Anatomy of a Spin-off: A Rocky Start
Tim Daly and Kate Walsh by Ron Tom/ABC
Watching Thursday night's underwhelming, overly frenetic "backdoor pilot" setup for the seemingly inevitable
Grey's Anatomy spin-off, I was reminded how blown away I wasn't by the original
Grey's pilot as well. The
Grey's pilot had its problems, but this glossy new twist on the formula seems much more problematic.
When
Grey's first appeared, with the pilot held for mid-season in a year when
Lost and
Desperate Housewives exploded on the scene and turned ABC's fortunes around, my initial thoughts were: Loved the cast. Liked the characters. But at first look, the reliance on heavy-handed voice-over (since dialed back a bit) and woe-is-me, life-as-an-intern-is-hard whining obscured many of the charms that would soon emerge, and it felt a bit generic.
By the end of that first half-season, though, I was hooked. The heightened mix of hospital drama and romantic comedy, lathered in torrid and twisty soap operatics, was infectious, and the wonderfully blended (by sex and race) cast pulled it off. At the very end of that mini-season, we were introduced to Addison (Kate Walsh), a significant spoiler in the Meredith-McDreamy relationship. And in one of the show's more pleasant surprises, what could have been a cliché (the brittle bitch of an ex-wife) evolved in the following season into one of
Grey's richest characters: a brilliant but vulnerable woman picking up the pieces of her shattered personal life while acting as one of the more exacting yet compassionate mentors to the driven medical students on her watch. (That she took her attraction and flirtation with Alex to the next level? Well, this is
Grey's Anatomy, with an emphasis on anatomy.)
Of all the characters on the show to build a spin-off around, Addison makes sense. She is still a bit of an outsider, and since there's no real future for her with Derek or the other horndogs on Seattle Grace's staff, let's see where her quest "to be happy and free" (the Chief's words) will take her.
Unfortunately, it took her to the New Age-y, touchy-feely Oceanside Wellness Group, which might as well be renamed L.A. Sex-pital.
Grey's sometimes gets knocked for its
Ally McBeal tendencies, but this place is infected by
Ally-itis, with cringingly cutesy flourishes of forced whimsy at every turn. Everyone on the staff seems on the verge of a perpetual emotional breakdown or crying jag, and upon arrival, Addison launched into a silly stream of infantile babbling like an overripe Ally. Around the third or fourth time the elevator talked back to Addison, I found myself wondering where the unisex bathroom was. When Addison actually apologized to the elevator (before being introduced to the unseen security guard on the other side of the creepy surveillance camera), I really missed Seattle. (Although the stories going on back home at the mother ship weren't exactly inspired this week, either. Tell me you didn't see Mare Winningham's hours were numbered when she came in with that tragic case of hiccups.)
Back at Oceanside, the writing was forced, the chaotic atmosphere was instantly tiresome, but the cast couldn't be prettier. Tim Daly (who deserved a hit in
Eyes and possibly
The Nine), Merrin Dungey (looking luminous), Taye Diggs, Amy Brenneman, junior beefcake Chris Lowell, and my favorite - because Shonda Rhimes writes nebbishes so well - Paul Adelstein (a world removed from his
Prison Break villainy) as a sad-sack doc who's turned to Internet dates that tend to backfire. Pretty solid ensemble there, although it's unclear if any of these characters (including Addison, as written in this episode) could actually carry the show. I'm not sure any one character has to. I just wish they'd all let up a bit.
Did I really need to hear Violet the neurotic shrink (Brenneman) describe her ex as "smelling like pee"? Or "Dr. Feelgood" Diggs remark, "Don't talk about your penis while you hug another man." And so on. I almost expected to see Denny Crane as a guest patient. Maybe for November sweeps.
"It's more fun than a stuffy hospital," Naomi (Dungey) told Addison about life at Oceanside. Which may be true, but one person's fun is another person's migraine.
Ordering up a
Grey's Anatomy spin-off is, in business terms, a no-brainer. Does that mean the show has to be as well?
