Television Review:Be patient with 'Private Practice'

[samack2010]

Like all those patients on every doctor show ever invented, "Private Practice" at first glance looks like it's about to die.

But by the end of its premiere tonight it has miraculously come back to life, apparently without even the aid of a tall, handsome, mysterious script doctor.

"Private Practice," the first of what could be several spinoffs from "Grey's Anatomy," sends Dr. Addison Forbes Montgomery, played by Kate Walsh, down the coast from Seattle to beachfront L.A. There she joins a private practice that at first seems to have rented its entire cast from Neurosis Cliche Central.

Addison was specifically hired by her med school friend Naomi Bennett (Audra McDonald). When we meet Naomi, she is sitting on the floor of her bathroom crying and eating an entire cake.

Violet Turner (Amy Brenneman) is a shrink who stalks her ex-boyfriend. Pete Wilder (Tim Daly) plays a cocky alternative medicine specialist who may be Addison's next fling.

That's not necessarily a position with job security. For those who were not keeping score, Addison is the one on "Grey's Anatomy" who was divorced from McDreamy and couldn't make it work with McSteamy.

In any case, our first encounter with the Oceanside Wellness Group plays more like sitcom than drama, and even then it's not as silly as Addison's first scene in L.A.

She takes a shower and then dances naked around her apartment - discreetly naked for purposes of the camera, but not discreetly enough so she doesn't flash the guy in the next apartment - who turns out to be another of her new partners, Sam Bennett (Taye Diggs), recently divorced from Naomi.

At this point, the show is looking like "Ally McBeal" meets "Melrose Place," a hybrid for which no one put in a request.

But the opening scene also could be read as an elaborate inside joke, perhaps reflecting Walsh's own nerves about leaving the hit "Grey's Anatomy" for something new and untested.

Whatever the motivation, the show soon pulls itself together, hitting the familiar doctor-show groove of interweaving several medical crises with snappy minidramas among the docs.

Even better, the show quickly shifts focus from the sitcom quirks to the more nuanced personal and professional sides of its characters.

If it can stay there, it can do what "Grey's Anatomy" has done so well, turning unremarkable sex jokes and familiar neuroses into quasi-parody while spinning other, fresher tales that are engaging enough to watch.

Prognosis for "Private Practice": good.

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