Farewell Private Practice

I believe back in July or August I started a series about the Fall TV Schedule where I listed the shows that were going to be coming on for each channel, a little synopsis about them, which ones we were going to be watching, etc. etc. I also believe that I didn’t finish the series and stopped part of the way through.

Today I’m going to start anew and give you my thoughts on some of the different shows that have been airing during the fall season. I am going to have to split these up a bit though because I watch A LOT of shows and if I were to put them all in one post it would be a bit daunting.

This week we’re going to start by jumping into Shondaland to talk about the first of the three shows of hers that I watch, Private Practice. I chose to cover this one first because it just had it’s series final on Tuesday and what better way to send it off.

Private Practice

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Recap

So much has happened in Private Practice this past season and with the weird way that they did some of the episodes, only focusing on one major character each episode and then doing that for each of them, it was a bit hard to keep up with. *deep breath* but here we go:

• Amelia

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• Amelia wasn’t featured to often but the few times that she was had a lot of growth in the scenes. She’s trying to reconnect with all the people at the practice after what she did with the drugs and she does this by trying to help Violet with her issues and trying to be there for Addison and Charlotte through their stuff. In her personal life though the growth is a bit stunted as she’s still mourning over the guy who just died. Over the course of the season though she starts to talk to James, the new ER doctor that was hired, and goes out with him a few times. They wind-up starting a relationship and he helps her to come to the realization that even though she just went through the toughest thing a pregnant woman could ever go through (see last season) she still wants to have kids… with him.

• Violet

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• Violets drama started early in the season and then she kind of disappeared for awhile before coming back with some more. The season started with her finding out that Pete had died which she processed fairly quickly, there was actually less time of her processing Pete’s death than there was of her helping a set of parents. The parents arc was a several episode arc that started fairly early in the season when their little girl goes missing, Violet helps them reunite with each other and stay together through the traumatic ordeal of losing their daughter. She then kind of fades to the background for a bunch of episodes until an episode or two before the end where she decides she’s going to write a new book.

• Sam

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• Again with the not to much happening bout. Sam starts out on the rebound from Addison and kind of becomes this douchy man whore. Not very becoming of his character let me tell you. He starts dating this nurse, Stephanie, and he doesn’t want to tell her anything about his past or have to punch a clock with her. It really feels like he’s using her for a booty call and it takes her awhile to realize it, however, when she does and starts to leave Sam grows some feelings and decides to divulge about his divorce etc. etc. Except, he doesn’t divulge everything and Addison accidentally lets the cat out of the bag when she gushes to Stephanie about how great she is being okay with Sam and Addison still being friends after they split and him living next door etc. Stephanie gets pissed and breaks-up with Sam. They spend a few weeks broken-up but wind up getting back together after Charlotte does some matchmaking. The only other thing to happen with Sam is that he finds out his mother has been having a lifetime affair with her boss, who is married… oh and the guy’s wife knew the entire time, and that this guy is actually his father and he’s dying. The guy needs a new lung in order to survive, however, after some choice words from Sam the guy refuses Sam’s offer to donate part of his lung and instead chooses to go home and live out the rest of his life with his wife and mistress. There really was no effect from all of this news, it happened in one episode and we’ve never heard anything else about it since.

• Sheldon

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• Now Sheldon is where the episodes starts getting juicy. He has had a bunch of stuff going on in his private and his work life. To start with his private life, in the season premier Sam tells him he has prostate cancer. At first Sheldon doesn’t want to deal with this but he finally decides to go see a specialist who recommends radiation treatment. Sheldon starts the radiation treatments where he meets Miranda, who has stage IV brain cancer, and they become friendly. It’s only after he starts to have feelings for her that she offers up the info of the brain cancer. At first Sheldon balks at starting a relationship, but when she misses an appointment and he fears that she has died then realizes she hasn’t he decides that “it is better than to have and lost.” Since she doesn’t want people to know about her condition they keep the fact that she is terminal from everyone. Now to his work life, and boy when Sheldon finds drama he finds it in piles. In one of the first episodes of the season Sheldon has a patient that comes in telling him about how he has feelings for his goddaughter, who is only five, and that because of this the guy wants to commit suicide. You can tell that Sheldon is conflicted as he wavers back-and-forth throughout the episode as to letting the guy go home and die or try to “cure” him. The decision is inevitably taken out of Sheldon’s hands when the guy admits to taking the medication to kill himself before entering the room so he didn’t have to die alone. Being a doctor, Sheldon is forced to try and save the guy. Fast forward a few episodes and the guy is in the ER due to the medication Sheldon has him on making him sick. He happens to be there at the same time as the little girl from Violets story who of course goes missing. However, he is in the hospital when the girl goes missing so while Sheldon originally suspects he did it he has to admit that there’s no way he could have. Over the next few months Sheldon starts to work with guy to overcome his “tendencies” and the guy is able to get a girlfriend and start functioning as normal. Sheldon though isn’t entirely convinced and starts to question him on different aspects of the girl to judge if he’s seeing an adult or not. Sheldon becomes convinced that the new “girlfriend” is in fact the missing girl from the hospital and goes to the police. They are unable to help him due to doctor/patient confidentiality laws and no proof, so Sheldon sets out to get it. He has the guy come in for another session and starts to antagonize him about the “girlfriend” not being an adult the guy essentially starts to goad Sheldon because he realizes he can’t do anything about it until Sheldon hits a nerve and he becomes agitated. This is what Sheldon needed and as the guy races out Sheldon has him put under arrest and thrown into the mental hospital on a suicide watch and the guy’s previous attempt helps justify this. Once the guy is out of the way Sheldon meets the police at his house where he tells them that the guy confessed about the girl and threatened to kill the girl then himself giving them the just cause needed… only she’s no where to be found in the house. Until Sheldon finds a room in the basement hidden behind some cabinets. They go inside and find the girl hiding under the bed, she is eventually reunited with her parents.

