As the title suggests, this week's episode of Private Practice [1] was sort of all about how no one is really talking to anyone else at Oceanside Wellness these days, even as their economic woes continue to get worse. But the thing is, I feel like everyone did a lot of talking (as usual), just not to the people they want to be talking to. Addison would love to talk to Naomi, but Naomi's still mad; Naomi needs Violet to be her new BFF and listen to her talk about Sam, but Violet feels like that ship has sailed; and Pete and Addison have never really talked as friends but now, because there really aren't many options left, they're feeling it out. To see the rest of my thoughts, .
OK, raise your hand if you thought the steamy, sexy opening was, in fact, sexy? Sam and Naomi kicked everything off with crazy-suggestive "hate sex" facial expressions that made me feel like I'd walked in on friends doing it. It was really . . . intimate. I'm not sure I need to ever see them having hate sex again. And then straight from that to Cooper in the bathtub with Charlotte. While, in my mind, there are lots of charming, quirky reasons to find Cooper crush-worthy, that fuzzy island of chest hair is probably not one of them. Neither Addison nor Pete got to have sexy time in this opening and decide to jog out their frustrations (Addison's worried about Naomi, Pete feels old after sleeping with the temp) instead, which ends with Addison flying off the treadmill.
Addison is fed up with being ignored so she takes refuge at the hospital feeling all "bad ass," as Dell put it (more on his return in a sec!), rushing from one surgery to another. Charlotte picks up on the fact that Addison's enjoying getting her hands bloody again and decides to "woo" her with a job offer. And just as Addison has given up on SWAT guy, he, too, appears to "woo" her with sprinkled doughnuts. Addison is skeptical (you know, the whole "Why didn't you call?" thing) and SWAT guy says he was crazy busy and assures her that "This is me being charmed by your rambling, incoherent message."
Meanwhile Violet gets a really intense consult — a woman who is losing sleep because she's convinced her kid is a sociopath. He killed the family dog after his father died and hasn't shown remorse. Violet refuses to hand the lady a prescription for sleeping pills (as Sam is pressuring her to do) and instead insists on helping her. Violet also is annoyed that Naomi is Sam's sounding board and has an emotional talk with Naomi at the end accusing her of trading up their friendship for Addison and she was not going to be the next-best-thing-friend ("You were using me as your Addison"). This makes Naomi storm into Sam's office to help Dell get his job back and announce that she will not be his sounding board. So basically, by the end of the episode, at least some people finally started to say things to the people they really wanted to say them to.
A few more thoughts:
- I know this sounds dark and a bit twisted, but I was secretly hoping Violet's sociopath was really a sociopath. But I guess that's more say, ER [2]'s style than Private Practice. In PP they always turn out to be so heartwarming!
- But man, how's this for some pressure? Cooper to Violet re: the sociopath kid: "You don't want to be the one to miss Columbine."
- Cooper's little big-headed baby side story was really sweet and cute. The woman who played the big-headed baby's mom was a good actress and I loved her sweet reaction to the situation (Cooper: "You know a lot of presidents had big heads").
- Ouch! That young guy confronting Addison and asking her the name of his wife, whom she'd just operated on, stung.
- Pete's little lecture to his undies-wearing fireman about how everyone has their "things" to cope with the curve balls life throws at us and this is good, this is what we need, lost me when those "things" included drinking too much.
- And, Dell's back! Yay? Or meh?
What did you think about the episode?
Photos copyright 2008 ABC, Inc. [3]