Private Practice vs. Grey's Anatomy
Will Addison’s Spin-Off Equal the Original’s Popularity?
Grey’s Anatomy has been a success pretty much from the start, but in its second and third season it reached the status of the kind of show everyone talks about, gaining viewer numbers in the hundreds of millions. In season three the drama escalated and the cliffhangers were life or death. The season finale found just about everything changing. A wedding was cancelled, a key character died, a most unlikely couple decided to make a go of it, and the eternal Derek/Meredith quandary seemed to be squashed. In the midst of all this chaos, Private Practice was born.
The first few glimpses of Private Practice were worked into episodes of Grey’s. Before it was officially picked up, we met the characters, saw what the Oceanside Wellness Center had to offer. It tested well, obviously, and has survived its first season. Now that both Grey’s Anatomy and Private Practice have finished their respective seasons and both have been released on DVD, fans begin to choose sides.
Addison or Meredith: Still the Question
The two shows have remarkably different leading ladies. Meredith Grey (played by Ellen Pompeo), occasionally called the eternal twelve-year-old, is delicate and unreachable, wry and analytical, with an indulgent, somewhat narcissistic side only her close friends see. She is fascinated by what she cannot have, and thus the main drive of the show: be a good surgeon to please the dead mother, keep McDreamy (played by Patrick Dempsey) entangled but at arm’s length.
Addison Montgomery (played by Kate Walsh) is idealistic and self-motivated, and Private Practice is really built around these two qualities. Of course she’s not above the occasional indulgence, and the show, like Grey’s, is very much about a group of adults who have no idea what they’re doing. The contrast comes in Addison’s approach. Several times in season one, Addison can be seen clearly stating what she wants, or is looking for, particularly when facing her co-worker Dr. Pete Wilder (played by Tim Daly). The people of Oceanside are mostly about searching, rather than cleaning up their messes. Thankfully, it still comes with snarky banter.
Oceanside or Seattle Grace: All About the Backdrop
This same contrast can be seen in the sets and basic practices for each show. Oceanside, as the characters have explained several times, is about small-town medicine in a big bustling city. They take one patient at a time, they make house calls, they get involved. They have none of the mussed, harried look of the Seattle Grace staff. Alternately, as Addison finds quickly, they are not quite so well equipped. The show is full of surprises, side routes, what Addison calls “crazy Macguyver surgeries.”
Included in the special features of the Private practice DVD set is an interview with creators Shonda Rimes and Betsy Beers, in which they talk about the color scheme for each show. Some effort was put into making Private Practice a more upbeat, warm show: the offices of Oceanside are filled with reds, oranges, dark greens. Fitting with the rainy city it calls home, Seattle Grace is brimming with steel grays, surgical blues, and hospital whites. Their drama is a little more edgy, the love a little more affected, and the sarcasm a little darker.
Private Practice definitely retained some of the qualities that made Grey’s Anatomy so popular. Thanks to the strong script, every episode is likely to make you either laugh or cry or both. It still has a wealth of strong friendships, mysterious men, and of course sexual tensions. Fans of both shows can surely look forward to dynamic season premiers within the next month.
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