• Charlotte and Cooper

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• Charlotte and Cooper start out the season by finding out she is pregnant with triplets and the rest of the season pretty much revolves around them dealing with this news. Cooper, who has always wanted children, is of course ecstatic to find out that they are pregnant and with triplets to boot. Charlotte on the other hand, who has never wanted children and has already been saddled with Cooper’s kid from another relationship (although she does love Mason as if he were her own), hates the fact that she is pregnant. The pregnancy starts out rocky to begin with because she got pregnant while having an IUD which means that she could miscarry fairly early. She actually tells Addison to not be good at her job when she removes it because her faith doesn’t allow her to abort and she can’t have any other kids at the moment. This doesn’t work in Charlotte’s favor and the pregnancy survives the IUD removal and while she is constantly complaining about being pregnant with “leaches” you can tell she is starting to love the babies and enjoying being pregnant. This is extremely evident when a decision has to be made about possibly aborting one of the fetus’s and she refuses because she can’t make that kind of decision. Everything is going great for them until Charlotte goes into early labor at 26 weeks. They rush to the hospital and Addison is able to stop the labor but only after Charlotte delivers one of the babies. The baby is rushed to NICU before Charlotte can see it and Cooper rushes afterwards. Addison has to wind-up sewing Charlotte’s cervix shut so she doesn’t go into labor and putting her into a semi-upside-down position to keep the babies from entering the birth canal. She has to stay in that position for about a week before she is able to be just bed ridden until the babies are ready to deliver at about 36 weeks. Meanwhile, the baby that was delivered has some major medical complications and is very touch-and-go for awhile but Addison, Sam, and Amelia are able to pull her through and Charlotte gets to see her right before she heads in the delivery room to deliver the remaining two. All three are released fairly quickly and just in time to move into the new house that Cooper just bought them.

• Jake

  

• Nothing much happens with Jake at the beginning of the season except for him and Addison getting started in their relationship. He moves in with her after a few episodes, she proposes to him and he doesn’t respond, but then he proposes to her in the next episode and she accepts. The juicy stuff with Jake happens midway through the season when you find out all kinds of good info in one episode. You find out that he’s been seeing and talking to the spirit of his dead wife, you find out that his wife died because she was addicted to drugs, you find out that he was arrested for beating a guy nearly to death, you later find out that the reason he did this was because the guy was his wife’s dealer and he had came to their house where their daughter was, you find out his teenage daughter is dating her professor, you find out that he threatens the life of that professor, and you find out that he finally comes to terms with his wife’s death and in loving another woman and no longer sees and talks to her spirit (that’s when proposes to Addison). Most importantly though you find out that he loves Addy more than anyone else probably has when he offers to leave her so that she can keep her son.

• Addison

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• I left Addy for last because while she wasn’t a major focal point of the season she is the major focal point of the series. Last season Addy finally got the call that there was a mother who had chosen her to be their babies adoptive mother. This season for Addy is all about making that dream come true. She starts home visits with a social worker, who in my opinion just seems to nitpick over everything, and going through the entire process they have. Things hit a snag when Henry’s birth mother makes a reappearance wanting to see Henry when she hasn’t wanted any connection with him for months. She comes on really strong and pushy wanting a lot of concessions, including a visit of Henry with her mother, after just a few hours of seeing Henry and being absent for months before that. Once Addy, Jake, and Henry meet with the bio-mom and grandma it is obvious that the mother still wants Addy to care for her son but the grandma wants the baby with them. The mother and Addy meet alone and finally come to an understanding. Everything else continues without hitch until the social worker wants to do a background check on Jake and finds out about his arrest record, while she seems a bit perturbed about this she indicates that she’s not going to make a fuss and sends the case to the judge for finalization. Addy goes to the finalization hearing only to find out that the social worker changed her mind and has decided to kick-up a fuss and that judge has decided to investigate more thoroughly. After Jake finds out that this is his fault he goes to the judge to give his side of the story and when the judge doesn’t seem moved he offers to leave Addy so she can have her son. Jake comes back to Addy’s with the signed adoption papers and you find out that after that move the judge was interested in hearing more of Jake’s side of the story and decided that Henry was better off with both Jake and Addy in his life.

