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October 12th, 2007

Grey’s Anatomy 4×03

ga Last night’s episode of Grey’s Anatomy was called “Let the Truth Sting,” and I have to say that for the second week in a row, it almost felt like I was watching classic GA again. There was more humor than heavy stuff, and that’s precisely why I fell in love with this show back in Seasons 1 and 2. GA doesn’t do well when it tries to position itself as a serious medical drama like ER, but as long as it sticks to fluff, it’s pretty fun. Here’s what happened in episode 4×03.

Meredith: There was almost zero interaction with McDreamy this week, which was quite a refreshing change. Instead, Meredith finally had to confront Lexie, who was tired of being ignored. After the half-sisters yell at each other for a while, Bailey steps in to tell Meredith that the best thing to do would be to give Lexie some answers about her mother’s death. So Meredith sits down with the file and goes over every single line of it, presumably answering all of Lexie’s questions along the way.

George/Izzie: George continues to be pissed at the world. What the hell is wrong with this guy? He’s had anger issues ever since his father was sick way back in the middle of S3. It’s hard to believe he was one of my favorite characters a couple years ago. Anyway, this week he’s mad because Izzie keeps asking him if he told Callie about them yet. He just needs her to back off so he can do it on his own terms.

Izzie, meanwhile, spends most of the ep talking with Really Old Guy, the semi-comatose patient in whose room the gang used to eat lunch when they were interns. Really Old Guy (Charlie, by the way) suddenly wakes up while Izzie’s group is doing rounds, and of course he knows all the lates gossip because he apparently overheard everything.

Charlie tells Izzie that he just wants to die, but naturally she won’t let him. However, there’s nothing she can do when he checks himself out of the hospital and dies while sitting fully dressed in his wheelchair.

Bailey/Callie: Callie spends most of the day hidden away in a lounge doing paperwork. She doesn’t even care about all the personnel drama that Bailey tells her about. When Bailey finally tries to confront her about everything, Callie says don’t bother. She knows Miranda is better at handling all that stuff than she is, so there’s no reason to spell it out. Bailey then surprises her by saying she’s going to start acting as Callie’s No.2 woman, whatever that means.

Later, Callie is waiting for George in his hotel room. When he arrives she tells him to “Just say it,” at which point he blurts out, “I slept with Izzie.”

Alex: He gets assigned an old intern, and even though the guy’s a pain in the ass, Alex doesn’t want to yell at him because it would be like yelling at his grandfather. But the intern gets in the way one too many times, so Bailey ends up yelling at Karev, telling him that there’s a pecking order in the hospital for a reason. That seems to serve as a wake-up call for Alex, because he goes back to being the jerk he was in Season 1, first by snapping at his intern and then by outing George as a repeater in an elevator full of interns.

Cristina: Not much of a storyline this week. She faked being sad about Burke in order to sucker Meredith into giving her the interesting surgeries.

My Reaction: Although not much actually happened in this episode, it was still fun for the most part, which is why I liked it. For instance, Cristina’s storyline wasn’t substantial at all, but it was funny to see her pretending to mope around whenever Meredith appeared. I also liked her exchange with Alex, when she said that sad was her fake emotion and that he had to find something else to use.

George is becoming more and more insufferable every week. Just when I think my hate for him has reached an all-time high, he goes and outdoes himself. What Izzie sees in him is beyond me. I hope when these two finally get together, it will be filled with misery and mistrust. With the way they got together, they don’t deserve to be happy.

Lexie still grates, but at least she and Meredith are talking now. Hopefully they’ll be a bit more civil to each other now that they’ve cleared the air about Lexie’s mom’s death. Then maybe Lexie will have some purpose for being here this season other than to cause Meredith anxiety.

I was caught off guard by how brutal Alex was in outing George in the elevator because it’s been a long time since we’ve seen that side of Karev. But in thinking back to S1 and S2, Alex and George never really got along at all, and Alex didn’t bother hiding his feelings back then, so what he did wasn’t completely out of character. Still, that whole thing was pretty cold.

Overall, this was a pretty good episode. Do you think we can have 3 good ones in a row? Check back next week to find out!

