kristen Chenoweth rocking out to "Hopelessly Devoted To You" and, oh yeah, a car that runs on dandelions. I never fell for Bryan Fuller's previous shows because they always seemed too hopelessly devoted to their own selves. The first "Pushing Daisies" episode somehow avoided that trap, but this one was perilously close.

On the plus side, it still looked amazing, and I'd be tempted to tune in every week just for that... except that, according to those LA Times stories, this was the last episode made before Warner Bros. tightened the budget and banned Barry Sonnenfeld from directing. How many weeks before we get a bottle show where all the regulars are locked in the Pie Hole for an hour?

Also on the plus side, Jim Dale narrating Young Ned's misadventures in prep school. If JK Rowling isn't going to give us an eighth Harry Potter book for Dale to read aloud, this may be the closest we'll get.

I want to see what a regular episode of this show looks like before I decide whether the sugar shock factor is too high to bother with.

If I didn't know that ABC was showing the early "Private Practice" episodes out of order, and that Shonda had gone back and rewritten some of the scenes from the premiere to make Addison seem tougher, I'd be heading for the hills, because the Addison in this episode (originally planned as the second) was the same dishrag little girl that she was back in that heinous backdoor pilot. And since the other characters -- save Cooper and maybe Violet (if the writers can ever free her of stalking her ex) -- are complete personality vacuums, Addison's really the only reason I'm watching. Fix her in a hurry, or else. So far, all three regular episodes have been largely carried by the guest stars (the crazy lady on the floor and the store manager, the two moms and the Thirtysomething Virgin), and that's just not enough to sustain a following long-term.

"Dirty Sexy Money" continues to be a good low nutritional content treat, with a red carpet catfight (and Juliet foolishly letting the press in on the lame origin of her feud), many entrances by "Rebecca Colfax, Darling family publicist," much talk of a very special sexual position involving banking, the very funny montage of Nick interrogating the Darling kids, bad Australian accents and some intrigue involving the still-unseen Blair Underwood as Simon Elder. And yet, as is true of the entire Berlanti ouevre, the show is able to turn off the silly switch when needed and present some genuine emotion, in this case revealing how much Patrick loves Carmelita (who, unlike her counterpart on "Big Shots," doesn't seem to be a hooker) and vice versa. Easy joke in the pilot, kinda moving in episode three. Not bad.

Finally, a question for the more hardcore "America's Next Top Model" fans: did this show so blatantly telegraph its exits back in the days before the writers (or story editors, or whatever you want to call them) first started fighting with management over salary and unfair treatment? Because this is three weeks in a row, I think, where the first girl to give a talking head has gone home. Within the first two minutes, I knew the bottom two would include Victoria and Saleisha (though Jenah's meltdown during the photo shoot briefly had me doubting myself). My wife's on Team Heather, and was worried when they made her dress up like a weed (but not, sadly, a dandelion), but I told her, "Don't worry. She's had almost no screen time this episode. She's not going anywhere." "Amazing Race" and, when I still watch it, "Survivor," seem just as blatant in telling you who's about to lose. Have all the reality competition shows gotten worse at this, or have we all just watched so much that we can recognize all the old tricks?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

How twee it is

Sometimes, I try to have a common theme when I do multiple shows in one post. Today's theme is a simple one: Stuff I Either Watched In Advance Or Got Through Before Falling Asleep On Wednesday Night, Plus "Cavemen." (Got all that?) Unconnected spoilers of varying lengths for, in order, "Pushing Daisies," "Cavemen," "Life," "Private Practice," "America's Next Top Model" and the "Top Chef" finale coming up just as soon as I try to figure out when I'll have time on Thursday to watch all the other stuff that was on...

The "Pushing Daisies" column review presented most of my thoughts on the show. Loved the look, love Jim Dale (even though his narration is the twee-est thing about the whole thing), liked Lee Pace and Anna Friel's chemistry, like the cynical note provided by Chi McBride (whose "Bitch, I was in the proximity" compensated for at least 20 minutes worth of twee)... I just want to see a second episode until I make up my mind. (Technically, I want to see a third episode, as I believe Sonnenfeld directed the second one before the studio banned him for going over budget.) I just worry that a little of this level of concentrated preciousness goes a very long way.

