Okay I'm just gonna say it, I like
Grey's Anatomy, but these days I love
Private Practice. If you read this blog, you're probably over the fact that I love crappy tv and b-grade movies so lets not deal with the topic of actual quality control. I'm more interested in the development of character and plot lines with these two shows. I got kinda into
Grey's Anatomy a few years ago and when Kate Walsh's character Addison came along I really wasn't feeling her. Yet, Addison is kinda a slow burn, and when I started finally watching her spin-off show
Private Practice I found it fun and faster paced than
Grey's Anatomy. Then, by the end of season two, and definitely now in season three I am completely absorbed in the plot lines and well the totally bitchin' characters that drive along the story line of
Private Practice. I find the women to be awesome role models, and in a way that you rarely see on TV. Many reviews of the show thought otherwise but I think if you stuck through the beginning episodes you'll find that the female characters are realistically flawed and yet powerful and remarkably unapologetic in their powerful positions. Better still, the male characters of
Private Practice are actually substantial and more often than not wonderful guys. I generally found the guys in
Grey's Anatomy to just be walking boners with great hair (McSteamy) or maybe just someone capable of walking and having great hair (McDreamy). While the guys in
Private Practice have some flaws they tend more often to be awesome dads and really reliable friends to their female co-workers.
Now I don't want to shit all over
Gray's Anatomy, its totally one of the best doctor shows out there. Maybe I'm partial cause
Zack Braff of
Scrubs is like fingernails on a chalkboard to me or cause I was a little to young to jump on the
ER train.....but
Grey's Anatomy, set at Seattle Grace Hospital, has awesome characters, plot lines, and is just an all around well made show. Their actresses are famous for their Emmy's and the writers don't shy from giving them great material to work with. Sandra Oh's character Christina Yang, is probably my favorite as the over achiever and dispenser of brass and sass. Miranda Bailey, played by Chandra Wilson, deserves all the acclaim thrown her way. She's a stellar actress and her character is totally the hard ass and yet the one who opens the free clinic at Seattle Grace and manages to hold everyone together. However, I've had a rough time with the way her character was always the angry mother hen and yet never seemed to get the positions she deserved. I think they've managed to finally make her an attending physician in season 6 -despite the fact she seemed to be running it all from day one.
Grey's Anatomy has done some other awesome stuff, I liked the early episodes when Izzie (Katherine Heigl) got sick of being harassed for her good looks and gave everyone a good look at, what under hospital fluorescent lights, seemed to be a pretty realistic female body, cellulite and all. There was also some interesting plot lines with the also awesome Dr. Callie Torres falling in love with another woman doctor. This story was kind of awesome in that the women seemed fairly realistic and weren't the youngest or skinniest characters on the show, so at first it didn't seem to be so much designed for male viewers. Unfortunately, the way McSteamy wouldn't stop sniffing around them like the boner he is, well it made me lose some respect for that whole story line.
I guess my big problem with
Grey's is Meredith Grey, played by Ellen Pompeo. In many tv shows, you're supposed to identify with this character.... she's the universal character, the Angela Chase (My So Called Life) only she would never have the balls to dye her hair red like Angela. Meredith drinks to have the guts to have sex, she is known for having low ambition and low talent, she doesn't believe she can be loved, and when she tries to leave her still married boyfriend he gets angry and calls her a whore and she goes back to him cause well he has really good hair. While we'll get to the irrational in a minute, Meredith is the classic case of unconscious. Aside from the fore-mentioned "oh how did i wake up in this guys bed" attitude toward drinking and sex, she also deals with her larger issues of family and relationship problems by letting go of control and finding herself unconscious. The most obvious example of this is the ferryboat accident in season 3 when she finds herself falling overboard and then for some reason just lets go, in an incredibly passive nod at suicide. Of course Derek/McDreamy, the knight with shining hair, shows up and plucks her from the waters. She remains unconscious for a while at the hospital and when resuscitated is confronted by Derrick about her repeated unconsciousness attempts. To see the irrational side of my unconscious and irrational
Grey's Anatomy theory we have only to look to Izzie Stevens (Katherine Heigl) who spends most of Season 5 being "visited" by her dead fiance. Her and the dead fiance ghost have a great sex life and he hangs out with her all the time, and eventually everyone begins to notice that she's crazy. This is sort of where I lost interest in
Grey's. Izzie has some of her own unconscious moments when she develops cancer and eventually flatlines and spends a lot of time in that coma state Meredith is in....mostly in hopes of joining the dead fiance ghost in the afterworld. But don't worry, she pulls through, and then after some other hullaballoo is fired. While the women of
Grey's Anatomy are complex and sometimes awesome characters its Derrick the Dreamy that plays the golden god, repeatedly saving the day in surgery and playing the pious moral character.