October 12th, 2007

Private Practice 1×03

pp logo Sorry that I’m so late in getting this Private Practice recap up, but I’ve been incredibly busy for the past couple of weeks. Plus, I’m still trying to settle on a decent viewing/writing schedule since my days are now filled with other activities. I can only write in the mornings or at night, which is definitely putting a crimp in my style! Anyway, I’m sure you don’t care about that, so let’s just move on to the recap of episode 1×03, “In Which Addison Finds the Magic.”

Addison: Addison deals with a new bride who hasn’t yet been able to have sex with her husband because she feels too much pain in her “vajayjay” (as Dr. Bailey would say). It turns out that the woman, a virgin who decided to “wait for the magic” of marriage, has some kind of muscle problem that’s causing involuntary spasms or something. Muscle relaxants don’t do the trick, so Addison ends up giving the woman injections instead. This treatment, along with some visualization therapy from Pete, does the trick, and the woman and her husband are finally able to consummate.

Pete: It was the anniversary of Pete’s wife’s death (she died in 2001), so he spent some time at the cemetery talking to her headstone (on Violet’s advice). Later on, we get bits and pieces of the story. Apparently, she went to bed one night and simply didn’t wake up the next day, which was all the more puzzling since she was just 40 years old. Oh, and apparently, she and Pete were pretty miserable in their marriage because he made it clear in his talks that he hated her.

Cooper: Cooper’s patient of the week was a little girl who suddenly turned “cornflower blue.” Why the mother decided to bring the kid to the Oceanside Wellness Center instead of the ER is a mystery to me, but there she was. Anyway, Cooper had never seen anything like that before, but he hazards a guess as to the cause, gives the kid an IV treatment, and sends her on her way.

A few days later, the mom comes back because now all four of her daughters are blue (to varying degrees). Cooper decides the cause has to be something environmental, so he goes back to the girls’ house to check things out. Finding nothing, he decides that his best bet is to et the girls to open up to him — no small task since they refuse to talk to anyone over the age of eight. But he arrives for a playdate with a bunch of pink toys in hand, dons fairy wings and lip gloss, and is soon a member of the tribe. Cooper eventually discovers that the girls were playing in a shed full of ammonium nitrate-based fertilizer, which caused the blue tint.

Violet: In between more ex-boyfriend angst, Violet makes a breakthrough with a patient who’s been coming to her for three years. The man has been in a bad marriage, and Violet finally gets him to admit that he wants a divorce. Unfortunately, when he goes to tell his wife, she starts bleeding uncontrollably from the nose. It turns out she has Wegener’s, so the guy decides to stay with her after all.

After some back and forth, it emerges that the wife’s condition is not new. She has been hiding it for the past six months or so, but decided to reveal it now in order to guilt her husband into staying. Even when confronted with the truth, the hen-pecked husband doesn’t care. He’s still going to stay.

Naomi: Eats lots and lots of cake from Dell.

Sam: Has custody of their daughter Maya for the week.

My Reaction: I have to say that I’m impressed with Private Practice thus far. I think the last two episodes have been an immense improvement over the first two, and I really think this show will keep on getting better. I’m getting used to the characters now and am actually becoming interested in what’s happening to them, so things are definitely on the right track.

Although I thought it was hilarious to see Cooper in fairy wings and lip gloss, the rest of that storyline bothered me tonight. First of all, as I mentioned above, I can’t think of another mom on the planet who would have taken her blue child to a wellness center instead of the ER. I mean, come on! She had no idea what was wrong with the kid; for all she knew, it could have been a fast-acting poison. But she was willing to go to the OWC first? Uh huh.

Second, I didn’t buy the mom’s reaction at all. She was acting like the turning blue thing was just a normal “girls will be girls” sort of problem when by rights she should have been freaking out. That bugged me to no end.

I’m still not feeling the Addison/Pete connection, but at least Pete was far less grating this week. I think it’s because he was so busy being angry about his dead wife, which is something that suits him far more than that smug, smarmy act he pulled all during episode 1×01 when he kept insisting that Addison moved there because of his kiss. Yuck!

Oh, and I also liked how Addison, Naomi, and Violet found time to bond over Dell’s cake. If the writers take time to develop these friendships before getting into the sexual relationships, I think this show will be great!

Anyway, this week was another step forward for Private Practice. I’m glad I decided to keep watching!

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