'Grey's' spinoff has 'McBeal' feel

September 26, 2007|Matthew Gilbert, Globe Staff

It was a gamble, pulling Kate Walsh out of "Grey's Anatomy" and dropping her into a series of her own. And, creatively speaking, the move has not paid off, big-time. "Private Practice," which premieres tonight at 9 on Channel 5, is just plain McLousy, from its stock cast of whiny healers down to the hokey, gimmicky medical cases of the week. The ABC show is a waste - of Walsh's appeal as a singular heroine, of costar Tim Daly's charm, and of our precious time.

What's most peculiar about "Private Practice" is its mimicry of "Ally McBeal," the late 1990s show that created a unique, fleetingly successful portrait of a woman on the edge of sanity. Shonda Rhimes, creator of "Private Practice" and "Grey's," floods the "Private Practice" engine with McBealisms, most notably early tonight, when Walsh's Addison dances like Ally through her new apartment in a towel. As the cutesy sexual tension invades Addison's workplace, and the tone lurches between comedy and drama, the spirit of David E. Kelley is in the air.

The "Private Practice" scenario is much as it looked last season on "Grey's Anatomy," when Addison visited the wellness clinic in Santa Monica in a special two-hour episode. (The only change: the recasting of Addison's friend Naomi from Merrin Dungey to a more volcanic Audra McDonald.) Addison tells Dr. Webber in Seattle, "I want to start over," and soon she's gonna make it after all in LA. It will be interesting to see if she references any of her Seattle people later in the season; tonight, though, she's The Lady From Nowhere.

Addison's new colleagues are not preoccupied with the rigors of a busy hospital, this being a cushy clinic in LA. They can spend an entire 9-5 day with one patient. And so they have time to be even less professional than the "Grey's" crew. Naomi and her ex-husband, Sam (Taye Diggs), shamelessly draw the office into their post-split acrimony. Daly's Pete vainly assumes Addison has moved to LA to be near him, since they shared a kiss last season. Amy Brenneman's Violet is an obsessive who can't let go of a married man. And Cooper (Paul Adelstein) is the resident sexaholic. I can't say I'm interested in knowing more about any of them or their textbook midlife issues. They're older than the "Grey's" interns, but certainly not wiser.