The Long Goodbye: ABC's "Private Practice" Reaches a Close

As a follower of the ABC medical melodramas I felt they helped create a particularly bleak start to the fall television season this year.  In fact, after watching the first few episodes of Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice I was quite depressed.  As anyone who follows the shows know, Grey’s Anatomy picked up after one of their infamous cliffhangers – an airplane crash that ultimately killed two of the central characters and severely injured another – and Private Practice started off with the unexpected death of one of its original cast members.  While I had known enough to expect Eric Dane’s (Mark Sloan) departure on Grey’s, I had not gotten the memo about Tim Daly (Pete Wilder) leaving Private Practice.  While viewers at least had the opportunity to watch Sloan’s exit (a very emotional episode where his friends and family had to follow his wishes and remove him from life support), Pete died off screen, his death-by-heart-attack only reported through his wife, Violet, who received word over the phone.  A bit anticlimactic for a melodrama. Although both programs started out with tragedy and loss, for some reason I felt that Grey’s was able to return to normal more quickly than Private Practice which I felt suffered from a rather slow and somber start to its sixth (and final) season.

 

I’m a rather poor popular culture scholar at times as I’m often the last to know when shows are going off the air, so I didn’t know that Private Practice was drawing to a close.  If I had I may have watched the series a bit differently.  Because I had met the first few episodes of the season with little enthusiasm I let the rest stockpile in my DVR queue for quite some time.  When I returned to the show, I was actually pleasantly surprised:  it had seemed to have undergone a transformation.  This, of course, was not the first time I felt this way about the program as throughout the years I often felt it struggled to find its angle and had to reinvent itself.  As a spin-off of Grey’s the show originally tried to present itself as a similar show with an ensemble cast although it was often focused on the life of its central character, Addison Montgomery Sheppard (Kate Walsh).  Recognizing this, the show eventually started using the voice-over framework (borrowed from Grey’s), drawing upon material from Sheppard’s extended monologues at her therapist’s office.  The last few episodes of the series deviated from this focus on Addison and used other characters to frame the episode and, although I love Walsh, I loved this approach even better.   Moreover, it wasn’t just a normal framework it had a bit of magical realism and (dare I say) artistry mixed in. 

 

Here are a few examples.  In the 7^th episode, “Life According to Jake,” unsurprising considering the title, the focus was on Jake.  The show was broken into the normal commercial-driven segments and featured lead-ins to the episode content where Jake was seen communicating with his dead wife, struggling to accept that he was ready to move on and fully commit to Addison.  In the 9^th episode, “I’m Fine,” the focus was on Sheldon (which is rare) and the repeated motif involved his radiation treatments and waiting room interactions which ultimately find him peace and companionship.  In the 10^th episode, “Georgia on my Mind,” the focus is on Charlotte’s bed rest after having delivered the first of her triplets prematurely.  The framework for this episode was a variety of dance numbers (featuring her and her husband Cooper) mirroring her emotional state.   In episode 11, “Good Fries are Hard to Come By,” Amelia gets the spotlight and the show’s various narrative segments are preempted by still image snapshots detailing her relationship with newcomer James. 

 

I loved the new approach to the show, the artistry in the framework, and I was enjoying the plot also:  the budding relationships between Amelia and James and Sheldon and Miranda were holding my interest; it was great to see Addison finally finding happiness both as a mother and a romantic partner; and Cooper and Charlotte’s expanded family brought about equally touching and amusing narrative potentials.  So just when the show sucked me back in I found out (with a week to spare) that it was ending.  Sigh.

 

The series ended with a wedding (as ninety percent do it seems), but not the one viewers expected.  Addison and Jake did get married, but so did the estranged couple Sam and Naomi.  (This was perhaps the one plot misstep in my opinion.  To have Naomi and Sam have a one night stand which not only lands her pregnant, but also makes them both realize they were meant to be seemed a bit too convenient.  I also had a hard time coming to terms with Sam telling Naomi she was “the only woman [he] ever loved” after two seasons involving his romantic relationship with Addison.  Equally unconvincing was his immediate excitement at learning he was to be a father again, after having been very clear on the fact that he was done with that part of his life).  But, despite this hasty rush to a resolution that involved all original cast members (i.e. Naomi), it was a nice moment when the camera panned across the faces in the crowd at Naomi and Sam’s wedding and found everyone happy.  The one character left without a love interest at the series’ finish, Violet, actually draws the show to a close by announcing that she has written another book – a book about their friendships and experiences as doctors… a book (predictably) called:  Private Practice.  (To avoid this being too cheesy of an ending the camera pulls away from the doctors debating the title, of which many are critical.  A funny final moment for the group of sparring friends).

 

So there ends another medical drama.  It was not always perfect but it was at times edgy (covering controversial issues in unflinching ways) and often heartfelt (you haven’t really cried over a medical storyline until you watch the delivery of Amelia’s brainless baby) and it will be missed by this sometimes-reluctant fan.