All of this brings us up to:

The Series Finale:

Some major things happen in the series finale but a lot of non-major things happen. The episode starts with Jake and Addison getting married with Naomi flying in so that she can be her matron-of-honor. This leads to Sam and Naomi sleeping together. The episode fast forwards three months where we find out that Naomi has broken up with Fife (and I liked him to *sad pandy*) and oh yeah she’s pregnant…with Sam’s baby. She doesn’t want to tell Sam any of this so she leaves after only being in town for the one day for Addison to confirm the pregnancy. Addison, who is now happily married, feels bad that two of her best friends are miserable so she goes to Sam and tells him about Naomi breaking up with Fife and still being in love with him, but not about the pregnancy.

Meanwhile, Miranda comes into the office to have lunch with Sheldon and has a seizure while there. This causes Amelia to put her into the hospital for an overnight observation, which Miranda at first agrees to and then declines when Sheldon leaves the hospital for a moment. He comes back in the middle of her signing the discharge papers and she tells him to leave her because she doesn’t want his last memories of her to be of her dying, he refuses so she leaves him. After a day or so he realizes that he’s in love with her and wants to be with her up to her dying breath so he quits his job at the practice and goes to her and in a very touching scene tells her all of this. The last scene of them two is them sitting in chairs on a beach somewhere holding hands.

Over on Jake’s side of the practice he’s trying to rebuild his relationship with his daughter, who served as his best man for his wedding, but he really bungles it all when she tells him that she’s taking a semester off to go to Rome. He tries to talk her out of taking the semester off with the promise that he’ll send her to Rome on his dime over the summer. She then drops the bombshell that she’s actually going to Rome because the professor is going over to teach and he asked to her to go. They fight and she storms off. After Sheldon quits the practice to go be with the woman he loves Jake has a moment of clarity and has his daughter come back in and he tells her that essentially he’d be happy to give her away on her wedding day to whomever she chooses, even if it is the professor but that she’d always be his little girl. They hug and its off to Rome she goes.

Nothing big happens with Amelia throughout the episode except that she’s still in the relationship with James and when he mentions marriage at one point she looks at him and smiles instead of balking. Nothing is also what happens with Cooper and Charlotte. He promised to stay at home with the triplets when she first told him she was pregnant so that’s what he’s been doing the past couple of months and it’s driving him bonkers. After a pretty funny speech he gets her to agree to hire a nanny and both of them go back to work. For the most part nothing much was going on with Violet, she was working with a patient who had been with her for about six years and was ready to leave but the patient just wasn’t ready to admit it and until almost the end of the episode. I’m guessing this was supposed to be a symbol of the show going off the air but really it just kind of felt pointless and really only served to give Violet an “Aww” moment when the girl came back and thanked her. Other than that she has been working on her book.

…going back to Sam and Naomi. After Addison tells him about Naomi still being in love with him he decides to break it off with Stephanie and chase after Naomi. He does this by bursting into a meeting and professing his love but being a dolt he starts out with “Addison told me…” Naomi takes this to mean that he knows about the pregnancy and after the other people in the room he leave she refuses his decleration because she sees it as him saving her from the pregnancy. Sam is quite shocked since he didn’t know about it and tells her that he loves her and is excited about them being pregnant.

The episode then flashes to Addison recording a video, which is how the episode starts actually, and you find out that the video is for Naomi on her wedding day to Sam. The episode flashes again to the kitchen at the practice and everyone is huddled around one end of the table chit chatting when Cooper comes in talking about a patient he joins the group and they start talking about the case. That is until Violet comes in and announces that she has finished her book. She tells them that it’s about them, their chats in the kitchen, her patients, and most importantly about her journey to find joy. They ask her what the title is and she tells them “Private Practice” and they joke back and forth about it being a good title as the camera pans out through the lobby and into the elevator and then the door closes on them all laughing.

My Thoughts:

The episode that featured Coop had each segment start with a different dance scene. This was the 90’s.

While the season had some great story lines overall the format in which they were presented was not my favorite. The jumping around and telling the story from one persons perspective and going months down the line, then jumping to another person and starting back at the beginning and getting them to that same point, rinse and repeat was really quite annoying and aggravating. This is especially so if you don’t care for a particular character and the fact that nothing really had consequences. Sam’s issues with his mother and his newly found father were never heard of again after his episode nor was there anything about the missing girl after Sheldon found her. As for the series finale it was decent episode but as a series finale it wasn’t that great. The only part of the episode that felt actually felt like an end was the part with Sheldon and Miranda and then the scene at the end of the episode.

My Rating:

2 out of 5 stars

Next week will be Grey’s Anatomy