Grey’s Anatomy

Seriously . . . is the old Grey’s back or what? Last night I finally got around to watching the season premiere from last week, and then I watched last night’s episode. Snappy dialogue, humor, emotion, and plenty of snark to go around. I fell in love with the characters all over again, and I think it’s safe to say I’ve signed on for the whole season.

I’m wondering if we’ll see some of Alex’s armor stripped away this season. And will Rebecca be back? Is he telling Meredith her sister is hot just to bug her? According to him to there’s no such thing as a happy family, and yet he’s so fiercely protective of the people he cares about. I’m ready to find out more about who Alex really is, and I look forward to seeing what the writers have in store for us.

Tough-as-nails Christina, assigning numbers to her interns so she doesn't have to remember their names. Bartering her wedding gifts for surgical favors. But I’m wondering when she’ll finally have a melt down. Or at least sit down and have a good cry.

McSteamy went to Seattle to get McDreamy back. Oh, to have been a fly on the wall during the read-through when those actors first read those lines. Way to go, writers. And won’t it be fun to see what happens when those two launch themselves into the dating scene? I’m feeling more than a little uneasy about Derek and Lexie, though. He wouldn’t. Would he?

I’m still totally lukewarm about George and Izzy. I’m trying not to be, but I am. At the end of last season I didn’t think the writers needed to put them together. This season I’m still not feeling it. There’s no chemistry between the two actors, and something about the two characters together doesn’t work for me. Maybe because they’re both like a couple of deer in the headlights.

Speaking of deer . . . I don’t even care that reviving the injured deer in the hospital parking lot was beyond unbelievable. It was classic Izzy. She's the polar opposite of Christina, and that was summed up so well when she was trying to convince Christina to give her the Mix Master. And Christina said no, you have nothing I want. Did I mention the snappy dialogue? The snark? Go, Christina!

I’m not missing Burke or Addison, so I guess it was time for them to go. Haven’t watched this week’s episode of Private Practice, either. Good thing this will be a long weekend. I have a lot of catching up to do!

See you tomorrow.

Lee

Gossip Girl and Private Practice

I’ll start by saying it’s been a busy week that has included my mother-in-law coming to visit. She usually makes the trip once a year and we love to see her. Her visit felt too short, though, and we’ll be sorry to see her leave this afternoon. While she was here, she taught my daughter how to knit and got her started knitting a cell phone case. LOL! If I can get a good picture of it, I’ll post it here. While my MIL was here, I was also able to give her a copy of my first book. She told me that she sat down to read for a few minutes, lost track of time and ended up reading for an hour and a half. Having a reader get lost in a story is just about the best compliment an author could hope for and when it comes from someone you love, it's gold!

This week I’ve watched the second episode of Gossip Girl and the premiere of The Practice. Before seeing either show I had expected to like The Practice and feel so-so about Gossip Girl. Turns out, it’s the exact opposite. Gossip Girl characters had me hooked within fifteen minutes.

After I watched The Practice last night, it didn’t take me long to figure out why I wasn’t drawn in. I liked the scenes with the psychiatrist and her patient-they were emotional and felt believable to me-but Addison still seems like a secondary character from Grey’s Anatomy. On Monday I blogged about secondary characters. I hadn't thought about it until now, but I think Addison needed to be a better-developed secondary character before becoming a heroine.

She is a self-described world-class neonatal surgeon, and yet she gives up that career and moves to a different city and a very different job. Why? Well, no matter what she says, it seems she did it because Alex said he wasn’t her boyfriend (or she wasn’t his girlfriend), and because Pete kissed her in the elevator. She’d already accepted that her relationship with McDreamy was over, she had to know there was no future with McSteamy, and she couldn’t possibly have believed she’d make head surgeon. So Alex’s brush-off just didn’t seem pivotal enough to have precipitated this, and I think the writers could have found a way to way to give Addison a stronger and more believable motivation for such drastic life changes.

So I think the writers rushed Addison’s transition from a secondary character to being the hero of her own story. In The Practice, they’ve given her a cast of quirky secondary characters—with the exception of the surfer boy/midwife, I had a hard time buying that—but Addison is still a secondary character too. She didn't seem strong enough to outshine everyone else. Can the writers redeem her in the next few episodes? Can Addison become the hero of her own story? I’m curious enough to watch a few more episodes and to see if they can.

Note to self: The Office and Grey’s premiere tonight! Also set VCR to record Ugly Betty and Big Shots.

I’ll be back tomorrow.

Lee

At Home on TV

The list of my favorite shows in the sidebar might seem a tad eclectic—dramas and comedies for adults and young adults, and settings ranging from small towns to big cities or, in some cases, stories set primarily in a single building. I’m not saying these are the best shows on TV. They’re simply the ones that have a struck a chord for me.

Different as they may seem, I see lots of similarities. Gilmore Girls (even though it’s been cancelled, it’s still a favorite), Men in Trees and October Road are set in small town America. To me, those communities are like secondary characters in their respective stories. But communities don’t have to be towns and cities. In The Office and Grey’s Anatomy, communities exist within the walls of a building. The Office’s boss Michael Scott (Steve Carell) has almost as much affection for the building as he has for his staff. Seattle Grace is practically home for the surgeon and interns of Grey’s Anatomy. In Degrassi: TNG, the community is a high school and, for the first time last season, a university.

Home and family are important factors in most of these shows. The contrast between Lorelei’s home and her parents’ home was a major story element in Gilmore Girls, and Rory eventually leaving home became a major part of the show. In Men in Trees, Marin Frist leaves her home in New York and finds a new one in the unlikely town of Elmo, Alaska. October Road is about a character returning home after a long absence and having to come to terms with what has changed and what has stayed the same. The relationship between two very different brothers and their father is an important element of NUMB3RS and for me it’s one of the things that sets it apart from most other crime shows on television. Their family home is a retreat from the chaotic, albeit predictable according to Charlie, world around them.

Brothers and Sisters is all about family. I didn’t watch it during the regular season last year, but I caught the summer reruns. At first I thought it might be too political for my taste, but that’s overshadowed by each family member’s individual story arc and the adult children’s relationships with their, um, slightly neurotic mother, Nora Walker (Sally Field).

I’m still debating which new shows I’ll watch this year. I saw the first episode of Gossip Girl and will definitely check out a few more before I make up my mind about that one. Since The Practice is a spinoff from Grey’s Anatomy, I’ll give that one a chance, too.

Any recommendations?

Back tomorrow.

Lee