Because (some of) you demanded it, I should say a few words about "Cavemen." A lot of other critics have already beaten me to the one-word review joke ("Ugh"), but my buddy Fienberg summed it up best in an e-mail shortly after it aired: "They made Cavemen less offensive... And somehow less funny... How is this possible?" The version I saw in June -- the one that led to one of the more savage press conferences I've ever attended -- was far more overt with the racial allegory stuff. I think we scared the creators away from that angle, so all that's left is a lame buddy comedy that could very well have been someone's unused script for a late '90s NBC sitcom, modified slightly to fit the cavemen in. Flat, smug and just not good. My kingdom for "I'm a Mac. And I'm a PC: The Series!"

I saw the second episode of "Life" a few weeks back, and while I was glad they dialed down the "Crews is amazed by modern technology!" gags (which, for the most part, called to mind Phil Hartman's Unfrozen Caveman Lawyer, each sketch of which was a thousand times funnier than "Cavemen"), but the fruit and zen aspects of the character still feel like the writers are trying too hard. And Crews is far too pleased with himself at all times, which is an attitude I'll accept from House because House is funny, where Crews is just an oddball who sometimes has good hunches. The case was boring again (and one of those Law of Economy of Casting things where the most recognizable guest star was the perp), but at least there were some interesting things going on with Crews' ex-partner and the start of his search for the real killers. Gets another week or two out of Damian Lewis loyalty, I guess.

This episode of "Private Practice" was supposed to be the fourth one, but it got pushed up because ABC thought the baby swap storyline would really resonate with viewers. I don't know that it's a good sign that a new show that's so much about showing developing relationships can shift episodes around without it even being noticeable, though. Shouldn't Addison's bond with each of her new co-workers be different in episode four than it's going to seem in episode two? Then again, Addison was largely a spectator this week, as the focus shifted to Sam, Naomi, Violet and, to a lesser extent, Cooper. The house calls idea, while I'm sure it seems cute and another obvious way to show how Oceanside Wellness does things differently (from both Seattle Grace and standard medical shows), didn't really work here, because what little we've seen of the clinic suggests it's a boutique for very rich people, and Sam's drunk patient was very blue collar. I'll give Shonda and company that the scene where the two moms shared the kind of details only those babies' mothers would know (though why can't the women be in each other's lives for a while? what would be wrong with that?), but most of the hour was forgettable.

I've watched previous "America's Next Top Model" seasons sporadically, but even I know that Tyra wouldn't get rid of a vintage bitch like Bianca this early in the competition, especially since she and Heather have gotten by far the most screen time thus far. (And, interestingly, Bianca seems okay with Heather. Her comment about having to get rid of her before she becomes too hard to beat was a kind of bizarre triumph of equal opportunity for people with disabilities, wasn't it?) Kimberly was, I believe, the one who gave that vile talking head last week about how "people like (Heather) cling" to you if you're nice, so she was already dead to me. Good riddance. Makeovers come next week, and that's usually when the real fun begins. Anyone want to predict which girl Tyra gives the semi-annual, tear-inducing short haircut to? I had figured it would be Kimberly, actually, and now she's gone.

Finally, the "Top Chef" finale threw in a wrinkle of sorts. After spending weeks of the show establishing the Hung vs. Casey/technical brilliance vs. "soul" dynamic, Casey performed terribly -- falling prey, oddly, to Dale's usual trap of making things up on the fly and not having a backup plan in place for when things went awry -- and the actual decision came down to Hung vs. Dale. Based on consistency throughout the season, Hung was the obvious choice. Based solely on the final meal, it gets more interesting. I'm waffling on whether I'm with Colicchio (that Dale shouldn't win because he made the worst meal of the night) or Gail (that Dale should be forgiven, because he was more ambitious, whereas Hung played it ultra-conservative with his chocolate cake). In the end, though, I think they made the right choice. Admittedly, I'm a newcomer to the Magical Elves family of shows, but it's been a while since I watched a reality competition series where the right guy won.

I'm sleepy now. What did everybody else think about any or all of the above? Click here to read the full post

Private Practice: Focus!

First of all, I've gotten a couple of e-mail complaints from people who don't like the grab-bag approach of discussing multiple shows in the same post, largely because the comments then go in multiple directions at once. However, as I've written, I'm only one man, and it's not feasible for me to do individual posts for every show, especially on a busy night like this one. Besides, even when I do single-show posts, the discussion often travels along several forks, and in the past I've found people are pretty good at identifying which show they're talking about in a multi-show thread.