However, a long time ago, in a land far away. Derrick was married to Addison. Then Addison cheated on him with his best friend McSteamy. However, instead of ending up in a coma like the
Grey's girls Addison gets her own spin off show.
Private Practice is shot in a very different way from
Grey's Anatomy. While
Grey's is sort of the dreary indie movie look
Private Practice is more like Clueless -sunny and fashionable. This might be the difference of their settings - Seattle versus Los Angeles. However, I think giving that gritty look to
Grey's Anatomy can distract you from the fact that everyone is secretly having sex on the operating table when you're not looking. It makes me very nervous about going to the hospital.
Private Practice is also similar to my other favorite spin off, Melrose
Place.
90210 was cute but Melrose was where all the fun was. Its interesting that the only character to tie those shows together was Jake (Grant Show) who plays Addison's brother in
Private Practice. Coincidence ? I like to think not.
Addison of
Private Practice is not only a medical genetics fellow but a neonatal surgeon with board certifications in both Obstetrics/ Gynecology and Maternal and Fetal Medicine. Along with her friends Naomi and Sam (once married now divorced from each other) Addison opens up Pacific Wellcare Center. The practice also involves Pete(Tim Daly), the naturopathic doctor and licensed herbalist, Violet the shrink (the ever awesome Amy Brenneman), and Cooper (Paul Adelstein), the pediatrician. Since
Private Practice is lead mainly by Addison and Naomi, the fertility specialist, the show deals with a whole lot of controversial issues surrounding reproductive health, abortion, stem cell research, designer babies, etc etc. I really appreciate the way the writers give fair play to both sides on most of these issues. While many feminists have taken issue with this I really liked that the whole practice could talk and disagree about issues like abortion and yet still remain friends and understanding of each other. Addison had an abortion when McSteamy knocked her up way back on
Grey's Anatomy and she stands by the decision and supports choice and her best friend Naomi is a bit more conservative about the issue, which I find more understandable in the context of her being a fertility doctor who spends all day trying to get people pregnant. However, the show deals with the gray areas of that decision over and over again including topics like rape, women accidentally implanted with another's embryo, fetus's who develop tumors. Seeing specific cases makes it more understandable why reasonable discussion of the issue on both parts is important. Many feminists have been resistant to this aspect of
Private Practice but I find it more true to the concept and practice of choice.
Another thing I love about
Private Practice is that Naomi has risen out of the role of the
Black Best Friend. Although she hasn't completely supplanted Addison as the main character, she has left Pacific Wellcare to head her own competitive practice that seems to be a bit more experimentally research based. Seeing a black female character that is so intelligent, classy, and powerful is rare on television and I'm glad that the creator of both
Grey's and
Private Practice, Shondra Rhimes, has finally gone there. Naomi remains very much in the story line since her practice is only one floor below Addison's.
While the show may be powered by the Amazonian figures of Addison and Naomi, the men of
Private Practice are nothing to disregard. Taye Diggs, as Sam, .......well who couldn't watch Taye Diggs do anything for an hour a week. The man is aging very well. Also, his character Sam, a talented internist, is also a great Dad, a wonderful friend to Addison, and a supportive co-parent and friend to his ex-wife Naomi. My other favorite dude is Pete, who I love partially because he is a naturopath doctor and I'm into that shit. Yet, he also rides a motorcycle, remains mature while steaming up the screen, and he takes sole responsibility for his baby with Violet, after she faces an incredibly traumatizing event. Also sometimes off screen he wears big glasses and talks politics and I'm into that too. Although, I'm not totally into Dell, I like that he's a young midwife in training as well as a great single Dad. Dell represents all the great young guys out there that just need Addison and Naomi to knock a little sense into them. Lastly, is Cooper, the man boy of the bunch who seems to get away with acting like a 12 year old because he's cuddly and is a great pediatrician. He's admittedly the most faulty character, yet I still think he's awesome due to his wonderful friendship with Violet who he takes care of all through her pregnancy, even going to Lamaze classes. He also dates the new doctor Charlotte King who plays the southern belle with a heart of ice. Well its not really ice she's just missing some normal people skills. However I enjoy his ability to rise above his 12 year shit and date a woman who is sexual, powerful, and in control, or as she puts it "too much woman for him".
