"Code Blue! We’ve got a medical emergency that just won’t stabilize. Last spring’s season finale of Grey’sAnatomy, the two-hour back-door pilot introducing the spinoff series for Dr. Addison Montgomery’s (Kate Walsh) character, was universally panned. As a result, creator Shonda Rhimes wanted a do-over.… Rhimes has earned our trust, so we were hopeful. But now we’re standing by with the paddles, watching the hour flatline. Clear! As self-consciously precious as the episode title, the tone of the spinoff takes a sharp turn away from Seattle and Grey’s . In Los Angeles, red-haired Addison has somehow morphed from a self-assured, aloof surgeon into a ditzy sitcom babe, Lucy Ricardo with a scalpel. The character made more sense when she was an ice queen." (The Denver Post)
"It’s hard to do an adult drama without adults….There’s only one voice heard on the Grey’s spinoff, and it might strike high schoolers as immature. These are supposed to be established physicians at a prosperous ‘wellness center,’ yet each does something tonight that makes you wonder if they’re capable of even finding the clinic, let alone running it. We may be a childish generation, but you can’t make all the characters childish at once, at least not before you’ve given us some reason to want to watch them grow up. (USA Today)
"Kate Walsh’s Addison Forbes Montgomery (formerly Shepherd) wouldn’t have been my first guess as to who would be the agent of a Grey’s Anatomy spinoff, but she’s a good choice, and I am glad for her sake that she is getting out of there….The title of tonight’s episode, ‘In Which We Meet Addison, a Nice Girl From Somewhere Else,’ reflects that whole clean slate thing. (On screen, it’s represented by Addison’s dancing naked in her new digs.) But new beginnings can be difficult; there are problems here, though they are not irremediable." (Los Angeles Times)
"Where Grey’s was a bottom-up show starring a mostly unfamiliar cast, Private Practice has an ensemble of actors who are stars in their own right and who have toplined their own series. It’s a top-down style of making TV, and while there’s nothing wrong with that, it doesn’t sync with the existing Grey’s universe…. While I understand the big-star approach to casting Private Practice from an initial business standpoint — an effort to get fans of these actors and/or their past series to tune in — it does seem like a house of cards to create an ensemble stocked with high-profile egos. How long until any one of these actors realizes he or she is not the star and begins to demand more screen time? Perhaps they’re older and wiser and that concern is unfounded, but I wouldn’t count on it. (Pittsburgh Post-Gazette)
“Private Practice, the new Grey’s Anatomy spinoff about a Santa Monica medical clinic, is unfunny faux David E. Kelley from Shonda Rhimes…. Some TV critics are saying tonight’s first episode is better than the backdoor pilot that doubled as an episode of Grey’s Anatomy last season. Wow! Tonight’s new episode is so awful even the amazonian Kate Walsh cavorting nakedly cannot redeem it.” (Ain’t It Cool News, “Hercules Deems Grey’s Spinoff Private Practice ‘McCrappy’!!”)
To watch a preview clip of Private Practive, check outB&C’s fall preview section.