Once we're another week or two into the season, I won't be writing about as many shows, both because some will have been canceled or pulled and because others will have ceased to interest me past the point where I have screener episodes. (See "K-Ville," for instance.) And given that I'll be seeing fewer shows in advance moving forward and can only watch a limited number of shows each night, the grab-bag posts won't be quite as busy.

That long pre-amble out of the way, I'm going to break up tonight's nearly all-rookie line-up into a few posts. "Private Practice" gets the solo treatment, because something about Shonda Rhimes shows always brings out my long-winded side. Then I'll hit the other shows I've seen in advance -- "Bionic Woman," "Dirty Sexy Money," "Life" and "Back to You" -- in a grab-bag post, and hopefully come back on "Kid Nation" and "Gossip Girl" sometime tomorrow.

So, spoilers for "Private Practice" coming up just as soon as I make sure I've lowered all my blinds...

I'm in a bit of a rush here, as I had this post all written and ready to go when Mo Ryan told me ABC sent her a slightly revised version of the pilot on Monday. She told me which two scenes had been changed, so at least I didn't have to watch the whole thing again, and it's instructive and even a little promising to see the new version.

So, the two changes: First, the opening scene where Addison resigns from Seattle Grace was originally a casual little chat over coffee with Chief Weber, instead of the more heated confrontation you saw. Second, Addison's big speech to the other doctors originally ended with her admitting that she didn't have a big finish, followed by much mockery from the other docs. Here, they added the big finish, including the whole "world-class surgeon" bit that left the others practically kneeling in her presence.

Small changes, but what they have in common is that Addison seems far more confident and aggressive and in control of her own destiny -- in other words, like the Addison everybody liked enough to make her deserving of a spin-off. And those changes suggest that someone finally got through to Shonda to stop making Addison act like such a wimp. Baby steps, but at least they're in the right direction.

But there still be plenty of problems here, mostly centering around all these borderline middle-aged characters acting -- as all Shonda characters do -- like they're still in high school. The fascination over Pete having kissed Addision, Sam seeing Addison naked, the giggling over the geezer giving the sperm sample... I could just barely tolerate that coming from George and Izzie (season one and two versions), but what's the point of doing a show with more mature actors if you're going to write them the same way you do your twentysomethings? And the custody fight for the dead guy's sperm was so quintessentially David E. Kelley that I'm stunned it hasn't already been a five-episode "Boston Legal" arc. (Or maybe it has, you tell me.)

That said, there's a reason I stick with "Grey's" even when it makes me throw things at the TV: that Shonda, when she's not reliving her own wonder years, developing unhealthy crushes on fictional people or letting these same fictional people tell her how they should behave, can be an exceptional, moving writer.

There wasn't a whole lot of the Good Shonda on display here, but there were traces of her in the subplot where Violet (the Amy Brenneman shrink) tries to diagnose the crawling woman in the department store. Specifically, I liked the device of Paul the store manager as the gauge of how seriously we were supposed to take the plot at any given moment. At first, he's comic relief, complaining about the woman's presence, offering Violet stuff but insisting she pay for it, etc., but when the (admittedly not that surprising) truth came out about her dead son, his mood completely shifted, and there was something oddly powerful about the way he said, "Yeah, I can do that for Jenny" in response to Violet's request to clear the area for a few minutes. (I'm not exaggerating when I say I actually misted up just looking at that line in my notes from the episode.) And then, at the end, he's back to asking Violet to pay for the flip-flops, but they have an understanding now. It's those small, human moments that Shonda's so good at when she's not busy doing all that other stuff that drives me up a wall.

So I'm around for a little while, but throwaway characters like Paul and the amazing likability of Kate Walsh -- even playing a flakier version of Addison -- will only keep me around for a little while. Get better, fast.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

The women are super; the shows aren’t

This column looks at the underwhelming premiere episodes of "Bionic Woman" and "Private Practice":

Jamie Summers has the classic complement of super powers: faster than a speeding car, able to leap from building to building in a single bound, rip apart a chain link fence like tissue paper, etc. Addison Montgomery can't do any of that, but she has uncanny abilities of her own, notably an innate likability so strong that she became one of the most popular characters on "Grey's Anatomy" even after being introduced as a witch-on-wheels.

Unfortunately, these two super women have been stranded in two not-so-super shows: "Bionic Woman" and "Private Practice." Though they may be the two most-hyped new shows of the season -- "Bionic" as a remake of the '70s series, "Private" as a "Grey's" spin-off -- they're also the most disappointing.

To read the full thing, click here. Click here to read the full post