This past season Amy Brenneman, formerly of Judging Amy, has been doing an amazing job playing Violet. She deserves all sorts of Emmys. Last season's finale found her pregnant and attacked by a psychotic patient intent on taking her baby. If anyone has seen the french film
Inside, you might have an idea what I mean. I think this episode, and maybe one Mad Men episode, were the only times I literally had to pause the show (I watch it on the internet), and walk around the house twice to chill out. It was incredibly frightening after recent news reports of real life similar situations. I had no idea how they would deal with the aftermath the next season, yet I've not been disappointed. The show has always been good at dealing with parenthood and the times when it may not come naturally to a woman, and it makes sense in Violet's case. Also, the trial of the psychotic patient was helpful in defining the difference between mental health problems and the old fashioned concept of female hysteria.
So I guess this post has turned into a grand opus on something very few people care about and even fewer people are going to agree with me on. That's fine, I'm sure there are a million different ways to look at these show. However I would like to point out that both
Grey's Anatomy and
Private Practice pass the
Bechdel Test with flying colors. In addition, creator of both shows Shondra Rhimes is truly a force to be reckoned with - she's had a couple busts such as ummm....
Crossroads, yet she's also kicked ass with
The Princess Diaries and
Introducing Dorothy Dandridge. I think we have a lot to look forward to from her in the future.
Or if you take another turn it'll be amazing shirts from the trips to Hawaii in the 70s or cruises in the 80s. And it isn't just my grandma's clothes...its all three of her children's from infancy until they left the house in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. I've worn these clothes since I was a baby. I grew up not really thinking it was weird to wear pinafores over all my dresses at a time when everyone else was wearing neon. This probably was helped along by the fact that the only barbies I owned were from my paternal grandmother who'd discovered a box of 1960s and 70s Barbies and Skippers in her own attic. In Jr. High and early High School I was totally a snob about what was really "hippie clothes" since all of mine came from the actual era of hippie. I felt bad for girls who had to buy their paisley shirts at the mall. Next was the era of the hipster t-shirt when I found a stockpile of 1980 Summer Olymics shirts. Then I discovered the furthest section of the attic with my aunt's 1980s aerobics clothes and a new era was ushered in. Of course the elastic was shot in almost everything but it was a phase when I didn't mind replacing elastic or sewing things to be tighter or just layering them to work out. I think all my galpals in art school had an embarrassing 80s bathing suit -probably the one thing you shouldn't wear due to the disappearing elastic problem.
In their post on vintage Threadbared mentions Gertie Lang's Blog and her post Vintage Sewing and Gender Politics. Gertie, who is really into 1950s fashion, received a comment that was concerned about the celebration of Fifties fashion being an un-feminist move. Gertie, who does consider herself a feminist, wrote the following questions as a way of thinking about this.
Gertie responds by saying that she usually changes the patterns a little bit to be more contemporary and girdle free - and that she sees it as a way of honoring the lives of the women who came before her. On the blog Renegade Bean, they discuss how although they love this era of fashion it is at times hard to overlook the fact that as Asian Americans this would have been a doubly difficult time with the repercussions of the Japanese Internment Camps and Chinese Exclusion Act. However both Blog's writers admit that they will go on loving vintage -with all the good and bad baggage it entails.
e also thought about this era of vintage a lot. I think its why I tend to like a mix of eras. I find that my generation tends to be a motley crew of appropriation, at this point we've run out of eras and we're back in the 90's - in a decade we're old enough to actually remember.
Then when I think about it there was also a lot of 50s and 60s nostalgia in the 80s. Just look at the B-52s. Cindy Wilson and Katie Pierson rocked those beehives. It wasn't quite as roughed up but it was certainly self aware. They don't look too uncomfortable in those outfits either.
